Been on decimals for about 8 years now and never looked back. Fractions worked fine for small stuff like door jambs or cabinet details where you're measuring in inches anyway. But once you start laying out whole buildings with 50 foot walls and irregular angles, decimal feet just makes everything click faster. You catch errors way easier too because 15.67' is obviously wrong when you meant 16.67', but 15' 8" looks almost right to the eye. Only place fractions still win is for coordinating with trim carpenters or framers who think in feet and inches. They get confused when they see 0.25' on a dimension for a 3" reveal. Otherwise it's a cleaner way to work and anyone saying otherwise probably hasn't tried it on a big enough job.

Gutter zip ties are temporary until the sun degrades them and they snap.

What if the friend who started the rumor actually worked on the Apollo missions and knew the real story?

Ive done this exact thing with my own shop vac and a wet rag. Worked like a charm pulling out a solid 6 inch chunk of congealed bacon grease that had been clogging my kitchen drain for a week. No pipe damage so far and I have old metal pipes from the 1950s. The key is to not crank the vac on full blast for too long. Just give it a few short pulls and you can hear when the blockage lets go. I think this method beats drain snakes because you dont shove the mess further down the pipes. Just my two cents from a messy kitchen.

Wait, wait - Dr Pepper? Like the 23 flavors Dr Pepper? I thought root beer was the only soda that worked for that trick.