Totally feel you on that, I've been there with the rust nightmare.

My buddy Mark from my college coding club still runs a classic BBS called The Rusty Porch on an old Pentium 2 machine in his garage. He's got like 30 registered users who still dial in for the door games and message boards. I logged into it last year just for nostalgia and it's wild seeing the same ASCII art and files from back in 2001 still sitting there.

Oh my goodness, @umasullivan, that happened to me too! I started taking before photos and asking them to point at a specific place on the picture where they want the lift. It stops the "oh I thought you meant something else" game later. Also started charging a small deposit before the appointment so they feel more committed to their choice.

That bit about not checking the oxygen valve first really hits home. I did the exact same thing as a new guy, wasted a whole tank of oxygen and a tip before I learned to always double check those valves. After that I started keeping a spare torch setup ready to go on my truck, so if I mess up a tip I can swap it out in minutes instead of losing half the day. It's just one of those lessons you gotta learn the hard way I guess, but once you burn through that first tip you never forget to check again.

That whole "post a thread on Monday and people would reply all week" thing really hit home. I actually ran a classic car restoration group on Yahoo back in the day and the pace let you really think through your answers. Someone would ask about rebuilding a carburetor and you'd get three or four different approaches over the course of a week, each one tested by someone who actually did it. Discord moves too fast for that kind of shared experience. One tip if you ever want to recreate that vibe, set up a simple email group or forum on something like Groups.io and just commit to checking it once a day instead of constant notifications.