Had someone contact me because a browser interface was ‘down’ and it was actually a cert issue. It surprised me that in an IT context, this person didn’t have a basic understanding of SSL certs. They didn’t even know how to add a cert exception.
It got me thinking, what basic ubiquitous things am I a dumbass about outside of IT?
Ive seen lots of ‘fun facts’ compilations, but it would be better to get a wide range of subject suggestions that I can spend 30 minutes each or less on, and become a more capable human.
Like what subjects would plumbers consider basic knowledge? Chemical interactions between cleaning products and PVC pipes?
What would an accountant or a landscaper consider to be so basic its shocking people can live their lives without knowing any of it?
For most areas of expertise, its difficult to know even what the basics are to start with.
Basic computer competency starts with reading the error message.
I’ve worked in IT and you’d be amazed how many people are stuck with some problem that would be fixed if they just read the error message on their screen.
For example, it might say:
Error! The green button needs to be pressed. It’s on your keyboard. It’s green. It also has lettering on it that says PRESS HERE.
People will bring their computer in, at a total loss for what to do.
The customer service manager sent not one, not two, but three emails in one hour demanding our engineers fix this login error that a high valued customer had.
The error was “username or password was incorrect”.
I fixed it by resetting their password.
you probably don’t know how to do a valve check on the car you drive every day
deleted by creator
don’t lie to me steven
How do the shims stay in place?
magnets
I work in IT and I need this. This field is vast and sometimes it’s hard to know what you don’t know, or how well you know what you know.
Sure, there’s certs, but they just show how well you’re familiar with that particular field (or worse yet, that you know how to pass that particular test).
I work in IT and I need this.
Learning to ride a motorbike made my driving way better too.
Oh there’s a good video I’d recommend about cornering on a bike: you’re leaning the wrong way by F9
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
you’re leaning the wrong way by F9
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I know this yet I still do it. I guess this should be preceeded by “gauge your entry speed”.
The much more general I’d give is don’t brake at speed. Well do if you have to, but afterwards look back and see how it could have been avoided with better planning. Outside of a handful of situations (offramps, downhills, some wild speed limit changes, and of course coming to a complete stop) engine braking is more than sufficient for any driver that actually anticipates and maintains a safe following distance. Not only is it much safer, forces you to think ahead, but it also greatly reduces fuel consumption.
It’s also IMO the best way to ride a motorcycle spiritedly on the road.
(However you should also know how to perform an emergency stop. Whether you’re in a car, on a bicycle, or a motorcycle, get on a straight and train for the hardest possible stop. It might save yours or someone else’s life someday. Crazy that some drivers don’t even know what their ABS feels like!)
Processes
Super generic, most people interact with them in some form all the time both at work and personal without a second thought. Very few understand what makes a good process, especially when there is a handoff involved.
Oh also communication. Everyone does it so a lot of people must be really good at it right? Yeah…
Could you give a brief overview (or detailed if you want, I’m curious!) of what you think makes a good process? More specifically, what makes a good process and what makes good documentation for said process?
Mostly it’s about best practices I think, and getting a feel for them. Try starting with something simple, like making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Describe how it’s done, each step. Think about where it’s efficient, where there’s extra wasted action, or time. By the time you’re done you’ll be considering if your butter knives are stored in the best spot, if you should get everything out at once, or one at a time. Do you have enough inventory? Is having extra inventory a waste? Is it worth washing knives afterwards or get extra so you can wash a batch at a time instead?
Then, go back through from the perspective of a child that has never seen your kitchen. Do the steps still make sense? How can you make it more simple, less effort? Finally, when I mentioned hand off… How do you ensure that your child laborer is going to deliver a pb&j of sufficient quality? Who determines quality? Production time?
Once you start thinking that way, everything is a process that could be considered, with inputs and outputs, quality control issues, potential waste, efficiency improvements, etc. It applies to data just as much as a sandwich for example, and office jobs are all about taking information, changing it a little and sending it on. Each step should transform in some way (capturing who does what, to what, at each step can help). Understanding the complexity instead of assuming simplicity so you can analyze it, but then distill it back down to something that is actually simple and understandable.
Anyway, hopefully that helps some in thinking about it a little differently.
For googling key words: quality management, process mapping, process analysis, lean, ?
Unfortunately there’s a lot of corporate shit, buzzwords, and SEO that have accumulated so it can by hard to find good info (like everything else now?)
