Ask Lemmy

My most used tool is a cordless impact driver. With the right bits it is so useful. Cuts many repair times down to a percentage of their non impact driver repair time. I have bits for any screws and also bits to adapt sockets.

The one I picked up is less than $50 at Walmart with the bits. Super useful tool to have around. I throw it in my backseat and it's always there when I need it.

Calipers.

This bad boy right here.

It's a bucket trowel, essentially a brick/block trowel that's been cut down on an angle to get the last bits out of the bucket.

It's literally my most used tool. I use it to mix, to lay out mortar for fixing stone, to skim coat the backs of tiles and veneer stone, levering stones up slightly to put more mortar in the bed, scratching my ass/back/legs, and I even occasionally cut myself on it accidentally!

Locksmith here, my most used and most important tool is a pen because if you can't write up the invoice you don't make any money.

I feel naked without my Leatherman multi tool.

Spoon, I am currently unemployed and I love to eat so I carry a spoon wherever I go just in case I might eat something.

IntelliJ IDEA

It's an IDE, a highly featureful code editor.

A lot of programmers like to use more basic text editors and pile on plugins. I feel bad for them when they share some new plugin they're excited about and it's a feature that's been in IntelliJ forever and they had to put extra work in to get it. And so many other users of that editor don't even know what's possible.

My brian.

Communication skills (aka bullshittery) I'm a finish carpenter and project manager so its my job to figure out what my boss thinks the client wants, what the client actually wants, what the fuck the architect is talking about, whatever the interior designer thinks they do, and translate it into usable language to get my carpenters to build it and make everyone think it was their idea that was the best.

Terminal on Linux for work. Bash is such a fun thing :)

Give me ssh, vi, bash and Linux kernel and I can get work done.

A spudger, aka nylon probe tool aka “black stick”. I have them in drawers and toolboxes all over the place. Useful for working tiny plugs out of electronics and pressing, poking and scraping at things.

My glasses, for sure. Next would be my bike, as I use it to get around everywhere. Third most important is probably my keyboard at work, or a pencil.

My penis.

My brain :p

12 volt drill. I have other drills I use at work- 20v hammer drill, impact driver, SDS MAX monster, but the 12v gets used much more than any of those.

Sublime.

My table saw. It's the cheapest one I could buy new, but damn if I don't use it for every single project I do. Just got much nicer combo blade for it, so now it cuts buttery smooth.

Smartphone as an answer would be cheating?

I'm a machinist, so I use a huge variety of tools (setting fixturing, looking at prints and diagrams, fine measurements and gauges, CAD and CAM software, manual machine tools, etc.) The most important? Eye protection. I have excellent vision and would never jeopordize it to whatever extent possible and reasonable. I use safety glasses so often now for scenarios even outside of work, I forget to take them off when eating until halfway through a meal. Maybe I should be worried about the broccoli, though. You can never be too careful.

Tape measure probably.

Back when I was doing plumbing only, the two hand tools that I used by far the most were Knipex Cobra pliers and adjustable wrench.

The browser. A surprising amount of my billable hours is googling the manual of some obscure thing someone else sold our customer and they want to feed the signal to our system and then reading aloud how they connect the thing.

A hammer. When you get down to it, every tool is a hammer

Org mode!!!

I don't say this lightly, I think I would be dead if it wasn't for Org mode in emacs given how hostile most of the tools and systems in society are to my brain.

It seems like every other organizational/pkm tool is built by people with extremely high executive function, is extremely opinionated in a way that is impossibly unlikely to dovetail with my particular brain and how it specifically needs help and is made with ZERO thought to how cruel it is to design a wholistic organizational and thinking tool and sell it to people who are struggling in precarious positions via a business that will eventually enshittify or abruptly go out of business and leave those people stranded a million miles from shore with a notes/thinking system that is hopelessly locked into an abandoned system.

I use Org mode for work, I use it for life, it is essentially as necessary as a pen and paper for me to actually get shit done.

Impact driver

Caffeine.

Excel.