PSA: I was overwatering my fiddle leaf fig for a whole year without knowing

I got a fiddle leaf fig from a local nursery in Austin about a year ago and kept giving it a cup of water every Monday. The leaves started getting brown spots and dropping, and I just thought it needed more light. Last week, I finally stuck my finger in the soil and it was completely soggy an inch down. I looked it up and realized I was drowning it by watering on a schedule instead of checking the soil. Has anyone else killed a plant by being too nice to it?

Had to choose between steel studs and wood for a Phoenix office build

We were framing a 12,000 square foot office in Phoenix and the client wanted to cut costs, so I had to pick between steel studs or stick framing with wood. I went with steel for the interior walls because of the fire rating and the fact it's straight in the dry heat, but the crew hated working with it. Anyone have a better method for keeping steel stud installs moving fast?

TIL a weird trick for getting a clean plot from an old HP 7550

I was trying to get a final plot out for a client in Cincinnati and my old HP 7550 plotter just kept jamming. The paper would feed about six inches and then stop. I checked the rollers, cleaned the heads, and even tried a new paper roll. Nothing worked. I must have spent three hours on it yesterday. Finally, I called a guy I used to work with and he asked if I had tried turning the whole machine upside down and giving it a firm shake. I thought he was joking, but I did it. A tiny piece of plastic, maybe from an old pen cap, fell out of the paper path. It worked perfectly after that. Has anyone else had to do something that silly to fix a plotter?

Paid $400 for a targeted social media ad campaign last quarter. It brought in zero new customers. Am I doing it wrong or is local online advertising just a waste for a brick-and-mortar shop?

PSA: Check your suction hose clamps before you start, especially on the old 8-inch Ellicott.

We were losing prime every 45 minutes on a job in Mobile Bay last week, thought it was a bad pump seal. Turned out two clamps on the main suction line were just finger-tight from the last crew. Snugged them down with a real wrench and it ran smooth for the next three days. Anyone else run into lazy clamp work causing major headaches?

Visited the Denver Botanic Gardens and saw a cactus that looked totally fake

I was walking through the greenhouse there last weekend, you know, the big one with the desert plants. I stopped at this one barrel cactus that was just a perfect, bright green ball, no marks or anything. It looked like plastic, the kind you'd buy at a craft store. I actually reached out to touch it (gently, I promise) to check, and it was real and spiky. The label said it was a Ferocactus, about 15 years old. It got me thinking about how some plants are so neat and tidy they don't seem real, while others are all wild and messy. What's the most 'fake-looking' real plant you've ever come across in a garden?

Update: My first real project finally worked after three tries

Tbh, last Thursday I spent all night trying to get a simple weather app to pull data from an API. The first two times, my code just crashed without any clear error. Ngl, I almost gave up. On the third try, I realized I forgot to put my API key in quotes. Honestly, that one missing character was the whole problem. Has anyone else had a tiny mistake ruin hours of work?