• (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    He quoted a price that translated to 46p a litre; it was something like £1.12 here, at the cheapest place around, last time I filled up. I shall find out tonight if it's wildly changed.

    I had the chance to drive about 40 miles this morning; gas prices for regular are running $2.39 to $2.54 or so a gallon, a bit higher if you go by the highway, of course.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    idea of a 'real car' in the US isn't legally a car, but a small truck

    bzzt wrong.

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat
    FrostCat:
    I drive a minivan for convenience (children)
    How many children? If three or less, a mid-size or large family hatchback would work just as well, and be cheaper to run
  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    As it is, I spend more time than I care to admit working out how many gallons the number of litres I put in equates to every time I fill up

    For casual estimates, 4:1 is close enough. (1 quart is .89 liter, IIRC).

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat

    I think UK gallons are closer to 5:1. I'm never really sure which size is the canonical gallon for MPG though

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat
    FrostCat:
    That's a weird parody of other parts of the country you have in your head.

    yeah, so i punched it up a bit for comedy.

    and to be fair it's really only the most vocal assholes that my comment is even remotely representative of. Unvortunately that group is both vocal, and assholes, so even when they're a small percentage of the population they're more than a little disproportinate in their impact on the visible to outsiders view of the population.

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa

    In the UK? Imperial gallons, every time. The US will of course use the US gallon instead.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    So basically, it's pointless comparing UK and US MPG values

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa

    Not without the proper conversion, no

  • (disco) in reply to tarunik
    tarunik:
    I just wish that whatever's jacking up diesel prices (relative to petrol) in the US would go away

    My understanding is it's mainly priorities: you can tune your distillation to optimize for gas or for diesel, and for a long time they were tuning for gas. I don't know how true that is.

    tarunik:
    I want a small diesel truck that gets >30mpg -- but that's not economically feasible (despite being probably possible with current diesel engine tech) because diesel prices are messed up atm.

    I suppose it depends. I had a friend with a 40mpg VW Golf (?) TDI and he didn't mind the higher diesel prices, because he had such high fuel economy that diesel was relatively cheap.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    How many children? If three or less, a mid-size or large family hatchback would work just as well, and be cheaper to run

    2, but we had 7 people in the house and a couple of dogs.

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat

    Yeah, you need a minivan :smile:

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    FrostCat:
    I drive a minivan for convenience (children)
    How many children? If three or less, a mid-size or large family hatchback would work just as well, and be cheaper to run

    We bought a minivan about the time our third child was born for two reasons:

    1. We occasionally make trips to Utah to visit my brother. Such trips in a mid-size or large hatchback are no fun. And renting a car for such a long trip is expensive.
    2. We buy vehicles with the intent to keep them for 10 years. We were already intending to have a fourth child at some point when we bought our minivan. The way my wife is talking, that kid will likely be born next year.
  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    How big is the difference? Over here, they're practically the same price these days. It's a long time since I've seen a difference between petrol and diesel of more than 4 or 5 p a litre, and I have seen one place with the same price recently

    Anywhere from 25-50 cents per gallon, going from memory...

    FrostCat:
    I suppose it depends. I had a friend with a 40mpg VW Golf (?) TDI and he didn't mind the higher diesel prices, because he had such high fuel economy that diesel was relatively cheap.
    Yeah...the high diesel prices do hurt the payback on such a car, though, which is rather a shame, as modern diesel cars are very good these days.
  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    Over here, they're practically the same price these days.

    We went over this before. This is largely due to your ludicrous taxes. But I think you have more diesel demand (relative to gasoline), so more gets refined.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK
    RaceProUK:
    In the UK? Imperial gallons, every time. The US will of course use the US gallon instead.

    And the US mile. :tropical_fish:

  • (disco) in reply to Jaloopa
    Jaloopa:
    So basically, it's pointless comparing UK and US MPG values

    Yep; the difference in size of pint is a real irritation. (Distance measures are virtually identical though, to better accuracy than most people bother measuring when driving.) What's even better is that the rules for how to calculate the standardized value for a vehicle are different too. How to calculate for a particular trip is pretty trivial — divide distance travelled by fuel consumed — but weightings for combining the measured values for various driving styles are different so there's really not much to do comparing them.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?

    At what?

    How do you even compare those two things?

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    CarrieVS:
    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?

