Mms proposed updates

These are my proposed updates, mostly reflecting the things that I've been doing without documenting them. Feel free to tear them apart. I'll annotate changes that I think need explanation.
Wouldn't we want to specify the latest patch too? It shouldn't happen, but what if it's a breaking patch?

My method in dev has been to manually `gem install thegemname`, then `gem list --local | grep thegemname` to see the exact version, then update it in the Gemfile and run `bundle install`.