Tundras live: Dumb Dad Jokes, Incorrect Opinions, and Relationship Advice.

Wow, yep. Good for him

 

Damn straight man. I'm glad my high school counselor was pushing the trades on a lot of us.
I make more than most people I know with a 4 year degree.

 

Same.

 

Yeah but, that's everyone else. When you like my posts, it's because you really like them, right?
Right?

 

Out all last week at a conference. I trust the shenanigans have been up to par, so I'll just start back here. I did read through 'I love this forum', so that was nice. Now I'll settle into a warm and friendly expense report and 500 missed emails.

 

Welcome back to the s#itshow.

 

A couple hours later.

 

Ahem. <tap tap>

YES. BUT I DO IT OUT OF LOVE.

 

My lumbar hurts just watching that.

 

I think they were aiming for the couch. I appreciate their effort so we can enjoy the fail.

 

I'll never understand why videos like this get uploaded to the internet instead of deleted.

 

Wow...I'm following him on Spotify now too...

 

That was my first thought too. Guess people are so hungry for attention from internet strangers that anything plays. Pretty tragic actually.

 

There is a huge vacuum for people willing to learn a trade. I know some machinists at work and they have nothing good to say about the younger generation. They cannot keep their face out of their phone, won't pay attention and expect senior pay for it.

Actually, it's not just tradesmen...I work around young engineers that have Masters and think that equates to being a senior engineer after bouncing between 3 jobs in 4-5 years. Drives me nuts.

 

Watching doomsday peppers, waiting for preseason football.
They keep saying this one guy has 19 hectares.
I'm thinking, wow, must be a huge piece of land.
I looked it up and a hectare = 2 1/2 acres.
47 acres.
Why not just say 47 acres?
So stupid.

 

Hectare sounds like the name of some dude that would try to rufie your drink at the bar.

 

I have to admit I'm in the camp that thinks we should have been using the metric system by now. It's us and 2 other countries against the world, and those two aren't exactly the modern first world. Pull the bandaid off and move to meters already.

 

The difficulty is that current old timers (over 25) would struggle with the conceptualization that is hardwired through what we learn in our youth. I don't oppose the metric system, but I don't think in metric. Ask a Canadian ( @Cpl_Punishment @Outbound ) how fast 30 KPH is and they can visualize the speed, and even explain it to an American without converting it to MPH. Something like "it's slower than normal town/city speeds" or more easily "It's your typical school zone speed." See, easy to visualize it. Not that way for me. I have to go get a converter tool on google to tell me how fast it is because just saying the speed limit is 110 KPH doesn't tell me anything. I have no frame of reference for it. I know enough to know it's over 60 MPH, but how much over? If I say I'm 5 miles away, you have an idea of that distance, yes? Now what about if I say I'm 5 kilometers away? I'm lost at that point.

It gets worse when you get into doing height in centimeters. I know approximately how tall somebody is if they say they are 6 foot even. I have no idea what that is in centimeters. I can hold my hands roughly a foot apart as can most people who grew up in the USA, but if you ask the average American to hold their hands up 80 centimeters apart I bet most would have no idea how big that is. I don't.

My brain really dies when I try to figure metric fuel economy, because they are measuring distance per volume of fuel, whereas we do the opposite.

The only way The States go metric is if we heavily teach it in schools, double up on road signs for a generation or two, and wait for everyone over who is over 25 today to die off before abandoning the Imperial system. If we just converted next year so many people would be utterly lost. Myself included.

 

Most people I know in Canada use both systems. It all depends on what you're doing. A few examples:

Metric:
- Distance
- Speed
- Volume
- Fuel economy (liters per 100km)
- Long range shooting
- Machining and other technical work requiring precision.
- Government construction projects
- People who insist upon it because they're pompous

Imperial:
- height of people
- weight of nearly everything
- general measurments (everything in usually measured in feet and inches, most people think in these units)
- virtually every non-government construction project
- fuel economy (miles per gallon, many people still think this way)

I switch back and forth daily, but generally think and visualize in Imperial. There's a case manufacturer called Nanuk, which is a Candadian version of Pelican. Nice kit, but the only measurements on their site are metric. I have to open up a converter to figure out the size of a case because I can't visualize what something like 152mm is but I know what 6" is.

Like your 80cm example, most Canadians would never be able to show you with their hands. They'll convert to inches and use that.

 

So does your sister.

 

And your mom.

 

Hey, if old ladies who could go bear hunting with nothing but a broomstick are what get you excited, I'm not going to stop you.

 

I guess the 'pull the bandaid off' phrase was the wrong phrase. We do have Kmh on our speedometers, and we could easily put it on speed limit signs as they're replaced. Science is generally done in the metric system in the US already (wasn't there a joint French/US spacecraft stranded on Mars due to mixing systems a few years ago?). All those other points are valid - - it'll take a generation to get it in place. Jimmy Carter tried to do it when he was president, but I think it failed because Jimmy Carter, not because people were so opposed to measuring differently. In England they still measure body weight in stone (14lbs), and I'm sure there are other examples around the world where folks use different systems mashed up. I'll be interested in how they metricify a few things that seem to have their own system - - 6-penny nails, No.2 paper bags, etc.

 

Also, there are two types of countries in this world. Those who use the metric system, and those who have landed on the Moon.

 

I think the Brits measure distance in KM and speed on the highway in MPH. I remember they have a weird mashup like that. Perhaps @TheBrit can confirm.