respublica

This could well be true

One of my Facebook friends posted this today, originating from a Jeff Grinnell. After googling this guy, it seems he does exist. In any event, the could be history of the width of railroad tracks is very interesting.

A history lesson for people who think that history doesn't matter:

What's the big deal about railroad tracks?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?

Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
So, 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 same 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 more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, 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 what about the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk 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. Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's rear 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, 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 fatter, 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 rear.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's rears control almost everything.

Would you do this?

Somewhere in Yosemite National Park there is a popular climbing area that brave (or foolhardy) people love to go. A section of one of these areas is a ledge 2000 feet up and supposedly used by climbers to take a rest and enjoy the view. My first thought was "this is nuts" and my second thought was, "how does he get off?"

I read this article but still do not know why anyone would be up on this ledge, known as the Thank God Ledge so named because climbers can take a rest. Not restful looking to me.

Cleaners and other things

Most days it seems as though we are past the days when Covid caused all kinds of shut downs and out of stock items in stores. But, there are still things everyone seems to be buying leads to empty areas in stores. The one item I can rarely find these days is Kellogg Vanilla Protein Drinks. Over the past few years Dale has made it a habit to drink one of these with his lunch and until Covid, I could always find them in area grocery stores. Then suddenly they were out of stock in local stores and haven't come back. Schnucks and Dierbergs still have not gotten the Vanilla but always have chocolate or strawberry, flavors Dale is not interested in.

Then some weeks ago I discovered Walmart carries these and always had Vanilla in stock. Until this past weekend. I guess lots of people really like Kellogg Vanilla protein drinks. But, today they are restocked which is one of those HURRAY days around here. And the best part? The very best part? A four pack at Walmart is 5.98 and before the other two grocery stores ran out of them the cost was 9 something at Dierbergs and 8 something at Schnucks. So many times Walmart is a wonderful place.

Also, since Covid, it has been hard to find a cleaners. The Collinsville cleaners we always went to shut down for good it seems. There really aren't many of these businesses anymore, maybe a drive to St. Louis. But  then we learned about Premium Cleaners in Fairview Heights, a newer business, and they have been fantastic. I'm picking up a load of cleaning today including a comforter. Comforters are impossible to wash in our machine and going to a laundromat is still not for me since Covid. The Premium people are great. It is on the east side of 159 south of the Mall area.

What I never knew about our washing machine

I read an article this morning on the importance of cleaning the washing machine filter. Frankly, I never knew our machine even had a filter. There seems to be no obvious place as to where it even would be found.

We have a Maytag which Dale bought for our Collinsville house during one of the years we lived on the seminary campus and what he did with the manual I've never learned. So I looked through some Google search links and still don't know if any applies to our washer. But nothing seems to go wrong with it so I will avoid anymore searching for now.

Sometimes Technology is a real pain

We've had Charter Spectrum cable since the mid-1980's. When we moved back to Collinsville two years ago we had the cable set up on the main floor where we watch most tv and the cable guy told us we didn't need another box upstairs in the bedroom to get spectrum programming, just go get a Roku stick which has the Spectrum app installed. We did this and had no trouble until recently. Now the Spectrum app seems to have stopped working. Why this is I don't know for sure, but am guessing Spectrum has put the kabosh on it.

I've tried the various, almost incomprehensible pieces of advice I found online, but none brings back the use of this app. We do like watching the end of Cardinal games when we go to bed or whatever else we've been watching. This is now super disappointing. After all these years with Charter Spectrum, you'd think they would not do this.T

We just don't want to be fooling around with a tv we have to be constantly downloading apps with their accompanying user names and passwords. That is why we have liked Charter.

Update: The next morning both computers working as they should for no rhyme or reason. I'd have to guess there was updating done by Roku without notice which had them out of commission yesterday.

This is how I've always felt

Math beyond 6th grade was always Greek to me. And don't get me started on chemistry formulas.

Just one more frustrating text

This afternoon I received a text, supposedly from Amazon which there has been some unusual activity on my account and I should do this or that. This is just not true, I checked with the real Amazon, but I'd guess this happens to others who actually follow the link. That is trouble.

There are crooks and creeps all all the web, it used to be fishing was done with email, now it's texts and messages on Facebook. I hate this stuff.

Auto license sticker update

Yesterday on the post just below this, I wrote about having to renew my license plate sticker. I have to say even though I was not thrilled about paying what turned out to be 160 dollars and change, the process was amazingly fast. I arrived at the place in Swansea and the emissions test and the receiving of the new sticker took no longer than 15 minutes at the most. That was not what I expected, so often there are many others in line.

The only difficult part was actually finding the place, it's set back from the main road (159) and there are so many businesses along there and so much traffic it was easy to miss the signage for the emissions testing. To be honest i gave up driving back and forth along 159 and went into a Huck's gas station and asked the two ladies working there. One told me to turn left out of there and when I saw a sign for Goodman's on the left, turn there. The emissions place was back a bit, surrounded by many new types of not retail business.

The man who I paid for the sticker told me not to put the new one over the old which surprised me. Getting the old sticker off was a bit of a trick involving a hair dryer and finger nail polish remover. But it's done for another year.

Once again with the license plate sticker

I find it irritating that Illinois requires a new license plate sticker every year and with that an emissions test. That test costs 151 dollars and I have to do this today. Thanks JB.

The Sky!

Last night around sunset I looked out over our back deck and saw a gorgeous sunset forming. Recently, for whatever reason, the sky a that time has put on quite the show. This picture is close to what I saw, but doesn't do justice to the beautiful blues, reds, pinks and oranges. It was stunning.