Sometimes I want to know what time it is.
Sometimes I want to build a clock.
Ome guy I worked with called it “Good, fast, cheap. Pick two.”
Am I really the only one who understands what he’s talking about? Because I PAINFULLY relate, and it has nothing to do with hobbies; it’s a manic compulsion mixed with a wild imagination and obscene levels of creativity.
I’ll spend three hours in the woods improvising with a bunch of twigs and some twine rather than bring a whisk broom along while I’m camping.
Or, and I just did this yesterday, I didn’t quite like any of the shower curtains at Target, and rather than drive to Wal-Mart, I picked up some regular window curtains with the plan to trim and hem them and put in grommets so I can use it as the outer shower curtain. I mean, WTF? They’re no cheaper, and a whole lot more work. Thankfully, I came to me senses* today, and I’m taking them back tomorrow and going to Bed, Bath and Beyond to find a shower curtain I really like.
Let’s see…once I cut cardboard strips out of boxes, layered them three thick and wrapped them in pretty paper, then stuck pushpins in them. Instead of going to the dollar store for a cheap necklace rack. Only took be about two hours to make five of them. :smack:
C’mon, tell me I’m not the only one, Crafty Dopers! Admit it, it’s not just the geeks!
*Okay, I didn’t come to my senses. Turns out that when the package says, “2 Window Panels, 84” wide by 84" long" it means 84" total, not each panel, so they’re not wide enough anyway.
I always call it “[my ex-boyfriend] syndrome”. He’d spend hours trying to figure a way to do something completely unnecessary that had a much simpler solution that people use every day. After a few hours, he’d get frustrated and assume that the task was undoable, and get pissed when I’d tell him that he just chose to do it the most difficult way possible. Kind of like what WhyNot says.
I think the technical term for this behavior is called stepping over a dollar to pick up a dime.
Engineers often have this malady.
A pain in the ass? There’s plenty of things I would rather do myself at maximum laber at mininal savings just because I have an interest in what it is I’m doing. But if someone is looking for an answer for your BNC-RCA example, I’m always going to recommend that they go down and just buy the adapter every single time. Because if I don’t, they’ll want me to build it for them after I explain to them how to build it.
On my screen, the line ended at necklace and rack was on the next line, so I read it as “Let’s see…once I cut cardboard strips out of boxes, layered them three thick and wrapped them in pretty paper, then stuck pushpins in them. Instead of going to the dollar store for a cheap necklace.” Can you make me a picture out of macaroni and finger paint when you’re done?
Either that or they WILL do it on their own and you’ll have to go and redo it when they make a loose connection and the screen turns green.
I’m familiar with the syndrome. To me, it’s all about being smarter than “ordinary” people - you know, suckers, patsies, dupes, the kind who buy retail when you can get it for wholesale just a three hour drive away.
I once spent about 6 hours reconfiguring my computer so that it would boot about 10 seconds faster.
I reboot my computer about twice a month.
Actually I do this kind of stuff all the time.
Cant buy satisfaction.
Plus geeks need to know how to do this stuff. Most of our projects are at 2am when all the stores are closed and we are high on caffeine and have to find a way to heist some solder off old electronics when we run out or fix an old vcr so we can watch anddub a movie we just respooled into a new case.
::looks around::
I think we’re all bozos on this bus.
It’s a total solution - it works 100% of the time.
Running to Radio Shack only works if they carry the part and have it in stock, so it’s not a 100% solution, and it might involve buying 2 adapters to go from RCA to X, then X to BNC, which might confuse someone not technically minded.
Also many geeks don’t trust the knowledge of the store staff and don’t depend on them to be much help.
Whoah, tread lightly!
That’s half the fun of camping, is improvising something you have becuase you didn’t bring something (or forgot to bring it).
Oh, and skip the twigs. March grass, long field grass, etc works much better. If you don’t need it to use it more than once, you can jst tie it together. If not, you’ll want tp pick dry grass or say, some fir branches or pine branches with the needles attached.
Okay, I just spent too much time thinking about cleaning. this is camping we’re talking about after all.
Guess it’s time to start a thread as I’m looking forward to camping now 
So here it is:
OK, what do we call it when some internet nerd types out a request for information and posts it on a discussion forum, when he can’t possibly have ANY practical use for it?
