What's an innocent misconception about your hobby/profession that drives you up the wall?
Like for example, how someone thinks because you work in IT you can fix their TV, or how if you're into music you must be able to play any random instrument.
I just like hearing pros rant about about their very niche problems.
For romhacking: that because I know how to romhack that I'd automatically just be willing to "do a quick hack for them" that actually is just stupidly hard and complicated to pull off (like a multiplayer hack for a single player game).
I have been a machinist/model maker for 10 years now.
No, I can't just take your .prt/.iges/.stl/.stp file and "load it into the machine and press the green button".
I use that quote because it was said to me by a particularly arrogant engineering intern. Machining is a complex trade that is made to seem simple because of software and modern automation. While that is fantastic for my profession, it brings with it this idea that I'm not really doing all that much work. Reality is that I'm constantly applying my knowledge of the trade and the things I do might be subtle to the onlookers, but there was a lesson learned before now that took me hours or days to overcome. I train a lot of our machining interns now who are mostly folks in the 20-25 years old range and every single on of them so far as had that humbling moment of "Oh I learned about this in the classroom and did it on the simulator, I know exactly what I'm doing" only to fail. Its a great line of work that is very satisfying for a lot of reasons but it does grind my gears when its portrayed as being unskilled or easy.
So... I built my first 3d printer in the 90's- I get exactly what you're saying. I'm always amazed at the .stls people bringing me thinking it's just a button.
and I'm not dumb enough to compare what I do to what you do. entirely different levels, there.
I think a lot of people would benefit from learning on manual machines. I had this misconception in my early twenties, but watching (and then using) manual machines was really helpful.
When I was an active in a band, "You should play our _________ (usually a very busy bar or restaurant), we can't pay you, but it'll be great exposure."
Whenever people find out I have a math degree, they tell me how bad they are at math. They seem almost proud about it. Nobody ever brags about being bad at English. They also assume I’m really good at arithmetic or counting, a la Rain Man or something. I am not.
I think my frustration is more that people think math is something you are good at or not, rather than a skill that can be honed. Math is generally taught in the US as a series of steps to memorize with little conceptual understanding or purpose behind it. It’s a shame.
Everything is taught in the US as a bunch of stuff to memorize and then immediately forget when the test is over, rather than teaching people to understand/process things in a meaningful way
I get the same. Writing up my thesis currently and people definitely ask me about my research just to be nice.
I start out by saying how on a clock, if you add 12 hours to the time then, ignoring the AM/PM part, you get the same time out. So you’re essentially adding a rule to the arithmetic of the clock that adding 12 is identical to adding 0.
I then say I work with number systems that have some manner of clock rule to them. I like to see how we can build up big examples of spaces with this logic from some smallest building bricks.
I think that’s just about the most coherent way of describing my research area. I just get blank stares and “it’s all Greek to me.”
I am a Windows and Cloud administrator. As soon as people hear cloud and computers, they start thinking that I am personally involved with building the metaverse and could work for NASA. Meanwhile, all the people on the technical sites and subreddits inflame my imposter syndrome every day.
Every time someone learns that I build PCs as a hobby, they almost all ask me about things relating to electrical engineering. Look, socketing a CPU isn’t rocket science. And no, I can’t fix your computer.
Speak for yourself... I trashed a CPU by socketing it in the wrong way around... I’m super lucky that Intel happily replaced it instead of saying “Nope, you destroyed it, you dumbass”
More than 20 years ago we had an intern who was tasked with putting CPUs and RAM on motherboards, which were sold as 'tuning kits' for older PCs. He was left on his own for nearly the whole day, because the guy who was in charge was out for the rest of the day. The next day the when he was back the intern came in and was kicked out immediately, because on all of the ~100-200 kits he built that day the CPU was inserted the wrong way around.
