Bad days just stick harder, that's how our dumb brains work.

Man, that hits close to home. I wasted a whole weekend once chasing a knock on a Silverado that turned out to be a loose heat shield. My ears were confident. The scan tool saw it in two minutes. It's not that hearing is useless. It's that our brains hear what they expect. You think lifter, you hear lifter. The data doesn't have an ego. Now I treat my ears like the first guess, not the final answer. Cheap insurance if you ask me.

Man, I feel this in my bones. My cousin and I dropped $40 on a DVD called "Sharkenstein" once, and it was so broken that the shark had like five seconds of screen time total. We still yell "the legs are the bait" at each other for no reason, years later. There's something magical about a movie being so bad that it turns into a shared joke, you know? That $60 is basically a ticket to a private comedy show that only you and your buddy get. Honestly, I'd say you got a bargain.