There's something about dimensions in this world that you've got to remember.
This is MY STORY, a long, long one, and if you read it, don't complain to me. It tells why the US will never fully convert to metric. After writing this, I think that the reason is similar to why Americans think they're defending their rights when they don't wear masks. It's stupid and juvenile, but hey.... that's life sometimes. Anyway, forge ahead:
On August 12, 2020 at 20:40, andrewinboulder said...
Turned out the guy who laid the burial grade cable did not put the cable in the conduit . He laid it next to the conduit. Wtf. He also ran it in such a way as to exceed the 328 ft limit by just a bit. Annoying.
What's annoying is how they came to that "limit."
I recently saw an internet article that mentioned a surfer who had surfed a wave that was 24.4 meters high. I was considering what kind of movable surveying equipment would be involved in making such a measurement when I realized we were all being fooled, starting with the idiot who called out the initial wave height.
I mean, how high is 24.4 meters? It turns out that if you pluck a random number out of the air, say 3.28, and multiply 24.4 by that, then you'll get 80.032. And 3.28 just happens to be the conversion factor between feet and meters.
So, some surfdude layabout is leaning back, enjoying the action, when he blurts out, "Man, that wave has GOT to be eighty feet high!"
And some senseless science nerd, not from the US, overhears this and, knowing that eighty feet doesn't mean anything to his audience, he calculates how many meters that is. For his audience. And it's 24.4 meters. I mean, if you round off. The number that was in the published article. (This is also an indictment of copy editors. If there still are any, they're horrible at their jobs.)
So the article has a ridiculously precise measurement for a wave which is a conversion into metric of a silly mad estimate of a wave height. You know, it coulda been 75 feet. Or even 85.
So... guess how the industry came up with 328 feet as the maximum cable length for that camera? That's right... some people did a bunch of design, and experiment, and confirmation, and manufacturing, and testing, and confirmation, and came up with cable that is GUARANTEED to pass the signal one hundred meters.
One hundred meters.
Which just happens to convert to 328 feet.
Calling the maximum "328 feet" ignores what happened and ignores the reality of how people understand things. It's quite possible that this cable could pass a signal, guaranteed, say, 108 meters, which would be 354.4 feet.
If that were the case, then the wire would be specced at 350 feet. The metric crew might be reasonable and also spec 108 meters, even though there's about three inches differences between the two measurements.
And the US won't convert to metric until metric numbers can be presented in ways that don't involve more precision than we can normally deal with. I mean, hell, they could have said 330 feet and nobody would get hurt, right? Do you suppose if ALL the lengths of cable will work at 328 feet, that any of them won't work at 330 feet?
