hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2603.txt

Episode: 2603
Title: HPR2603: Dummy shares a tip and a tip/rant about asking and answering questions
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2603/hpr2603.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:27:09

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This is HBR episode 2600 and free and titled Dummy share my tip and a tip slash rant about
asking and answering questions.
It is posted by the ODD Dummy and is about 25 minutes long and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is those blasted rubber coffee mug seals and let me google that for you.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
With 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Hello, this is DODD Dummy with today's edition of Hacker Public Radio.
This is probably going to be a short episode.
I just want to offer a little piggyback on the recent couple of episodes on tips.
I got two tips, I guess.
I don't know if one of them is a real tip, but anyway, let's get started.
The first one is about how to remove the rubber rings on some coffee cups.
I guess travel mugs is what they're normally called.
These are the kind that have just a pretty simple lid and it's held on by a rubber ring and a groove.
This wouldn't apply so much. Some of them are easy to remove.
This is more appropriate for the rings that don't come off very easily.
So for example, if everything's dry, some of them you can just rub your thumb on it and then move it down and then the rubber rolls off pretty easily.
You probably don't need it for this, but there's some that they don't come off that easily.
And then especially when they're wet, it's really nearly impossible to get them off.
I typically would, I used to dig a spoon or something in there to try to get under there to take them out.
Then that would end up damaging the rings and take time.
I know that I'm not the only one with this problem because I've talked to some couple of people who said,
yeah, they just don't even use the lids because it gets gross under those rings and it takes them too long to get them off so they don't even use the lids.
So anyway, so this would be for those kinds and it's really not too difficult.
But anyway, I've been having this problem for a long time and I finally thought, well, let's see what we can do about it.
So I'm at work and I want to clean the lid and I can't get the rubber thing off because my hands are wet and it's kind of difficult to get in there anyways because it's like it said.
It's one of those even when it's dry, it's kind of hard to get off.
Anyways, I had a lot of people do at work. They have those brown paper towels that aren't really very absorbent.
Anyways, I put one of those on my thumb and then I put my thumb on and rolled it and pushed my thumb down and then it rolled off pretty good.
The towel gave it enough traction to where it only took, you know, was really quick and it was easy and so I felt kind of like an idiot that I've been fighting with these rings for so long.
And then what I noticed at home that we have dish rags that if you use a dish rag, those seem to grip it pretty easily even when wet.
So there you go and hopefully you guys might be laughing at me.
But even if you just get a laugh on how stupid I am, okay, mission accomplished.
And if anyone of you are dumb like me, then try that and see if it works for you.
Okay, so that's one. The second one is kind of like a tip and a rant.
And it's the whole, the punch line is, here, let me Google that for you.
And it's something that kind of is a pet peeve of mine that, you know, with the internet and with how easily information is available that it's pretty easy not to talk to people at all.
And it's also pretty easy for people to get annoyed that you're talking to them.
And so I understand the, you know, how to ask a good question and you don't want to waste people's time.
One of the things I do at work is I answer questions a lot.
I've always kept a fact at work and people refer to that.
And I will publish questions without names attached.
So people feel, tend to feel a little bit more at ease asking me questions and letting me post their questions because they know I'll remove the names.
And so they can kind of, it's kind of a safe environment for people to ask dumb questions because a lot of people feel insecure.
You know, there's the whole imposter syndrome.
And so a lot of times people won't ask a question if they think it's a stupid question or they think it might be perceived as a stupid question.
And also, many way the point being that I feel a lot of questions at work.
And one of the, in my fact, one of the things that I notice, you know, I kind of tell them what I hope they do before asking me a question.
Number one is to read my fact because that's kind of where I post all the questions of answered and asked and answered.
And since it's normally work related, that's a good place because the questions are specific to our work environment.
And so, you know, I asked them to do that first and they even asked me the question starting with, hey, I've Googled and I've searched your fact and I still don't have the answer.
So, specifically pointed out that that saves my time, that respects my time.
And so, I understand the sentiment of, hey, do some research before you take somebody else's time, you know, just respect their time.
So, I get that.
But there's another kind of environment where I don't think that applies as much.
And I think some people get kind of get offended or upset or think worse of you when you ask a question without Googling first.
And specifically, I'm talking about when you're just around friends or maybe you're in the chat room and you say, the question comes to your mind and you just ask it.
And without maybe normally, especially when I do it, but I think this is common too, it's more of a social just chatty with people, especially in chat rooms for your online.
But also, sometimes when you're not online, if you got your phone, right, you're on your phone and you know, that's how people kind of talk these, sit around in a circle and they kind of gibber jabbering and then they don't have their, and then they're on their phone at the same time.
