Update: I was torquing head bolts wrong for a solid year

I was doing a rebuild on a 6.7 Powerstroke last week, and the owner mentioned his last engine only lasted 40k miles after a similar job. I asked who did it, and he just stared at me. That's when I realized I'd been using the torque-to-yield specs from the old 7.3L manual on these newer engines, basically under-torquing every single one. I went back and checked my notes, and I'd done it on at least eight motors. I feel like a total idiot. Has anyone else ever mixed up specs between generations that badly?

Appreciation post: My kid's teacher showed me an AI that grades essays in 30 seconds

I was at parent-teacher night last week and Mrs. Johnson pulled up a demo of an AI tool called 'GradeAssist' on her laptop. She fed it a student essay and it gave back a full rubric score, grammar notes, and even suggested talking points in under a minute. It blew my mind, but honestly, it also made me a little worried. Are we heading toward a future where no human even reads a kid's work anymore? Has anyone else seen AI used in schools and felt this mix of 'wow' and 'uh-oh'?

My 'envelope system' of cash in a shoebox versus a simple spreadsheet (spoiler: the raccoons won)

I tried switching my lawn to a clover mix to save water, and it's attracting way more bees than I expected.

After seeing a flyer from the county extension office about drought-resistant yards, I replaced half my front lawn in Tucson with a white clover seed blend last fall, and now the buzzing is constant, which is great for pollination but has my neighbor, who is allergic, concerned.

Switched from a 12-inch to a 10-inch cutterhead on my suction dredge

I ran a 12-inch head on my dredge for about three years, thinking bigger was always better for material flow. An operator I met on a job in Mobile Bay told me, 'You're moving too much water and not enough solids with that big head in this silt.' He was right. I swapped to a 10-inch head last month and my solids output went up by almost 15% in the same clay material. It just lets the pump do its job better without fighting the suction. Anyone else find a smaller cutterhead works better in certain soils?