    At what?

    I don't know, but I'm going to guess probably not at amphibious operation.

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek

    I think about the only thing they have in common is... uh. I lied; I can't think of ANYTHING they have in common.

    [image] [image]

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    CarrieVS:
    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?
    At what?

    How do you even compare those two things?

    That's the joke ;)
  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    I don't know, but I'm going to guess probably not at amphibious operation.

    It accelerates quicker. I think.

  • (disco) in reply to RaceProUK

    Hilarious.

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    blakeyrat:
    CarrieVS:
    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?

    At what?

    I don't know, but I'm going to guess probably not at amphibious operation.

    At a beach assault. I thought that in the absence of any specification to the contrary, that was obvious.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS
    CarrieVS:
    HardwareGeek:
    blakeyrat:
    CarrieVS:
    Didn't they also find that a Ford Fiesta out-performed a navy landing craft?

    At what?

    I don't know, but I'm going to guess probably not at amphibious operation.

    At a beach assault. I thought that in the absence of any specification to the contrary, that was obvious.

    1. It wasn't obvious.
    2. So non-obvious, in fact, that I'm still not convinced that your assertion that it was isn't some sardonic or ironic or w/e form of wit, despite never having seen anything like that from you.
    3. I like lists.
  • (disco) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    It wasn't obvious.

    In hindsight, clearly. Hence why I used the past tense.

  • (disco) in reply to CarrieVS

    I see.

  • (disco)

    Getting back on topic :) (I remember this post from my pre-discourse membership days):

    Speaking as an ex-service engineer (software development has been my 4th career for the last 10+ years), there are some that would claim that the TRWTF is having a Server you could open up without setting off all sorts of alarms / sirens / flashing lights / closing "blast doors" etc etc and without shutting down the Server the hard way. :smiley:

  • (disco) in reply to abarker
    abarker:
    The way my wife is talking, that kid will likely be born next year.

    Aren't you on the committee that makes these decisions?

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    (Distance measures are ***virtually*** identical though
    :wtf: :question:

    AFAIR Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, and Steve Scott competed over identical 5280 foot distances....

    Filed under: :interrobang: is a lousy interrobang, have a :wtfquestion.png:...

  • (disco) in reply to ijij
    ijij:
    AFAIR Sebastian Coe, Steve Ovett, and Steve Scott competed over identical 5280 foot distances....

    I think there's a slight difference because the UK Imperial inch was (re-)defined precisely in terms of millimetres, and the US Statute inch wasn't, or at least wasn't until much later (and the number of inches per mile is the same; that's a pre-revolutionary measure). It's a difference on the order of 0.01% though, so even over a marathon, the difference is negligible. Most people simply don't bother measuring things that accurately.

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    marathon

    Rankled. Milers.

    Also - Eammon Coghlan.

    yes, you're probably just extrapolating/trolling.... but the Mile, a thing of beauty...

  • (disco) in reply to Boner
    Boner:
    Aren't you on the committee that makes these decisions?

    Clearly you've never been married.

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat

    Ah, if only. Dosn't my upbeat, happy-go-lucky tone and gerenal joie de vivre give any clues? :neutral_face:

  • (disco) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    the UK Imperial inch was (re-)defined precisely in terms of millimetres, and the US Statute inch wasn't, or at least wasn't until much later

    The US inch most certainly was, although I don't remember the timing1. Actually, the yard is defined in terms of the meter, and the inch is defined in terms of the yard.

    I once had a disagreement with a college professor about how many significant figures were appropriate to use when converting between inches and SI. He said 3, at most (25.4 mm/inch); I said that conversion is exact, so the precision of the result is limited only by the precision of the rest of the calculation. I had to go to three different libraries to find a booklet published2 by the National Bureau of Standards giving the exact legal definition of an inch in order get credit for my correct answer on the test.

    1 Further research reveals that the inch was first defined in terms of the meter in 1866 (1 m === 39.37 in). It was redefined (with the same value, but the defined unit was the yard) in 1893, and again in 1959 (with the definition of a yard changed to 0.9144 m, a difference of -0.0002%). This brought the US definitions into accord with those used in other countries, so it did indeed occur later than in the UK, although it had already been defined precisely in terms of metric units (but with a slightly different definition) for 93 years.

