What are you really bad at?

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sunnybob":21hise8l said:
Hand planing and chiseling :D :D :D
If the power goes off, thats me done. =D> =D> =D> =D> 8)

Oh, and remembering what the missus has just told me. :roll:

That would be my answer as well Bob,....Word for word! :D
 
Plastering and posting photos on this forum,when I attempt to do any plastering it looks like I've been trying to screed the floor,when I try anything with technology like photos etc. I end up feeling suicidal.I don't even own a mobile phone and wouldn't know how to use one anyway.Still I've managed this long without so no problem.
 
* Patience, especially with people who I think are idiots.
* Fixing damage caused by my wife's clumsiness.
* Getting motivated to do something I don't want to do.

I haven't asked my wife btw, I don't want a row, but I know the first thing she would say is that I don't listen - I do, honest :wink:
 
Imagining or visualising in 3D e.g. if I have a mental picture of e.g. a half-lapped dovetail and mentally rotate the piece it is part of through 180°, I have great difficulty in picturing the new arrangement. This is a lack which taking up woodworking first revealed to me. This is probably linked to a kind of mental tunnel vision which shows up when concentrating hard e.g. I can be doing a series of cuts and then can forget to turn the bit of wood around for half of them. The antidote is to force myself to constantly review things.
 
The whole marriage thing.....apparently & I didn’t need to ask :lol:

Also Bookwork & by that I mean any bookwork, estimates, invoicing, financial, end of year I hate it all with a passion, I don’t so much think I’m hopeless at bookwork as hopeless at getting motivated to do it which really doesn’t help when you run your own business.
 
Doug B":kaa0cwhp said:
.......Also Bookwork & by that I mean any bookwork, estimates, invoicing, financial, end of year I hate it all with a passion, I don’t so much think I’m hopeless at bookwork as hopeless at getting motivated to do it which really doesn’t help when you run your own business.

Life's too short. Pay someone to do it.
 
1. Resisting buying that cannot do without tool.
2. Not using said tool for ages.
3. Not being able to find said tool when finally get round to wanting to use it!

Oh, and finishing jobs, particularly those assigned to me by the Boss! (hammer)
 
MikeG.":1s4azqvy said:
Doug B":1s4azqvy said:
.......Also Bookwork & by that I mean any bookwork, estimates, invoicing, financial, end of year I hate it all with a passion, I don’t so much think I’m hopeless at bookwork as hopeless at getting motivated to do it which really doesn’t help when you run your own business.

Life's too short. Pay someone to do it.
Right now, as I sit on the sofa drinking coffee and being lazy, my good wife is doing the accounts. All is right with the world.

I should probably go and fiddle with a chainsaw, just to pretend I'm not incurably indolent, which I am.
 
Finishing projects (but pretty good at starting new ones).

Remembering jokes (the funnier they are, the harder they are to remember).

Names - I used to be very good at remembering faces though, but slowly getting less good at that too....
 
When I was at school, right in the middle of the exams to see what groups you would be put into for the GCSEs I got knocked off my bike by a van.
Pow.
I was ok but I missed the maths exam.
A fortnight later I was back and they made me sit it. This fella took me to a little room and said crack on. So there I was. Not too great at maths tbh. But here's the rub.
I look over and Holy Jesus in all His Heavenly Glory what's sat on the table in the corner but everyone else's exam papers all ready to be marked.
Happy f***ing Days.
I'd also missed the RE exam but they never made me sit that, probably figuring me not cut out for a vicaring sort of chap. They were right. But I crossed myself for the only time in my life that moment. I was that bad at maths.
And you know, sometimes you reach a crossroads in life that makes you ponder the direction you take. You take time to ponder and evaluate your options. You analyse and ponder. You weigh and measure.
Clearly this wasn't one of those moments.
I reached over and found Neil Merrit's exam paper. He'll be working for NASA or in the looney bin for torturing cats these days I'd expect.
I'm not completely daft of course.
I chucked In the odd error to throw them off the scent from Merrits 100% accuracy. No flies on me.
I sat back and waited. The teacher came. All ok? Yeh no worries sir.
I breezed out the room and went off for my holidays and I can honestly say I never gave it another thought.
Not one.
Suckers.

