Man, form over function never works in the desert.

Nah I was the same way honestly. Thought it was some voodoo horse whisperer stuff that don't really work. But I tried it on a mare last week that always throws her weight into me when I go for her front. Pushed my knee into her shoulder just a bit, not hard or anything, and she just stopped. She stood there like a lawn ornament. Then I tried it on a gelding that pins his ears the second you touch his foot and same thing. It's wild how one little shift changes everything. Makes me feel dumb for all the years I spent wrestling with them instead.

Eight feet is a bigger gap than most folks realize until they see it on a screen. I had a similar problem on a lake I worked for years, where I thought I knew every dropoff by heart. Turns out the channel had shifted a couple feet after a big flood, and my old markers were useless. Now I do the same thing you do, drop buoys by eye then fire up the GPS for a reality check. It is a humbling tool, that is for sure. But the confidence you get from knowing you are on target is worth the wait.

Ten minutes of cranking for one cup and you earned a gym membership on top of the bill.

Oh man, I feel your pain. I've been there with dowels on a pantry cabinet and it still makes me cringe. Honestly, I think the trick is to pair dowels with a good clamping setup and never, ever rush the glue up. On big jobs like a kitchen, I stick with pocket screws for face frames because they're forgiving and you can tweak alignment after driving them. Dowels are fine for smaller stuff like drawer boxes where you can work on a bench and clamp everything dead flat. If you're doing production work, don't let a youtube guru talk you into something that costs you time and money.