Harbor Freight meters are basically fancy placebo devices. They give you the confidence to be completely wrong. You almost condemned a good compressor because a toy told you to. That's the tax for not walking back to the truck.

That soggy couch cushion story is a new one for me.

Wow, that actually makes perfect sense to me. I've seen inspection plans for big bridge foundations that are just massive. You're not just looking at one spot, you're doing a full photo and video survey of every single surface. If there's heavy growth, you might be cleaning a section just to see the concrete underneath. Thirty two dives to document every column carefully sounds right for a major structure.

You said you spent four hours on a missing piece. Honestly, I just wouldn't do that. A missing miniature is a bummer, but that's a huge chunk of time. I'd just mark it with a note and play the game. Is a perfect copy really worth an entire evening of hassle? I've used a Lego guy or a painted cube before and kept the fun going. Fixing things is good, but sometimes you have to ask if the fix is worse than the problem.

Honestly that makes a ton of sense. It feels like a lot of problems come from things just being too closed off, not getting enough air. You see it with stuff in the fridge or even just leaving wet laundry in a pile. Letting things breathe seems to fix so many issues before they even start. Your gambrel trick is just a really smart version of that basic idea.