Specifications!!

The U.S. standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4feet,
8.5 inches. That is an exceptionally odd number.

Now, why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in
England, and the U.S. Railroads were built by English expatriates. Why
did the English build them that way? 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
used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

So why did the wagons have that particular odd 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? The first long distance roads in
Europe (and England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions.

The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads?The ruts
in the roads, which everyone had to match for fear of destroying their
wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the
chariots were made for (or by) Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the
matter of wheel spacing. The U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5
inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war
chariot.

Specifications and bureaucracies live forever.

So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's
ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial
Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back
end of two war horses. Thus we have the answer to the original question.

Now the twist to the story... When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its
launch pad, there are two booster rockets attached to the side 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 might 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 had to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The
tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track
is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, the major 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!!!

Don't you just love engineering?

--
Disclaimer: Any errors/misstakes in spilling, glamour, tact, or fact are
transmission errors

my experiences in the US

Hi all,
feels great to be mailing you all back after a long time. this is the first part of my long journey to the promised land.so on the night of the 24th of December left home for the last time for the next 2-3 years and landed at the airport to check in. said bye to a few friends outside the airport and went in and had just checked in my luggage when kow and mama arrived outside. felt great to see those guyz and had a talk with them and i was pretty nervous and also took a few snaps with them at the airport. i then proceeded to immigration and completed those formalities also.
then around 4:00 boarded the flight and the dlight firdt landed at mumbai. we were made to wait there for 2:30 hours already a delay of 1:30 hours and left mumbai at 8:00 am. india had shown its true colours and this delay almost proved me costly as to be explained later.then from there it was an 8 hour flight to frankfurt and on board slept a lot,watched kal ho na ho and listened to some music. food was pretty good on air india.reached frankfurt waited for around 45 minutes and then boarded the flight and we left for chicago. this was a 9 hour journey. this tme they played fida and towars us we filled out some customs and immigration forms. landed in chicago at 5:00 instead of 4:00. the e1 hour delay thanks to mumbai airport.
soon as we landed rushed to immigration counters,i was luckily in the middle of the plane . there was around 200 people in front of me that day. so when my tun came got the i20 and i94 stamped and pinned to passport. by the time i checked in my luggage to united airways for my connecting flight my flight had left. so got a confirmation for the 26th i.e next day and went to air india counter and got my free hotel accomodation and dinner passes and boarded the shuttle service to Ramada Inn the hotel where i was put up.
to be continud later

Hey guys!!

Me back after a break. was on leave the whole week. First of all, Wishing u all a very happy new year! sorry for the delay! Swalpa adjust madi. Neways, lots if things have happened during this time and it was not very good...Let's hope the new year is much better. well Kanth, where are the snaps u have mentioned in the shoutbox? Well, there have been no posts abt the G2G. Let me just remember and summarize it. It was held at Pai Viceroy on the 19th and i think 18 turned up. Sad number, can't help it. But, we had a gr888 time!! Mama has grown a little fatter and was looking really good.The class T-shirt was launched officially and it has got a very good response so far. we have run out of 40 size T-shirts and have only 42 left..FYI. All of us talked about our journey in the past 16 months, what lies ahead and most important- our current love - life. As usual, Ambar made the maximum noise. For a change, Ambar and Muddy did not fight much (to our relief). After lunch, a few went home. The rest of us went to Amoeba for bowling. Muddy told he knows the way to MG Road from jayanagar but ended up following us ;-). In Amoeba, we had a bet in which the loser has to pay for the winner. Jyo paid for harris. After that, we were roaming around that area, bid farewall to Kanth before leaving home. Well, that's abt what happened that day. Anything left, please add...

Sorry people

Had a bit of work recently....
hope u understand....

/**
project is an member class of this package
*/

import New.Office.*;

public static void main(String args[]){
Project p = new Project();
p.slog();
p.getFreetime(null);
p.tryToPostBlog("difficult");
p.nextPostName("kodachadri","savanadurga");
p.nextPostTime(new Day(7) );

}