[lace-chat] Re: Tax Free Days
Hello everyone, Tamara was asking about petrol prices in non English speaking countries and thought there are too few of us to comment. My reason for not writing anytihng in the first place was pure laziness. All those different gallons and currency changes... ;-) I do not drive very often, but asked my fellow worker. The current prize here in Finland is 1,20 Euros per litre. According to the web page Margery sent: 1 US gallon is 3,8 litres. That would make 1 gallon cost 4,56 Euros. According to OANDA currency calculator: (Link sent to the list long time ago, do not personally know about its reliability.) 4,56 Euros is 5,58 US Dollars 4,56 Euros is 3,04 British Pounds Most of the prize is different taxes. I am surprised to realise that according to Jean in Poole the Brits pay more (82.2 Pounds per litre makes 3.12 Pounds per gallon) than we do. I have always thought that we have the most expencive petrol on earth. That is the impresson you get when listening to news in which the prize is commented. :) Happy lacing! Outi [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Weronika's Matlab
Weronika (confused in Caltech, Pasadena, USA) (Also, my Matlab program just returned out of memory, arrgh) Hi, Weronika - Programming's like hitting your head on a brick wall - lovely when it stops! G And a programmer is a machine for turning coffee into code - is that still true for the newer generations of programmers? BFN, Margery. (programming still, since 1963) [EMAIL PROTECTED] in North Herts, UK To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Petrol
The English (don't know about the rest of the UK) are great at panicking whenever shortage is mentioned, and create an even greater shortage by panic buying. At Christmas, when the shops close for a couple of days, people buy enough food for at least two weeks, as they seem to think the shops might never open again. Then there's the mention of a price rise in petrol - that results in long queues at petrol stations just to save a few pence on one tank of fuel, and in some cases on just a few litres. Last evening I went to my local supermarket to find a very long queue to the petrol station part of it. Remember yesterday morning it was anounced that the average price had risen to 82.2 pence a litre. The supermarket had taken advantage of this and had a big notice announcing 5p off per litre of petrol, which accounted for the queues. But what the drivers obviously hadn't noticed was the very small print at the bottom of the notice when you spend 50 pounds in store. From the store car park, I could see a couple of arguments going on at the pay booth. The store was also in the process of putting security guards out in the queue to make sure the motorists knew the conditions for getting the 5p off. Jean in Poole To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace-chat] Weronika's Matlab
(Also, my Matlab program just returned out of memory, arrgh) Hi, Weronika - Programming's like hitting your head on a brick wall - lovely when it stops! G g. Actually programming isn't that bad, I just wish I had someone to debug it for me! Plus, I spent most of last summer dissecting fruit fly larvae - programming really isn't that bad. At least you can be pretty sure there's nothing disgusting in your coffee g. And a programmer is a machine for turning coffee into code - is that still true for the newer generations of programmers? I'm the rare non-coffee-addicted Techer, but in general, yes. Even worse for the electronics people, it seems. Two years ago during finals a friend of mine locked himself in the electronics building basement for I think 5 days, without sleep or food, in order to finish his class project. BFN, What does that mean? Weronika (Caltech, Pasadena, California) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace] Re: [lace-chat] The culture shock
The last confusing time detail I can never remember properly - do you use 00 or 12 for midnight and noon, and which one is pm and which one is am? Weronika Okay. If 11 PM is 2300, then midnight can only be . 1200 would not follow 2300, but would. Therefore, 1200 is noon and it is PM. is midnight and it is AM Unless of course, you live in Spain, which has a whole different set of rules. I worked at a voice mail company and had to check out the Spanish phrases. We had to invent a whole new method of concatenating phrases because of the Spanish way of doing things. AM doesn't change to PM until 1300, or 1400, depending on some arcane detail I don't quite remember. But AM and PM aren't used to announce the time. Times are described as morning. afternoon, evening and night. Things are always done a little differently everywhere you go. Good night (but it's past midnight, so Good morning) Patty To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace-chat] The culture shock
Weronika Patena [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ah, and they [windows] all have those insect nets, In Michigan (very recently wet, rainy Michigan), if you didn't have window screens, you'd be eaten alive at night by mosquitoes. Even with the screens, sometimes the mosquito-whining from outside the screens drives me crazy, and if one of the little devils has sneaked into the house, into the bedroom, it has to die before I can sleep. Does the US really have that many more flying, stinging insects than elsewhere in the world? Insects the screens keep out (in Michigan, I'm sure the list varies by area of the US): horseflies, blackflies, mosquitoes, wasps, hornets, various native bees, honey bees. Non-stinging but annoying to have blundering around: crane flies (or mosquito hawks, although they don't eat mosquitoes, unfortunately), all kinds of house flies. And nothing keeps out a no-see-um, a tiny little biting fly that can walk right through window screen mesh. The loggers who came here to lumber off our white pine forests came up with folk tales about the mosquitoes. One I dimly remember has a logger running from a cloud of mosquitoes. He hides under a big iron cooking pot, only to have the mosquitoes sting through it. He hammers each stinger over as it pierces the iron, and eventually the whole swarm is caught, whereupon they fly away, pot and all. Every state I've ever heard of with lots of mosquitoes, jokingly says the mosquito is the state bird. Lynn Carpenter in SW Michigan, USA alwen at i2k dot com To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace-chat] Weronika's Matlab
