Thread: Happy meals.

A new fish and chip shop opened up bear us about a month ago and we decide to give it a go so I ordered two serves of Barra and chips.
The food was delicious but each serve was enormous, 2 huge pieces of fish and enough chips to trigger a major diabetic episode if I ate even half of them.
Now we order one serve and SWMBO gets 4/5ths of the chips.
No teeth sharing but

Originally Posted by BobL

Now we order one serve and SWMBO gets 4/5ths of the chips.

4/5ths? Did you write that so RRich could understand that😂
Rgds,
Crocy.

OK, 4/5th or 80%. What am I missing?

We used to sell 80 proof as a "Fifth" meaning a fifth of a gallon or 757 ml. Now we get an 'Imperial' fifth or 750 ml. Now I cry over all those missing 7 ml that I am paying taxes on but not receiving.

Originally Posted by rrich

OK, 4/5th or 80%. What am I missing?

We used to sell 80 proof as a "Fifth" meaning a fifth of a gallon or 757 ml. Now we get an 'Imperial' fifth or 750 ml. Now I cry over all those missing 7 ml that I am paying taxes on but not receiving.

I was having a go at BobL, haven't heard anyone except Americans using fractions for a long time. On another forum (US based) they were discussing buying/selling wood and the backwards and forward's on who had what available in your weird system of 5/4 and 6/4 etc, makes me cringe, because metric is so, so much easier.
Rgds,
Crocy.

Originally Posted by Old Croc

I was having a go at BobL, haven't heard anyone except Americans using fractions for a long time. On another forum (US based) they were discussing buying/selling wood and the backwards and forward's on who had what available in your weird system of 5/4 and 6/4 etc, makes me cringe, because metric is so, so much easier.
Rgds,
Crocy.

I wouldn't be too quick to sneer or laugh at fractions, it's not old fashioned or quaint but a real mathematical thing.
Many formulas in Physics and maths use fractions.
For example; the volume of a sphere is not 1.33 ∏ r^3 but 4/3 ∏ r^3 and there is a difference, especially if you have to get to the moon..
The moment of inertia for a spherical shell with the axis through the centre is 2/3MR^2

In practice in the shed I do tend to work with metric systems but as I also often use imperial drill, tap & die sets and also use Vernier callipers with the fractional display I'm often mixing and matching.

If you look at my signature quip, that is really true. I tried to convince my wife that metric was the way to go in the early 1970s. I failed as did millions others. When I told her to look at her measuring cup and tell me how many ML in 4 cups she didn't speak for hours.

It was September 1958 when I was introduced to the metric system in High School Chemistry. All I could think, the metric system is effing brilliant. Mr. Jessup, our chemistry teacher didn't appreciate the expression. Then he explained that automotive efficiency was expressed as liters consumed per 100 kilometers. I think that metric lost a lot of the guys. I mean, if you consume one gallon of gas, how many miles did you travel?

In woodworking there is a very large and well known international company that turned me off to the metric system. I had devised a very simple method of making tenons of a very precise and repeatable 3/8 inch thick, or 9.525 mm to be exact. I bought a new chisel, 3/8 inch, to clean out out the mortise. The mortise was cut with a 3/8 router bit. Previously my old (Before JC was even a choir boy.) Craftsman 1/4 chisel worked well but it was a PITA. Oh my new 3/8 chisel was going to be wonderful. Unfortunately it was 10 mm and not 3/8. You can not believe the grief that a miniscule 0.475 mm made. Not even a ½ of a mm. The joints were so sloppy that they couldn't be glued up. The joints became wedged tenon joints that could not be disassembled after a dry fit. Yes, they were eventually glued. Yes a nail gun was used to insure that the joints stayed fixed.

I did write a letter to the company in question. I started it with "How could you". Didn't do much good.

So speak kindly of the Imperial system as it is based on some ancient Anglo Saxon Protestant Monarch's foot length. Yeah, I know. But I never learned how to cook. Boil water? Does that mean heat the water until it bubbles? Is that little bubbles or large bubbles? I mean, I can barely cook oat meal cereal (Gruel) in the microwave.

As for the 5/4 and 6/4 designation for timber it is worse. In ancient times a 2 x 4 was really 2 by 4 inches. If you have ever worked on an older house you will find the studs a real 2 x 4 in the walls. Today a 2 x 4 is 1½ by 3½. AND 8 foot studs in the wall are really 96 inches, not 93 inches.

I may have mentioned this before. In 1974 Australia went metric. At the end of 1973 one of the last things I did before changing employers was produce a conversion table for all the units that people in my department were likely to use, and distributed throughout the organisation. Unfortunately, there was one error in it - correct numbers, but several orders of magnitude wrong. I realised it almost immediately and issued a correction, but obviously, some people didn't replace the incorrect one.
Ten years later, I returned to work at this organisation and was surprised to find that a number of people still had the incorrect table stuck up on their walls. When I retired after another 20 years, some still had it stuck up.

The American method of listing timber sizes (ie 5/4 or 6/4) my theory is that in the saw mill they had a series of holes on a table saw, drilled 1/4" apart to set the fence in while ripping down the logs to thickness. So instead of having to measure for a different setting of the fence it was quicker (cause Yanks are always in a hurry) to drop the fence into another 1/4" hole to change from say 2" to say 2 1/2" or from 8/4 to 10/4. I may be miles off but it looks feasible to my feeble brain

Originally Posted by chambezio

The American method of listing timber sizes (ie 5/4 or 6/4) my theory is that in the saw mill they had a series of holes on a table saw, drilled 1/4" apart to set the fence in while ripping down the logs to thickness. So instead of having to measure for a different setting of the fence it was quicker (cause Yanks are always in a hurry) to drop the fence into another 1/4" hole to change from say 2" to say 2 1/2" or from 8/4 to 10/4. I may be miles off but it looks feasible to my feeble brain

Nearly but not quite. The fractions system relates to what the log is sawn to when green, the timber is then stacked and stickered to cure, and in that process it shrinks and or warps. If it is subsequently dressed it is sold as dimensional lumber generally with normal fractions ( like 11/2 inch) sizing. The higher volume US commercial mills put the log on a rail mounted carriage to run it through the mill blade, and the carriage has a cross feed mechanism operated by a lever. Each pull on the lever brings the log 1/4inch across the carriage. So the operator pulls in the lever 5 times for 5/4, or 8 times for 8/4, so that is how the timber is sold.

rrich,
You're only got to worry about missing 7ml. Here in Oz, they used to sell spirits in 750ml bottles....Now they are 700ml. We dropped 50mls somewhere along the way

Originally Posted by skot

You're only got to worry about missing 7ml. Here in Oz, they used to sell spirits in 750ml bottles....Now they are 700ml. We dropped 50mls somewhere along the way

I would almost bet that you are still paying taxes on that missing 50 ML.

BTW - A friend brought me some Irish whiskey back from a trip. I was shocked to discover only 700 ML.

I pulled an old bottle of Kahlua out of the cellar. 26%. Bottles available now are 20%.

slightly different tack, but several times I have been tempted to employ a lawyer and have McDonalds charged with false advertising.

how on earth can they call that thing they sell a mchappy meal. (mccrappy meal meal suits)
Last time I ate at McDonalds was 10-12 years ago had indigestion for next 24 hours, never been inside to eat since.

Originally Posted by skot

rrich,
You're only got to worry about missing 7ml. Here in Oz, they used to sell spirits in 750ml bottles....Now they are 700ml. We dropped 50mls somewhere along the way

That would be the angels' share.