Used to think old iPods were done for, but $5 a pop for a battery swap gamble?

That whole argument sounds like classic old timer noise, more about pride than actual cutting. Two guys who probably haven't sharpened a chain themselves in years, just yelling over each other to feel important. Oak is oak, whether you hit it at 25 or 30, the difference is maybe a few seconds per cut, not some huge jump in speed. Chain life comes down to how often you hit dirt and how consistent you are with the file, not two degrees on a gauge. Unless you're in an actual race cutting competition, nobody on that job site can tell the difference. Run whatever you know works and let them argue about it until the fuel runs out.

Wait, the sharpening settings thing is actually kind of a trap though. Manual sharpening is mostly for if you're printing huge or doing crazy detail work, but for dog park pics, masking layers and local adjustments are way more useful because you're fixing specific blurry spots instead of nuking the whole photo. I paid $200 for a "masterclass" on color grading and the guy spent 40 minutes on histogram charts, then I found a 5 minute video on split toning that did more for my sunset shots. The real issue is these paid classes often teach you the "proper" way to do things that assumes you're already good at the basics, but free tutorials are usually made by people who remember what it's like to be stuck on the same dumb problem you're stuck on. So yeah, you're not crazy, but I'd also say the manual sharpening stuff isn't useless, it's just not the thing that's gonna save your shaky dog pics.