Maybe for some of them (we still have a pot brewing in all the break rooms around here), but not for me. I try to limit my caffeine intake to chocolate, which I can't live without. Not sure if I qualify as newer generation since I just passed my 40th birthday. Lisa in Dallas Margery wrote: And a programmer is a machine for turning coffee into code - is that still true for the newer generations of programmers? To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Screens and walking
Hi All, I also love reading about the differences among countries. We sure need window screens in Vermont for most of the bugs mentioned by Lynn. I was surprised when we spent the night in a hotel on the Oregon coast and had no screens. They didn't have any bugs! Very nice! I suppose there were some at the fish canneries in a nearby town but the ocean breeze blew them away from the hotel. I walk everywhere. I did when I lived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (big city) and I do now in Brattleboro, Vermont (population 12,000). I love walking and I was thrilled to find out it's good for me too G. My bone density is fabulous! I'm so amazed how many people drive everywhere even when they could walk. Two years ago I worked for 8 months at a place on the other side of town (2.5 or 3 miles from my home). That was a bit much for a round trip so I'd walk to town (3/4 mile) and take the bus to work. The bus was erratic about time in the afternoon so often I'd walk home. I realize that is a tiny commute for most people! When I first started that job I drove for two weeks before the car broke down. I hated it! I'd get home and jump out of the car to take a walk. All the worries of the day were still with me and I hadn't seen anything of nature on the way home. When I walk the worries fall from my shoulders and I look at the flowers and birds and talk to the cats and people I see, much more to my liking! We also used to have many, many neighborhood grocery stores in town. I've lived here 30 years and in the last 20 years they've been closing. They are more expensive but I like talking to the people who work there and it's more convenient. I can walk there instead of driving! Now I do go to the big grocery store every week or two but usually buy at a smaller place. Recently a large convenience store closed in town to make way for a big parking garage! That store was used by everyone who lives downtown, especially those in the Senior housing across the street. However there was good news last week. We have an Indian restaurant downtown and they had a small grocery behind it. The grocery has now moved to a more central location and they are adding milk and other items to the Indian specialites! It will be nice to be able to pick up a few things on my way home. As Tamara (I think) said, cars are smaller in the US than they used to be! I went to Italy and Greece in 1967 and I remember seeing a Citroen (sp?) and it looked so big! Also an American car somewhere, maybe in Rome, which looked very out of place! Now it seems the vehicles are getting bigger again. Jane in Vermont, USA where it's partly cloudy instead of totally cloudy - an improvement! [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace-chat] The culture shock
In Michigan (very recently wet, rainy Michigan), if you didn't have window screens, you'd be eaten alive at night by mosquitoes. Even with the screens, sometimes the mosquito-whining from outside the screens drives me crazy, and if one of the little devils has sneaked into the house, into the bedroom, it has to die before I can sleep. Does the US really have that many more flying, stinging insects than elsewhere in the world? Given how big the US is, it's quite probable that some part of it has more of them than at least anywhere in Europe. I wouldn't be sure about Africa and South America... But there are pretty much no insects here in California, and we still have the screens. Well, there are ants, but the windows don't keep them out at all... We have some mosquitoes in Poland, especially the lake region - one summer I lived in a little wooden summer house right next to a lake for a few weeks, and the mosquitoes really were everywhere. We closed all the windows and doors, but once someone left the little bathroom window open a little, and the next time someone opened the door, a huge *cloud* of mosquitoes flew out and tried to kill us g. I'm going to Alaska in two weeks - I wonder if there'll be mosquitoes there... Weronika To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Re: Tax Free Days
At 09:52 AM 6/2/04 +0300, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Most of the prize is different taxes. Here in the states, we have no idea how much of the price of auto fuel is taxes. A gas-station attendant once told me that it's against the law to tell us! So much for the First Amendment. -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where the constitution is past its use-by date. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace] Re: [lace-chat] The culture shock
