Man, that's the truth and then some. @johnson.paul nailed it about flash set in heat - I learned that one the hard way back in 2019. I was helping a buddy do a patio slab in late August in Texas and we didn't have any retarder on hand. The concrete started going off while we were still trying to screed it. Ended up having to break it all up and start over with ice in the water. Now I always check the forecast and keep a bag of retarder in my truck year round. Cold weather pours are almost worse though, got a story about trying to cure a slab under tarps in a snowstorm once and the blankets froze to the concrete overnight. Temperature just messes with everything.

Man @alice_hart your buddy's story hits real close to home. I spent a solid six weeks cold calling small business owners about website design services before I realized half of them were renters with no say over their online presence. Total facepalm moment when I finally checked the county business records and found the actual decision makers. Feels like we all have that one dumb blind spot we have to crash into before the lightbulb goes off, right?

Friend of mine had a big oak like that in her yard... during a windstorm the whole trunk just split right open in the middle. Turned out the hollow went all the way down to the roots and water had pooled inside for years. It came down hard on her shed and took out half her fence.

2 grams is a pretty small margin. I'd be surprised if that was the main reason your bread wasn't rising or your cookies were flat. There's usually a few things going wrong at once in baking, like oven temp or old yeast. I've used the same cheap scale for five years without checking it and my stuff turns out fine most of the time. Sounds like maybe you just needed to adjust your technique a bit, not blame the scale.

A buddy of mine from the local guild bought a brand new 50 lb press a few years back, top of the line everything. He thought it would make him a production machine overnight. After six months he could barely forge a decent leaf without it looking like a dog's breakfast. Sold it at a loss and picked up a worn out 25 lb tire hammer from a guy retiring. Took him about a year to really get the hang of it but now his work is night and day better. He told me that little hammer taught him more about heat control and hammer placement than any class or book ever did. Sometimes you got to go backwards to move forwards with this craft.