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What is something that, surprisingly, worked?
An odd suggestion from a friend.
A dubious lifehack you read online.
A “well I can’t make the problem any worse, so I might as well try something” moment.
Whatever it was, you didn’t expect it to work, but, against all odds, it actually did.
- What was the problem?
- Why were you doubtful about it in the first place?
- How well did the novel “solution” work in the end?
This is awesome advice but I live in Canada where the penny is extinct.
Yeah but think of all the wrenches you can buy with the societal cost savings of eliminating the useless penny!
Sincerely, someone who's irrationally passionate about currency reform.
This is my go to example when I tell people how dysfunctional congress is. It's a win for everyone but it's not a hot button issue so it won't even get to the floor.
Why would congress make moves on the penny? All it would do is simplify our lives and save the federal government a few paltry hundreds of millions of dollars. But for most people it's meaningless on a voting record, so it's beneath them.
This may not help many people around here but for those who work in the service industry facing customers, it might help.
When I was in high school, I worked as a cashier at a grocery store (Food Lion). Customers were often rude because an item they wanted was missing, or because something was expensive, you know, the usual customer complaints.
One day after another customer yelled at me because the rotisserie chicken wasn't fresh, and I felt sad because someone just yelled at me. Another coworker saw this and gave me a tip. "Next time they're yelling at you," she said, "just smile and say yes ma'am, or yes sir, or you're absolutely right sir, and keep smiling. Before you know it, they'll realize they're an adult yelling at a 15 year old powerless kid in this company because rotisserie chicken isn't hot enough."
And from then on, whenever someone was mean, rude, or started yelling at me, I'd just smile and agree with whatever they said "yes ma'am, your right, the chicken should be fresh," or "yes, of course, sir, we need to stock up on items that are on sale so they don't sell out the first they." And before you know it, they stopped, they likely thought to themselves "why the fuck am I, a full grown adult, yelling at a teenager because the grocery store ran out of organic steel cut oatmeal."
I always think about the southern phrase, “bless your heart,” which means “fuck you,” but in the most kind and passive aggressive way imaginable. A killing by kindness.
While I don’t literally say it, I think a burst of kindness let’s you ditch your ego for some control over the situation, and is generally disarming for the other person.
If somebody is having a moment, I give them the benefit of the doubt that it’s just a moment for them. Maybe this interaction with me will be what they need to turn their day around.
And if that fails I either play dumb or to assertively tell them to move on.
"Kill them with Kindness" will take you far in life.
And it also helps with people that are good people just having a bad day.
The actually mean ones can't exactly complain about being treated with politeness and care, can they. But oh, they hate it so much.
And the good ones just having a bad day usually appreciates the politeness and calm down.
Win-win.
I like to call that one the Wall of Politeness. Even if they lack the insight to realize how ridiculous they're being, being mad and staying mad takes energy. Two people being mad at each other keep giving each other more fuel to stay mad as each one gets freshly insulted. Being nice to a mad person makes it like they are trying to climb a glass wall; there's nothing to support their anger so eventually they just wear themselves out.
Decoy wasp nest.
After we moved into our new house a few years ago, every summer I had to spray 6+ attempted wasp nests that were being built on the south side of our house along the roof eave (or behind the shutter or inside a light fixture).
I have a bee venom allergy (not the kind where I'lldie, but I get pretty severe swelling), and a toddler, so I really didn't like having to be so vigilant about spraying wasp nests all summer.
So I saw that decoy wasp nests were a thing and, although I was skeptical, I figured it was worth a try. I ordered one and I hung it up in the tree about 15 feet from the back of the house (within view of where all of the nests were trying to be made).
I haven't had to spray a single nest since then, and it's been like 3 years.
(To clarify, the decoy doesn't deter wasps; it just deters them from building new nests nearby.)
Neat, wasps are a huge issue in my area and everything I've read about decoys said they were more likely to provide building material or habitat for wasps than deter them. I wonder if it works on certain types that not everyone has? Ours are mostly paper wasps with the occasional yellow-jackets in their evil underground hidden lair.
