Man, walking the radius is the right move but the tape has to be the one deciding, not your feet. Pace count changes with your stride, boots, and how tired you are by lunch, so it can drift a couple feet easy. Good on you for catching it now instead of after another Gary pour.

My own version of that ghost hunt ended with me cussing at a multimeter for twenty minutes before noticing the ground screw was painted over. Old panels love to bite you on stuff the manual buries in fine print, and a floating ground on a translator will drop zones every time. At least you found it before ripping out all the wiring.

The "emotional payoff landed flat" part is exactly it. You can't just skip to the big moments because those moments only work if you put in the time with the characters first. It's like reading the last page of a book and wondering why you didn't cry. The boring episodes are doing quiet work the whole time, building up your gut feelings about these people so that when the big stuff happens you actually care. Your friend probably thinks he's saving you time but he's really just robbing you of the part that makes it all worth it.