    2 It was also necessary that it was published after the redefinition of the meter from the distance between two scratches on a particular platinum-iridium bar to the length equal to 1 650 763.73 wavelengths in vacuum of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the levels 2p10 and 5d5 of the krypton 86 atom because this "might have changed the conversion factor." He rejected the statement in a Physics textbook that the conversion factor is exact because it had been published before that redefinition (although looking now at when that redefinition occurred, it seems unlikely; the textbook was in current use at the time, and the redefinition had occurred 20-ish years earlier).

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    and again in 1959

    Jim Ryun's records are from California... in 1966/7, other WRs were set on non-US, largely Commonwealth soil, so all that is probably square. Which is what's important. :flags:

    Thing I had forgotten: The two-mile world best for men is 7:58.61 set by Kenyan Daniel Komen in Hechtel, Belgium 19 July 1997.

    :scream:

  • (disco) in reply to blakeyrat
    blakeyrat:
    I think about the only thing they have in common is... uh. I lied; I can't think of ANYTHING they have in common.

    The colour?

  • (disco) in reply to Boner
    Boner:
    Aren't you on the committee that makes these decisions?

    In theory. But in a marriage, such decisions are generally made primarily by the person who will actually be pregnant.

  • (disco) in reply to abarker
    abarker:
    such decisions are generally made primarily by the person who will actually be pregnant.

    If the decision is reached without consensus, addition of a (or another) child to the family is likely to cause stress that will destabilize, and perhaps eventually lead to breakup of, the marriage. For all the problems we had later, this is an area my ex-wife and I made sure we were completely in agreement.

  • (disco) in reply to HardwareGeek
    HardwareGeek:
    abarker:
    such decisions are generally made primarily by the person who will actually be pregnant.

    If the decision is reached without consensus, addition of a (or another) child to the family is likely to cause stress that will destabilize, and perhaps eventually lead to breakup of, the marriage. For all the problems we had later, this is an area my ex-wife and I made sure we were completely in agreement.

    I did not mean to imply that I have no say in the matter, simply that my wife has a weighted vote in the matter. If it was entirely up to her, we'd be trying for another kid right now. Since we're closing on the sale of our house next week and moving into a brand new house this fall, I've persuaded her that it would be better to wait until after we've finished moving for the year before we start trying to have another child.

  • (disco) in reply to abarker

    It was a slightly tongue in cheek question, you're correct of course.

    We know a couple, he only ever wanted 1, she always wanted 2+ kids. They came round to visit to give us the happy news they were expecting their 2nd child. He was saying "We only ever wanted 1, I don't know how this has happened", and she's sat there like [image] I look forward to them announcing their third.

  • (disco) in reply to ijij
    ijij:
    Hechtel

    Hechtel-Eksel officially but nobody cares about that place ... Even in Belgium that is considered a small, irrelevant place.

  • (disco) in reply to Luhmann
    Luhmann:
    Hechtel-Eksel officially

    You'll have to take that up with Wikipedia.. it's apparently big enough to host (or have hosted) a decent Athletics Meet... it is, now, unto me, a veritable shrine.

  • (disco) in reply to ijij
    ijij:
    a decent Athletics Meet

    Like

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

    ?

  • (disco) in reply to Luhmann

    Remembering to add that to the Ultimate Vacation Itinerary

    Clearly Van Damme is not where Komen set this World Best, because in that same year he set the World Record for the 5000m at Van Damme.

    There's a nice looking track on the Lupinestraat in Hechtel... but no obvious reason for it being there (school, parking lots for a stadium, etc..).

    Other than that there's not much in Hechtel - except lots of streets with long names.

  • (disco) in reply to ijij
    ijij:
    Komen

    luckily then it was not organized in Komen-Waasten

  • (disco) in reply to Boner
    Boner:
    I don't know how this has happened"

    I have a friend who actually asked "how that happened" when my wife and I told him she was pregnant. He immediately regretted asking in that manner.

  • (disco) in reply to FrostCat

    hey, he asked the question. he deserved the answer. that is his punishment. :-P

  • (disco) in reply to accalia

    also, you learn really quickly that the correct answer is "no" when a member of my family asks you if you really want to know the answer.

    very quickly indeed. :hide:

  • (disco) in reply to Boner

    "I'm off the pill, and it's bareback or nothing"?

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