Number 847 was clearly the chosen one.

140 applications and one contract gig doing HTML edits at $17 an hour, that is brutal.

Oh wow, that question flip is such a smart move. I heard a podcast about one on ones where the guy said the best managers ask "what's slowing you down" instead of "what are you working on" and it totally changes the talk. Like instead of you listing tasks, you're actually fixing stuff. My old team had this dumb handoff too where everything sat in a shared folder for two days before anyone touched it, so I get why your Austin thing saved a Friday. That kind of fix only comes out when someone asks the right question.