@amy974 I get what you're saying, but is frost heave really that big a deal for a simple fence post?

Yeah, I used to think bracing was overkill for small gates too. But watching a buddy's fence sag after a couple years showed me it's just not worth skipping that step. Now I'd rather take the extra time than hear the foreman yell at me about it again.

Hold on, I gotta push back a bit on this. I've been doing it the other way for years and I get solid welds every time with a clean 120 grit finish. The flux issue @christopher943 mentioned makes sense in theory, but in practice I see more flux getting trapped and causing blowouts with rougher surfaces. Maybe my technique is just dialed into the smooth surface thing, but I've tried the rough approach a few times and always ended up with more inclusions, not less.

@bell.felix said "rough buddy" but honestly the real killer is how fast it happens. One week everyone's hyped for the next session, next week half the group is gone. I had a board game night lose three people in two weeks because they all got different shifts at the same warehouse. No drama, just scheduling. That's the part nobody talks about. The silence after everyone stops replying hits harder than any argument.

Oh man, "a whole room just for journals" got me. That sounds like something out of a dream. I actually had a similar thing happen at this little used bookshop in Seattle a few years back. They had this corner with old diaries and notebooks people had donated, some going back to the 1920s. Reading through someone's daily life from a hundred years ago just hits different, you know? It made me dig out an old Moleskine I'd been hanging onto and start jotting things down more often. Your mileage may vary, but for me, that kind of find is the best push to drop the phone for a bit. So yeah, you're not alone in that feeling, it's a good itch to scratch.