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Things You Would Change in Your Past

Started by Ecurb Noselrub, January 06, 2023, 08:53:37 PM

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Quote from: Tank on March 30, 2023, 08:38:35 PMThat's an interesting thought, not one I have ever considered. I can't remember an occasion where I have ever been traumatically humiliated.
Pretty much this.

I think for me, to even be able to take a slug to my otherwise quite sizable ego, it has to be on the line somehow. For me personally, it is only so in areas, in which my image to an uninvolved third party actually matters to me, and those are... Not many.

For instance, I could perfectly well go in front of a hundred thousand people and make an ass of myself with my singing - and I would not be humiliated in the slightest by fermenting produce thrown my way, because... I had it to do, and so I did, with not a care in the world for how it went or was perceived. In that case, the only person whose opinion mattered (the proverbial number one) had none. Now, if I did a poor job on something that had my professional reputation attached... Yeah, no, bad example. I'd just re-do it if I could - live and learn, if not.

That's not to say that there were no "oh, for fuck's sake" moments in my life - there were plenty - it's just that I don't find "living things down" particularly difficult.
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

Tank

Quote from: Icarus on March 30, 2023, 11:09:49 PMI was thinking of one of those occasions earlier today. It was about one of my race motorcycles a long time ago...like 60 years ago.  That bike was spectacular and it won every race that it entered. I decided to give it a little extra maintenance.  I will give it a new piston and attend to the valves or any other part as needed.

I sent the cylinder out to a machine shop to have it bored for the new oversize piston. It was a German bike and I had the service manual and also some direct advice from the factory. The proper piston clearance was 0.10 mm. I told the machine shop to bore to fit that spec.  They told me that they figured that was too much clearance. I said "no use that dimension". They bored it 0.010 inches for the piston clearance. The engine was a poor performer immediately after that, until I discovered, to my extreme humiliation, that the damned piston was flopping around in the cylinder. Ten thousandths is two and a half times one tenth millimeter.

Why I was thinking about that this morning I cannot know.  Actually this small episode was  a result of my own stupidity which caused me much humiliation. I knew the difference between metric and Imperial measure but failed to make the important distinction to the machine shop. That was 60+ years ago and metrics were not a common unit of measure in the US, at the time.

America, inching it's way to metrication!
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Ecurb Noselrub

Quote from: Tank on March 31, 2023, 12:41:35 PMAmerica, inching it's way to metrication!

We will go metric the same day you start driving on the correct side of the road. ;D

Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

billy rubin

the metric business has always puzzled me. it is so much easier to cut a board in half that is 242.8 cm long than to try to find the middle of something  with a l length of seven feet 11 and 37/64s inches.

but i still think in shillings and pence, so go figure.


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Icarus

Base ten is a whole lot more sensible than base 12,36, 43,560 square feet per acre, 5280 feet in a mile, 1728 cubic inches in a cubic foot, etc.

In the kitchen we use teaspoons, tablespoons, cups.and occasionally ounces for measure.  Damn site easier to use grams, liters. More exact also.

We colonists are slowly, too slowly, converting to the metric system.

billy rubin

in printing i always used picas, points, and ciceros to mrasure layouts


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Dark Lightning

Much of my engineering "career" I used SI. The last 14 years, I did a mechanical job, one task of which was to spin balance a spacecraft. I about fell out of my chair when I saw they were using EEU- the moment of inertia was in "Slug-Feet^2" rather than kg-M^2. Of course, working with antennas before that, I had to be facile with both systems, since we made test fixtures and so forth on machines using EEU.

billy rubin



"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Icarus

If I remember rightly,  :unsure: a slug is equivalent to 32 pounds.  In the old days the factor g (gravity) was expressed in slugs. We used slug feet per second for dynamic calculations.  DL can fill me in if I have been confused...which is easy for me.

   

Tank

If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

Ecurb Noselrub

We don't even have 32 pound slugs in Texas ( :) . I just bought an armadillo trap, because he is digging up my flowerbed at night looking for grub worms. I'll see if it works. This is apropos to nothing, but it's my thread.

billy rubin

put out a worm feeder to distract him


"I cannot understand the popularity of that kind of music, which is based on repetition. In a civilized society, things don't need to be said more than three times."

Asmodean

Quote from: Icarus on April 04, 2023, 12:35:12 AMIf I remember rightly,  :unsure: a slug is equivalent to 32 pounds.  In the old days the factor g (gravity) was expressed in slugs. We used slug feet per second for dynamic calculations.  DL can fill me in if I have been confused...which is easy for me.

   
:headscratch: The Asmo is pretty sure that the proper thing to measure in slugs per second can either be a) French cuisine, or b) the output of a fully-automatic shotgun.

Being a God, The Asmo hereby proclaims that it is so. :smilenod:
Quote from: Ecurb Noselrub on July 25, 2013, 08:18:52 PM
In Asmo's grey lump,
wrath and dark clouds gather force.
Luxembourg trembles.

MarcusA

You can't change the past. You can just change your mind.
This user has been banned for spamming the forum.