But, so, like, when I'll do it, I'll ask a dumb question, but I'm Googling at the same time.
And so, the question I'm asking, I'm really, I'm asking you, but I'm also Googling, so I'm doing the research too.
And I do this, for me, I think this is okay for a couple of reasons.
If you're in an environment where you're amongst friends or people that you hang around with kind of like your friends, even if you're not really friends, like if you're at work and you guys talk a lot and help each other out and you're always answering each other's questions,
I think this would apply to, even if it's kind of like a forum at work or your work social media.
You have a question, maybe it's not obvious and you Googled it just a little bit and you can't find the question, but okay, I know I'm going to find it, and maybe a couple of hours I'll probably find it.
You know, if it's one of those more esoteric things or maybe your Google Foods, not what it should be or what it could be.
So, you'll post a question and then you search, and then I think that's not so bad.
And, especially if it helps a little bit of a dialogue between you and the person, I think that's fine and I think it helps a little bit socially.
And also, there's a benefit that I don't think a lot of people don't really see, especially if you're doing this in an environment or a little place where it's like the people who are part of the group kind of see a lot and visit.
If you post a question, even if it's one of those you could have searched, for example, if I have a question, I post it at work, and it's a place that people at work might go to first when asking questions because it's specifically work related.
And I think, okay, if it's a work related question, in my work I might get the question, or maybe if they don't go first, maybe they'll go second, but it's a place that is normally in their list of places they look for answers.
So, if you post a question, they can see the question, and it's maybe it's got terms and everything that specifically fits your work environment with, sometimes that's part of searching, isn't it?
No one exactly what terms would make sense, and maybe your particular branch of whatever field it is uses different terminology, or maybe even in your work environment you use different terminology.
So, it might be easier for you to get the solution that matches best for your environment from that place.
And I think that's fine. There's one caveat though, and this can kind of give you a reputation of really abusing people's time, or not.
And that is if you find, and this holds generally true when you ask questions. If you ask somebody a question, and if you ask a question somewhere, and you're still looking, or maybe you've got questions in different places, so you have people actually working for you answering the questions.
If you get an answer, post the damn answer. It's really, really annoying, and you can lose a lot of credibility and a lot of goodwill, and you can really get people not wanting to answer questions.
Even people who normally would be interested in answering questions because they like question answering is fun for a lot of people.
So, let's say you ask the question, and you're googling, and you're doing your own research. You can even post that in the question, actually. You can say, yeah, I know, I'm googling too, and I'll let you know if I find the answer, but if you know the answer, you know, post it.
And I think that's fine. So, and so that's something that I just been, the reason I decided to write a show on that is, what I typically do, if there's a pet peeve of mine, or something that I don't really agree with, or kind of irks me here, I think it's worth pointing out.
And if it happens at work, and maybe when the places that I go online, and social media, and also in real life, if I kind of get some, you know, in the past several weeks, two, three, four, five, you know, several questions or conversations around the same topic that I think it might be worth talking about.
Especially if I have a different take, and so I do. And so, a lot of times, if I'm asking you a question, I'm also searching it. So, and I don't always say that, but sometimes I just expect people to understand that I'm asking questions.
And I'm, I mean, then when I ask questions, I'm also looking for the answer. I'm not just, you know, hoping that you'll solve my problems.
And normally I, it depends, but often I also have really looked for a long time. I mean, if I have a question, or somebody gets me a question, I can't find the answer.
I keep it on my question list, and I'll, I'll try again, and research in that question to be open for me forever.
So, sometimes I'll, I'll have a question on my mind. I've been looking at for a couple, like I just had one at work for a couple of years. I've been trying to figure this out.
And I can't find the documentation that it hints that you might not be able to do it, but it's something I think you should be able to do. So, I'll just keep going back.
And sometimes at work, there's been a few times where I've been able to do something with the normal tech that we use at work just thinking about it a different way.
And online will tell me there's no way to do it, and they give me all of this, no, you shouldn't do it that way. You can't do it that way, blah, blah, blah.
And then I'll finally really need it, whereas before with more curiosity, but also now okay, I really had this application I need to figure know this thing.
So then I'll get down and I'll just try stuff. And there's been three, four, five, six of those kinds of things where people told me you just can't do it. And actually you can't do it.
So I don't always take no for an answer, even if it's from someone who's like, I had just one thing where silly stupid thing, but there's GDGs.
There's a thing on the mainframe that's kind of a file where it's, when you write it more file with that same name, it gets plus one so there's versions of it.
And it's kind of esoteric, but anyways, the way we use GDGs is not the way that they recommend you doing it. And we had an issue where we were overwriting files.
