That "messy win" idea your friend Mike had is really interesting. My buddy had a similar thing with the last Lord of the Rings movie. He always hated that the Scouring of the Shire was cut. He read the book later and said that part, where the hobbits come home and have to fix their own problems, was the whole point. It showed how they changed. The movie ending felt too clean to him after that, like all the real work was done for them.

Ouch, hand floating 200 sq ft in that heat sounds brutal. When you say backup plan, are you guys just running extra charged batteries now, or is there something else on site like a small gas-powered trowel? I've seen crews keep a beat-up old backup machine in the truck just for this.

Pretty scary? Sounds like someone just wanted to read your spam folder.