Oh man, I have to disagree on that one. I tried the block and pencil trick once and the pencil point kept wobbling, so my line was all shaky. For me, a cheap plastic profile gauge from the hardware store gives a much cleaner copy of the wall, no guesswork. Have you actually had good luck with the homemade kind?

Yeah, sage_lewis10 gets it. That's the whole joke. You do a bunch of extra steps, jump through all their hoops, and the reward is basically a gum ball. It's not even about the money at that point, it's about the principle. They make you work for a prize so small it feels like an insult. Makes you wonder why they even bothered to add the extra step in the first place.

Feel that deep in my soul. You get all set up, swing that maul with some real hope, and then it just explodes into a pile of bug dust. That drive back to the yard, knowing you're eating the cost and the daylight, is its own special kind of quiet rage. Doing the reset alone in the dark with your headlamp is the final insult.

almost every other day" sounds about right for my kitchen chaos

Remember that whole thing about the Titanic sub implosion? I got stuck reading a thread where someone insisted it was a hoax. I just asked how they faked the international coast guard search patterns. The silence was pretty loud. Sometimes you just need one question that needs a real, boring answer.