I work from home when distractions are high on site.

Every job I've had since graduating from college was salaried and I put in far more than 40 hours a week. And in my company, we have a 10% headcount reduction in my department every year for cost reduction, so all of us except the hourly folks we have been picking up more and more work. I'm doing the work of three…

Back in the dark ages, you'd use tri-sodium phosphate cleaner, but due to environmental concerns, you can get TSP, but they reformulated the phosphate out of it. So, the soft drink with phosphoric acid in it is about as good as it gets now.

Our 4WD pickup leaked a large quantity 80W90 gear oil in our garage with a concrete floor. Here's what we did. Note: we weren't so concerned with looks as we were with tracking that gunk into the house.

The best way to handle change is to be the one driving the changes.

I'd like a device that ensures a Kardashian-free zone? Is that possible? j/k

Wow, that's pretty industrial strength!

I use CrashPlan for daily backups and a quarterly backup to an external USB drive. I have a few vital files which I also e-mail to my work PC for a third backup.

Fortunately, my cubicle is in a corner, so I have two walls. Since I have the walls, I have several colorful posters to add energy and color to the office. I built a phone stand for my office phone and added a small boombox which I keep on a very low volume so it can be heard only by me. Due to RFI, I can only get…

Ditto!

Yes, there is. The New Old House had a segment on it. Can't remember all the details, but in essence it added a small pump which formed a loop so the hot water would circulate, so when the faucet turned on you'd get hot water asap. If I remember correctly, it used the cold line for one of the paths of the loop, so…

As for the inbox - I shoot for 1 page of them - Itry to handle 80% of my mail once and only once. Most goes in trash. Some small items are handled and deleted, others are placed in online reference folders, others go on the calendar, others go on to-do list with a priority and a due date. The few items that remain…

At work, we have to keep our e-mail under control. You literally get locked out of your e-mail don't keep under the threshold. We can archive to our laptops to our heart's content.

My company has been moving jobs offshore for many years and every quarter there is a layoff somewhere in the US. About once a year my organization gets hit. Every year we lose 10-15% of our staff. The survivors are facing excruciating work loads. Pay has stagnated and lost ground against inflation. Working…

I was thinking that here in the USA if you had a job and only worked 25 hours a week, somebody who is willing to work 40 hours will end up taking your job away.

Have to credit WaPo for poor timing. If a good share of the country and Canada it's too darned cold to fix these.

I put several flashlights hanging on the wall in the stairwell heading to the basement where the breaker panel is. As others have noted, the problem to solve having light to get to the panel. A good time to check/replace the batteries is at the change to and from DST, along with those smoke detector batteries.

Only recurrent problem we have is an upstairs bathroom sink drain that slow because hair gets wrapped around the lever mechanism that lifts the drain plug. When it gets slow, I use a hook tool that I made out of a coat hanger to pull out the hair, then flush the drain with hot water.

Having lived in the snow belt my entire life, this is good advice. Yes, it looks weird. If you don't like the penguin analogy go with the baby steps.

I thought the article was good - especially when it was a combination of safety device education and a project to make them.