Come the next term I look at my timetable. That's odd. Ere. Rob. How many maths lessons you got? 3. Wtf. How have I got 9 then? Rob laughed.
Not only did they put me in the top set but they put me in another special set of class with odd kids who only ever spoke to each other in algebra and beeping noises. I'd never f*#^*ng seen any of them before. I think the school raised them in secretive basement splinter cells specifically to raise the Ofsted ratings.
You never them anywhere else. Neil Merrit and his big head aside was pretty normal in comparison. Some of these fellas had moustaches and back pain. They were 15 going on 66.
Anyway.
So there I was for two years. Triple maths.
Every.
Week.
And I just sat there like a complete c$@t. Bewildered. A rabbit in the headlights. Literally drowning in maths.
Never once occurred to me to own up and take the rap and be put in a maths group where I understood what the teacher was talking about. Where I might actually have learned summat.
I bluffed it.
For two years.
How I got away with it looking back is a complete mystery. What the teacher must have thought is fairly elusive. It must have baffled him a little. Surely?
In fact the only maths I learned was at the mocks. I learned averages.

It turns out that when you get an U, that's ungradeable btw, for the special advanced exam, it's possible for just the one person, to bring the whole class average of A, down to a C.

:D

Questions must have been asked at what can only be imagined to be a fairly executive level.
I was fairly hurriedly moved into a group of normal kids who spoke english not beeping . It turned out unexpectedly that I was about average at maths and I passed the exam proper when it turned up a few months later.

I've even grown to appreciate the beauty of mathematical patterns as I've grown older but only from the perimeters. I'll never be in on it properly.

Looking back as a grown man I do wonder what that teacher must have made of it all . I wonder if he sometimes lies awake at night and tries to drown out the memory of me subverting the whole experience of his teaching career.
:D

But maths is not my weak point.

Its foresight.

Right.
Now I'm off to finish building a cupboard.
 
Organizing anything and quelling curiosity.

Can't even organize my thoughts, sometimes. I don't mean that in a crazy way, but more like every born problem solver is at not being able to resist investigating further vs sticking to a plan.
 
I'm not good at starting things, never have been. I know I will enjoy them once I get stuck in, but that doesn't help.
I can remember my very exasperated father making me write out "Procrastination is the thief of time" fifty times over, when I was about 8. I can't remember what it was that I was late starting, just the punishment. It didn't help, btw. :(

PS. Sorry not to have replied sooner...
 
Drinking alcohol - I have a fairly low tolerance but I like a social pint or three. I am drunk while everyone else is still at the 'merry' stage and then I fall asleep. I've lost count of how many pubs I've been asleep in. Also, after about 4 pints my brain casts off all filters and lets my mouth do as it pleases which often doesn't go down well. I should probably stop drinking.
 
I just want to make a brief comment on the "can't sing" thing. As a music teacher, it's something I feel rather strongly about! Although many of use feel that we're "tone deaf" or "can't sing", and we're often told the same by those nearest and dearest to us, it's total nonsense. If you didn't have the machinery to sing, physically and mentally, you'd be profoundly disabled and would struggle to speak intelligibly (a LOT of information in speech is coded as pitch and rhythm).

Most people who do sing are "taught" as kids by their parents at a very young age and of course think nothing of it. Those who don't pick it up are then told to stand and the back and mouth the words, or worse: and then of course they never improve.

So it you're in that category, you *can* acquire the necessary skills. It wouldn't be instantaneous, of course, but even a few weeks of lessons would surprise you.
 
No, no. Really, I can't sing. My best buddy (the guy I caught corona virus from) is a professional concert singer (baritone) and a teacher at a couple of the UK's top musical colleges (London and Cambridge). He said the same thing to me (everyone can sing), but when he heard me sing "happy birthday" at a birthday party last year he had cause to rethink, describing my voice as almost beyond hope, and a life's work. I really, really can't sing.
 
u38cg":1857u5pg said:
I just want to make a brief comment on the "can't sing" thing. As a music teacher, it's something I feel rather strongly about! Although many of use feel that we're "tone deaf" or "can't sing", and we're often told the same by those nearest and dearest to us, it's total nonsense. If you didn't have the machinery to sing, physically and mentally, you'd be profoundly disabled and would struggle to speak intelligibly (a LOT of information in speech is coded as pitch and rhythm).

Most people who do sing are "taught" as kids by their parents at a very young age and of course think nothing of it. Those who don't pick it up are then told to stand and the back and mouth the words, or worse: and then of course they never improve.

So it you're in that category, you *can* acquire the necessary skills. It wouldn't be instantaneous, of course, but even a few weeks of lessons would surprise you.

Without wishing to derail the thread, I was told at the age of 8 or so, when I joined a new school in the 2nd year of junior school by my music teacher, Mrs Dawkins, the wizened old crone, that I couldn't sing and to go to the back of the class and play the triangle instead. I never did get over the embarrassment and still never sing in public. #-o
 

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