# Any "I was doing it the hard way" stories? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [July 16, 2024, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335 "2024-07-16T18:47:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/41 "2024-07-17T21:13:26Z")
No, we just peel them the hard way. ---
**Author:** ![Author\_Balk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Author\_Balk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Author_Balk)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/42 "2024-07-17T21:21:11Z")
I used to peel a banana from the top. Once someone mentioned peeling from the bottom, so I gave it a try. It’s a lot easier. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/43 "2024-07-17T21:28:31Z")
> [@motu](#): > > Moved into a new house, the kitchen sink had built-in soap dispenser. Soap ran out after a month or three. I cleared everything out from under the sink and wrestled with the soap dispenser bottle for almost thirty minutes to get it out. After that, I was in no hurry to re-install it, it was a real pain in the a\*\*. A couple of months later finally re-installed it after almost an hour of contorting myself under the sink and fighting with this plastic container. But I did it! My mother’s kitchen sink had one of those built-in soap dispensers, which she liked. Until one day, the dispenser bottle broke or leaked dish soap all over the inside of the cabinet. Rather than replacing the bottle, my brother installed a [pipe](https://www.lowes.com/pd/Keeney-Clear-Soap-and-Lotion-Dispenser/999927770) that leads to a large bottle of dish soap on the floor of the cabinet. Now, it’s never necessary to refill the bottle. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/44 "2024-07-17T23:29:17Z")
> [@solost](#): > > One last, second-hand example, is a young upcoming guitar player I heard being interviewed on NPR years ago. He had listened to and been inspired by Chet Atkins (I think), and didn’t realize that the echoing, secondary notes he was hearing were caused by delay or slap-back reverb. So he taught himself to play just like he heard Chet by playing every note twice, the second time with slightly less volume. And it sounded just like the effect. There’s a story of Joe Walsh proudly telling George Harrison he mastered the solo in “Nowhere Man”. It was actually a duet with George and John on the record. I always wondered why he wouldn’t just think it was George double tracking. ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/45 "2024-07-17T23:37:05Z")
> [@Grestarian](#): > > But, for some reason, his antics made me think of a scene in a TV show that I had watched less than a week earlier. Two detectives were talking about a tale of a yacht getting stuck while trying to go under a bridge that crossed a canal. City engineers were brought in to take measurements and make recommendations about how best to cut the underside of the cement bridge so it wouldn’t weaken the structure so much that it couldn’t be repaired to a usable condition afterward. A kid in the crowd of spectators laughed and said, “Don’t raise the bridge, lower the water!” I remember seeing this story in an old issue of the Reader’s Digest when I was pretty young – so, late 50s or early 60s – only it was a truck stuck under an overpass, and the kid said “Let the air out of the tires.” Maybe there are other variations out there. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/46 "2024-07-17T23:43:02Z")
I was visiting a friend and noticed that her refrigerator opened onto the wall next to it instead of into the kitchen. I borrowed a screwdriver and flipped around the doors. She had no idea that refrigerator doors were reversible, and had been using it that way for 2 years. ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/47 "2024-07-18T00:18:58Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > I don’t understand. To peel an avocado you make two incisions lengthwise at ~90° to each other all the way around. Then you pull the skin off. If it does not come off, the avocado is not ripe anyway. > Do you eat avocados unripe in the USA? Doesn’t that leave you with a peeled avocado with a pit in the middle? How do you avoid getting it all over your hands when you remove the pit? I use Cervaise’s method. It works quickly and easily. And if you just want to eat the avocado without using it in a recipe, you can use a spoon to scoop it directly out of the skin. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/48 "2024-07-18T00:40:34Z")
I have one of these avocado tools. The knife is serrated plastic which works very well for cutting avocado skin but is impossible to cut yourself with. The three blades in the center work better than a knife for grabbing the pit, without risking damaging a good knife by slamming it into a pit. I don’t really use the slicer thingie but I’m very happy with the way the other two features work. > **[Amazon.com: OXO Good Grips 3-in-1 Avocado Slicer - Green: Home & Kitchen](https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Avocado-Slicer/dp/B0088LR592)** > > Online Shopping for Kitchen Utensils & Gadgets from a great selection at everyday low prices. Free 2-day Shipping with Amazon Prime. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/49 "2024-07-18T00:47:25Z")
I was once using a hacksaw to saw off the top few inches of a metal gatepost in a chain-link fence (I don’t remember exactly why I was doing this). The post was maybe 3 inches diameter and there was a finial thing on top of the post. I was cutting horizontally a few inches below the finial. After laboriously cutting about half way through the post, it became clear that the post was not hollow as I had thought; it felt like it was solid metal. After even more work I had reached about 3/4 way through the post, and pulled the saw out to take a break. I put my hand on the finial and to my surprised it moved a little. I grabbed the finial and it lifted right off the post, along with the tail that had protruded down into the post and which I’d been unnecessarily sawing through. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/50 "2024-07-18T00:54:24Z")
That’s funny! ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/51 "2024-07-18T01:04:15Z")
I wanted to replace a temperature sensor on my lawn tractor. It was threaded into the transaxle case. A 22 mm socket and ratchet would normally remove it. But there was a wire coming out of the sensor, right in the center. It was a long wire that went… somewhere. So I couldn’t use a socket. (My plan was to remove the sensor, cut the wire about 12 inches from the sensor, and then make a splice when I install the new sensor. I didn’t want to cut the wire at the body in case I needed to use the old sensor for some reason.) So I grabbed a 22 mm open end wrench. But I _hate_ open end wrenches, because they only grab a couple corners, and you risk rounding them off. So I took a closed end wrench and cut a slot in it using a hacksaw. I didn’t want to do this, obviously, since it ruins the wrench, but I didn’t have any other choice. But it worked - the wire went through the slot, and I was able to remove the sensor with the wrench. It was then that I discovered the sensor wasn’t “hardwired”; there was an electrical pin at the center of the sensor, and the wire/connector simply pressed onto the pin. All I had to do was pull on the wire, and it would have come off. ---
