I need to use regular, not mechanical, pencils for an upcoming test. I haven’t used pencils for writing in some time and had to go purchase both pencils and a pencil sharpener.
But I can’t sharpen the pencils. Twist, twist, twist. The lead breaks. Twist, twist, twist, ooh, this is good. Write, write. The lead breaks.
I seem to be able to have a very flat nubbin of lead sticking out beyond the wood, but no sharp or even sharp-ish points. And even the nubbin breaks off if I use it for more than a line or two.
I begin to think life is too difficult for me and I need a keeper.
Am I just that incompetent or is there a trick to this that somehow I’ve forgotten?
The other tragedies? Your tales of gross incompetence with the simplest matters. Make me feel better!
I have trouble using keys to unlock things far more often than I should. Far, far more often. Makes me feel like a retard but it should make you feel better.
WAG: Could be it’s not you but the pencils at fault. I find that some cheap ones with crappy leads are almost impossible to sharpen and behave just like you describe. If you have the same problem with all the pencils you have handy, you might try picking up something slightly more expensive at an art-supply type store, or at a non-chain-type office supply place that sells them by the each instead of multiples in packages. At last resort, you could try a carpenter’s pencil – hardware stores have them along with special little sharpeners (even though real carpenters generally use whatever blade they have handy).
Empire pencils. I just remembered that. The yellow one , probably #2.
Get a bunch and go somewhere where there’s one of those on the wall with a crank (school, library, my house and sharpen them all. Those cheap plastic sharpeners never work good unless you’re lucky.
Why no mechanical?
Well, hot diggity dog. You’re right. Thus proving that I may not be too stupid to use a pencil sharpener, but I am too stupid to buy good pencils! I found one lonely pencil in a drawer and it sharpens just fine.
But I’m gonna go get me some of those pre-sharpened ones Suburban Plankton mentions.
It’s sad that I need to practice for my test AND practice sharpening pencils!
You didn’t go to catholic school, did you? Karma is as karma does.
Not only did the nuns have excellent sharpeners, but if you were a lefty they’d fix that too.
I have one of those hand cranked ones, with auto-feed yet, and it works perfectly.
Well, I think it works. I can’t find it. I use a mechanical pencil, 0.09 mm lead.
Mirado Black Warrior pencils? I want some of those!
It’s because you may have non-standard graphite in your mechanical pencil. This is all theoretical, because unless you go into an art store or somewhere that caters to architects, etc (who still use pencils instead of CAD), you’re gonna get standard pencil “lead” that is exactly the same as in regular pencils.
It’s a CYA because you’d hate to have a mechanical pencil that someone, somewhere filled with extra hard or extra soft lead and have the scantron not read the marks. But there’s nothing wrong whatsoever with using mechanical pencil lead that’s graded HB/#2. It’ll read just fine.
I always experience extreme difficulty getting Ziplock bags to close. Line the two sides up carefully… press… nothing. Repeat six to eight times until one small portion finally locks in place, after which I can (usually) work my way along from there.
Sometimes, when I’m having trouble with some simple manual task (like tearing open a package), I’ll remember, “Oh yeah! Pretend you’re right-handed!” And suddenly it’s easy. But the Ziplock problem doesn’t seem to be amenable to this.
Have you also noticed that most coffee mugs seem to have their decoration placed so that it faces you if you’re a rightie, but faces out if you’re a leftie?
Also to the OP, if you don’t want to spring for fancy pencils, our admin buys OfficeMax 2HB’s which don’t break off in our wall mounted manual sharpener.
I cannot sharpen my kitchen knives worth a damn. I have an electric knife sharpener, and my husband seems to have no trouble sharpening 'em all up to a razor-fine edge. I watch how he does it, and then I try doing it the same way, yet they feel as dull as when I started, if not duller.
They’re in need of sharpening right now, so it’s time to pester him into doing it for me, since I’m too stupid to sharpen a knife.
I’m not too stupid to use a pencil sharpener, I’m too stupid to know when to STOP using a pencil sharpener.
I was using a hand-crank sharpener at work, sharpening a bunch of pencils (the exhibit we had at the time required them). After I’d finished a few, I noticed that my hands were getting a wee bit sore, so I took a break for awhile. It wasn’t until about five minutes later that I noticed four blisters starting to form on my index finger and thumb. I told my supervisor, and she got several bandaids, and a latex glove to wear over them, from our security/medical staff. I felt dumb because not only could I not write with that hand for awhile, it also meant that I couldn’t punch in or out (since our system uses a fingerprint from the index finger of the dominant hand). I also had a stupid purple glove on my hand for the rest of my shift.
I also accidentally stapled my thumb the other day while stapling a bunch of fliers together. Since it drew blood, I had to call the medical staff again for a bandaid. It was on my dominant hand, again, so I had trouble handling things, but at least I could still punch in.
Dammit, why can’t I injure extremities that I DON’T use so often? :smack:
Architects and engineers and designers are all using CAD these days.
I’m trying to set up an old-school drafting table using tech pens and erasing shields and mechanical erasers and drafting machines and lettering stencils and that green vinyl that goes over the board and all that, and I’m finding that a lot of the equipment is not available easily any more.
The wide variety of pencils at art stores is for people who like to draw birds and people and landscapes and stuff by hand.
Well, my parenthetical aside was to mean “for those (few) engineers/archies who don’t use CAD”, which is mainly really really oldsters or some students.
But yeah; I stopped at my old university’s bookstore when I was at the registrar to pick up my transcripts a couple of weeks ago. I was hoping to get my Staedtler mechanical pencils again. I had lost them in one of my moves and I loved them. I had them in 0.3, 0.5, 0.7 and 0.9. They only had the 0.5, not many leads to choose from, and the entire archy section was a lot smaller. And I only graduated 5 years ago!
I can’t make a fire without paper. (And a lighter of some kind, but I think there’s probably a lot of people who can’t make a fire by rubbing two sticks together or whatever the boy scouts do, and that isn’t quite so bad by society’s standards)
Just came back from a camping trip and this was brought to my attention a few times, I made a fire, but I can’t light anything natural unless I get a shitload of crumpled paper in there and have it start a big conflagration, hoping and praying that I aligned the natural products (wood, sticks, leaves) in such a way that the paper conflagration lights it to make a half-way decent fire. If the fire starts dying out, my only hope is to throw more crumpled paper on it for a short burst of a big flame.
Soak (ligtly) some cotton balls in vaseline and store them in an airtight metal container. A few of these are easy to light and will start firewood better than paper.
and sharpen them all. Those cheap plastic sharpeners never work good unless you’re lucky.
