Yeah you probably already know this, but wetting blocks ahead of time is a must in that heat. Dry blocks just suck the moisture right out before you even get the mud on em.

Oh man, yeah. That's the thing. You can wear a tuxedo to a frat party and someone's still gonna ask if you want to try their new energy drink. It's not about the outfit, it's about the type of person who sees a woman in a professional setting and thinks "perfect pitch, let me interrupt her." Your friend did it right though. Finding the other woman who's also tired of the same old routine, that's where the real networking happens. Those three leads are probably worth more than a hundred awkward handshakes with some guy who thinks his app is the next Facebook. Dressing smart is a shield not a guarantee. It might cut down the noise a little but some people are just born without the filter.

Man, that hit close to home. Did a dishwasher for a guy in Scottsdale last month where I spent almost 3 hours tracking down a random electrical short in the control board. He walked in right as I was replacing a $12 relay and acted like I was ripping him off for the service call. Didn't see me pulling the whole machine apart and testing every wire with a multimeter. That's the thing about this trade, people see the 10 minute fix but never the hour of head scratching and testing. It's like a mechanic changing your oil in 15 minutes but you don't see the 2 hours they spent on the previous car. Good on you for mentioning the diagnostics part, that's where the real skill is.

Doesn't everything work better when you actually match the tools to the job though?

Huh, that contractor really put you in a tough spot. But isn't scanning a hand-drawn vellum and vectorizing it in CAD usually faster than redrawing the whole thing from scratch?