Nah I gotta disagree with you on this one. Watching one car leave after 10 minutes sounds like torture not hypnotic. I clicked that link hoping for some boring zen vibes and just got annoyed by how slow the refresh rate was. If you want real boring checkout the website for the Lincoln Nebraska airport webcam, at least that one has planes taking off sometimes.

Bought a beat up Garret from the 80s for $10 once and spent an hour digging up a door hinge, so you're already doing better than me.

Have you checked if the wall itself is perfectly flat? I made that mistake when I first got a cheap laser - blamed the tool but it was actually my basement wall being pretty uneven. The half inch off sounds rough though, I had a $35 one that was usable within like 10 feet but it got sketchy past that. Maybe yours is just a lemon, or the calibration was off from the factory.

Did you ever try putting it in a zippered jacket pocket instead, that worked way better for me?

Wait... you actually went through all that trouble for a stranger's keys? That's wild. Most people would've just left them on the bench or tossed them in the trash. I found a wallet once with a hundred bucks in it and the owner's address was right on the license, so I drove it back to their house. The guy looked at me like I was crazy for bothering him about it.