This is really interesting and a good way to think about a bunch of things. I’ll try it out. I do pay some attention to processes, but not to granular detail.
This is a very rationalistic worldview though. Surely you don’t look at everything as a process?
Hah, no, definitely not a 24/7 thing. More that it can be a useful exercise.
Thank you, this was a really interesting read. Would love to see a tutorial series on processes by you!
Ho boy, I’ve been working through Goldratt’s greatest hits, and just the question of inventory opens a whole rat’s nest of considerations. Like what even is inventory? I mean, -hits pipe- even time is inventory, man.
Are you talking about the meters that simply detect whether wires are still live or not? Definitely a good backup to double check that you’ve shut off the right breaker.
If you’re talking about a single lead multimeter to measure voltage, I’ve never heard of such a thing and don’t know how that would even work.
This one can detect voltage with a single lead and also works as a voltage meter if you use two leads: https://www.benning.de/products-en/testing-measuring-and-safety-equipment/test-equipment-voltage-tester/voltage-tester-duspol.html
It also has an inbuilt motor to distinguish leaking voltage from continuous AC.
Sorry if I didn’t use the correct English terms and that wasn’t clear enough.
In Germany you simply call it a Duspol and every electrician knows what you mean. Didn’t research enough into the English description but it seems it’s a two pole voltage tester with one pole voltage detection mode.
There’s literally no such thing as a one-lead voltage meter. Voltage is, by definition, the difference in potential energy between two points.
Any tool that can give a voltage reading with one probe has a second probe you’re not considering, or is estimating voltage based on a some assumptions about current or some other factor being measured.
Adding to electrical safety: even if your breaker box is switched off, unless your utility powered off your location entirely, it STILL HAS ELECTRICITY RUNNING TO IT
I’m constantly amazed at how many people don’t understand the concepts of basic finance and how compound interest works.
Years ago, I brought my laptop with me to buy a car so I could plug all the numbers into a quick amortization schedule. The sales person offered me a choice of $1,500 cash back or 1.9% financing instead of the typical rate a few percentage points higher.
I plugged the numbers into my spreadsheet and saw taking the cash back would cost me a couple grand more than the lower finance rate. When I told him I wanted the finance rate instead of the cash back, he mentioned that I was the only person he’d seen not take the cash back.
Maybe he was pulling my chain, but in my experience, the average person doesn’t know what compound interest is, let alone what an amortization schedule is.
EDIT: Sorry didn’t mean to reply to your comment, I’m on mobile, can’t tell posts from comments.
I believe knowing a little bit on how a car works helps you understand why maintenance is important or from getting scammed at mechanics, I loved old commercials like these that explain in such an easy way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
Some skills I wanna pick up is how to micro solder, I deal with a lot of tech and sometimes you just need a type c port replaced and soldering iron is not the easiest tool for tiny pins.
For microsoldering: you want the quick 861dw or one of the knockoffs and a bunch of tips. Sometimes you can get away without a microscope but usually you need one of those too. You need a swing arm mount for it because you often won’t be able to position your board under the objective of a tabletop mount.
You 100% cannot get away without a fume extractor. You’re gonna need low melt solder and flux, so you also need to be wearing disposable gloves.
You need a board holder because once all the solder in the area is liquified you don’t want the heavier parts sliding off the board because it’s propped up on a piece of wood at a ten degree angle.
If you wanna extend the amount of work you can do with just a decent iron: use flux and low melt to get everything on your usbc liquid at the same time so you can lift it off the board.
I found that using a soldering iron to be unweildy, which could either be a bad iron or my poor skills. I was thinking of maybe investing in future for one of those hakko hot air rework stations and see if it is any easier. Right now that’s on hold, but totally something I want to try in the future, maybe as a hobby.
Start with the hakko 888 or the weller equivalent. Learn how to solder big stuff first like tinning wires without burning up the insulation, big through hole joints according to the nasa guidelines, bell splices etc. it’s easier to see and judge how things are going with big stuff because you can see it better.
Use different tips to see what they do.
Remember that soldering is just brazing. You’re joining two metals by introducing a third.
Don’t start with a project you want to finish, just join a bunch of junk together, pull parts you don’t care about from old circuit boards and put different parts in their place.
Make little sculptures out of your trash.
Cheat with different kinds of flux till you don’t need to anymore.
Do the same things with smd parts.
It takes a long time to get good at soldering and no matter what anyone says you can’t just jump past the iron to hot air.
