Things you always wanted to know the answer to [Vol. 3]

[FiF]

RATATTAK said:

SCEtoAUX said:

At building sites you see a bloke with one of those incredibly technical looking theodolite things, being used in conjunction with another bloke who has a hammer and a few muddy stick to bang in to the ground.

How does the millimetre precision of the theodolite work in conjunction with the muddy sticks?

Once the stick is in place, if more accuracy is required, then a mark or a nail is placed on the stick (wooden peg)

Yeah but watched them digging the groundworks when they built Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. Site had been surveyed and marked out using theodolite accurate to a fraction of a second, bloke asks foreman where corner of building will be, foreman stomps about a bit with his arms outstretched to form a sort of right angle. Dig here Seamus, it's near enough. Builders - bodgers.

[RATATTAK]

FiF said:

Yeah but watched them digging the groundworks when they built Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. Site had been surveyed and marked out using theodolite accurate to a fraction of a second, bloke asks foreman where corner of building will be, foreman stomps about a bit with his arms outstretched to form a sort of right angle. Dig here Seamus, it's near enough. Builders - bodgers.

Millimetre accuracy is not required for excavations ... the corner of the building will be set out again following installation of the footings ready for the steel erectors/brickies

[Short Grain]

On the 'sticking your head out of a car window', why, if you blow into a dogs face will it often snap at you, but if a dog is in a car, they love to stick their head out of the window?

[Antony Moxey]

RATATTAK said:

FiF said:

Yeah but watched them digging the groundworks when they built Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. Site had been surveyed and marked out using theodolite accurate to a fraction of a second, bloke asks foreman where corner of building will be, foreman stomps about a bit with his arms outstretched to form a sort of right angle. Dig here Seamus, it's near enough. Builders - bodgers.

Millimetre accuracy is not required for excavations ... the corner of the building will be set out again following installation of the footings ready for the steel erectors/brickies

Also, just because your theodolite measures angles accurately (not quite to fractions of seconds, they're usually one, two or five second accuracy) doesn't mean you have to use that accuracy. It's easy to set a ninety degree angle - modern instruments mean you just tap it into the screen rather than manually adjusting it - then all you need to do is look and see if the peg is within the crosshairs. As said above, once the groundworks are dug and trenches filled you can then use pins to get super accurate - a foundation trench doesn't need millimetre accuracy when it's half a metre wide for a 200mm thick (or whatever it is) wall.

[Ultra Sound Guy]

Short Grain said:

On the 'sticking your head out of a car window', why, if you blow into a dogs face will it often snap at you, but if a dog is in a car, they love to stick their head out of the window?

Bad breath!

[Roofless Toothless]

Why is it that wherever you go on Street View it's always bin day?

[Antony Moxey]

Why, no matter how heavy the rain, do football managers never put the hoods up on their coats?

[Jonboy_t]

Antony Moxey said:

Why, no matter how heavy the rain, do football managers never put the hoods up on their coats?

Did you ever see the fallout of Steve McLaren’s umbrella? Maybe summat to do with it - fearing ridicule for no particular reason!

I never got the problem with mclaren and his brolly. It was raining, he put a brolly up - so what?

[talksthetorque]

Jonboy_t said:

Antony Moxey said:

Why, no matter how heavy the rain, do football managers never put the hoods up on their coats?

Did you ever see the fallout of Steve McLaren’s umbrella? Maybe summat to do with it - fearing ridicule for no particular reason!

I never got the problem with mclaren and his brolly. It was raining, he put a brolly up - so what?

The issue was not with the Brolley, but the dry thing underneath it who was a berk. He did ok at Boro, because he had a good team round him, including the director, who could persuade really good footballers to experience the joys of the north east. " It's a seaside town"

Nowadays he gets champoinship jobs and fails at them.

The Daily Mail invented the famous catchphrase.

