Completely useless skills

I can program in Fortran77.

I can also troubleshoot down to the component level but nowadays it's just replace the entire board or device. Gone are the days when replacing a $0.10 part could revive a $500 appliance, we just throw them out and buy a new one now because the time troubleshooting down to that level is worth more than the appliance.

Nuh, your trouble shooting to component level may be a rare skill these days but it sure isn't useless. I use that same skill to explain how control cards work, attempting to ingrain an ethic of test before replacement so that the next card also doesn't get fried. Also I've had to canabalise a blown card when the new card has been carelessly blown as well on more than one occasion. When a card costs $10,000 to $30,000 and the nearest spare is 4000km away in Perth and a $4million machine sits there till it arrives, a second look is warranted.

Consumer stuff though you are right most of the time.

Now there 's a futile effort:

"attempting to ingrain an ethic of test before replacement so that the next card also doesn't get fried. "

You win by my calculation.

milo

Fair comment

Hello TVP45

I note that there are several knots classed as "Weaver's Knot".

Could you place a picture of your "Weaver Knot" here please.

If you can tie a knot with your left hand only, then you should be able to tie that same knot as a mirror image of itself with your right hand.

Kind Regards....

Here's the knot:

www.theropepeople.com/WeaversKnoti.html

By the way, I cannot explain to anyone how to tie this knot, except to say that it is a slightly modified sheetbend, and I cannot tie it when thinking about it.

try touching your nose tip with the tip of your tongue. i used to challenge my friends to do that 40 years back. i found i can still do that

I can define most anything in 11 words or less. Thats not completely useless, but mostly useless.Example :

Lever:

simple machine

lifts heavy objects

makes me feel strong

long bar

Guest:

over unity

true believing poster

no data to share

angry fool

Coke

Solid residue

of distilled coal

supports blast furnace burden

smelting reactant

Thats mine.

milo

I have what I feel are very good skills at arguing logically in a debate. I feel that I am reasonably articulate. And I am married.

And which of these, bob c, do you consider completely useless?

SAW THAT ONE COMING...

milo

Not unnecessary. Just ineffective.. :)

Does that translate to arguing logically in a debate with your wife? Not only useless, but counter-productive!

I can curl up the sides of my tongue.

Actually, that is a skill that harmonica players sometimes use. I have a harmonica, but I don't really play it.

LLANETHLY shouldn't be a problem for you then boy'o, must be your welsh heritage?

Regards JD.

No Welsh heritage that I know of. I do have Irish, Scot, German, English and a touch of French in me. With the way the Irish get around, I wouldn't be surprised if some Welsh snuck in there somehow.

LLANETHLY in Google brought up references to a town in SW Wales. Didn't see anything about music or tongue-curling mentioned in any of the references.

I'm a bit of a mongrel as well, A word in welsh with a double "LL" in it, is pronounced by force the air up the sides of the tongue.

Regards JD.

Aren't all Aussies mongrels, except for the aborigines? Most Americans are mixed in some way, so I guess most of us are mongrels too.

I have nothing against mongrels. The best dog my family ever had was a cross between a collie and a coyote.

Yes a mongrel is the best breed? My mother was Irish, My father welsh, ( I grew up in South Wales, UK), I was born in Luton (depression years, family looking for work), and my grand mother was scotch. My mother was from a large family and has sisters she never met who migrated to New York. And yes there are a lot of mongrel in Australia. The diversity I think makes for a better genetic pool? Thats a new subject all on its own?

Regards JD.

I can program a 8085 - (If I could find the 30 mb RLL HD with my tools, the documentation , a PCI - RLL card and a crazy customer)

We have a system 36. With 10-1/2" floppies.

I couldn't believe it when I hired in...

Talk about sunk costs...

milo

After only one sip of real coffee, I can talk for the next 4 hours, without stopping, at better than 200 words per minute, and say absolutely nothing anyone wants to hear. It irritates my family no end. I consider the ability worthless. I haven't found any value in irritating my family, either. So I drink decaf now, only. That last is what is really worthless. But I still have my family, and they talk to me now, since I no longer talk like "a squirrel on speed" (Their definition. I just think I'm an engaging monologist.).