I mean, it’s possible. You’ll just never be able to fix mistakes or bridges you make with the hot air.
Some skills I wanna pick up is how to micro solder, I deal with a lot of tech and sometimes you just need a type c port replaced and soldering iron is not the easiest tool for tiny pins.
Good news, the broken component is a common 2 dollar chip!
Bad news, it’s an SMD, and in the middle of a giant block of plastic and 2 more circuitboards.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Learning about cars, engines and motorbike maintenance at this stage in life really opened my eyes. I could have easily been a mechanic or an engineer if I had the access to this knowledge when I was younger.
Now I do as much of my own maintenance as I can, and I’m pretty sure my engine will hit 400K before I start getting serious issues. None of it is overly complicated or difficult, and saves me money in the short and long term.
I was fortunate to have a dad who had the tools, space, and time to teach me how to do repairs, with the things he taught me I can save a lot of money buying a beat up car and fixing it up for usually 1/3 to half the price of a used one.
Have you told this story before, possibly on reddit? I swear I’ve read this verbatim including the part about the laptop and “I was the only person who took the lower APR.”
Maybe, but it would’ve been years ago.
With each year that passes since the re-telling it gets exponentially more interesting.
The interest in this story is definitely compounding.
Could just be we’re old as fuck to the point that we find amortization schedules and saving money interesting.
You can also use an interest calculator or multiply the payment by the term length to see how much over the purchase price you’ll pay in interest.
This is why it’s important to haggle over the purchase price and not the monthly payment. Never ever negotiate over the monthly payment, or you’re likely to get stuck with a 96-month loan at 23% interest.
My mother in law bought a truck the same week I bought my car. I mentioned that I got a 1.9% interest rate. She got a 22% rate!!! I was absolutely floored when I found out what she did.
22% is insane, that should be illegal honestly. Pretty much bought it on a credit card.
Yeah I was absolutely disgusted when I found out. It made me realize that there’s definitely a “poor tax”. If you don’t have good credit and/or aren’t informed enough to pay attention to interest rates, you’re basically going through life on hard mode.
Lol that just reminded me of the /r/justbootthings subreddit. So many stories of 24% APR loans on Dodge Chargers.
That’s wild. When I was getting a mortgage for my house, the lender was like “your interest rate is X, but if you pay $Y you can add a ‘point’”. I’m like “wtf is a point?” Turns out, it’s a roundabout way of saying, higher down payment = lower interest rate.
It already wasn’t obvious what their jargon meant, so for you to have a sales person offering the exact opposite of what my lender did, actively bribing customers to take a worse deal for themselves, it’s just…scummy.
Yeah, buying points is a bit different though and again is a great example of why everyone should at least have a basic understanding of how to make an amortization schedule.
Buying points isn’t exactly the same as a higher down payment, because that money doesn’t take any principal off your loan. It’s basically paying interest up front, giving the lender a lesser amount now rather than a greater amount later.
Shit gets complicated real quick, so plugging it into an Excel spreadsheet makes it much more clear.
Cool, see I didn’t even know about that difference lol. To me it amounted to “do you want to pay us more up front for a lower monthly rate”, which just sounded like the same thing as a larger down payment.
As someone who works with tech, here is my 2 cents on basic knowledge.
If your computer is “not working” restarting the computer can generally fix 80 percent of the issues. We are not trying to make you mad, this is literraly first thing I am doing if you present me a problem.
Stop downloading things from unknown sources.
Use generic effects/fonts on your powerpoint. Just because you bought something cool doesnt mean it will magically transfer when you pass your presnetation to another computer for your presentation. (Microsoft does not migrate your paid effects)
For gamers Stop playing pvp on your pc/console on wifi, are you a mad?
Everyone in general We are at an age of computers. Learn how to type, it will save you tremendous amount of time, literally.
Do… do people really buy add-ons for pp to enhance their slide decks?
That’s just wild. I’m in meetings with slides constantly and never heard of this. We’ll, now I have a new rabbit hole to go down (as in “finding the most ridiculous of these”).
FYI you can embed some Truetype fonts in PowerPoint and word (not on mac)
If you’re pulling on a rope really hard, don’t wrap it around your hand to get a better grip. If it starts to pull away from you, you won’t be able to let go, and if someone runs up to help and starts hauling on the end, your hand is going to be in a world of pain.
What if there’s no reason for it to pull away?
Don’t use high heat on nonstick pans.
