Don’t mess with acdevil. He blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night, and he blew up his house too.
Just thought of one more weird thing I do that I didn't post in this thread earlier. And it is specific to the microwave.
When I am heating something up in the microwave, I NEVER put in a typical number of seconds, like 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and the like. I ALWAYS put in something else, like 23 seconds or 27 seconds, or 41 seconds, or 31 seconds, or 29 seconds.
For the life of me I have no idea why I do this. Am I alone in this little quirk?
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust
I save moving a finger and always type 11, 22, 33, etc., rather than a round number. I continue the series up to 99 seconds for items that don't require 2 min. or more. And I'm kind of obsessive about pulling the item out of the microwave one second early so that it doesn't give me the three long beeps at the end.
I am somewhat similar - I remember when I was a teenager every day after school I had these microwavable snacks and cooked them for 54 seconds.
Now I am lazy and usually just hit the +30 seconds button a few times, depending on what I am cooking. But I will often stop it early if necessary and like you, I try to always stop it on a random number (my favorite number is 4 so usually 4, 14, etc. if possible) but I specifically tend to annoy round numbers.
My famous party trick among friends is that I can count letters in words extremely fast. I am a pretty good speller so as long as I can spell it, I can tell you the amount of letters quickly. I mentally break it into syllables and quickly add them up. (if you are wondering, Krzyzewski is 10 and Wojciechowski is 13). This was slightly helpful during my brief stint writing headlines and when playing Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy (sometimes Jeopardy has categories like "11 letter words"). I think I learned this skill as an only child on long car trips.
When I was a kid, if I saw 2 numbers I had to multiply them in my head. I would look at the clock and multiple the hours and minutes. I got REALLY good at multiplication in my head. NM requires all seniors to take the ASVAB ( Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test. They had 100 arithmetic questions and you had 2 minutes to complete as many questions as possible. I completed all of them with about 30 seconds to spare. Once in college, I would use the calculator more so I'm not as good now but still pretty good. My kids like to quiz me on square roots. They give me some ridiculous number and I try to find the square root in my head. I can generally get pretty darn close. The kids think it's some sort of super power.
So I got a "dumb" microwave... but rather new. Pressing "start" without anything else will go for 30 seconds. Press the "+" and the timer goes up in 10-second increments. And I almost always wait until the timer reaches "0" before I open the door... habit.