I am beginning to suspect that it is surprisingly common for intelligent, competent adults to somehow make it through the world for a few decades while missing some ordinary skill, like mailing a physical letter, folding a fitted sheet, depositing a check, or reading a bus schedule. Since these tasks are often presented atomically - or, worse, embedded implicitly into other instructions - and it is often possible to get around the need for them, this ignorance is not self-correcting. One can Google "how to deposit a check" and similar phrases, but the sorts of instructions that crop up are often misleading, rely on entangled and potentially similarly-deficient knowledge to be understandable, or are not so much instructions as they are tips and tricks and warnings for people who already know the basic procedure. Asking other people is more effective because they can respond to requests for clarification (and physically pointing at stuff is useful too), but embarrassing, since lacking these skills as an adult is stigmatized. (They are rarely even considered skills by people who have had them for a while.)
This seems like a bad situation. And - if I am correct and gaps like these are common - then it is something of a collective action problem to handle gap-filling without undue social drama. Supposedly, we're good at collective action problems, us rationalists, right? So I propose a thread for the purpose here, with the stipulation that all replies to gap announcements are to be constructive attempts at conveying the relevant procedural knowledge. No asking "how did you manage to be X years old without knowing that?" - if the gap-haver wishes to volunteer the information, that is fine, but asking is to be considered poor form.
(And yes, I have one. It's this: how in the world do people go about the supposedly atomic action of investing in the stock market? Here I am, sitting at my computer, and suppose I want a share of Apple - there isn't a button that says "Buy Our Stock" on their website. There goes my one idea. Where do I go and what do I do there?)
It's called SWAMI Xpress -- don't ask me what the letters stand for. (It's actually web-based; what you're buying is a passcode that's physically shipped to you.)
Edit to add: here's a sample diet report (PDF) from the software, in case you're wondering what its output looks like.
ABO blood type and secreter status are the only tests that have to be sent off for lab work; the rest can be done entirely at home if you have someone to help with the measurements and observations. (For example, the PROP test is a blinded taste test, so it's easier if somebody else administers it; other tests require inspecting the shape of your teeth, measuring the angle of your jaw, etc., which are very difficult to do by yourself.)
My wife already knew her ABO/secretor results, but she bought the home genotyping kit to get the PROP test strips and fingerprinting kit. There's enough stuff in the kit to do at least two people -- it comes with a lot of taste strips, and a bunch of the stuff (like the jaw-measuring protractor) can be reused for as many people as you like.
The book has some shortcuts you can do for a quicker but lower-accuracy grouping, using a smaller set of measurements; the software is supposed to basically take more factors into account in food selection than what can be done with the six generic charts in the book.
(As I understand it, a person can have markers from more than one group, so a weighted scoring system is used to rate the markers.)