I don't like using chemicals either. The ground nests I use dry ice on the hole and covering it with a bucket & heavy rock at night, when it's colder and they aren't as active. I figure the cold keeps them lazy and the CO2 suffocates them. For the hanging nests, I've just been using orange oil air freshener on wasps then knocking the nest down. It's not as fast at killing as raid, but it's fast enough. I'll have to try the decoy and see if it deters at least the paper wasps. It'd be nice not to have to check car doors for new nests.
Btw have you had an allergy test for bees, wasps and stinging ants? Their venom are similar, but different enough that it's not uncommon to only be allergic to one. Also, even if it just confirms you are allergic to both, it's a good idea to make sure wasps don't have a worse reaction than bees.
I'm sure that it only works to deter certain species of wasps—likely only the kind that are territorial. I'm in the Midwest, and we don't really have any issues with ground nests (thank god).
I did spring for the more expensive version of the decoy and not the cheaper paper kind. The one I ordered from Amazon is this one, and I used spray foam to fill it out and make sure that bees couldn't turn it into a real nest. $20 felt like a reasonable gamble on not having to deal with new nests multiple times a year.
No, but I've been stung by honey bees, hornets, and wasps, and it's pretty much the same reaction. When I was a kid, I got stung in the eyebrow and I ended up looking a bit like Igor for half a day. Got stung on the palm by a wasp and my hand swelled up like a cartoon glove. If I take a bunch of antihistamine when it happens, the reaction is much more minimal.
Thanks for the link! It'll be interesting to see if it works on paper wasps, maybe they'll fear it's a real hornet nest. I'm in the Pacific NW, there are hornets so it might work. Luckily they usually seem to stay near the rivers around my place... lucky because when you stumble face first into a nest the river makes a great place to escape. If the decoy doesn't work I'll just sneak it into my sisters backyard to prank her. >:)
Ouch! I'd say you were tested alright and it was the hard way. Near the eye is the worst, I'm just glad paper wasps are fairly docile and the others are not common enough to be a major issue - though I swear bald faced hornets are ambush predators.
I read that you can build one yourself by wrapping up plastic bags with duct tape. It mimics the shape and color, and doesn't have an opening for wasps to enter so I don't think it can be claimed and converted into an actual nest. I have yet to try it myself though because when I asked my dad to buy duct tape at the store, he got bright yellow tape. It's been probably 5 or 6 years and we still haven't used up the roll, and we don't have any major problems with wasp nests to justify buying another roll just for this.
I have an issue where sometimes if I wake up my mind starts running a million miles an hour thinking about various things and I have trouble getting back to sleep again.
I read online that counting helped, of all things. Essentially the old school "counting sheep" idea, but without the sheep. I thought it would just end up with me reaching 1000+ and still being awake.
And the first time I tried it I didn't even make it to 10.
It doesn't always work, but apparently if you can concentrate on something boring it's a good trick to get back to sleep, it worked for me.
I really suck at going to sleep. I've tried everything and it only works sporadically at best.
However, a couple of years ago I read an article which said that while counting/etc can work, what's actually more effective is trying not to go to sleep. By which they didn't mean staying out of bed, drinking coffee, etc. More like you do all the usual bed stuff, get comfortable, close your eyes and then try really hard to stay awake.
It is by a noticeable amount the most reliable non-pharmaceutical thing I've tried.
Yeah. I'll lay there with my eyes open in the dark. That helps sometimes
I have the same issue and use podcast to get to sleep again. Two people talking, a mundane topic and low volume so it is almost inaudible works wonders.
The Empty Bowl? That podcast comes to mind immediately with that description.
Reconcilable Differences is the one that works for me
I've been listening to some professor's youtube lessons on introductory astronomy. Maybe if I turned the volume up just a little I'd learn something by subliminal message
I have a YouTube playlist of soft sung music (asmr basically) it's about an hour long but I'm usually asleep within 3-5
I heard a joke about this once....
