Lost an hour? Come on @brian_jackson, sounds like a rough day, not a crisis.

So Frank's got a point but not quite right about the micro-cracks thing. I'm a metallurgist by trade and I spent 10 years in power plants dealing with this exact thing. Grinding too hot won't create micro-cracks in the HAZ from just the heat alone, it's more about the grinding burns that change the surface hardness and then that can lead to stress corrosion cracking later on, especially in boiler tubes where you got that caustic environment. The real trick Frank might have been getting at is the discoloration of the metal - if you see that blue or purple color from overheating, you've basically hardened that spot and set yourself up for cracking under thermal cycling. So yeah, slow it down and keep your grinder moving, but the issue is more about surface hardening from burns than actual micro-cracks from the heat itself.

Fancy stainless steel mandoline" sounds like you bought a showpiece, not a tool.

Honestly I read somewhere that the PS4's APU die is actually smaller than people think so a pea sized dot is about right, but even then its easy to overdo it. I heard this one tech YouTuber say the pressure from the heatsink spreads it perfectly so you don't need to spread it yourself like with a card. Ngl I see way too many people using way more paste than needed because they think more is better, but it really just pumps out the sides and makes a mess on the board. Tbh Ive seen some nasty globs that looked like someone squeezed a whole tube on there.

Thinner pages? That actually threw me for a second because most bullet journals have thick pages on purpose so markers don't bleed through. Did yours actually hold up okay with pens and stuff on the thinner paper or did you have to switch to a different pen? I tried using a Moleskine once for planning and the ghosting drove me crazy. It's funny how we get sold on the idea of the perfect tool but the cheap stuff sometimes just works better for how our brain actually operates.