Freemand: I agree with your analysis. In the end, what ultimately matters is what the individual listener perceives. If, after putting an alarm clock in your room or having tones played over your phone or drinking a few glasses of Wild Irish Rose, you believe that your system sounds better, then it obviously was worth it to you. I don't think anyone disputes yours or Norm's or anyone else's experience (putting aside the obvious bias that arises when someone like Norm takes freebies, failes to disclose it, and then asserts publicly that they work).
Your analysis does not, however, address the issue of whether those "tweaks" have even a remote chance of helping others. If the point of this forum is to share experiences that may help others, it is important to separate tweaks that have no apparent explanation (which, more likely than not, induce a placebo effect that likely is not repeatable acrosss the population or even for an individual over time) and those that have some basis in rationale, scientific explanations (which are vastly more likely to have a similar effects on others' experiences).
Otherwise, Norm's anecodates about how little pebbles have changed his life are just that: cute, personal anecdotes that contribute nothing to the general understanding and improvement of the forum members' experiences.