One person is complaining to another "I've had problems with insomnia, just can't fall asleep these last few weeks, nothing I've tried works."
The other person says "have you tried counting? If I can't fall asleep, I start counting. I just count to 4 and I fall asleep, well, sometimes until 4:30 but still."
I have a book, I forget the name at the moment but if anyone's interested I'll have a look when I'm back from holiday. It's an account of the air war on the eastern front, 1941 to 1945.
It's not quite the narrative story I thought it was going to be but rather a numerical daily listing of losses and replenishments per combat unit on both sides. The numbers are utterly staggering, of course, but by god's it's boring.
Usually 3 pages and I'm fast asleep again. I've been going at it for a few years now.
Now this is a top tier life hack! I had the same experience with an extremely dry Roman history book. At a certain point I realized it was immensely boring and I wasn't getting anything out of it, but I kept reading it every night because it was one of the best sleep aids I've ever had.
I think history and philosophy are the unbeatable genres for this.
Sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep and can't, I just think about mundane stuff like things to add to the grocery list, chores that need doing, what my day will look like tomorrow, and usually I start getting sleepy soon after.
Probably works in the same way that counting does, cool.
I'm a pretty good sleeper so I can't really speak to techniques when you really can't sleep.
But most nights when I go to bed I fixate on trying to visualize something. Sometimes it's voyager cruising through space and what it would look like to sit on it while speeding along. Other times I'll try to imagine a story of some adventurer. It's kinda like a combination of a meditation and imagining a bedtime story for yourself.
Blinking as much as possible for as long as you can helps me a lot- sounds weird, but the idea is fatigue in your eyelid muscles tricks your brain into thinking your exhausted and MUST SLEEP
I work nights and used to have trouble falling asleep during the day. Like you I thought I would get to 1000 and still be wide awake. So, I would start at 500 and count backwards. For the even numbers I would wiggle my right big toe, for odds, my left. That would give my brain something to do while I counted. I would rarely make it to 400.
Well,
And these are just the ones off the top of my head. There's a lot more I could write if I tried to think a bit harder about the past.
You're the living version of those "this one weird idea!" gifs
Some say once they fix their wall with ramen noodles they will evolve in a full lifehacker paladin!
I have a small form factor PC, and I wanted to try out some 3d modeling software (blender?). It required DirectX version 11.1, and the integrated graphics only support up to 11 (or something like that, it's been about two years). So I found the old family computer with its moldy old GeForce 310, but that doesn't fit in a SFF case...
So I took some tin snips and I made it fit. Held it in place with duct tape and a prayer, had to fiddle around with ancient drivers and stuff, but ultimately got it to work. What surprises me the most is that I managed to do it without retaining any knowledge about computers at all! But that's how everything I do with computers goes. I can put Ubuntu on a flash drive. Cannot tell you what BIOS stands for.
Isn't that what computer knowledge is all about? Fuck around, find out and remember the results XD
BIOS - Basic Input Output System
Huh. All these years I thought it was Built-In Operating System. (It's not.)
These days, the BIOS doesn't do much at all. It's a fancy bootloader. The OS has its own drivers for those things that talk to the hardware directly. Especially the ones that can be changed with the computer running.
Thanks for correcting me and letting me know! Me thinks I need to delete that post! Guess I'll have to read up a bit more about today's compters!
You can make any structural modifications to a computer you want as long as you leave the electronics intact! The case isn't really part of the computer, it's just a fancy box so you don't have circuit boards and wires laying haphazardly on your desk. The computer doesn't know what shape the box is, all it cares about are that things are connected to the right places.
There's an entire community of PC case modders out there who take full advantage of this. For a while, I had my main machine in pieces screwed to a piece of plywood hanging on the wall.
That said, the case (or lack of) design can make big differences in directing airflow and, as a result, how well the cooling setup works. By all means, go nuts; just keep an eye on your temps.
I had to chop the AMD CPU supporting legs off of a CPU cooler (that could support both Intel and AMD CPUs) to fit in my case with the Intel CPU once. I used a hacksaw and it felt weird, but it worked out okay.
