Whiter (not gray) clothes are obtainable. Next time you’re at the grocery store, pick up a bottle of laundry bluing. White cotton is not truly white, it’s slightly yellow. When it was made, some added blue dye is the opposite color of yellow. (Remember the Color Wheel from grade school art class? Same overall concept.)…

I worked at the Ford rear axle plant around 1974 when these came out. 1) A spring in all the gas plate door covers in the center rear eventually failed and fell down, looking very tacky. 2) I did Quality Control work for their rear axles. After lengthy reporting and repeated directions to “tell the QC manager when…

Chances are good the Willys starter just needed new motor brushes. A $10 DIY task. A used Land Rover is a money pit. Otherwise, your “backyard” is not a “junkyard.” — you need to move to Waterford.

Any product can have a part that was accidentally made improperly. That’s what warranties are for. But the bizarre damage to a week-old car makes me wonder what REALLY happened here. Anything can be pushed past its breaking point.

I will always miss the late 1960's VW Beetles that had an automatic stickshift. A pressure-sensitive electric switch in the shifter opened a valve to use engine vacuum to pull a diaphragm to the clutch instantaneously. The torque converter led you drive it like an automatic that let you choose 3 manual gears. One of a…

That “mounting method” has “(inept) user-installed” written all over it. Also looks almost identical to piezo buzzers, but weatherproof? (no hole in the middle). Piezo devices are cheap and have been around for decades, can run on 12 volts.  https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2334524.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0…

I got really ticked off at having to keep track of all those coupons (in the wife’s car? in my car? on the kitchen counter? in my wallet? the wife’s wallet?). YOU HAVE COMPUTERS, CVS, WHY DON’T **YOU** KEEP TRACK OF ALL THIS CRAP??? I finally went online, found my account, and had ALL coupons forwarded to a dead-end…

I’ve also read that 70% alcohol disinfects better than 91% - the extra water lets it absorb into the microbe.

I knew a woman who added some RAM to her desktop. Then it wouldn’t boot. A shop told her she needed a new motherboard. I laughed, told her they were thieves. Then I asked if she was wearing her sweater when she added the RAM. “Of course, I always wear this sweater.” Yup, you need a new motherboard. You just dosed a…

Take the keyboard outside, turn it over, shake like crazy. Food bits, dirt (and removed staples in offices) will litter your yard.

I highlighted the important details in this article, copied and pasted them into an email addressed to myself and my wife. Now I can search my Inbox and find it any time I wish.

Back in the late ‘80's, I witnessed salespeople for the Lutheran Brotherhood being taught Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques to enable them to deceptively gain a prospect’s trust in order to sell them overpriced financial and funeral products. Fiendish. Tony Robbins also taught these tools, but he did it to…

Bravo, Kirsten. It takes an extraordinary mind to suss out the exact reasoning in a convoluted discussion and explain it clearly and briefly. Most of us just give up, move on and forget about it. Thank you.

At a major automaker, they bring the guy to a small office near the building door. They give him his pink slip, collect his badge and the keys to his company vehicle, and security walks him out the door. Meanwhile, all his computer and door ID’s are being disabled. Put him in a prepaid cab to take him home and they…

Find the geeks that operate the servers in your company’s IT department. They get a pack of very special zip ties when they unbox new server hardware — you won’t find these in stores. These ties have a small zip coupled to a giant zip, and, most importantly, they can be *un-zipped* (there’s a handle on that tiny tab…

ANY old smartphone and nearly any stereo receiver (or a pair of PC speakers) will play Pandora anywhere in your home through a wi-fi connection and the phone’s earphone jack (hide the phone/speakers under the couch). Ditto for your MP3 playlists, podcasts, your favorite FM radio station’s streaming service, Amazon…

Most laptops have two RAM slots. Some come with a single 4Gb stick, some have a pair of 2Gb sticks. I go to Crucial.com, use their automatic configuration tool download, and buy a single 8Gb stick to replace one old 2Gb stick (or fill that empty slot). I end up with 10Gb or 12Gb of RAM with a single $60 purchase. On a…