My buddy Dave tried this exact same thing last month. He set up his tea station in the garage thinking the distance would force him to unplug. First day he made it halfway to the garage and turned back to grab his phone because he wanted to check if his kid texted. By day three he was just making tea with his phone in his back pocket the whole time. The only thing that actually worked for him was putting his phone in a drawer and setting a separate alarm clock. He said the tea thing just made him feel productive without actually changing anything.

Fair enough @betty_wells but I think you're overstating the permit thing. It was strict but so is needing stamps and addresses today. The real point is they had a working system that moved messages across an empire with no cars or phones. That's still a big deal.

Man that chipmunk part got me. I swear animals have a sixth sense for finding the one weak spot on anything expensive you buy. Three days of ice in Arizona heat is no joke though, those rotomolded ones really do work. But yeah its like the universe balances it out. You save money on not buying ice every weekend but then a little rodent comes along and reminds you nothing is perfect. At least the replacement part was only 15 bucks, could have been worse. Still annoying as hell though.

Guess I'm just that guy who gets hung up on weird stuff then (like how my tire rotation schedule is two days overdue, which is a whole other crisis). It's not about being sensitive though, it's more like when someone emails me "per your request" and I'm sitting there thinking I don't even know who "per" is. Professional tone can be a crutch, you know? Like people use it to sound smart when really they're just hiding behind big words and fancy formatting. I'd rather get a honest "hey this is a mess" than a polished "we are currently experiencing operational challenges.

Did you ever catch that interview where someone from the crew talked about all the off-camera stuff? I read a blog post that made it sound pretty messy behind the scenes, way more than what those tapes showed.