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Grex > Agora56 > #20: How will you celebrate New Year's Eve? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 96 responses total. |
slynne
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response 55 of 96:
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Jan 3 17:12 UTC 2006 |
I decided to stay home by myself. A friend of mine who is a bartender
calls New Year s Eve, "amateur night" because of all the people who
come out and feel that they need to party even though they aren t
really party people so they end up drinking too much and making asses
of themselves. I didn t feel that I needed to witness that this year
and I definitely didn t want to do that myself even though being an
amateur can be kind of fun even if it bugs everyone else around you.
I cracked open a bottle of cheap Asti from Trader Joe s and ordered a
pizza. I watched the last several episodes of the second season of 24.
Around midnight, the dogs got all weird so I thought they might need a
walk but then there were fireworks from the New Year s jubilee thing in
Depot Town and the dogs got scared so I went home. I had two messages
on my machine; one from the friends who live in Sonoma County and the
other from happyboy. I called happyboy back and heard that his daughter
is a big New Year s Eve party *animal*
I was kind of bummed because I missed watching the ball drop. At first
I thought it was the first year that I didnt watch it but then I
remembered that I didnt watch it last year either because I was in
Hawaii on New Years Eve.
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rcurl
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response 56 of 96:
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Jan 3 17:48 UTC 2006 |
Where did this ball-dropping thing come from? They don't even *drop* it,
for Pete's sake: more like letting it ooze down. Why not have it rise for
a change? Or make it a cube? Or Dick Clark? I noticed in the news that
elsewhere they are dropping other things.
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tod
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response 57 of 96:
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Jan 3 17:53 UTC 2006 |
I'd hoped Clay Aiken would ride on the ball as it was lowered since they had
Ryan Seacrest in full annoyance.
re #54
You think people want to bring in the new year watching Steven Hawking on a
speak&spell do the count down? Well, besides Son of the Beach fans..
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marcvh
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response 58 of 96:
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Jan 3 18:16 UTC 2006 |
Pizza and cheap champagne has been our New Year's Tradition for some time.
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naftee
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response 59 of 96:
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Jan 4 04:31 UTC 2006 |
is happyboy's daughter hot :!?
are you one of his old b/f/s or something, slynne ?!
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slynne
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response 60 of 96:
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Jan 4 13:57 UTC 2006 |
Maybe I am one of YOUR old b/f/s or something?
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ric
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response 61 of 96:
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Jan 4 14:05 UTC 2006 |
I celebrated by attending a Carolina Hurricanes hockey game, in which the
first place Canes beat down the montreal canadiens.
Then I took my niece home, got back to my house around 11:55, turned on the
TV, watched the ball drop, kissed my wife and went to sleep
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bhoward
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response 62 of 96:
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Jan 4 15:23 UTC 2006 |
Four days on and we are finished, or rather, I nearly was.
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naftee
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response 63 of 96:
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Jan 4 20:51 UTC 2006 |
re 60
You're a guy ?!
dude.
uh !
that's creepy ?!
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slynne
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response 64 of 96:
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Jan 5 00:05 UTC 2006 |
...or something
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bhelliom
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response 65 of 96:
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Jan 5 05:30 UTC 2006 |
resp:54 George is no one's pal.
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mcnally
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response 66 of 96:
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Jan 5 23:58 UTC 2006 |
That's probably a bit harsh. I'll bet there are many who have been
happy to see George again after an unexpected absence.
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gull
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response 67 of 96:
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Jan 7 02:39 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:56: "Time balls" were once commonly used as devices for
signalling standard time, mostly so ships at dock could reset their
chronometers:
http://www.tumblong.uts.edu.au/artefacts/greenwich/more.cfm
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rcurl
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response 68 of 96:
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Jan 7 06:55 UTC 2006 |
You're right! And, I knew that...but had gone blank in connecting the
*slow lowering* of the Times Square ball, and the *dropping* of the
time balls used for chronometer synchronization. My search of the web,
however, did not find how fast they were "dropped:. They say they were
dropped, but since they were big (a yard of more in diameter, 50 lbs or so
in weight), I find it hard to imagine that they were simply dropped. More
likely, they were lowered, but rapidly. After all, a "minute is a mile
the world around" (that's *nautical* mile), so every second is ca. 31 meters,
so the ball would have to drop in much less than a minute to have a longitude
precision (at the equator) of one nautical mile.
