The Vent and Rant Thread

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

It's a whole lot easier than that. Just estimate. After all, unless you are talking about someone's illness and fever, or baking a quiche, being off by a degree or three doesn't amount to anything.

I know that if it's 35°C I'll wear a T-shirt. If it's 35°F I'll wear a sweater. Don't need much more accuracy than that. And at our ages, we can certainly estimate the temperature without a thermometer, right?


Stitchawl

Plus there's some obvious alignment points that make it easier. 50F is 10C, 68F is 20C, and 100F is 38C

[Bilbo1967]

28C = 82F is the palindromic one I always remember.

[issybird]

And the highly useful and broadly applicable -40F° = -40C°.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I thought Britain had been on the metric system since forever.

We're supposed to be metric for everything bar road distances I think. Road distances are all still in miles.

Having said that, there are still many people (the majority?) who only measure height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds respectively (me included).

[PeterT]

I estimate the C to F conversion as double and add 30, or F to C as subtract 30 and half. For our standard living range this is adequate. (Of course it fails miserably at -40 either C OR F!!)

[WT Sharpe]

I always just do the math in my head: C=5/9(F-32), although I tend to round off, sometimes to keep things simple. This is the first I'd heard of a shortcut.

[kindlekitten]

not even going to go into my klicks to miles figuring. it was always right, so who is to worry?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

We're supposed to be metric for everything bar road distances I think. Road distances are all still in miles.

Having said that, there are still many people (the majority?) who only measure height and weight in feet/inches and stones/pounds respectively (me included).

Because I've been using inch/feet/yard/miles/leagues measurements like forever, I can (almost) instantly convert them back and forth to cm/mtr/km, but the other measurements, especially the weights, always get me down. (No pun intended )

1 fl.oz. = 29.5735 ml (I mostly use 30 ml) is OK, but 1 ounce (~28 grams) is weird, because in Dutch 1 ons (O pronounced, approx. like the one in 'pot') is 100 grams. Another weird one is 1 pound / lbs = ~453 grams; in Dutch, 1 pond (pronounced like the word 'pond' in English, but with a shorter O) is 500 grams.

[Stitchawl]

It got really crazy in Japan when I first tried to come to terms with having to pay $75 dollars (in Yen, of course,) for 100gm of steak.

My brain refused to acknowledge that 100gm was 1/4 lb. How could it be possible to charge $75 dollars for a quarter pound of meat? Not having math ability didn't help much.

I just figured my conversions must be wrong. Unfortunately, they weren't.


Stitchawl

[PeterT]

Of course I still recall "cooking" a pork roast for friends one sunday and totally messing up the conversion from kgs to lbs and way WAY undercooking the pork. Porl tartar anyone?

Then there is the famous Gimli Glider where a 767 was under fuelled due to a mixup in conversion between metric and imperial units, and was glided to a landing on a former RCAF airbase where folks were drag racing.

[wodin]

'S a piece of cake; a cm is just a smidge under a half an inch, a liter is just a smidge bigger than a quart, a meter is a bit more than a yard, and a shot is EXACTLY 50 ml!

[cromag]

Even really bright people screw up when metric and non-metric teams have to cooperate -- like the famous case of the Mars Climate Orbiter that failed to orbit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter


I'm most comfortable with US measures, but I have a few "approximations" I can use when I have to. And bottled beverages are sold in metric sizes here, so I'm pretty good with them.

[WT Sharpe]

1 inch now equals exactly 2.54 centimeters. I don't know who lost or gained when the powers that be decided to make that the standard.

[CRussel]

Ah, interesting. I've always known it as 2.54, but then, I rarely use Pi beyond 3.14 either. Though in the case of Pi, I at least know it off the top of my head to several places beyond that.

[Hitch]

Some asshole ran over Ned, our INDD/PDF Crew Chief.

His leg is fractured. He has to move back home to his folks' for a while, as he's a bachelor and has no one to assist him, until he can get around.

*&^%$#@! bad drivers, jerks, idiots, and others who run over innocent bystanders (from BEHIND, mind you!!!)!



(Yes, he'll be okay. But it's a bad fracture, and if I understand the story, it was hit/run, too. Of course, I'm getting the story either from him rather HEAVILY medicated, or from family, third-hand.)

Hitch