**Author:** ![Nyvaak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Nyvaak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nyvaak)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/52 "2024-07-18T03:48:20Z")
I was hiking around a lake with a friend, when we observed a man laboriously carrying sand bags down to his canoe from a parking area high above Friend asked him why, and he explained that when he was paddling by himself it really helped to have some weight in the bow of the canoe. “Yeah, I’ve found that myself,” she said. “But I’ve usually just carried a few big, empty plastic jugs and filled them with lake water.” He just stood and stared for a few seconds before whispering, “oh my God!” ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/53 "2024-07-18T05:26:43Z")
> [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](#): > > There’s a story of Joe Walsh proudly telling George Harrison he mastered the solo in “Nowhere Man”. It was actually a duet with George and John on the record. I always wondered why he wouldn’t just think it was George double tracking. FWIW I’ve encountered that tale several time with the solo being “And Your Bird Can Sing” and the Beatle being Ringo (Joe Walsh’s one-time brother-in-law and All-Starr Bandmate). [One link.](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/eagles-joe-walsh-said-person-play-tricky-george-harrison-solo-including-george-harrison.html/) ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/54 "2024-07-18T11:48:28Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Then he picked up the first avocado and began slowly, laboriously using the paring knife to peel it, like you’d hand-peel an apple or a potato. Same happened to me with my brother in law. He’s a good cook, but did not know about the easy way to scoop out an avocado. If I had to peel them, I wouldn’t eat them. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/55 "2024-07-18T12:13:03Z")
> [@carrps](#): > > I’ve done a little bit of teaching – not “professionally” just part of my job – and I freaking _love_ those moments. Preach it! Those are the best moment of teaching bar none. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > In my first proper job, there was something of a culture of late nights. I ahd managed to avoid this until the day I found myself confronted with a massive Excel file, one column of which was fouling up a formula because each cell contained a double space. I’ve got an Excel story, too. I’m self-taught with spreadsheets but enjoy them. If you hired me for my spreadsheet abilities you’d be really disappointed, but if you hired me for anything else you’d be delighted; I’m way better than most people and way worse than people who actually know what they’re doing. Anyway, I was trying to help our school cafeteria staff by designing a spreadsheet that would communicate which students wanted which lunches. Each day the cafeteria offered two lunch choices, and by 9 am they needed to know how many lunches of each type to make. The spreadsheet had to meet a few criteria: - It had to be easy enough to use that teachers with no spreadsheet knowledge would use it. - It had to be useable on a touchscreen where students could enter their choices. - It had to communicate easily to cafeteria staff how many lunches to make. The setup was pretty simple: student names in the first column, the second and third columns headed with the day’s lunch choices. Students would tap the row with their name and the cell under the choice they wanted and enter “1”. A formula at the bottom of each column totaled the number of “1s” in the column; and as a bonus showed how many students had made their lunch choice. All good–except that different classes had different numbers of students. A class with 14 kids needed that “Total” line on the 15th row, but a class with 22 kids needed the “Total” line on the 23 row. I could put it on the 25th row for all classes, but then there’d be a bunch of blank space, and it looked ugly and made it less simple to use, and what if someone got a really big class? I played with a lot of options and did a bunch of Googling, looking for ways to make the formula appear on the next empty row, before I finally found the solution. Can you guess it? I put the “Total” line at the top of the page, not at the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/56 "2024-07-18T13:38:18Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Can you guess it? Never in a million years. Good job! ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/57 "2024-07-18T15:31:14Z")
Back in 2018 I stayed at Burg Reichenstein on a trip up the Rhine in Germany. Carrying a 40 lb backpack. This was, up to that time, the hottest week in the history of Germany. We got off the train and walked up the main street to the base of the castle and started slowing walking up the dozen or so switchbacks to get up the hill to get onto the castle grounds, proper. Took us a good 30 minutes to walk up that hill. We get to the top and into the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk asks why we look so tired. We tell her we just walked up the hill, and she laughs and points out the window. There was a driveway basically right out of the train stop that was a gentle slope up, in the shade, right to the castle. “_Nobody_ comes up the other way!” D’oh! ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/58 "2024-07-18T15:32:33Z")
At least you weren’t moving a piano. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/59 "2024-07-18T18:28:50Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The very first physics test I ever took in college, when I sat down with the paper, my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember any formulas beyond F = ma. My physics prof once told us we didn’t need a cheat sheet as he would write all the formulas we needed on the board. That’s exactly what he wrote - F = ma. I think for the final we could bring one sheet. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2024, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335/60 "2024-07-18T21:25:34Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The very first physics test I ever took in college, when I sat down with the paper, my mind went blank. I couldn’t remember any formulas beyond F = ma. And so I frantically re-derived every one of them, on the spot, as I needed them. Finally, I turn to the last page of the test… > > and it was a formula sheet I was taking an advanced physics class in college and once when I was taking a test I drew a complete blank on the formula I needed to answer one of the questions. Fortunately I was able to remember enough other formulas to derive it, since my professor wasn’t considerate enough to provide a formula sheet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-i-was-doing-it-the-hard-way-stories/1004335.md?page=4)