We were given another of these "how to get along with angry customers" courses.
This time they told us that once a customer us done with yelling, simply ask them a question like "so... what would be your suggestion for the issue?". I discarded it as nonsense, but gave it a try nevertheless. And... it actually worked. You can't yell as easily when you're tasked with a solution for the problem.
haha yep, I like giving customers little tasks to do to reset their brain, I'll ask them for an account number, or the specifics of the product they're angry at, or the date of their last purchase, whichever one is the least related to what they're angry with. They have to shift out of the angry gear to parse their brain for different information, and then it takes effort to work themselves up again.
Unless they've been on hold so long and been passed around agents asking them same thing over and over and over again. Once people figure out you're being useless or manipulative they get more angry.
yeah, thank god I'm the first and final point in our call list, it's definitely not something I could get away with if their nerves were fried already before reaching me
Oh thank goodness.
I always start conversations with "if I sound irate that's because I'm mad at the company and the system and not at you: I was already irate before I started talking to you"
Recently after 2 or 3 hours of attempted tech support and customer service verifications I was so mad I started to use over the top analogies and it made both me and the support person laugh a lot :) but yeah I was steaming mad
Years and years ago I was at a youth group movies night. We were watching something on a dusty old TV that had probably been sitting in a church basement for 20 years. Old enough that it still had dials for changing channels.
We were having a problem where the TV had to be on a certain channel to use the VCR . The TV was showing colour properly, but the movie was coming in black and white.
I was goofing around and made a joke that if we cranked the dial fast enough we could confuse the TV into showing colour where we wanted it. I started flipping it back and forth rapidly between the different channels and suddenly it worked and we enjoyed the movie in colour.
This is really interesting to me and I may be able to find out the mechanics of why that worked. My dad used to be a TV repair guy from the late 70s to the early 90s. He definitely worked on really old sets. I think I'll ask him the next time I call him to find out.
I'd be interested to hear what he says. I always assumed there was some component that was a little loose and I accidentally knocked it back into place.
I've only had one surgery in my life. Relatively minor one but they had to knock me out for it. So they put that oxygen mask on me and told me to count backwards from ten. I couldn't believe it. I remember thinking "Wait seriously? Like in the movies? No way that'll work. Well, whatever, 10, 9, 8....."
Then instantly it was two hours later and I was waking up in the recovery room.
I think they make you do that so they know when you are knocked out, not to help you sleep.
I was very aware of that getting a colonoscopy once and I kept counting. I remember hitting like 6 or 5 before I started getting audibly nervous about still being awake, conking out, and waking up being told I needed like twice the usual anesthesia lol
Haha same, I had wisdom teeth surgery and at the time the government pays for it if you go for all four at once. I remember joking around with the anesthesiologist and that it stings going in. I don't even remember them finishing up the injection
Puts into perspective how fragile living creatures are. The substance was padded with something to make the stinging less noticeable already. Without that, apparently we can all die from very little bit of the wrong stuff in wrong places.
Yeah every time I look into anaesthesiology, I’m always terrified by the combination of “if we go too far, the person just dies, no undo button” and also “basically make guesses, sorta maybe guided by calculations that might include weird nonsense like whether you have a red headed parent”
I was renting a student dorm room for a weekend to attend a gaming convention during the middle of summer, and when I arrived the first night the room was absolutely sweltering. I quickly noticed that the radiator was on full blast, despite the glorious sunny weather.
Removing the radiator valve cap, it was obvious that the pin wasn't being closed by the cap as a piece of the internal cap had chipped off.
Travelling with just a change of clothes and contents of my pockets, I had a rummage around and found that a two cent coin fit neatly into the inside of the cap. Reattaching the valve with the coin inside, I could just about screw it down enough to shut the valve, saving myself from what would have been a truly miserable night's sleep.
What country currency has two cent coin? :D in Hong Kong we used to have 20 cent coins! Mys old textbooks referers to <10 cents that were no longer in circulation ......