Mike

Hello micahd02

Have you ever thought about going in to politics?

You would do an excellent job, providing the coffee supply did not run out.

Kind Regards....

Did it. Didn't like it. Quit. Now I compute, instead of come puke.

Mike

Sounds like you're an auctioneer in the making!

Yes. That's great! Can you do that in meetings? It'll drive everybody else crazy!

It figures... I get my first "Good Answer" rating for having the most completely useless skill! Can I include honor this in my resume'? Thank you for your votes!

Yes, you can...

(Life is hard...)

(Life is hard...)

Didn't a Barbie Doll say that?

Oh, no .... She said "Math is Hard"

She needs to get a life. Then she might say "Life is hard".

Another useless skill, never being able to forget what a stupid advertiser said, especially when it fits the mouth it supposedly came from.

Mike

If you could sign your name with your left and right hands at the same time, with the left signature backwards, it would sure be fun to watch the reactions from the tellers in a bank.

I'll have to try that next time I have a couple of checks to deposit. I'll have to get the teller to hold them while I sign. This has been a really fun forum!

I would give my left hand to be ambidextrous

I wouldn't call that entirely useless.

'Ever been made to write a hundred times in school?

I will not talk in class
I will not talk in class
I will not talk in class
I will not talk in class
...

'Should have come in handy

I wasn't that skillful back then, but I did use carbon paper once, when I had to write something 100 times. Do you remember carbon paper? That was a long time ago.

I didn't use carbon paper but I did tape two pens together so that I could write two lines at the same time.

'Course, the teacher wasn't that easy to fool. I submitted my paper waaay ahead of the others and got my teacher suspicious. I 'fressed up and got another hundred.

Say, that's one useless skill! Cheating never really worked for me!

Lines? Call them lines?
A pedantic chemistry teacher once made me write out ...

'Cavorting in the corridor at school is not permitted'

Bit of class eh?

Hey are we having a 'best lines' thread next?
Did you do the thing with three pencils held together with an elastic band to write 'em quicker...now that was a useful skill.

Del

my buddy and I had to write "I will not shoot spitballs in class" 200 lines.

along with many others equivalent length.. grade 5. ah those were the days.

I don't know how my teacher put up with us.. but calmly and cooly made us

stand at the back and 'nose' the wall for 15 minutes.. then stay after school to

write out lines.. and we couldn't stop laughing. sometimes we even had to write

lines on the blackboards instead of paper...

The gormless gargoyle that posed as our high school vice-principal took corporal punishment to unprecedented levels. After graduation and an abscence of 35 yrs my wife and I ran into the bastard whereupon he promptly reminded me that I still owed him a years worth of detentions.

I told him I was surprised to see him amongst the living. He then scolded my wife of twenty five or so years for not having had sense enough to say no to me...."we expected so much better of you my dear"....sed the gargoyle....

After a couple of beers and a few good laughs we went our merry way. It was good seeing him again. He still hadn't forgotten the day my chums and I set off the emergency siren.

Maybe he was a product of the chalk river environment...and came up on dry land to be a school vp. lots of unusual creatures thereabouts.. lol.. they usually migrate to ottawa I think, to become politicians.. this one must have gotten lost. :) thanks for the laugh.

My skill is doing Yoga which includes physical exercises and breathing exercises. I can tell all friends that with breathing exercises I could control my diabetes and now blood sugar has come to normal fasting 90 post lunch 130. Is it not wonderful?. Just spend 15 minutes and you can get rid of diabetes and blood pressure problems.

Fortunately that works, and we congratulate you (i have had similar results with blood pressure doing Tai Chi for the past 9 years); unfortunately, it does not qualify as completely useless , since it is saving your health...

We're looking for completely useless here...

milo

How's this for a useless skill:

To me, reading upside-down has been a invaluable skill. I learned it from sitting in the principle's office and reading what was on the detention report.

This skill has been invaluable with job interviews, business meetings, parent-teacher conferences, etc....

