21 May 2017

A good week. I made progress on a couple of projects at work, patched a bunch of systems, and this weekend, patched another bunch of systems. Best of all, they’re all still running and doing their assigned tasks. The lawns are mowed, the coffee is roasted, Marcia’s new office fan/light is installed, and my energy: it is gone. But the wheel keeps turning. Three day weekend coming up next, that’s a good thing.

Oh, yeah, about that new office fan/light? I had tucked the receipt into the box when I bought it … five years ago. Sigh. New means newly installed, I guess.

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Huh. For some reason I’d never run across the term “short ton” before. 2000#, aka “a ton” in US measurements. Apparently all the other usages: “long ton”, “metric ton”, and “tonne” refer to  1000 kilograms (around 2200 pounds). Apparently that’s also the common usage in Britan, where I might have expected a larger unit of measure. After all, the weight of many heavy things is measured in “stones.” A stone ton would be about 28000 pounds. Now that’s a useful unit of measure, especially when referring to chocolate, or bacon. Sadly, though, the UK banned stone-based units of measure for commercial purposes back in 1985. This from the country that kept its national currency even after joining the EU. I say, upon Brexit, bring back the stones!

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DoD reported no new casualties in the last week, for which we are grateful. Ciao!

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About bilborg

I am who I am, there's plenty of data on this site to tell you more. Briefly, I'm a husband, computer geek, avid reader, gardener, and builder of furniture.

2 Responses to 21 May 2017

  1. Geoff Powell says:

    The “long ton”, a British unit, is 2240 pounds. The metric ton is indeed 1000kg, or 2200 pounds, since 1kg=2.2 pounds, as is the “tonne”, which seems to be an alternate usage.

    The stone is 14 pounds, and is still in live use in UK – we say , “She’s 9 stone 3lb” meaning “she weighs 129 pounds”. By government fiat, commerce is done in metric units – kilogrammes (note the spelling!) although a significant number of people (myself included!) still convert mentally.

    There ain’t no such animal as a “stone ton”, although your derivation sounds plausible.