At 12:57 AM 6/2/04 -0700, Weronika Patena wrote: The last confusing time detail I can never remember properly - do you use 00 or 12 for midnight and noon, and which one is pm and which one is am? In twelve-hour time, it's 12:00. (In modular arithmetic -- clock arithmetic, useful for many things but it's been forty years since I studied it no longer remember what -- it would be 0:00. More precisely, 12 mod 12 equals zero, as do 24, 36, etc.) Everybody gets confused over whether 12:00 is ante meridian or post meridian. But everyone agrees that 12:01 in the afternoon is post meridian, and 12:01 in the morning is ante meridian. Sensible people say that the time one minute after 11:59 AM is twelve noon, and the time one minute after 11:59 PM is twelve midnight. -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where the sun is shining. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace] Re: [lace-chat] The culture shock
At 06:58 PM 6/2/04 +1000, Ruth Budge wrote: Just remember that when one day ends, the next day starts - at midnight!! Unless you are an astronomer . . . ;-) -- Joy Beeson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where the creek isn't quite flooding and three partly-cloudy days are promised. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Software upgrade - a funny
Enjoy!! Peter INSTALLING HUSBAND V1.0 Dear Tech Support, Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance - particularly in the flower and jewellery applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0. In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0. and Golf Clubs 4.1. Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do? Signed, Desperate Dear Desperate: First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command: http\\www.IThoughtYouLovedMe.html and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5. But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0, or Beer 6.1. Beer 6.1 is a very bad program that will download the Snoring Loudly Beta. Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background, that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0. In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Hot Food 3.0 and Lingerie 7.7. Good Luck, Tech Support To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Re: Phone call charges
On Jun 1, 2004, at 16:16, H. Muth (Heather) wrote: I just got my phone bill today and you will all (especially Tamara) be pleased to know that it cost me CAD$1.64 to talk to David. Yes, only $1.64 and we talked for 23 minutes! I was expecting 5-7 dollars so am pleased at this price. And my short call to Tamara (she called me back and we talked mostly on her bill) was only CAD$.44. Mine came in yesterday and it was close to $13. Which hiked the total bill sufficiently higher from our normal fare to prompt Severn into asking if I had, by any chance, called British Columbia. He was all set to call the phone company and complain about their screw up since, knowing my aversion of the phone, he figured it was highly unlikely I'd made the call :) We probably should set up some cheap-o plan for long-distance calls but, since we hardly ever use the phone for numbers other than those starting with 800, it never seems worth the trouble. To give you an idea of relative value, a large Tim Horton's (a Canadian icon) coffee is CAD$1.55 and a McDonald's Big Mac costs CAD$2.99. Pretty good deal for the call, eh? Not bad :) Lessee... What could I have had for $13? Two booklets of 2-Pair Inventions printed? Half a tankful of gas? Severn's final comment, when baulked of his gripe against the phone company, was: if I'd known she was calling from Brit Columbia, I wouldn't have passed the message onto you g --- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [lace-chat] Re: Phone call charges
If you don't want to be locked into a subscribed plan because you don't make frequent long distance calls, look to see what cheap plan programs exist for your area. I dial 101-55-66 before I make long distance calls. The discounts are enormous AND the charges are added to the normal phone bill so payment is just included in with all the other charges. You have to be careful because the charges are $1 for 10 or 20 minutes depending on the plan, so if the person isn't there, you still have to pay $1, and over the 10 or 20 minutes are charged on a per minute basis. But, if I want to call to friends in Washington State or North Dakota (my 2 usual North American destinations), I call first, check the person is home, then immediately call them back. The 10-20 seconds it takes to make sure they are home only costs a few cents. Then I put on the timer and call them back. I also use it to call to England every week, where there is no minimum time limit. A recent 78 minute call to my sister, Jacquie, cost just over $5, and a 10 minute call to my mum cost just 70 cents. Malvary in Ottawa (who is so happy that Jacquie and her dragon, Basilick, were prize winners because mum, my aunts and I are all basking in reflected glory.) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[lace-chat] Re: Phone call charges
On Jun 3, 2004, at 0:28, Malvary Cole wrote: I also use it to call to England every week, where there is no minimum time limit. A recent 78 minute call to my sister, Jacquie, cost just over $5, and a 10 minute call to my mum cost just 70 cents. Malvary in Ottawa (who is so happy that Jacquie and her dragon, Basilick, were prize winners because mum, my aunts and I are all basking in reflected glory.) Jacquie Tinch is your sister??? And both of you lacemakers??? What a small, small world... :) --- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
