Laymen to Manipulator: thought process changes
1) Consumers are instructed to start over if they mess up dialing a combination, and never to go back to a previous number to try to correct it. With some experience spinning locks, we become intimately familiar with wheel pick up, and can know how to "make" the wheels do our bidding. Gone are the days of starting over. Now if I overshoot a number, I know how to reset the wheel to come back at the number for a second try without starting the whole combination over again.
2) Manipulators learn to center the gate in order to maximize room for dialing error in spinning the dial. Very often, this means we end up with a gate center at a half number interval. I caught myself the other day giving a manipulated combination as 28 1/2 - 50 - 73 1/2. Only a manipulator would give a combination in this odd language, no?
3) Consumers are told to count the times they pass the next targeted number. For example, turn the dial to the left four times to the first number. Then, turn the dial to the right, passing the second number two times, and stopping on it the third time. Then, turn the dial back to the left, passing the last number once and stopping on it the second time.
Manipulators tend to keep track of the wheels by full rotations from where we start the turns in order to keep track of wheel pickup. When I reverse wheel direction to go to the next number, I'll count full wheel rotations BEFORE going to and stopping on the next number. In other words, consumers focus on the next number throughout the turns, while manipulators count wheel pickups based on the number we are spinning FROM before switching focus and stopping on the next number.
Am I an oddball, or do fellow manipulators think in these new terms too?