Flat rate vs. hourly for a 3 month project I just wrapped up

I took a website redesign gig back in March for a local restaurant chain. I went with flat rate - $4,500 total - thinking it'd be clean and simple. Client kept adding features for two extra months. By the end I was making like $12 an hour. My buddy bills hourly and says he never touches flat deals. But I had a flat rate job last year on a small site that took 2 weeks and I made bank. So which side do you guys lean on for longer projects? Does it ever feel like a gamble either way?

Hit 500 revisions on a single floor plan today, felt like a record

Tried A/B testing my follow-up subject lines and the casual one crushed it

The playful subject line with a tree pun got a 40% open rate while the formal one barely hit 12% so I'm ditching the corporate tone for good and has anyone else seen a huge gap like that between two versions?

Old timer at the supply house told me to use lithium batteries in wireless sensors

I had this old installer named Dave tell me to swap out all my wireless sensor batteries for lithium ones about 6 months ago. I thought he was just being stubborn about change, so I kept using alkaline like I always did. Well, I got called back to 4 different houses last month where sensors were chirping low battery after only 10 months. The alkalis were already dead. I finally switched to lithium in all my new installs and those same sensors are still reading full charge. Has anyone else seen a big difference in battery life between the two types?

Just realized that timing belt "rule" cost me a $1,200 repair

Old mechanic named Gary at the NAPA in Tucson told me timing belts are good for 100k miles no matter what. I followed that advice on my 2017 Accord and the belt snapped at 97k. Took out three valves and left me stranded on I-10 last Tuesday. Turns out Honda revised their recommendation to 60k for that engine in hot climates. Anyone else get burned by outdated advice from the old guard?

Realized I was standing wrong at the urinal for 32 years

Was 45, in a restroom at a Buc-ee's outside San Antonio, and this old guy next to me just goes 'son, you're leaning too far forward.' I'd been doing the hover stance my whole life for no reason. Anyone else ever randomly discover you've been doing a basic thing backwards?

Old senior tech at DAL taught me to trust my nose

Back when I was a new guy at the hangar in Atlanta, there was this old timer named Hank who barely talked. One day we had a MD-80 with a weird intermittent smell in the cockpit. Everyone was chasing wiring diagrams for hours. Hank walked up, sniffed the overhead panel, and pointed at a specific circuit breaker. That breaker had a tiny hairline crack heating up. Fixed it in 10 minutes. He just said 'your nose knows oxidation before your meters do.' Has anyone else had a weird smell save them time troubleshooting?

Vent: The tape-and-float shortcut that actually saved me 3 hours on a ceiling job

I was fighting with corner bead on a long hallway ceiling at a house near Springfield last Thursday. Spent over an hour trying to get it straight before I said screw it and used paper tape with a heavy bed of hot mud instead. That quick fix held up perfect and I finished the whole room in half the time. Has anyone else junked the metal bead for tricky spots like that?

Visited a blade show in Ohio and saw something weird about damascus

I went to that big knife show in Columbus last month and walked the whole floor. What got me was how many vendors were selling damascus billets that looked almost identical, like they came from the same source. A guy next to me said half of them are just pattern-welded 1095 and 15n20 from the same supplier. Has anyone else noticed this at shows or am I just being too picky?

The time a shop in Boise talked me out of ever rebuilding another injector myself

I used to think I could save money by rebuilding my own injectors on the weekend. Then a shop in Boise showed me their flow bench results from my last attempt. Turns out I was off by nearly 15% on three out of six injectors. They charged me $180 to flow test and fix them, which beat the hell out of buying new ones. But the real kicker was the old mechanic there asking if I liked chasing fuel leaks for fun. Has anyone else had a shop make you rethink doing your own fuel work?