Showerthought: My trusty brush head snapped clean off inside a flue last Tuesday.

I was finishing a sweep on a 1920s brick chimney in Cincinnati and the threaded ferrule just gave out, leaving me to fish the bristles out with a magnet on a string for 45 minutes, so what's the most reliable brush connector you all use?

I finally figured out why people keep asking the same question about freelance contracts over and over.

Talking to a guy at the hardware store made me switch my mix for cold weather pours

I was picking up some bags of Quikrete for a small patio job last Tuesday, and this older guy, maybe in his 60s, was doing the same. I mentioned I was worried about the overnight dip to 35 degrees. I always just used regular mix and threw in a bit more cement, thinking that was enough. He looked at me and said, 'Son, that extra cement is just making it set faster and crack. You need the right admixture to slow it down and protect it, not just more heat in the bag.' He showed me the calcium chloride accelerator he was buying and explained how it works differently. I grabbed a bottle instead of extra cement. Poured the next morning, and the finish was way smoother, no crazing. Has anyone else had a cold weather tip that seemed wrong but actually worked?

Showerthought: I billed for a full day's work on a Tuesday and didn't leave my apartment.

Last week, a project I'd been waiting on for months finally got the green light, so I just sat at my kitchen table in Seattle and worked straight through from 7 AM to 6 PM. I realized I hadn't spoken to another person all day until I called for a pizza at the end. Is it weird that this felt like a bigger win than landing the job in the first place?

Went to the new tech store in Portland and their demo setup was a mess

I checked out that big new electronics place on 5th Avenue yesterday, and their whole gadget review station was just broken. They had three tablets lined up for comparing screen quality, but two of them were stuck on the same bright white demo loop. The third one had a dead pixel right in the middle. You couldn't actually test anything the way they intended. It made me wonder how many people base their buying choices on faulty store displays. Has anyone else run into a really bad in-store demo that almost put you off a product?

Pro tip: Use a cheap paint roller grid instead of a tray for small touch-up jobs

I was painting a closet door in my apartment last weekend and had to choose between setting up my big messy tray or trying something else. I grabbed a 5-inch paint roller grid from the hardware store for about $4 and just poured a little paint into a plastic cup. It worked perfectly, used way less paint, and cleanup took 30 seconds. Anyone else have a better trick for small painting jobs?

Just learned how much of the Hubble Deep Field image is actually empty space

Read it's like 99.999% nothing, which is wild to think about when you look at all those galaxies. Anyone know a good place to find the highest resolution version online?

Changed my mind about using body filler on quarter panels

My uncle, who ran a shop in Toledo for 30 years, always said to cut out and weld new metal on rusted quarter panels, never just fill it. I thought he was just being old school and wasting time. Then I did a repair on a 2015 Civic last month, skimmed over some surface rust with filler, and the whole thing bubbled back through in under 6 weeks. He was totally right. Anyone have a good source for patch panels for that generation Civic?

So glad I tried herbal tea, my stitching is much neater now