What Clever Hacks Blew Up In Your Face?

dilettante

dilettante

Well-known Member
Location
Michigan
Like so many, I'm trying to restrict carbs. Especially sugar. Especially in processed items.

Sometimes you need a taste of something though. In my case I tried to get clever with "Starburst Fruit Chews" which are a medium-soft tart taffy square.

Well... I tried to be clever, and took a knife to cut a few of them cross-crossed (making 4 out of each one). My thinking was something like "Well I'm eating these for the taste, yet often I swallow them before fully chewed." So why not make them into "minis" and be satisfied by 1/4 the sugar and whatever else is in them?

It sort of worked, but they seem to be much stickier now. Like a lot stickier. I don't like crap stuck to my teeth.

So maybe that was a bad idea. Perhaps I'll stick to other stuff. Maybe apple slices, bagged in a little lemon juice to prevent browning in the fridge. I also try to buy stuff like fresh blueberries on sale then simply wash and freeze them and try to use them up within a couple of weeks. Those might be good in plain unsweetened nonfat yogurt too.


What have you tried that didn't really work out as you had hoped?
 

Well, it wasn't me, it was my young pre-teen son.
He planted a load in one of my cigarettes on a night when we had company. 6 of us hanging out in my kitchen, snacking and having fun and I (who smoked back then), picked up my cig and when I put it to my lips, Bang! it blew up my face.

Everyone screamed with laughter, including me, after I realized what happened. My son laughed so hard, he couldn't breathe. Brat.

I know this isn't really what you meant @dilettante, but when you wrote "blew up in your face", I had to relate.
 
Early in our marriage when in the Navy & dirt poor we had company coming for dinner wanted clean salt & pepper shakers. Plastic was all we could afford so my plan was to sanitize them by washing with soap & warm water. Worked great. My hack of quickly drying them in the oven not advised. Seems plastic melts when heated.
 
A co-worker's husband put a gold-rimmed brandy snifter with brandy in it, into the micro wave to warm it. Sure enough, the metal sparked, the brandy caught fire, the snifter exploded and there was a fire in the micro wave oven.

He put it out; easy for him because, get this:
He's a Firefighter!

How we laughed when she told us next day.
 
Off topic general comment, not personal to OP...

I as a long time hi tech person, strongly dislike the way social media (no accounts on any post smartphone social media) uses the term "hack". Before it was mutilated for the meaning you are using, it was used to describe writers with mediocre skills. Later was used to describe those "hackers" using illegal methods to access computers. And then a decade or so ago began seeing it on various web sites by twentysomethings to describe unusual ways to do things as though it was "cool".
 
dilettante said:
My thinking was something like "Well I'm eating these for the taste, yet often I swallow them before fully chewed." So why not make them into "minis" and be satisfied by 1/4 the sugar and whatever else is in them?
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This begs the question... when you cut them into quarters, were you really able to eat just one teeny little square? Pretty sure I'd talk myself into eating all four anyhow. 🤷‍♀️ Oh... and for my daily PSA, you mentioned apple slices... a medium apple has 25g of carbs. One Hershey Kiss has 3 carbs. Just sayin'... I'd rather have 8 kisses for those 24-25 carbs. 😊
 
dilettante said:
I get that. There are things that bug me too. Like when people say "hone in on" when they are trying to say "home in on." But maybe they raise honing pigeons?
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"Hone in on" is the correct term... meaning to go toward something. (Although some argue the opposite... "home" doesn't sound right to me.) See... I'm just full of useless information. Or something. :)

EDIT: I just fact-checked myself... both are actually considered correct depending on who's using it and where they live.
 
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All I ask of my clothes dryer is that it get hot and go round and round.

All I ask of my hair dryer is that it get hot and blow. My old blow dryer died so I got a new one that was very cheap but did a super powerful job of blowing. That is, until it sucked my long hair into the intake, wrapped it around and around the little fan in there and made the whole thing grind to a stop. I had to cut it off my head. When I took it apart what I found of my hair inside looked like a strand of knitting yarn.
 
OK, here's one: happened about 20 years ago....I stopped on the way home from work, picked up a burrito. Got home and thought I'd just give it a little "nuke" so I tossed the burrito in the microwave to reheat it. About 5 seconds later heard a pop and saw flames....yanked open the microwave door and grab the flaming burrito bag and threw it on the floor. Put the flames out, discovered that I had put my Bic cigarette light in the bag, which then got nuked. :eek:
 
I microwave eggs all the time. I bought a microwave-safe clamshell dingus for this purpose. But yeah, I also "scramble" the egg a bit before cooking it. I might like a square one instead, but the round one works fine and is easy to clean.
 
When I was about 11 years old I tried to cut a board with a hand saw using an air mattress as a saw horse.

Later when I was in my 30's I tried to defrost a refrigerator using a screw driver.

Results were one air mattress and one refrigerator destroyed.
 
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Career was based on customer tech support. Never did get very adept on cell phones. Only knew to remove battery for reboot. 2 years ago I changed my 'Smartphone' for an older style flipper. Thought I needed to get sim card from SP and install it in flipper. I had no idea they rigged them to prevent theft. Screwdriver in hand almost set dinning room on fire. Ruined tablecloth & scorched table top before before getting control. Since learned how to open the darn things.
 
I tried to cook a plateful of chicken livers in the microwave.....without using a spatter guard thingie. Do you have any idea how hard...and disgusting...it is to clean cooked chicken liver debris off the entire inside of a microwave?

If it hadn't have been early in the game when microwaves were expensive, I would have just thrown the dang thing out in the trash.
 
David777 said:
Off topic general comment, not personal to OP...

I as a long time hi tech person, strongly dislike the way social media (no accounts on any post smartphone social media) uses the term "hack". Before it was mutilated for the meaning you are using, it was used to describe writers with mediocre skills. Later was used to describe those "hackers" using illegal methods to access computers. And then a decade or so ago began seeing it on various web sites by twentysomethings to describe unusual ways to do things as though it was "cool".
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Back in the day: guys like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and later on Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Linus Torvalds were "hacking" computer hardware and software to make them work together. What people today refer to as "hackers" are usually...crackers.
 

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