Read somewhere that plaster blocks wireless way worse than drywall, so testing signal before committing saves a ton of headache.

That story hits different because it's not really about the salt at all, it's about how he corrected you without making you feel small. My grandma did the same thing to me with pie crust, she just took the dough out of my hands and showed me the right way without one word about how I'd messed it up. I still hear her voice when I roll dough out too thin. Those quick lessons stick because the person mattered more than the technique. Dale sounds like he was one of the good ones.

That line about the Q and A getting cut to 8 minutes really hits home. I went to a city council forum last year and the same thing happened, a bunch of people in matching shirts got up and filed out about 15 minutes in, and by the time they got to questions there were maybe 20 of us left in a room built for 200. What got me was the people who stayed, a retired guy next to me had a whole list of questions written on a notepad and he only got to ask one. So yeah, you drove up, paid for parking, sat in that 315 mess, and the folks who walked out got exactly what they wanted without saying a single word. Did the speaker ever come back around to the stuff he stumbled on, or did he just rush through to the end?