Man, I had a buddy who swore by his reserved desk and turned out he just liked leaving his monitor and snacks out overnight. He still ended up chatting at the coffee bar more than actually working at his spot. So yeah, the fixed desk sounds less like a productivity hack and more like renting a locker with a chair.

Heard magnesium warps less but aluminum's fine if you don't baby it lol.

The elbow thing makes sense because your fingers are always gonna be a few degrees warmer than the dough, so you're basically measuring yourself instead of the bread. What gets me is that Ray probably learned that from someone else who learned it from someone else, and none of it was ever written down anywhere. Baker's math and dough feel live in the body, not in books, so when a guy like that retires it just vanishes. I bet there are entire ways of doing things that died out in small shops all over the country and nobody even noticed. Feels like the real loss isnt the trick itself but the chain of people it got passed through.