My sister and I did this learning to read, in a rural area in Oregon, where we could only get to a library about once every two months, and, being kids, only were allowed to check out two books each, for two weeks (our returns were always WAY late, until the librarian caught on and changed the rules, just for us). We had no near neighbors (read that as <10 miles away by road, though only 5 miles cross-country and up a cliff), so the two of us shared everything, with one reading upside down, as fast as the other, upright, in order to get the opportunity to read everything RIGHT NOW, and not have to wait for a turn later.

Not much use now, except when I want to sneak a peak at someone else's meeting notes (or crush notes, in a meeting, different, and more fun).

Mike

Not only can I read but I can write upside down. This skill was developed in the old days of drafting on the drawing board. With a big drawing I could not write on top being rather short in stature so I would go the other side and write upside down.

As an extension, I was an excellent manual draughtsman, who is useless today but honestly I do not mind the drawing board's obsolescence.

I was very good with the slide rule but certainly do not mourn its demise.

In engineering school during welding practical I did a perfect gas weld (first time ever) so much so the instructor accused me of pinching his demo weld. I have never had an opportunity to weld ever after. This is despite the fact that I am butter fingered and can cut myself easily with a screw-driver if I tried opening a screw.

My mother and later my wife never let me in the kitchen and I did not have a clue what cooking was all about. When I was working in Canada my wife could not take the cold and went Bombay. I was surviving on Eggs. Bacon, sandwiches, restaurants and Michelina (just peel the end and microwave). A friend in New Jersey told me cooking is no problem and gave a demo. I came back and tried it, and from day one I was cooking really well, attested by my neighbors. No matter how much I convinced my wife about my skills it is yet no admittance in the Kitchen. But I have never been able to cut a whole chicken and finally have to rip it apart with my hands and butter fingered as I am generally cut myself in the process.

Other sundry useless skills: I can shake my ears; fold the second toe over my big toe and in my younger days could also fold the third toe over my second, and can wind the string on the top with my left and play it with my right. I was born left handed but my mother would hit it and I converted to my right because left hand is considered inauspicious in India, the reason for which I shall not delve into.

Welcome to CR4. Welcome to the insanity pool. And thank you for a most amusing post.

Welcome and thanks for a most amusing and interesting post.

regards,

Vulcan

Hi Dedaelus and welcome to the clan! I'm glad you decided to join.

Haven't drawn anything on a full sized drafting board in a long time. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

You'll find alot of good people here with much information to share. You'll also find alot of varied styles of humor which are just good healthy outlets to balance the genius (although not on my part..) so that total insanity doesn't set in....at least in most cases. LOL

Extract what you may and help others when you can.

Enjoy yourself you will.

welcome and thanks for the insights

Welcome Mumbai boy. Nice and witty string. After all you are from city of Busy Bee.

I can tie a knot in the stem of a cherry with my tongue

That can impress the opposite sex quite well. But I found untying it was even more impressive.

Oh yeah! And I can twiddle my thumbs and hands in opposite directions at the same time.

I bet the wife/girlfriend does't think that's useless .

Del

When I was young, I did a fair amount of general carpentry, and in my spare moments would practice flipping the hammer 2, 3 and 4 twisting revolutions in the air, and then catch it agian, by the handle.. and it improved my eye-hand coordination, and let me know the specific amount of energy and twist to impart to the hammer.. but.. for the last 20 years I have sat at a computer, and have never used this skill, and no woman has ever mentioned how much it turns her on, if she knew... so I have to call it a useless skill... :) I never got paid extra for it, and it never helped me hit the nail any better, nor prevent me from smashing digits, or even from getting sore back! maybe it made me a better dancer... I also used to practice throwing a hatchet/axe into a tree (or the bushes when you missed) but that could be a useful skill... you never know.

chris

Wow I have that very same hammer skill. And I thought I was the only one that could do that one. I never got over 3 revolutions though so I guess that would make you the master of "hammer flipping"

pipewelder

I'm sure there are cirque de soleil types out there can do it more.. 4 is just what I remember.. maybe my memory is faulty.. like i said.. its a long time ago.. people do have amazing skills.. a couple of weeks ago in the park, I saw a guy ride a monocycle.. over a picnic table.. he just hopped up on it.. one step at a time, then down the other side, just for practice.... I was amazed.