My suggestion would be “thanks, but I’m totally willing to spend the extra .00 to save those few minutes on my part and on the part of the people who posted the 34 answers.”
Unless we want to add something more explicit about not doing things just for their own sake.
Well sure! But when I say “camping” I mean “car camping” and when I spend more than 40 days a year (non-consecutive) in a huge cabin tent with a full kitchen and on an inflatable mattress with sheets and blankets instead of a sleeping bag, and I have a clothesline strung out back with decorative sarongs hung from it so the campsite looks like something at the Quidditch Cup Match…it’s not exactly like I’m Laura Ingalls Wilder! I’m all about the cushy camping, and here I am trying to improvise a frickin’ broom, and badly, at that!
I did, after 10 years of this, buy a broom last autumn. It’s awesome. It unscrews into four 12 inch lengths, so it’ll fit in any spare corner of my car.
I might do what the op suggests, although probably not in electronics, where my soldering skills are not up to scratch to make an attractive, functional connector. Besides, I probably have what is needed in my snake basket.
But, I re cut and re crimp TV cable at the drop of a hat, since a cable that is exactly the right length probably is not 6, 12, or fifty feet long. Besides, the Cable guy left me two cables both around twenty feet too long when he came to put in the service, and left the fifteen foot cable that was here from last time. I also reconnect most of the splitters and such for the same reason. I don’t want cables longer than I need. Originally it was probably silly to spend 45 bucks on tools to do it, but I have done dozens of cables since, for others.
I asked for one foot USB cables for years before I finally started getting them. Who the hell has a six foot desk, at home? Were it not for my aforementioned soldering skills, I would probably have been making those as well. Phone cable I also got by the foot, from left over long ones. I generally only use the one that comes with the phone at other folks houses. My phone cable is about fifteen inches long. The phone itself is cordless.
It’s not really all that expensive, aside from the tools, and a plastic bag full of connectors.
Tris
I plead guilty.
But, dammit, when you want something done right …
I spent four hours on the Sunday before Christmas customizing an 8 mm. bolt into a specialized bolt that serves as the starter lever pivot pin on my motorcycle. I stripped the torx head on the original. The Yamaha dealer was closed and I didn’t want to wait a week for an online order. Four hours for a bolt that costs $6.95, if it was available.
But, dammit, when you want something done right now …
Ref the OP’s restatement of his / her question …
A major process afoot, especially on the SDMB, is people’s obliviousness to other people’s circumstances. Before you advise your Mom, you consider the problem from her POV, not just from yours. Probably the first couple geeky answers were from folks who didn’t even stop to consider “how could/should the OP solve the problem”, but rather answered “Here’s how I would solve the problem.”
You often see this as international cluelessness too. Someone whose location says “UK” and whose English usage is clearly not American will ask a question about buying a car or phone or about his/her local law & get some totally off base advice. The advice is from a Texan, talking about Texas reality as if it was universal. That person never even stopped to think that maybe that info is only applicable to Texans & hence worse than useless to a non-Texan.
Both of these are a combination of selfishness, social cluelessness, and living in a very homogenous environment where significant variations from your norm simply don’t exist. The Dope gives you an opportunity to interact with a lot of people whose variety far exceeds your IRL experience.
Then you get the effect that most folks in a thread aren’t answering the OP, but rather answering the posts after it. So once we’re a few posts in, the geeks (or hobbyists or experts) are just having a conversation & the poor OP is left in the dust. This often happens on math & astronomy GQs.
ETA: I got’s ta know … what the ^&#@#* does TLDRIDKJKLOLFTW stand for?
I was going to agree that it’s a nerd thing and then I remembered my coffee mug. We can’t have open containers at work (spillage on computers) so we use mugs with lids. The company supplies one to each new employee but they are for right handed people. Instead of investing a $1 on a new mug I spent an hour cutting a matching hole in the lid so I can use the “official” mug.
I believe this is called “showing off.” It’s an opportunity to tell someone about the neat stuff you can do, regardless of how appropriate your story is.
(And I will sew any item with fabric, barring ordinary clothes, rather than buy it. It costs a lot more that way. Also I don’t eat bonbons from candy stores, because mine are better, although they take two weeks of late-night work every year.)