Ouch! Where's the love? :-)
Seriously though, a stainless steel flower bed would be pretty cool. I'd polish it though. Even flowers can always use a bit more bling.
Also, ATC compensates for the temperature of the refractometer, not the sample. You don't need to wait long for the few necessary drops to cool, but you will get a low reading if you try to measure a hot sample right away.
I couldn't agree more. My father-in-law has the ability to put down any type of malt-based swill that is set in front of him, but even he couldn't drink more than a few sips of this stuff. The only reason I drank more than one gulp of it was that I had a hard time believing that the first sip...
I used to have problems with my SS braid collapsing, so I wound some stainless steel wire around a pencil and inserted it into the braid for support. Since doing this, i haven't had any issues.