Please don't take this the wrong way, but when you say "build PCs as a hobby", what does this mean exactly? How many PCs do you build on a regular basis? And what do you do with them once you are finished? I am genuinely curious. Most people I know just build their PC and maybe replace a couple of parts over the years and then build a new one once it's out of date. Thanks in advance!
you sell them to "gamers" and let them go broke. a neatly packaged custom rig can recover the cost, at the very least, if not make a tidy profit. Or you make a youtube channel about it.
alternatively, you buy one or two components here or there as they get outdated and swap them them out. Or you do what I did for my first Beowulf Custer... raid Dad's "computer parts shelf" (he's a unix admin... pretty sure having decade's old spare parts on a shelf is mandatory for the profession.)
I'm at an advanced level of knitting and crochet. I wear a lot of the things I knit to work and I decorate my office with my crochet.
Almost every single person I met has uttered to me, "This is so good! You should sell these." They assume that 1) I would ever do this for a profit motive and 2) that anyone would even buy my work at the price point I establish.
I just recently finished a sweater vest (link in my profile) that used 8 yarns. The cost of just materials was close to $350. And then I also time my projects, which for torso pieces for me are never fewer than 100 hours. The sweater vest ended up being just shy of 184 hours. So once you consider the cost of labor and expertise, this sweater vest is worth over $2,700 at even minimum wage for the area I live in.
There's absolutely no way I would consider selling my work!
One time I was showing off a cardigan I was done with but wanting to add pockets to, and these teenagers in the knitting group I was in asked if this was for me or for a gift. I jokingly used a snide affect and told them, "Um, haha, no. This is for me. I don't love anybody this much." 😂
I swear to God, everyone over the age of 60 or below the age of 26 thinks that WiFi and the Internet are the same thing. These people have no concept of a local network, and seemingly have never heard of network cables. They're usually tech illiterate in other ways too, but this one always gets under my skin.
I had to explain to my dad last week why his phone wasn't loading emails even though his phone was connected to the Wi-Fi.
We were stating at an Airbnb house when a power outage hit the neighborhood. The house had a backup generator, so it still had electricity. But whatever upstream switch that the modem connected to seem to go down with the power outage. It took me a bit to explain to my dad, "Yes. We have power and Wi-Fi, but the modem isn't able to connect anything. Because of that, we have no internet. That's why you can't load your email. Just turn off Wi-Fi on your phone for now and you can load emails using your phone's data." For some reason, his phone didn't switch to using his phone's data when it detected that the Wi-Fi had no internet.
his phone didn't switch to using his phone's data when it detected that the Wi-Fi had no internet.
I wish I could get my phone to do this.
Recently, I was trying to set up a device that broadcasts it's own Wi-Fi network for the web UI, and my phone kept disconnecting because it didn't have internet. I had to break out my laptop just to log in and set the thing up on my Wi-Fi network, just so my phone could talk to it.
There are 2 types of mines: open pit and underground (tunnels, etc). Open pit: they dynamite certain areas, then get big trucks to haul the rubble. They keep going until all of the minerals have been extracted. Example: nickel mines in Cuba. IMO, not very dangerous as long as safety precautions are followed. There is some risk that the walls of the open pit mine might collapse.
Underground: this is the type of mining with real danger. Anytime you hear of a mining incident, it's likely to be underground. They do take a LOT of precautions which is why modern mining is a lot safer compared to 80 years ago. The ever present danger is collapse of the tunnel or formation.
Sort of. Open Pit mining can be incredibly dangerous, the dangers are just different. I haven't ever seen any numbers from MSHA breaking down the incident rates (I haven't looked to see if they even publish them, in a broken down form like that), but you can really get your ass in trouble in an open pit mine, if you're not cognizant of the highwall, keep track of the very large equipment, Not paying attention to blast times or barricading, or not paying attention to the Shovel Cables, and where the approved crossings are.
I'd suspect that the numbers of overall incidents are probably higher underground, but I'm not sure about actual deaths. I spent about 20 years working in/around/as a vendor to both open pit and underground operations, and just completely anecdotally, I mostly remember most of the underground reportable incidents to be less serious than the ones I saw in the pits.
