Totally feel you on that. Invisible rules are the worst.

Is it like that for you with most new habits too? I think it depends on how big the change is. If I try to overhaul something massive all at once, yeah I crash out in a few days. But if I just do a tiny piece of it, like 5 minutes a day, it sticks way better. Weird how that works, like our brains hate big changes but are okay with tiny ones.

Whoa that brings back a memory. I remember reading a tech article a while back about return lines on some older Detroit Diesels that talked about how a collapsed return hose can create enough back pressure to actually push fuel out past the injector seals and cause a hydro lock situation. That always stuck with me because it's the opposite of what you'd expect. You figure the supply side is the only thing that matters for getting fuel into the cylinders but the return path is just as critical for the whole system to work right. Your kinked hose story just proves that point again. It's wild how something so simple can bring a whole engine to a halt.

Read a writeup from some film photography blog about this a while back. They said the welding glass acts like a super dark ND filter so you can get those crazy long exposures in the middle of the day. Makes sense now that I see your results, the photos have that hazy, dreamy look to them but also sharp where it matters. I never would have thought to try something like that, honestly. Kind of brilliant if you ask me, just grabbing a random piece of glass and turning it into a lens filter.

Is a pressure cooker basically cheating at this point? I've had the same problem with slow cookers and cheap meat, it always comes out dry or uneven. My pressure cooker turns a tough chuck roast into fork-tender shreds in under an hour. Once you go pressure, you don't go back.