Doubtless everyone here has, like an old kitchen sponge, sopped up a number of interesting, though perhaps not exactly genteel, things over the years. And like the kitchen sponge, we have come to know those bits of info, whatever their provenance, as though they were a part of us. It other words: they’re here to stay.
And if you haven’t already guessed, I think it’s time to give the old brain a squeeze and see what comes trickling out. C’mon, it’ll be fun.
I’ll go first:
I) When playing the original MOO it almost never pays to colonize poor or ultra-poor planets. These require a space navy to defend, since they can 't build missile bases fast enough. The navy production and upkeep outweighs the population gain. This I know from long experience.
II) I can give summaries of the plots and characters of most (I think) of Hal Clement’s old scifi books. I’m also prepared to discuss the pro’s and cons of his writing when compared to other 'classic ’ writers. You’d be amazed how often this doesn’t come up in normal conversation.
Now it’s your turn; share some of your hard earned but woefully underused knowledge.
I know all the blocking assignments and reads for the wishbone offense against a 5-2, 5-3 and 4-4 defensive front. I know the importance of gap spacing and proper cheats for each pulling man. Normally I’d say this type of thing would have its place in your typical sports discussion, but the complete disappearance of a legitimate wishbone offense renders it completely moot and reenforces just how out of touch my coaches were a scant 8 years ago.
When playing Civ II, work hard towards getting the pyramids. The fact that it will initially slow your growth is far outweighed by the benefits in the long run.
When planishing out a knee cop, make sure you work it smoothly across the whole of the dished out region. A thin spot might not look to badly, but when it’s being hit like a baseball for hours on end, you don’t want an armor failure.
Everclear can be used for firebreathing, but it will kill all the healthy enzymes and such in your mouth.
Take any three-digit number and repeat it to make a six-digit number. Examples: 256 becomes 256256…or 491 becomes 491491. This new 6-digit number is always divisible by 143.
This useless piece of knowledge won’t even work as a pick-up line.
When opening the chess game don’t rely on already designed lines of openings. The purpose of the opening is to create an imbalance, if the imabalance is the activation of pieces and such then work to get your pieces out and mobile. Otherwise look for a weakness in your opponent’s plan and work to exploit it.
If you lose your queen against a lesser player, then keep playing. Often it will give him a false sense of confidence and he will be more likely to blunder. If against a greater player, keep playing until it is absolutely clear you’ve lost. Usually though that is when you lose the queen.
When setting a record player for on the air play, find the beginning of the song and then turn a half turn back into the empty space. Thus when you cue it, it will not have the winding up sound which is so annoying in person an triply annoying in real life.
When flying the F-19 Stealth Fighter, remember to head directly towards pulse radars and fly perpendicular to doppler radars. Every once in a while, you’ll have to go ‘rock and roll,’ and attack all the radars and enemy fighters in your location. Afterwards, very quickly find your next waypoint, go low and slow, and you’ll stealth your way out of the enemy response.
Don’t pour on the negative G’s in an airplane with a float-type carburetor.
Never, EVER think your Battle Dreadnought can take my Assault Dread in a one on one fight. You will end up like the last 30 or so people who tried.
Never EVER try to cloud bomb (generating a wave of 400 or so MIRV bombs along the same horizontal plane) around ICC ships mounted with a pluse wave (pluse waves detonate all projectile weapons… aka 400 bombs go BOOM under your ship)
Yes that K’luth ship flying around infront of you not shooting at anyone is making a mine field. Don’t keep flying forwards.
Even though you stopped infront of the mine field your teammate will keep flying forwards and hit the mine field, slightly damaging your ship, enough so that when he explodes you die along with him.
You can sniff most acids to determine their relative strength. It’s however a REALLY painful idea.
Great, I could’ve been the first replier to this thread last night, but the only thing I could think of was “Get the Pyramids as soon as possible in Civ II”. I said to myself “Self, that’s too pointless and geeky even for this.”
I come in this morning to find three people who would’ve been in awe of my wisdom and Civ prowess. I’m going to go add an Internet Law that nothing is too pointless and geeky for MPSIMS.
Fine, you want useless, I’ve got useless:
In Windows Minesweeper, if you’ve flagged all the mines around a number (1 mine next to a 1, 2 next to a two, etc), clicking on the number with the left and right mouse buttons simultaneously opens all the remaining hidden squares (as they’re guaranteed safe unless you flagged a wrong square).
Something tells me that’s not useless information right now.
According to my father and my husband, everything I know is useless information. Of course, the odds of beating me at Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit aren’t real high.
It is possible to hang upside down from the top bar of a swingset (or the side-bar of the A on the end) while wearing a skirt without showing one’s underwear.
The F3 key in Word Perfect 5.1 gives you a list of all the F-key functions; alt-F3, however, opens a new document. You can have up to two documents open at a time. Shift-F7 opens the Print function. (Could be wrong but think I still remember correctly.)
It is possible to hang upside down from the top bar of a swingset (or the side-bar of the A on the end) while wearing a skirt without showing one’s underwear.
The F3 key in Word Perfect 5.1 gives you a list of all the F-key functions; alt-F3, however, opens a new document. You can have up to two documents open at a time. Shift-F7 opens the Print function. (Could be wrong but think I still remember correctly.)
