The handy-dandy reference info thread

[LumberJack]

I'm playing around with something. The idea is that I could put together a thread with things that might be good as a reference. I've noticed that I have sometimes referred to the same things in multiple places, and if I could have a repository for that it might be helpful. So, for starters, I am going to put together a Fahrenheit <-> Celsius conversion table. Given that we have both USA members and members in places that use a sensible measurement system (metric), it might be helpful to have sort of a rosetta stone type of thing.
Degrees F --> Degrees C
50 --> 10
60 --> 16
70 --> 21
80 --> 27
90 --> 32
100 --> 38
110 --> 43
120 --> 49

 

[LumberJack]

Other way around:

C------>F
10---->50
15---->59
20---->68
25---->77
30---->86
35---->95
40--->104
45--->113
50--->122

 

[SillyOldBear]

I'm playing around with something. The idea is that I could put together a thread with things that might be good as a reference. I've noticed that I have sometimes referred to the same things in multiple places, and if I could have a repository for that it might be helpful. So, for starters, I am going to put together a Fahrenheit <-> Celsius conversion table. Given that we have both USA members and members in places that use a sensible measurement system (metric), it might be helpful to have sort of a rosetta stone type of thing.
Degrees F --> Degrees C
50 --> 10
60 --> 16
70 --> 21
80 --> 27
90 --> 32
100 --> 38
110 --> 43
120 --> 49

Great idea Jack!

 

[LumberJack]

The story of the Bengali Tea Boy:
“When the great Buddhist teacher Atisha went to Tibet . . . he was told the people of Tibet were very good-natured, earthy, flexible, and open; he decided they wouldn’t be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along with him a mean-tempered, ornery Bengali tea boy. He felt that was the only way he could stay awake. The Tibetans like to tell the story that, when he got to Tibet, he realized that he need not have brought his tea boy: the people there were not as pleasant as he had been told”

Meaning: When we have irritating people in our life, we can imagine that they are there to help us learn patience. The irritating person is your personal "Bengali Tea Boy," who is doing you the favor of giving you enough opportunities to learn how to be gentle, but also protect your own boundaries.

PS- I am no good at this, personally.

 

[Winslow]

The story of the Bengali Tea Boy:
“When the great Buddhist teacher Atisha went to Tibet . . . he was told the people of Tibet were very good-natured, earthy, flexible, and open; he decided they wouldn’t be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along with him a mean-tempered, ornery Bengali tea boy. He felt that was the only way he could stay awake. The Tibetans like to tell the story that, when he got to Tibet, he realized that he need not have brought his tea boy: the people there were not as pleasant as he had been told”

Meaning: When we have irritating people in our life, we can imagine that they are there to help us learn patience. The irritating person is your personal "Bengali Tea Boy," who is doing you the favor of giving you enough opportunities to learn how to be gentle, but also protect your own boundaries.

PS- I am no good at this, personally.

The illustration of the Bengali Tea Boy certainly resonates with me. Because this is what I practice in my own life. It was already explained in a separate thread about how the most toxicity comes from my closest friend. When I see the toxicity as a test, then I tolerate. Also by seeing the toxicity as the price I pay for all the good things he does for me. The price I pay is worth it because he's still a friend I've had the longest, all the way from the early 1970s! And even he admits the same to me, that I've been his longest lasting friend.
In friendship, there is the principle of accounts receivable and accounts payable. If those two accounts are more or less equal, then it's totally worth it.

 

[seabird]

The tea boy story is a good one. I used to remind myself of that little story quite frequently when my children were at a certain age, and they were assisting me to become a more grown up person. : )

The story fits in with the book I'm reading called The Invisible Lion, by Benjamin Fry. It is aobut why and how most of us have disregulated nervous systems, and how to heal.

 

[may71]

I am going to put together a Fahrenheit <-> Celsius conversion table

There's a conversion formula, but I forget what it is.

That reminds me of a saying:

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll sit in a boat all day and drink beer.

 

[LumberJack]

There's a conversion formula, but I forget what it is.

That reminds me of a saying:

Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Teach him to fish, and he'll sit in a boat all day and drink beer.

Silly measure to sane measure: Deg_F = Deg_C*1.8 + 32
other way: Deg_C = (Deg_F -32)/1.8

True on the fishing. Last time I went fishing I didn't even put a hook on a line. It was more important to me to just be on the water and taking in the natural sights, sounds, smells, and textures around me. It also may have been an excuse to day-drink. Last time I went fishing was a long time before i quit beer, lol. Oh speaking of which - if you're at altitude, and you have a chilly stream nearby, submerge some warm beer cans and in a matter of (IIRC 10-20) minutes they are frosty as can be. A friend told me!

 

[LumberJack]

I've actually been thinking about doing a little script (pretty much any language, probably even DOS it would not be tough) or Excel custom function to take 2 inputs: a number, and a system (e.g., C or F), and spit out the conversion into the other system. In all my spare time, lol. But - I have found that coding distracts me from anxiety.

 

[thorns_all_over]

Hi Everyone,

There's Android Apps for this, like
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=kr.sira.unit
for example.
This one is called Unit Converter and features more than just temperature conversion.
I'm sure there's something similar for iPhone.

Take care,
Thorns

 

[LumberJack]

@thorns_all_over - I was not so much concerned with unit conversions per se, but actually I wanted this thread to have like some boilerplate content that I could post a link to, instead of putting like 700 words of theory or another damn Buddhist story in multiple threads. And the script idea was more an interesting programming exercise as opposed to something that I could just solve with an app.

FWIW though, on iphone the native Calculator app does unit conversions and a couple other neat mathy things that "in my day" we had to memorize formulas for. Like they didn't want us using calculators on tests even, because what if we had to solve a problem at work and no calculator was handy???? Well, that doesn't seem like such a risk now, but this was the prevailing pedagogy in the mid 1990.

That said, I can do mental math in my head faster than most people can punch things into a calculator, up to a limited number of significant digits. And then they ask me how I did it, and it takes me longer to explain than it would have to just pull up the phone app, so whatevs, lol.

I will never forget, 2pi*r as in the formula for the circumference of a circle relative to its radius. It always drove me nuts, because it's the same as pi*d, since diameter is twice the radius, but that takes fewer characters. Which I have now spent a few hundred characters to complain about, so there that goes again.

 

[seabird]

omg that. 2π•r used to make me ticked off when I was a kid. Thank you so much for reminding me. lol @LumberJack

 

[thorns_all_over]

I wasn't sure about your intent.
Regardless, it doesn't hurt to let people know that there's an App that helps the average person save some time.
In regards to r and d, they usually give you the radius, not the diameter.
I'm sure there's a good reason for it.