on 11.11.2000 03.13, Ma Be at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Nov 2000 14:58:54 Gregory Peterson wrote:
>> ...
>> ... I tell people that my house is 150 m from the corner on the north side of
>> the road and I usually get a blank look in return.
>
> And this is the kind of stupid reaction that REALLY ticks me off! !#$$%%@#$%^
> Indeed! This does happen a lot.
>
>> ...Nobody uses their odometer or trip-odometer to measure distances in the
>> city.
>> ...
> Now, this one comes to me as a huge surprise! By golly, aren't odometers
> supposed to be used for that purpose??? If someone says 24 km to a certain
> place, how can one *be sure* to find it without the use of an instrument. Do
> people have such "mind accuracy" that they could dispense with the instrument?
> On the other hand, this would explain why I still hear so many around here
> talking about distances in miles (IRK!)... :-(
>
Dear Greg, Marcus, and All,
Recently I have seen modern cars in Australia with electronic odometers.
These have the ability - as did the old mechanical ones - of indicating each
100 metre mark with the decimal number on the trip odometer. But the newer
ones also have a 'mode' switch that allows you to change this to two decimal
places, thus allowing you to use the odometer to measure in 10 metre lots.
My brother in law and I recently used this feature to prepare for some
fencing on his farm. We designed the fence in SI units, then drove along the
line of the proposed new fence, while throwing out the right amount of
materials every time the odometer indicated we had gone 10 m.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin CAMS
Geelong, Australia
>
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