I mean, the bottom, to make it shorter, I asked people on IBM mainframes.com how to do this and how to solve the problem, this doppelver writing them. And I asked IBM, and they said you couldn't do it.
And there's no way to avoid it the way we were doing things. And then, finally, I had where my team was needing it, so I buckled down and came up with a solution, and it really wasn't so hard.
Well, once you figured it out, it's not so hard, but the point being, I didn't need any special technology, or I didn't have to write some assembler routine that did it, I could just do it with the normal scripting language that we used.
So anyways, if you're in one of those kind of areas where you're supposed to be friends, or at least friendly to each other, or at least be on the same team, and someone's asking you a question, don't automatically get pissed because he's wasting your time.
He didn't even Google it, such a simple thing. Maybe you'll get to know the person, and you'll realize, oh, it's really kind of more of a social thing, and he's kind of talking out loud while he's googling, he's also asking the question.
And especially if you start seeing that he's posting the answer that he finds, then you can maybe just know that posting the question might be useful to someone else, and the fact that he's given the answer is kind of a sign that he's really not disrespecting your time.
And you can also don't have to feel like you have to start looking for the solution yourself, anyways, because hopefully you're in a kind of, you know, there's a little bit of an understanding these days that if you ask a question that you should actually be searching for it, so don't feel like you have to search for the answer.
But maybe if it's just answer that you know, or maybe it's one that you think is interesting enough to spend your time searching, maybe you'll want to do it for your own modification or pleasure or whatever, but I would recommend not being so harsh on people.
Until you start seeing them post a lot of questions and then not following up with the answer, even if they don't answer the question themselves, if you post the question and then someone else answers it for you, you really should post the question the answer back.
And if the person that actually provided the solution, if it was a link, make note of the link, or maybe give credit to the person, unless he specifically doesn't want, you know, doesn't want credit.
Yeah, so that's really that's all, so at least I hope that you'll know that if I ask a question, you don't have to tell me, let me Google that for you, because I've probably already looked at .go and Google and whatever fact I keep myself and whatever is available for me.
So, and then the other thing to know, not to know, but I know this is a thing because I have it.
Sometimes I'll be reading the manual, I don't mind RTFM's that much, but I'll read the manual.
Sometimes for some reason, even I've been reading manuals for a long time, sometimes I read the manual and it's telling me, it's telling me, but for some reason it doesn't click with me.
And I read manuals and embarrassingly a lot. Sometimes I'll have read this, the actual part that answers the question several times, and either I don't understand the answer, maybe I don't even realize, I might not even realize that's telling me the answer.
So, that can be a thing too. And for me a lot of times, you know, a lot of times you get the answers and there's no example.
And for some reason, a lot of times I need to see, I mean seeing the example really helps me kind of get it out, you know, kind of hash out the solution and get it real good understanding.
So, if you're one of those people who really gets upset, especially like I said, if it's in kind of your click or you're set of people where you're supposed to be a group, you know, where you guys are all, you know, halfway friendly to each other, maybe don't get so harsh.
And actually go ahead and call someone out if you see that they're posting a lot of questions and never giving the follow-up the solutions that they found or worked for them.
Maybe you can talk to them and say, hey, dude, do you keep asking questions, but you never give us the follow-ups.
And if the answer happens, or the reason happened to be, well, because it was such a stupid question, or it was so silly.
Well, post those silly questions for the silly answers. If they're really silly, then you'll be still helping someone, you know, preventing someone from the waste time answering questions in the future.
Or at least you'll pass on the, hey, I respect your time. I took time to ask you the question, made you listen to it, or you listen to it.
I said, at least, you know, be respectful enough to provide whatever solution I went through.
So, I rambled on for 21 minutes. I thought this would be a five-minute episode.
So, okay, well, that's all for today. I almost forgot. This episode is also part of a series, maybe not yet, but I have a couple of different recording methods.
And instead of doing some episode that compares them all, then I'm going to record episodes with different mics.
And I'm going to try to do the environment and the setup as close to possible possible, the same on each one, so you can kind of compare.
Just a way to show that you don't need a lot of equipment and the different kinds of recording you might be able to get.
And if you're looking for something, maybe this will help you determine which one.
This one was recorded with the blue snowball mic, and it's the cheaper one. I forgot exactly now which one, but it doesn't have the two different carotid and carotoid or whatever that word is.
It doesn't have that and I'm new directional. It's only got one. I think it's, I forgot which one, but anyways, it's the cheaper model.
They look almost the same. The base looks different on the two is kind of how visually they look different.
But that's the one I have. I think you can get it pretty easily between $30 and $50. I paid, I got it for six bucks at a goodwill.
So that's the mic I'm using for this recording. So that's all.
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