Ireland - the Euro uses 1 and 2 cent coins, although since 2015 or so we use rounding - where change is rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cent increment - so they are pretty uncommon now though still legal tender and you come across the odd holdout that hasn't adopted the voluntary cash rounding practise.
Oh that's so cool :D I looked it up, 1,2,5 cents are all copper but increasingly bigger.
We had squiggly edges for our $0.2 and our $2.0 https://envs.sh/20n.jpg
And I'm fairly sure the euro Toonies were copied from the Canadian idea :)
Edit: Toonies are Canadian two loonies, and a loonie is one dollar with picture of a loon on the non-Queen side
I found the cure for itchy, painful sunburn on a forum years ago and it saved me from some of the worst discomfort I have ever felt.
You get in a cool/lukewarm shower. Whatever temperature you can tolerate that won't make your sunburn hurt.
Every few minutes, crank the temp up a bit. As soon as you adjust to the new, higher temperature, turn it up again. Get the water as hot as you can stand by repeating this process. If you're not in serious pain, you can try to wipe your skin with a washcloth or even just your hands.
The reason this works is that the itching is caused by dead skin and other gunk in your pores irritating your sensitive, sunburnt skin. Hot water opens up the pores and allows them to clear out a bit. Lasts for 6-8 hours so you'll need a morning shower and then one after dinner for a full day of relief.
I went from not being able to sleep or relax to feeling great immediately. Knew I found a real life hack.
Not disputing whether this works, but the itch isn’t from clogged pores. There’s the neurogenic inflammation, which includes the release of histamine, causing the itch. When it finally dries and starts peeling, there’s also feeling the dead skin brushing/pulling on the sensitive newly exposed skin.
Super interesting, thanks for sharing! So, my extremely limited medical knowledge and terrible memory tells me that hot water helps to relieve itching by breaking down histamine. Is that accurate? And is that the cause of the relief?
Here’s an article on heat for mosquito bites that has some relevance. It seems heat may help break down some histamine. Hear also acts as a “counterirritant”, overriding the itch sensation. It could increase inflammation though. Overall, doctors don’t recommend using heat for itch treatment.
Slightly related, but for mosquitoes itchy spots, dip a metal spoon in fairly hot water, and as much as you can tolerate, super lightly and quickly tap the itchy spot. Something about heat destroying the itchy chemical or something. Anyway it works.
There's an electronic gizmo on salethat does just what you describe, minus the water. For me it generally works.
I have fond memories of my brother and I standing in front of the gas heater every morning whenever we were bitten by mosquitoes — we’d wear baggy pants and let the back of our pants heat up in front of the heater. Then, when it was hot enough, we’d grab the front of our pants and quickly pull it against our skin and the mosquito bites would suddenly not be itchy anymore (and the intense heat would suddenly be demanding much more of our attention)
See, I just take an allergy pill. But that's way less fun.
:) that's simultaneously adorable and also terrifying. Where did you live and what kind of climate would have mosquitos AND have to have a heater on??
You know, that’s actually a good question, I’m not sure I can describe it in a way that makes sense today? I know it was something we did, but only very fuzzy memory around the details. It was a tiny town in rural Victoria, Australia.
It was a place that got lovely crunchy frost in winter (it even snowed, exactly once, in the entire time we lived there which was a decade or more) but I guess we were in a valley and our property backed onto a marshy flat area and a small creek at the bottom of the hills?
A kind of literary moor! Wet and boggy but also chilling!
The recent "weird that it works" discovery is that a stupid plastic ball actually works far better than metallic specialized keys to open screw back watch cases. Yes even submariner watches. O..O
The problem with metal keys is that you need to hold it in place very firmly, and apply a decent amount of force. If you slip, and it slips very easily because the notices are usually <1mm deep, that metal on metal slippage will scratch your watch.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about this wikihow has pictures
https://www.wikihow.com/Open-a-Screw-Back-Watch
This hurt to read lol
TIL a "friction ball" is a thing.