There's three of us! I still practice this whenever I use a hammer. My record is seven.

Have you ever wondered why the head of the hammer rotates 180 degrees about the axis of the handle for each 360 degree flip of the handle? If you start with the head to the left and flip the handle once the head now points to the right, etc.

I can also pull my hammer out of my tool belt, flip it around my fingers like a pistol and land the handle into the palm of my hand in one fluid motion.

At one time I could throw a framing hammer like a hatchet and imbed the straight claws into a 2x4.

These skills are only useful for getting you fired from your former construction job.

"So pony up."

Don't you mean "Get your ass in gear"?

I can jiggle my eyes back and forth very fast. My wife hates it. I can raise one eyebrow at a time. I can flip people off using both hands at once. How useful is that?

You would have been great in a Mel Brooks movie with Marty Feldman!

Probably would have given Mel and Marty headaches, too!

If you ever have a balance problem and get an electronystagmus test, do that! It'll make their day.

Hi everybody, I can drive a wheelbarrow with one hand. And like one of the contributors, I also can flip a hammer up to 4 times catching it by the handle. And the last thing I can do that is useless, is rocking the sides of my nose, so the nose holes(translate?) get a little bigger.....

best regards from

moe

I also can do that with my nose, and I can just ever so slightly move my ears. You should see how the dancers in the strip clubs fall all over you when you can make your nose holes wider and move your ears. I have to almost fight them off. No I swear it's true.

I can write ALGOL programs and I can move my ears...

I can pick my nose endlesly

if i was a oil well my supply would be everlasting

I can wiggle my ears without touching them, I can flip my tongue upside down and rotate it both directions in a twisting motion, and I can see whats in a magic eye poster.

I can do this all simultaneously.

Is that completely useless?

I can make women squirt. It can be useless or a powerful tool

I can snap a beer bottle cap across the room.

I can flip my ears forth and back (unfortunately not as efficiently as Dumbo) so I think it scores as un-useful.

I can rotate any hand in one sense (let say clockwise) and the same side foot in the contrary, or rub one hand up and down my breast while the other hand makes a normal to breast surface movement (like hitting it).

And most un-useful thing I can do: VOTE (all eligible use to be professional politicians...)

Kind regards

I don't think anything is useless. I think of it as an accomplishment if someone else can't do it.

I absolutely agree.

Myself, having the gift of chirping like a bird without moving my lips and being able to throw my voice is rewarded by the fact that it drives the dog, cat, wife and kids into a frenzy.

I can also make a chattering squirrel sound... but I have to screw up my face to do it.. lol you are 2 funny!

Works great at board and management meetings also! Especially when one of them begins to pontificate.........

One fellow used to tape a five dollar bill to some fishing line, lay it on the floor and wait until the accountant walked in. You can guess the rest.

Ooooh...I can do a good Crow impersonation and make a good startled pheasant noise

I have the ability to fold my tongue as in the photo below:

Oh yeah, and I can talk a fluent Donald Duck - impresses the kids, but I haven't landed a gig yet.

Hey! I can use a slide rule. I've got a set just like this:

Now that's a useless talent today.

Me too!!!!

I've still got my Faber-Castell one. I remember when my two daughters went to school (now both are BS in IT) and I proudly show them the rule and told them I could calculate any power, trigonometric functions direct and inverse or even hyperbolic functions. They told me: you must be joking dad,... how can it calculate anything without batteries?

Kind regards

Lost my Faber-Castell pocket one - which means the skill of being able to use one is now useless, as my Thorntons is too big to lug around, so it sits in a draw .

Better than a calculator...'cos if you are constipated you can always work it out with a slide rule.
Del er... I mean
Kris

I can read a Vernier - with the fancy digital jobs coming along these days, it'll soon be a lost skill (and if I lose or damage my Vernier caliper, it'll be another useless skill).

I can use my Chop Sticks left or right handed. Didn't think any thing about it until at a Japanese restaurant, I went to a lot, the waiter called over the rest of the Japanese staff to show them.

Brad