I’m still blowing people’s minds with Ctrl-K.
It can be damned confusing to a person who is reaching up over his head to loosen a bolt he can’t see. I was working with someone who made this mistake. Only after he waled on it with all his might for some time did I figure out he had the ratchet set wrong.
All the computer posts are pretty helpful to me - I didn’t know where files were automagically stored, those keyboard short cuts and what excel is capable of. The left and right concept, I understand well but I turn on the wrong stove burner at home because my mind is back at my job in medicine (where left and right of the body is the body itself not standing in front of it.)
I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force and in tech school out instructor taught us the snap trick for when you get confused about which way you should be turning a wrench. Position your fingers as if you’re about to snap, point your fingers at the bolt, and then snap. If you are using your right hand, your fingers will move in a similar way to how they would move if you were tightening a bolt. The reverse is true for your left hand.
Or if they “understand” it, in the manner of “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” kind of way. If it’s hot, they set the thermostat to an absurdly low temperature well below even the lower end of what’s considered “room temperature”, or if they’re too cold, they set it to a very high setting well above room temperature.
My efforts at trying to explain it to them are met with skepticism:
“Look, set it to the temperature you want the room to be. When you select the temperature, that’s not the temperature of the air the heat ( or air conditioning ) puts out. It’ll make the warmest ( or coldest ) air it can until it reaches the set temperature of the room and cycle on/off to keep it there”
“But I’m hot ( or cold )” ( Bangs head )
I have some experience with home/auto repair and I can only do this right with my eyes closed.
I also have problems with left and right. I can remember when I had to image writing and knowing that was my right hand. I’ve always been right-handed although, like another poster, I played hockey left-handed for some reason. Actually pretty ambidextrous with a hockey stick.
The scene from Full Metal Jacket makes me want to cry.
I believe the correct terms are “driver seat” and “passenger seat”.
Only correct in some countries!
Yes, it’s called “jail”.
I’ve seen articles about it from time to time, but a quick google last night didn’t bring any of them up.
It’s pretty impressive how quickly information becomes “ancient lore.” My nieces and nephews likely have no idea what www means, or ftp. On “Kids React” they played an instructional video from the 90s on using the internet; multiple kidswere surprised to learn what .com meant.
And if you want to blow minds - Ctrl+Z freaks people out.
Time travel!
The look I got, I’m glad they no longer burn witches.
I’ve heard the stories about places like Britain, Australia, and Japan where people supposedly drive their cars on the left side of the road. These are obviously myths. Think about it. All these places are islands. How would any cars get there? These places have no cars and the locals just make up stories about driving so they don’t feel inferior to us. But their lack of actual experience in driving is shown by their belief that cars can be operated on the left side of the road, which is just nonsense.
Being older than the hills I know some tricks to use in some software that haven’t been seen in years. Laughing about this with another old colleague I demonstrated people’s reaction to seeing me invoke and use an old style line editor by recoiling and making a cross with my fingers as if they had seen a vampire.
Only tangentially-related, but my conceptual problem is with wind direction. I plan long bike rides, and need to know if the wind will change (and whether I’ll suddenly be pedaling uphill into a 20 mph wind).
So the forecast says “NE 15mph”. But the wind is really blowing SW. If I’m biking in a SW direction, I’m going with the wind (that they call “NE”).
I have to say “FROM THE” before the direction. Every time. You think it’d be second nature by now, but no. I feel like those people who still do a trick to figure out Left and Right.
As a long time IT guy, I know very well that most people who work with computers barely know what they’re doing, so I’m not surprised anymore. Some examples:
(this I have mentioned before on this board): “My internet is down” can mean anything from a loose cable, over someone not knowing how to open their browser up to global thermonuclear war.
Q: “What’s your browser?”
A: “Google.”
Q: “Where did you save the file?”
A: “In Word.”
And the many, many people, probably the majority of users, who think that Excel is a program to lay out nice static lists to print out.
I have this and it’s embarrassing if I get caught making an “L” with my index finger and thumb to know which is left. I am ambidextrous.
When I was a wee tyke, I was helping my father do some gardening. I was near the house, and he yelled to me to turn on the water. When he saw me looking confused, he added, “Just turn it to the right.” I noticed that if the top of the spigot was turned right, the bottom was turned left. There was no way to turn it so that the entire spigot was turned right. My father bounded toward the house, yelling, “I have to do every goddamned thing myself around here!”
The woman I know who makes the “L” first did it in front of me when she was driving us somewhere. I said, “make a left here” and she held up both of her hands and traced the left “L” with her right index finger. She saw me staring and explained.