Wow, 500 is a lot. I used to defend garage sales to anyone who'd listen, said it was all about the hunt. But honestly, this kind of put it in perspective for me. I've probably been to maybe 80 this year and I'm already burning out on seeing the same plastic toys and old Tupperware, so I can't imagine doing six times that. It really does feel like the good stuff gets scooped up by resellers before 8 AM, and the rest is just stuff people are hoping someone else will take for free.

Three seconds of no breathing is the real test.

I gotta respectfully disagree about calling this a "bonehead mistake." Mixing imperial and metric scales is definitely a pain, but it happens more than people admit, especially in firms that work across both systems. I've seen senior architects do the exact same thing on MEP coordination sets and nobody called them boneheads for it. The real problem is that viewport scales don't give you a clear warning when you switch between unit types, so it's easy to overlook. If you caught it after 8 years, that's on your firm's checking process too, not just on you.

@garcia.tyler makes a good point about cleaning, but my own experience took a different turn with an old hand grinder that just would not cooperate. Spent a whole Saturday breaking it down, cleaning every tiny piece, and even tried oiling the mechanism only to get a fine powder instead of grounds. Finally gave up and bought a new one, and that old grinder now sits in my basement holding a screwdriver and a few random bolts.

My buddy Mike's chef knife still looks like a jagged saw blade.