I had a dryer that didn't want to turn on. I gave it the ol' caveman's percussive maintenance and it started humming. Never thought hitting something modern would work like it did in the old days
If your car won't start it's often written in shop manuals to try smacking the starter with a wrench. Usually means one of the solenoids are out IIRC.
A connection somewhere probably got knocked loose and couldn't make contact and then you made sure it did. Probably the lid switch I'd guess.
During the pandemic, I wanted to put a rope swing in a very high tree branch, but I definitely didn't want to climb the tree. After watching some arborist videos on youtube, I saw how they throw a small rope into the tree with a weight, then tie a larger rope to it. Sometimes they launch the weight with a slingshot.
Not wanting to spend $200 on a slingshot, I 3D printed a fork to go onto an 8 foot long board, then made the slingshot out of latex tubing. I thought it would take forever, but i got the rope into the tree on the third or fourth try.
I used the small rope on the weight to pull the swing rope (California truck rope, rate for 1000 lbs) over the branch and through a loop on the end of swing rope so that it makes slip loop around the branch. This allows the loop to expand as the tree grows and not suffocate the branch. I also put a canvas cover over the end to protect the bark of the tree. Finally, before I pulled everything tight, I tied a smaller rope to the loop at the end of the main rope. This will allow me to pull the loop down out of the tree if I ever want to take the swing out or replace the rope.
On the swing end, the rope ends in a double bowline loop the swing is attached to. The swing is two pieces of rope knotted through holes in a piece of pressure treated 1x6 for a seat with a stretcher board knotted in about 3 feet above that to keep the rope spread.
Based on the length of rope used for the swing, it is about 40 feet long. It covers a span of 30-40 feet when it swings, but is only about 6-8 feet off the ground at the extreme end because of the long rope.
It was a great addition to the yard at a time when we couldn't do much on playgrounds.
Obviously, I tried to make this as safe as I could for my family, but I am not an expert. Lots of things could go wrong, people could get hurt, or you could damage your tree. So do your own research, consult a professional if needed, and don't blindly follow the plans of some random guy on the internet.
This radiator hose bodge is one I'm pretty happy with. I was trying to get Grandad's old tractor going to clear some access tracks on his property (lantana is a curse) and found that hose had a sizable split in it that would promptly dump out any coolant. Since I was only up for a couple of days and didn't think it likely that even if I drove into town anyone would have have that specific hose for an ~50 yr old tractor from the USSR I went for a patch attempt with what I had on hand - lots of electrical tape, a old rubberised dishwashing glove, and some hose clamps.
Surprisingly it did work for those couple of days and I managed to do what I needed to do with the tractor, figured I shouldn't push my luck though so I did order in and bring up the correct part next time I went up there.
TL;DR: Using a zip tie to unlock my car.
I had a very new (at the time) 2008 or 2009 Ford Ranger and was out 4x4ing when I managed to lock my keys in the truck while it was running. I had a tool box in the back with a few simple tools but nothing serious. At this point my experience with breaking into locks was just a) the badic knowledge that wave rakes and bump keys existed b) seeing my brothers car after thieves had forced the lock with a screw driver.
I was going to force it with a screw driver but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I go scrounging around and find these zip ties that are a similar size to my keys. I figured maybe I could just jiggle it in there and some magic would happen.
Well, I didn't jiggle it. I put it in and turned it. It opened. No fiddling, no jiggles, no excessive force. It. Just. Opened.
So when you see some youtuber blast open a cheap lock as quick as if they had the actual key; that shit is totally legit.
Glad it worked for you, but also slightly horrified it was so easy. Hopefully they've changed the locks since then to be zip tie proof!
Lol, fat chance they've improved it. It really changed how I look at locks though.
I think what happened is maybe a version of an impressioning attack. Remember how people used to say you could open a bike U-lock with the tube from a soft ballpoint pen? That was a version of an impressioning attack. The soft plastic sort of mushes into the shape of the correct key when you jiggle and mash it. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe they developed a way to combat that attack but cheap locks are probably still vulnerable.