Assuming we want the same internal temperature, high heat will cook the outside more than low heat. For bread you probably want a bit more heat to get a nice crusty outside. For steaks you want less heat to avoid overcooking most of the meat, then just a quick sear on the outside.
Don’t overload your pan. If your food is cooking in a bunch of water that came out of the food you are boiling it, not frying it, and it’s going to suck. Put in less food so that water can boil off before it starts boiling your food.
Don’t overload your cookie sheets either. The center of the pan will not get as hot due to all that cold wet food sucking up all the heat, so the fries on the edge will cook faster than the fries in the middle.
Sear or roast your brassicas. They taste way better with some browning and lots of oil and salt.
Measuring food by weight is much easier and much more accurate than measuring by volume with measuring cups and spoons. This is next level awesome if you’re trying to measure something sticky like honey or peanut butter, you can weigh it in the mixing bowl rather than dirtying a measurement device.
Don’t overvook your meat. Use a fast read meat thermometer. Beef, pork, chicken, seafood, are all much better when cooked.to the proper internal temperature.
I am not a cooking expert, I am a heat transfer expert with a strong background in chemistry and those skills transfer over to cooking.
Just adding to yours as I’m a nerd for gardening and it isn’t common knowledge: brassicas are vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, mustard, etc
Also on the topic of brassicas, if you see the little white “butterflies” with a black dot on each wing, those are cabbage moths and the bane of a gardeners existence! Unless an entomologist can chime in and say why they’re actually great lol
I find high heat in stainless steel pans is very good though? Like it works better to heat the pan and then add your oils. They’re so much better.
Definitely. I agree that in stainless, it is best to get hot first, then add oil, then add food. It is also best to let the food sit still for a bit on the heat, as it browns it will naturally start to detach to flip or remove. Same works for cast iron but easier
Basic knife skills is something I’m often almost shocked by. I had a housemate last year who’d bought herself a decent Sabatier chef’s knife (like this) but the way she cut veg, she may as well have been using a sharpened bit of moss. All the gear and no idea. Thankfully she forgot to take it with her or something when she moved out so it’s my knife now.
“or something”… You hid it didn’t you lol
For onions specifically:
Sharpen your knife and make French onion soup.
You’ll cut so many that you’ll figure it out.
For everything else: pinch grip and crab your other hand. The pinch grip is where you rely on a pinch between thumb and forefinger on the blade just in front of the handle to grab the knife. It’s the choke up of holding a knife and will make you much safer and give more control. Crabbing your other hand is where you curl your fingers up like ginger roots instead of letting them extend out like little baby carrots. It will keep you from being hurt when something goes wrong and allow you to go much faster because you’re not having to slow down to avoid cutting yourself.
I don’t usually read the names of posters, but getting food and cooking advice from “bloodfart” is rimjobsteve tier.
Happy to help, citizen!
I’m a person you will be horrified by because I gave up on sharp knives, switched to serrated for everything, and NO REGRETS.
This is typically why education and experience are still needed if you’re self taught.
I know from learning programming that people online don’t explain “common sense” problems. So many times you’ll look up a problem and see people talk about huge refactors or complex niche fixes when in reality you misplaced a single line of code.
Or forgot a ;
If people say ‘i have excel competence’, the difference could be between ‘i can resize fonts and do tables for my company forms because I don’t know how to do them in word’ to ‘fully modelling a business plan for a Telco, including it’s subsidiary units’. Make sure you test for the level of competence you’re after.
Learn a new formula every now and then, or at very least learn to read other people’s formulas, then google what you don’t know. Literacy in any field is the result of a long process of learning.
(Reread your question) Outside of IT: if an appliance stops working, it’s sometimes just a fuse that needs replacing. It’s cheap and easy to do.
Recently been picking up some basic PowerQuery and my goodness is it a game changer
Using pivot tables will make people think you’re a wizard.
If someone tells me they’ve mastered excel, they’re either overqualified for any job I’ll ever hire them for (I’m not in IT) or lying.
We are all terrible at applying statistics, it is incongruent with the way our intuition works. It takes intentional consideration plus math and understanding to consider things statistically, much harder than the immediate intuitive answers our brains give us. The worst part is sometimes those intuitive answers are dead on, sometimes they totally miss the mark, and we have no way of knowing which is which without doing the hard work to evaluate the situation statistically.
The boom Thinking Fast and Slow covers this in great detail and provides some guidance on how to manage it.