Recreational scuba instructor since 2008. People think it's extreme as fuck, and badass and all. It's honestly really Zen. You take long, slow, deep breaths; often wearing a wetsuit or drysuit which reduces the sensory input on the body; you can't talk to anyone else (unless you have a full face mask and comms system/are fluent in sign language); mechanics of sound through water mean that everything is muffled and sounds like it's above you; you're (ideally) neutrally buoyant, so you're drifting through your surroundings.
It made a hell of a lot of sense why this was my career choice when I got an autism diagnosis in 2019.
it sounds nice but being in instructor must be hard. i remember when my mom tried to learn diving and it ended near terribly. thankfully she was with a reputable company who made sure her dive belt was right before they set off. on the descent on her first dive she got lost and instead of surfacing like she should have she just kept going til she was hoisted by the dive belt. according to her and my sister the dive instructor looked like he was going to be sick, understandably so.
That's really fascinating especially because I was in the former group and didn't really think about those aspects of diving. Would love to hear more of your stories/experiences diving - that sounds amazing to me.
People who play tabletop role-playing games have no social skills. Dude, we sit around and talk with real people for literally hours on end - that is literally what the game is!
Also that Dungeons And Dragons is the only role play game. There are hundreds if not thousands with different themes, focuses, setting, systems and whatever else. DnD is good for high action high fantasy, and if that's your bag that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you want a renaissance coutly intrigue it is really not!
Hell yeah dude. I've been through heart-wrenching loss and triumphant joys that technically never happened. Yet there's a group of us that experienced it together and are now emotionally richer for it. It's an almost purely social experience that teaches us how to deal with other humans and explore scenarios that the average person would never touch.
D&D and TTRPGs in general should be considered more often when talking about the development of social skills. I've learned a ton about clear and effective communication, how to converse with people I would normally never talk to, and how to be considerate of the feelings/opinions of others while not losing sight of my own.
Absolutely. Every emotion in a safe environment. I know a few autistic people who play, and one once said something along the lines of it being a social interaction where you can sit down and read the files first!
Yup. It's fun. The game I was in was short lived but entertaining. It uses the regular CoC system with a few adjustments (e.g. experience comes in the form of training courses) so if you know that it'd be easy to pick up, and if you don't... well it'll still be easy to pick up, tbh
Also that Dungeons And Dragons is the only role play game.
Oh man I could go on about this. I almost exclusively run Savage Worlds, and it straight up doesn't get enough love for how versatile it is vs. cramming a fistful of homebrewed rules into D&D.
I've not had a lot of experience with Savage Worlds, I'd like to play it more tbh. I've only played at starting character level in a couple of one-shots so I've not had a good exposure to it
Wish I could find someone with your mindset locally. Just moved to a new city and it’s been easy to find DND campaigns advertised, incredibly hard to find anything else.
It's a problem. But it happened before when 3rd Ed was released, and wotc have just upset a lot of creators wuth their ogl shenanigans, so I am confident things will change. In the mean time, keep looking, play dnd, and/or run a game yourself.
I work in tech support for a credit card processor (it’s even more boring than it sounds). Yes I’ve got some general nerd knowledge and know some other random stuff, but I can only guarantee I can (probably) fix a credit card machine my employer makes.
Your Windows machine crashed? Better use google. That’s what I’d be doing if I tried to fix it.
I’m an oncologist. When online, it drives me mad and almost personally offended (at least to the extent a hardened former Twitter and Reddit user can be offended!) when I come across variants of the old ”cancer care does more harm than good” trope. If so, I’d have quit my job and chosen a way more lucrative specialty. Interestingly, I almost never encounter that type of argument in real life, only by random people on the internet.
Instead, people IRL seem rather convinced that we wade in pain, sorrow and grief all day. Sometimes, that results in me holding a speech about how much I get back from my patients, the joy of curing someone from metastatic melanoma, or how I somehow end up having a good laugh with someone almost every day at work. I usually can’t summon that kind of patience, though.
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