I've never heard of it on a regular key though so I just searched it and found this video on youtube. There's quite a preamble (that I didn't bother watching either) so maybe cut to 13:45 to see the theory and 20:20 he actually does it. He's taking a key blank (real metal key blank) and jiggling it in the keyway then viewing the markings and filing it down, repeating until he end up with a working key. Wild stuff honestly.
Well, yesterday I was replacing the rear shock on my old Toyota SUV. There was no way the top bolt on the shock was coming off after farting around for hours and after trying multiple options I went for the nuclear one. Just eyeballing it I found the point in the floor over the shock and drilled a hole. I was only out by 1/4 inch. Then I cut it out bigger with tin snips and had that bolt out and the shock replaced in five minutes.
No big deal really. I cut a metal plate to fit over the hole, used epoxy putty to fasten it down, and put the carpet back over top. Could never tell it was cut.
Ive done this before with replacing a fuel pump in an older Yukon too. If you do it the normal way, you have to drop the fuel tank which is not only very difficult if its got a lot of gas in it, but the connections are really hard to reach. But if you measure and cut very carefully, you can cut a little 'hatch' directly over the fuel pump, have in changed in five minutes and reseal the hatch. As long as its air tight, the carpet covers it and no one's the wiser.
I was in Darfur for work. I was strongly advised not to leave the hotel during the weekend because of risk of kidnapping. I'm European so I could be a bit of a target.
I managed to get the toilet clogged, unsurprisingly because I don't think we were supposed to flush paper. I found a solution online that you could unclog a toilet with a plastic bag and some strong tape. Well I had that.
What you do is fold the bag so that it covers to bowl, and tape up any air holes until you have a near complete seal. Then you flush (start slowly) and the bag will rise. Push it down carefully, wait for it to come up again, then push down again. Repeat until the toilet empties. Add more flushing if needed.
That's why you always bring duct tape and strong garbage bags on trips. The bags can do double duty for your used tp too instead of putting them in the small bin and smelling up the place.
Is your dog fearful of the vacuum? Scold it. The vacuum, not the dog. Scold the vacuum. Tell it that it's a BAD vacuum. TOO LOUD. You're scaring the puppy. BAD!!
Chances are, your dog will feel a little more at ease, since their human is acknowledging the perceived threat and is "doing something about it".
Works with other things your pup might be wary of, too. Beeping appliances, ceiling fans... yeah my dog is silly lol.
My mouse had a double click issue, so I looked for solution online, and someone suggested blowing into the front of the mouse, creating a "hah" sound and releasing warm air. Make sure you're not "foo"ing out cold air. It works.
Using olive oil to prevent squeaky bicycle brakes.
I always did rubbing alcohol for the rims, and sanded down the pads with some 120 grit. Good stopping force, and usually got rid of squeals too. Never considered using oil though. How much did it affect stopping force?
I had a old ('96) toyota corolla. I accidentally locked my keys inside. I knew the locks were pretty worn out though. Asked my friend is I could borrow her keys. She had a honda accord. It worked. The keys don't even have matching slots, let alone the ridges. But the lock was worn out enough that it didn't remotely matter. A screwdriver probably would have done the trick.
Another time, my keys got locked in on a backpacking trip (it wasn't my fault this time, I swear!). I was parked on a road, but it was very light traffic out in the middle of nowhere. I tried to flag down a couple people to ask if they had any tools I could use. No dice.
There was an old barbed wire fence. One of the wires was dangling. I tried bending it back and forth in one spot to wear it out and break it. But it was so malleable that it ended up just heating up to the point that it burned to hold it. So I used some small rocks to grip it, bend it back and forth until it broke, stripped the barbs off with the rock-pliers (old style barbs that are separate twists of wire, not the newer kind where it's all fabricated from one contiguous strip), fished the wire through the door frame and popped the lock on the inside.
If you have poison ivy hose that shit down with the hottest water you can tolerate. It seems to overload the nerve endings that cause the itching and seems to give relief for a few hours.