Replace proof with specificity. A stranger is trying to answer one question - will this work on my mess - and a logo band is a weak proxy for that answer. Real output is a strong one.
What went in mine: a screenshot of an actual result with the actual numbers left in, annotated with two callouts. Under it, forty seconds of screen recording of the real workflow with a cursor, no music, no face. Under that, one line about who it is not for, which did more for trust than anything else on the page because it is the only sentence on a landing page that could possibly be against my interest.
Check the customer balance in the dashboard before you assume the money is gone. It is parked, not lost, and if they stay subscribed it eventually gets consumed against invoices you would have collected anyway. The loss is only real for the ones who churn while holding a credit.
Cheaper version if you are one or two people: your host gives you a stable alias per branch that does not change per commit. Register that one URL for your main working branch and stop thinking about it. It breaks when a third person opens a fourth branch, but it costs five minutes today.
Right. The level you worry about is above the outlet, up in the riser, because that means the water isn't leaving. If it's sitting exactly at the pipe, the system is doing its job.
That's what it does. A septic tank is meant to be full of liquid up to the invert of the outlet pipe at all times, and everything above that line is just air. Pumping empties it, and then it refills to the outlet and stops.
Two adults using a normal 150-odd gallons a day will refill a 1000 gallon tank in about a week. Nine days is exactly on schedule. What you actually paid for was removing the sludge on the bottom and the crust on top, not for it to stay empty.
That last paragraph is the one people do not want to hear. Count the actual queries in a request trace before you defend the architecture. It is usually four.
Reasonable, with one adjustment: refund on request, yes, but close the account at the same time and keep a list. There is a small population who will happily use the whole month, ask for a refund on the last day, and come back next month with a different address. Refunding without ending access is how you fund them.
Also 14 days is arbitrary. Tie the trial to usage instead - first 100 tasks, or first project completed - so somebody who signs up and then goes on holiday still gets a real trial when they come back. Calendar trials mostly measure whether someone was busy that fortnight.
Middle path that worked for me: no block, but new accounts start on a lower quota that unlocks with either a card on file or a domain that isn't a free mail provider. Serial trialists get a usable but thin version, real evaluators barely notice.
Also worth logging a loose device signature - same IP plus same screen size plus same timezone across eleven accounts is a much stronger signal than email shape, and it doesn't depend on a provider's aliasing rules staying the same forever.
The technical separation is worth doing, but be clear about what disputes actually turn on, which is the contract text and the timeline, not your ssh config.
So the useful work is: read the assignment clause and the field of business language, check whether your jurisdiction limits what an employer can claim over things made on your own time with your own kit, and see whether your policy has a disclosure route. Disclosing early is uncomfortable for a week and removes the entire problem afterwards.
Also, and I say this gently, the lunch hour question answers itself. Do the thinking at lunch on paper. Do the typing at home.
Supply house counters are genuinely the best distribution channel nobody writes about. Add the trade schools and apprenticeship programmes to that list. The instructors know everyone in the region and they are usually delighted that someone under sixty is interested in their sector.
Ring them. I know. But this is the sector where a phone call is normal and an email is suspicious, and dispatchers answer phones for a living.
I made forty calls over two weeks for a similar tool. Twenty-two never picked up, eleven were polite and short, six turned into a real conversation, and two of those became customers at the end. The script was: I built a thing for X, I am not selling today, can I ask you two questions about how you currently do Y. Nobody was rude. Several were pleased that anyone had asked.
The unexpected benefit was that after six of those calls I could describe the problem in their words instead of mine, and my landing page stopped sounding like software.
Call now, but call for an inspection and a pump-out rather than an emergency. Greener grass over the trenches is normal to a degree because that's where the nutrients are. Squelching underfoot two days after the rain stopped is not, and that's the part I'd act on.
While you wait, do three things. Cut household water use hard for a week, so short showers and laundry spread over days rather than five loads on Saturday. Walk your gutters and downspouts and make sure none of them discharge anywhere near the field. And keep everything with wheels off it, including the mower if you can stand the long grass.
That could be most of your problem. A roof that size sheds a startling amount of water in one storm and dumping it above the field means the soil never gets a chance to drain. Extend it 20 feet downhill this weekend, it's a $30 job.
Before the monthly round, offer the current price locked for two years if they prepay now. Some fraction takes it, you get cash up front, and you learn who is price sensitive without anyone having to churn to tell you.
Do it knowing what you are giving up. Once the session cookie is scoped to .example.com, every subdomain can read it - including whatever marketing deploys on blog.example.com next quarter with three analytics scripts on it, and including any subdomain someone can get content onto.
That is a real trade and worth making deliberately rather than because it unblocked a redirect loop on a Friday.
Bang on average. Eight to twelve is typical, less if the system cycles a lot. When you fit the new one, set the precharge before you put any water in it, and check that precharge every autumn with the pump off. Five minutes a year and you'll get the full life out of it.
Your tank has lost its air charge, or the bladder has failed. That's what short cycling means nine times out of ten and it will burn the pump motor out if you leave it, because starts are what kill submersibles, not run time.
Check it in this order. Knock on the tank from the top down with your knuckles. It should sound hollow for most of the height and solid only near the bottom. If it's solid nearly all the way up, it's waterlogged.
Then kill the breaker, open a tap and drain the system to zero, and put a tyre gauge on the schrader valve at the top of the tank. With no water pressure in it, it should read 2 psi below your cut-in, so 28 psi for a 30/50 switch. If it reads 10, pump it back up to 28 with a bicycle pump and you're done for a while.
If water squirts out of the schrader valve instead of air, the bladder is torn and the tank needs replacing. They don't get repaired.
Counterpoint, since everyone is saying stay: Auth.js with a database adapter, email and one OAuth provider is genuinely not much code. A sessions table, an adapter, a callback, and you are done. If that really is all you need forever, two or three days buys you never thinking about monthly active users again.
The trap is "forever". Almost nobody's auth requirements stay still.
When you drew the level down to the pump, you pulled water from the very bottom of the borehole where sediment and iron sit, and you stirred the whole thing up. That usually clears with time and flushing.
Run an outside hose bib wide open onto the lawn for 45 minutes, well away from the septic field, then check a glass. If it's better, run it again the next evening. Also flush the water heater tank, because that's where the rust settles and quietly comes back for weeks after everything else looks clear.
Chlorine handles bacteria and some iron bacteria. On dissolved iron it will just oxidise it into visible rust particles and make the staining worse until you flush it all out. Test before dumping bleach down a borehole.
The one place I still reach for it is markup I do not control, like the output of a markdown renderer, where I cannot put a class on the element and have to style by tag. That is a real use and it is narrow.