Well, since being here I have now lost 1st 2lb. I’ve a doctor’s check-up on Friday to tell him what I’m up to and to make sure it doesn’t cause any problems. I’ll probably have to remind him how many lbs are in a st. I’ve just looked up stones – did you know 8 make a hundredweight? Wow, I was only a stone short of 2 hundredweight when I landed – now that sounds very heady. Actually, I remember when I was a kid, bags of coal weighing a hundredweight. Apparently “The stone was originally used for weighing agricultural commodities. Historically the number of pounds in a stone varied by commodity, and was not the same in all times and places even for one commodity.” Now that’s the sort of weight measurement I like – vague.
Anyway, must get on, got Lincolnshire sausages to buy today for next week, a quick trip to Freshies (for a cuppa, that’ll throw them), and then back here to strip the beds, clean the bathrooms, etc. Glamour? Heard of it 
Woo hoo, woo hoo hoooo, woo hoo woo woo hoo hoooooo
(Has to be sung to a dance – my sister can demonstrate perfectly ……:)
xx
16 ounces to a lb. 14 lbs to a stone. 20 stone to a ton.
Back in olden days I learned that by rote – repeating it over and over in a sing song voice.
Also, in the computer world, 8 bits in a byte, 4 bytes in a sandwich…
How many stone of sausage did you buy? For a people used to keeping track of pence, shillings, sovereigns, guinies, pounds, ha’pennys, thrupence, groats, fivepence, bob, farthings, florins, crowns, half crowns, and who knows what else, of which were intricately connected by variable conversion rates, keeping track of weight in two units is child’s play.
Actually Jase, 4 bytes was a word back when there were 8 bits in a byte. These days there are 64 bits in a byte (hence 64 bit computing) and the idea of a word (sandwich) is forgotten.
You could store more information in 4 bytes now than originally powered the Apollo missions !
Too techy for you ? I haven’t even started ……
I’ll get my anorak.
owdo big man. I’m afraid I’ve not had to worry about bits and bytes since there were only the eight. Btw, how many bits in a nibble? Like you say, that was more than enough at the time. This was at a time when a 512kb hard drive was about three feet long and you needed good weight-lifting skills to pick one up, a floppy disk was 11 inches across, and a head crash on a hard drive was a major happening with a slight risk of fire.
Heady days
Keep the flag flying for the GREAT LINCOLNSHIRE SAUSAGE Jase, the BEST SAUSAGE IN THE WORLD BAR NONE!!!!
(and this is from a YORKSHIRE man, NOT a native of Lincolnshire)
16 ounces to a lb. 14 lbs to a stone. 20 stone to a ton.
Er, are you sure about the 20 stone in a ton Shirley?
Ah, just looked it up, it’s 1 ton = 142.8st. Now, I’d ask how many bushels that is, but I’d have to specify barley, wheat, etc, as a bushel is different for each thing you are trying to weigh. http://www.agric.gov.ab.ca/calculator/bushel2tonne.html. Mind you, looking at the calculator, some of the new-fangled items seem to take the wheat scale as their basis.
oops loz – 20 hundredweight to a ton. – now where’s the blushing smiley