"brooklyn1" > wrote in message
>>
>> metric will never become as second nature for you as English
> measurement. If your car's speedometer wasn't marked side by side in MPH
> and KPH there'd be no way you could come close to estimating your KPH, but
> I'd bet you could tell even before looking that you're doing 60MPH in a
> 55MPH zone..

After a week of driving in Europe, it does. I have no reason here to make
the calculation, but once you get used to the kph, it is no different.
Highway speeds of 90 kph to 110 kph are common.


> Don't tell me you can go outdoors right now without looking at a
> thermometer and guesstimate the temperature in Celsius, no friggin' way...
> you'd be scratchin' your head screwin' up your eyes, and even though you
> can come within 5º F you'd need to go look for a conversion table.

Again, you get used to it. I can do the calculations in my head. I had to
use them so I learned. I know that 14C is a bit chilly and 16 to 17is
rather comfy, and 0 is freezing.

Quick, how
> many inches is a 27 mm wrench... I'm positive you'd have to look it up, or
> at least calculate millimeters in your head.

Truth is, it does not matter. if you have a 27mm wrench it will work, if
not, the fit is sloppy. The maintenace guys at work wondered why everthing
on the machine was metric except the mold dogs were 11/16. Once they
started using a 17mm, the nuts did not round over any more.



> I can eyeball a 1/4"-20 Allen screw at 20 feet but I will always need to
> measure metric hardware.

So can I, also M6, M8 M10 since we use them all the time. Mixed hardware is
a little more difficult, such as looking at a bolt it is not always easy to
tell, but if you know it is metric, you know it is M6 and not 1/4" or M8.