Speaking of weights & measures:

Railroad tracks:

The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?  Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.
 
Why did the English build them like that?  Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
 
Why did 'they' use that gauge then?  Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts ..

So, who built those old rutted roads?  Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?  Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
 
So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right.
 
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses ...
 
 
Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

Now you know, Horses' Asses control almost everything...
Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn't it?

I dunno, you just can't let a bloke have a half decent excuse, can you?

Just when I start to feel a little less red faced about my boo-boo, you have to go and declare that you're "conversant with BOTH"

Well, Mr. Smarty Pants, I'm conversant with lots of stuff, so there.

Oh yeah, I arranged for the delivery to be on Wednesday [tomorrow]between 7.30am and 11.30am.

I could have had it today but I had a really rough night with the damned flu and didn't want to be bothered with it today.

They could have delivered today between 8.00am and 10.00pm, but I just wanted to go to bed after being up pretty much all night coughing and sneezing.... feeling like Andre The Giant is sitting on my chest.  Oh how glad I am that I quit the smokes 2 1/2 years ago.

@starkers - get well soon sooner!

@Daiwa - Brilliant! 

Yes, mate, I intend to... going back to bed shortly and hope to be rid of it in the morning, fingers crossed.

I went to bed about 8.40 this morning and got about 4 hours sleep, but that's nowhere near enough after an all-nighter so I'm going back now [around 11.00pm] and hope I'm able to sleep until about 7.00am, so's I'm hopefully wide eyed and alert for when my stuff arrives.

Yeah, very good.

ORRIGHT, IT"S HERE.  YAY!!!!!!

So right now I'm gonna shut this baby down to cannibalise the drives, GPU, Soundcard, etc.

Will be off line 'til further notice.   BYE!

Good luck, Cap'n!

..........and Starkers was never heard from again..........................................................................................

guess you could call it a stripped stark error.

harpo

Orright,so after several distractions and numerous interruptions [my sister rang 2-3 times, eating, etc] I finally am back on line with the new rig.

Okay, so the first time this beast scared me was when it took two couriers to bring it in... like my first thought was: "Oh fark, they've brought those feching big fans and all." Yup, they had me worried for a while... it's all Jafo's fault, going on and on about my boo-boo with the fan measurements.  Anyhow, when I got it out of the box I near shat. 

It's like near twice the freakin' size of my old tower... a good 3" wider, about 4" - 5" taller and about 4" - 5" deeper.  Yeah, I was worried it wouldn't fit in the pigeon hole on my desk, and whether or not I'd be able to access the HDD dock and front USB3's.  Let's say it just fits in height-wise, and it wouldn't have wanted to be any taller... at its highest point there's half an inch to spare to the shelf above, so to access those ports/dock I have to slide the case forward about 4 inches, which is a breeze with the nice big feet on it.

Yeah, very nearly, very nearly!!!  I went inside to route a few cables and nearly got lost... it's that big. However, that was not the reason I was delayed getting back.  Apart from the interruptions and distractions, I could not get Acronis to behave itself and restore the image I did yesterday.  For some reason it couldn't see it and kept going to an older image that I preferred not to use... was missing a couple of items I didn't want to have to reactivate, etc.  It finally allowed me to access the desired image and viola.... I'm baaaaack

Anyhow, the building part went great and there were no issues at all... smooth sailing all the way.  You were right, Harpo, I did enjoy working with the case... and the room, it's fantastic. What I will have to do, though, is get out the drill and make a series of holes in the the shelf above to allow for better circulation from the top fan.  It's right at the back so nobody will notice, and I'll use this template I have to make it look real dandy.

We did get a few photos so I'll upload them shortly so you can all see.

I just traded in my Xbox 360 and preordered a Nexus 7.  I feel dirty.  

Not just dirty, you should feel downright disgusting filthy dirty... not that I know what Nexus 7 is, but owning an X-Box 360 is more than enough.

Yeah owning hardware I never use while wanting stuff I would is awesome. It's like...

like...

umm, something.

I also did not know what a nexus 7 is/was, turns out it is one of those phones for dummies that are smarter than the users ie the phone uses the person, NOT the way I prefer ie person uses phone.

harpo

He most likely ment the new Nexus 7 (mini-)tablet

I see that they made it large enough for idiots to FIND when they put it down.

like  starkers new case

harpo

Yeah, do you even know what a tablet is?

It's a computer.

Not a phone.

Get a clue.

tablets are made by medicine companies eg aspirin tablets, panadol tablets, antibiotic tablets etc...

computers consist of a computer BOX that has one or more storage devices( eg hdd, odd, tape drive, floppy drive), a keyboard, usually a screen, possibly a mouse and other external peripherals. it does NOT have the keyboard or storage devices

phones have either a separate handset or integrated handset.

and the real killer of your claim is the websites that had it listed it as a PHONE!!!!

these are the clues for you to see what I KNOW. now grow another brain cell so the one you have will not be lonely.

harpo

No keyboard? Really?

No storage devices?
Just because 'it' doesn't spin up and makes grinding noises when active doesn't mean it hasn't got any storage.

Think outside the 'box'.... What we, 'the elders', see as a computer isn't necessarily the definition of a computer.
Things 'evolve', you know.

10-15 years ago anyone our ages would have said the same about mobile phones... 'That's not a phone. It doesn't have a cord or a dial'