Why do power drills have R and L?

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

sounds like fun I have always found working on an american car to be easy...my '66 mustang was frankly agriculteral with drum brakes all round etc....

[rbowman]

There were some gotchas. I preferred 6 cylinder engines. Cramming a V-8 in the same engine compartment didn't do anything for the ease of service. I had a Lincoln where the hood opened forward. That was a joy.

[hah]

Or if you go any direction other than one of those 32 points, you'll fall of the flat Earth :-)

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

my father had one of those old hand drills that looked like an egg beater. You only rotate one hand, not the hand you use to hold it straight.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

That's an unusual drill. Most go in or out, not left :-)

Did you notice that I didn't ask about pushing it that direction, but about pushing on that SIDE (that is, pushing it the opposite direction)?

[snip]

I would expect "off" here to mean "press here for off".

Some mobile phones have soft keys, which are labeled on the phone's display. I've had one where one of the soft keys is "Mute", and I know one person who thought the phone's microphone was already muted. I recognized it as the "mute" button and pressing it changes the label to "Unmute" (when it's muted).

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I guess you never learned that 4:00 PM (or 16:00) is late afternoon?

[charles]

I've stll got mine.

[Commander Kinsey]

Apparently in the USA they (used to?) have police testing you were sober at the side of the road by asking you to say the alphabet backwards. I can't do that, drunk or not. Who knows that backwards?!

[Commander Kinsey]

But IIII is harder to read, if you don't look carefully it could be III.

[Commander Kinsey]

Didn't these gods ever argue? Like politicians?

[Commander Kinsey]

I was surprised that my neighbour couldn't remember a phone number I'd read out long enough for her to write it down. She's only 50. The phone number was 11 digits.

[NY]

I tend to think of bearings other than the simple 45-degree ones N, NE, W, etc in terms of angles wrt N, rather than trying to remember the sequence of names like NbE, NNE, NEbN, NE, NEbE, ENE, EbN. The "by" ones at 1, 3, 5, 7 x

11.25 degrees are particularly hard to remember.

[Commander Kinsey]

I've seen some clocks with no numbers, just a line for each hour. Very annoying. I like to hang those squint on the wall so the time is completely wrong and nobody notices, especially if it's a round face.

[NY]

The problem is that one hand has to try to counteract the wobbling caused by the rotation of the wheel using the other hand. I'm not sure which is better: those that you hold straight by a handle inline with the axis of the drill bit, or those with an egg-beater handle at right angles to the axis of the drill bit.

I've got two hand drills. One has a single small cog, connected to the chuck. The other has a second idler cog directly opposite the chuck one, presumably to prevent the big bevelled handle wheel from wobbling about its axis. However the latter drill has much more friction in the mechanism, despite being well oiled, so I always use the former drill.

[Commander Kinsey]

It's an expression. "Why does Rachel insist on driving her car so slowly?" This means Rachel does it by choice, but really wants to and continues to do so, no matter how many people tell her off.

It's very inconvenient, because nobody knows what it means. Using a word to describe a group of numbers is crazy, rather like the version of Android OS - lollipop? WTF? Nobody can remember which is which. and MacOS - is a tiger better than a leopard? Who knows!

And again every time someone uses it because it's impossible to remember. Anyway, the meaning is not fixed so it could mean all sorts of ranges depending who said it.

And you can guarantee that the person who said it looked up that site too?

So even harder to remember.

Never heard of such a thing. I go to the doctors if and when I'm broken, not when I'm healthy! What a waste of resources.

Sure? Rbowman is in America and he said he didn't want to go into one.

[Commander Kinsey]

I use virtually only Windows, and I'm constantly clicking the wrong one, sometimes with drastic effects. I assume it's because almost everything else in life is more/confirm/increase to the right. Maybe Microsoft is to blame for people pressing the brake instead of the accelerator, "because in Windows you press the right one to stop".

[NY]

Interesting. Until it was mentioned in this thread, I'd never thought about whether the OK button should be on the left or the right based on the analogy of the order of pedals in a car. I learned the GUI in SunOs (UNIX) first, slightly before I encountered Windows. I don't remember which way round the OK and Cancel buttons were, but I don't think I had any problem accepting the order that they are in Windows. Now if I use Raspbian or Ubuntu, I have to make a conscious effort to click on the opposite one to the one I'd default to in Windows. Mind you, I've had about 30 years for the Windows way to get ingrained, and I'm now in my 50s rather that 20s - old dogs/new tricks.

The one thing that does not come naturally to me is using a left-handed mouse. I can use it as a pointing aid nearly as well with my left hand as my right, but the swapping of the buttons really throws me. My brain instinctively uses the left button for left-click, even though it's now my middle rather than index finger, and I have to stop and think that I must use the mirror image: still use index finger for left-click even though it's now the right button.

My mum, who is left-handed, uses her fork in her left hand and knife in right hand (probably she had to conform with the righties at school), and she has her mouse buttons the normal way round (though she holds the mouse with her left hand). She holds a pen in an exact mirror-image of the way I'd hold it, without resorting to the cack-handed way that many lefties do, which involves trying to contort the hand above the line of writing with the fingers and the pen pointing in the direction that a rightie would do. I can understand that a leftie has to take extra care not to smudge the line of writing if they are using a fountain pen, but that doesn't explain the very painful-looking contortions of the hand.

[rbowman]

That's the type I have. Some of the cheaper versions only have one pinion but the ones with two work well.

[rbowman]

I'm left handed so the mouse is set up that way. Some people who try to use my machine don't take the clue from the mouse being to the left of the keyboard.

I still say 'right-click' when describing how something works. I can use a right hand mouse with my right hand and it all seems to come together naturally.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

got one of those in the kitchen