Nothing like watching a drive that should hit 500 MB/s crawl along at 200 because somebody trusted a button labeled "quick." It takes less time to look up the sector size than it does to argue with the customer about why their brand new machine feels slower than the old one. Half the time the alignment tool doesn't even read the drive specs, it just guesses, and the guess is wrong just often enough to ruin your whole afternoon. At this point I trust a napkin and a calculator more than most of these imaging suites.

Skip the ear and teeth checks and look at lip sync on fast speech instead.

Check your local brick supplier's dry stack or sample board next time you're grabbing materials. Most of them have a cutaway showing the frog facing down, and the manufacturer's website usually posts the same thing under their technical specs. I caught myself doing the same trick with the mortar holding easier, but once you get used to flipping it, you'll see the bed stays way more even and you don't get those weird hollow spots behind the face. Also, watch how the older guys load their boards if you're on a mixed crew, that's how I finally figured out I was the odd one out.