I support endsormeans's advice about HAM (the application manager 'app').
Because it sounds weird what you explain about using apt-get and sudo.


If you really want to mess up:
root password is default to 'rootme'
apt will not work when HAM (or other apt processes) lock
when you are in a root shell (after 'sudo gainroot' or 'root') apt has to work without pre-sudoing
when in a user shell the sudo will not work as apt-get is not configured in the sudoers file
go and figure