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gull
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response 69 of 96:
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Jan 7 23:09 UTC 2006 |
The nautical mile makes some kind of sense to me, but I've always
wondered where the statute mile comes from.
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marcvh
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response 70 of 96:
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Jan 8 00:04 UTC 2006 |
Well, it's 8 furlongs, obviously, and a furlong is 40 rods. What could be
simpler?
What I find more mysterious is where "acre" came from, though I guess
it's 10 square chains, and a chain is 4 rods, so that makes sense enough.
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aruba
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response 71 of 96:
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Jan 8 04:21 UTC 2006 |
Which is why the chain was the unit of choice in a lot of old surveying, and
still appears on a lot of deeds. (A chain is 66 feet.)
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rcurl
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response 72 of 96:
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Jan 8 06:31 UTC 2006 |
Then there is the *rood*, 0.25 acre or 40 square rods....
It gets more complicated (or more interesting?).
"The U.S. survey mile is equal to 5,280 U.S. survey feet, 6,336/3,937 km
or approximately 1,609.347 m. One international mile is equal to 0.999 998
survey miles. The survey mile is used by the United States Public Land
Survey System."
"The international mile is the distance typically meant when the word mile
is used without qualification. It is defined to be precisely 1,760
international yards (by definition, 0.9144 m each) and is therefore
exactly 1,609.344 m (1.609344 km). It is used in the United States and the
United Kingdom as part of the Imperial system of units. The international
mile is equivalent to 8 furlongs, 80 chains or 5,280 international feet."
"The statute mile is a mile of 5,280 feet, without specifying which foot
is used. The term is therefore ambiguous."
(That's what http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile says, but it still leaves a
question as to which mile your odometer measures, and which is used for
rods and chains.)
At least
"The international nautical mile is defined to be 1,852 m. It is used
universally for aviation, naval and maritime purposes and originated from
the geographical mile."
while
"The geographical mile is a unit of length determined by 1 minute of arc
along the Earth's equator, approximately equal to 1855 metres (6087.15
international feet)."
Which all makes it even more amazing that we landed the Rovers on Mars.
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aruba
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response 73 of 96:
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Jan 8 07:01 UTC 2006 |
Heh. Well, the difference between an international mile and a survey mile
is less than 3.2mm, so not that big a deal. My understading is that they
redefined the inch to be exactly 2.54cm at some point, and the rest of those
international definitions follow from that.
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keesan
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response 74 of 96:
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Jan 8 18:12 UTC 2006 |
South Ireland uses Euro's - are they also metric?
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rcurl
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response 75 of 96:
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Jan 8 19:56 UTC 2006 |
If you drive 100,000 miles, the different between the international and survey
distance is 320 meters! You'd notice that hike.
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aruba
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response 76 of 96:
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Jan 8 22:17 UTC 2006 |
Well, only because your legs would be cramped from being in the car for two
months solid. :)
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gull
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response 77 of 96:
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Jan 8 23:00 UTC 2006 |
Considering odometers are allowed to have something like 5% error when
new, and it's often higher on cars that have had their tires replaced,
the 0.0002% difference between a survey mile and an international mile
is lost in the noise.
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jep
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response 78 of 96:
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Jan 9 01:40 UTC 2006 |
I thought a "mile" was the distance a Roman legion could march in an
hour. I thought the kilometer was defined in some function of the
diameter of the Earth, but I didn't know the mile was defined that way.
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klg
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response 79 of 96:
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Jan 9 03:39 UTC 2006 |
In France the metric system officially started in June 1799 with the
declared intent of being 'For all people, for all time'. The unit of
length was the metre which was defined as being one ten-millionth part
of a quarter of the earth's circumference. The metre is now defined as
the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 second.
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