[Bandit110]

Brother D said:

Why does changing wind speed make it difficult to breath? I was cycling to work this morning and it was rather cool and gusty, and I struggled to get a breath in when face with a gust.

Is it changing air pressure? I just wouldn't think a 5/8mph change in airflow would affect the pressure that much?

Maybe it's in the same way as a carburettor, where a flow of air above the fuel bowl sucks fuel up and into the airflow, the gusts across your face literally take your breath away?

[Rich_W]

My Local Tesco is 24Hr from Monday 00:00 to Saturday 23:59

Sundays are 11:00-17:00

Why do Sunday trading laws even exist anymore?

It's a mockery when all it means is this Tesco will be reopening 7 hours later anyway.

[Exige77]

Rich_W said:

My Local Tesco is 24Hr from Monday 00:00 to Saturday 23:59

Sundays are 11:00-17:00

Why do Sunday trading laws even exist anymore?

It's a mockery when all it means is this Tesco will be reopening 7 hours later anyway.

God squad holding the rest to ransom.

[poing]

Move to Scotland, we ditched them a long time ago. Comes as a bloody shock when I go south of the border and think I'll just pick something up in the morning before I travel back up the road!

[Hugo a Gogo]

No Sunday opening in Germany, and the unions are dead set against it, they managed to stop the couple of pre-xmas open shopping Sundays that were planned. Nothing to do with religion, but pro family time.

[Rostfritt]

Roofless Toothless said:

Why is it that wherever you go on Street View it's always bin day?

Is it? I was trying to work out exactly where a border was between two councils recently and it would have been really handy if it was.

[Rostfritt]

Hugo a Gogo said:

No Sunday opening in Germany, and the unions are dead set against it, they managed to stop the couple of pre-xmas open shopping Sundays that were planned. Nothing to do with religion, but pro family time.

This is a good thing IMO. When I worked for a supermarket it was time and a half on Sundays, so I always worked them, but it was restricted to 11-5. I think this was the most profitable time for the store as the tills were pretty much flat out.

They occasionally bent the rules a little with 30 mins 'browsing time', which on one occasion caused me to meet the stupidest customer in the world, who at about 10:50 turned up at the till I was on and unloaded their trolley. Bearing in mind the tannoy was repeatedly explaining that nothing could be sold until 11, but they could shop beforehand.

• customer loads the belt with shopping*

Me: 'Good morning'

Customer: 'Good morning' *Waits for me to start scanning*

Me: 'I should be able to serve you in 5 mins, quite handy to be able to get in earlier though isn't it'

C:'Why can't you serve me now?'

Me:'I can't serve until 11, like they said on the tannoy'

C:'Well why didn't you tell me before I put all my stuff on the belt?'

Me:'It is only a few minutes, at least you will be one of the first out'

C *angrily moves her stuff to another till, while shouting about terrible customer service*

Another customer then came to my till a bit confused as to why this lady had just left.

Is it still a thing in Germany that train stations can have shops open on Sunday? I remember a station having a reasonably sized Netto or Aldi or something that was rather busy on a Sunday morning. The whole thing seemed to be a shopping mall with a station attached.

[grumbledoak]

Rich_W said:

Why do Sunday trading laws even exist anymore?

Pointless pain in the arse, aren't they? Bloody god botherers.

[The Mad Monk]

poing said:

Move to Scotland, we ditched them a long time ago. Comes as a bloody shock when I go south of the border and think I'll just pick something up in the morning before I travel back up the road!

That's too high a price to pay.

[Willy Nilly]

I often see car transporters with the bottom deck empty and cars still on the top. Why don't the drivers reload them to make the load more stable?

[AstonZagato]

Rostfritt said:

Is it still a thing in Germany that train stations can have shops open on Sunday? I remember a station having a reasonably sized Netto or Aldi or something that was rather busy on a Sunday morning. The whole thing seemed to be a shopping mall with a station attached.

When I lived outside of Frankfurt, I'd drive to the airport if we'd run out of something on a Sunday.