restart the server before demo

what happened

was tweaking out and then realized i didn't restart the server. the demo was running stale code with old bugs.

why it's a gotcha

you've been coding for 20 hours straight. you made fixes. you forgot to restart. now the demo shows the old broken version and you're standing there confused about why your fix isn't working. stale environments cause the same confusion as "it works on my machine" bugs.

the fix

add "restart all services" to a pre-demo checklist. do it 5 minutes before you present, not 30 seconds before. give yourself time to catch anything that doesn't come back up cleanly. this is part of the full pre-demo verification flow, and don't tweak the code right up to the deadline — that's how you end up needing a restart you don't have time for.