Had a networking event go completely sideways in Phoenix last Thursday

Honestly, I showed up to this mixer at a co-working space and the main speaker's mic kept feeding back so loud it set off a car alarm outside. Tbh, the whole thing turned into us just shouting business ideas over the siren while someone tried to find the owner of a blue Honda. Ngl, has anyone else had a meetup just totally fall apart in a funny way?

Showerthought: I just found out 'The Room' was shot on two different cameras, one for film and one for digital.

Read it on a wiki deep dive last night. Does that make it more of a technical trainwreck or a weirdly ambitious art project?

I was packing my tent wrong for years and only found out on a windy night in Moab

I was camping near Moab last fall when a big wind came up around 2 AM. My tent was flapping so loud I thought it would rip. I got out to check the guy lines and saw the problem. For years, I just staked the corners straight down. That night, I saw the rainfly was loose and the whole structure was wobbling. A guy at the next site came over to help. He showed me how to pull the lines out at a 45 degree angle from the tent, not straight down. He said, 'You need to pull the fabric tight, not just pin it to the ground.' We re-staked it and the tent went quiet. I felt pretty dumb. I had been setting up my old Kelty the lazy way for maybe ten trips. How did you learn to properly stake out your tent?

I used to think adding water to the mix on a hot day was fine, but a job in Phoenix last month proved me wrong.

This week a guy came in asking for a 'classic fade' and brought a picture of a military buzz cut. We got it sorted, but man, the disconnect is REAL sometimes.

Pro tip: I found a way to keep my pork shoulder moist without spraying it every 30 minutes.

I put a pan of water on the rack below the meat in my offset smoker and it held perfect moisture for the full 12 hour cook, so has anyone else tried this method for long smokes?

Just read a report that says AI training runs can use more water than a small town

I found a study from the University of California that broke down the water used to cool data centers for big AI models. They said training something like GPT-3 could use about 700,000 liters of water, which is enough for hundreds of homes for a year. I was just looking at energy use before, but the water cost never crossed my mind. It's a huge hidden resource drain that nobody talks about when they show off a new chatbot. How are companies even tracking this, and is anyone working to fix it?

Ngl, my drone battery died right as we were about to map a site in Tempe

We were on a tight schedule to get the topo data for a grading plan. I only had my phone and a 12-foot piece of PVC pipe from the site trailer. I taped the phone to the end of the pipe, walked the perimeter with a GPS app running, and basically made a giant selfie stick for mapping. It actually gave us a decent rough outline to start the CAD work while the drone charged. Has anyone else had to get that creative with site surveying?

The grocery store cashier scanned my avocados as coconuts

I was at the Kroger on Main Street yesterday, and the total seemed way too high. I looked at the screen and saw she'd charged me $8 for two avocados. I pointed it out, and she just sighed and fixed it, but it held up the line for five minutes. Does anyone else get annoyed when you have to double-check basic stuff like that?

TIL my old house paint might have lead in it from a free test kit at the library.

I grabbed a test kit on a whim and it turned positive on my 1978 kitchen trim, so now I'm looking at safe removal options before I sand anything.