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Yes. I meant hardware store in the USA. And Yes! I know about and respect
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that we are just one country among many nations around the world. I consider myself fortunate that I live in a unique place within a mile of Microsoft. Because they have brought in people from all over the world to help write their software and to internationalize it I am in a multicultural microcosm where I am sometimes the only American in the supermarket. It is fascinating to see so many different costumes and hear so many languages spoken in the aisles. That microcosm is situated in a myopic bubble world called the USA where most people take it for granted that they, and their country, are the only ones that matter. When they think "foreign country", if they think at all, what comes to mind is Canada and Mexico. Most of them don't realize, or don't care (which is worse!) the other 180+ countries even exist. Recently they have been rudely awakened to the ugly fact that just about everything they now wear, buy, and own is made in China. Americans have fought metrification for at least the past 50 years (since I was first introduced to its elegant simplicity in high school) kicking and screaming all the way. They prefer the comfort of teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces, cups, pints, quarts, gallons etc. when they cook. I defy anyone to tell me how many teaspoons are in a quart. To me it is mindboggling how confusing the English system is. I hold onto a glimmer of hope. While Americans were sleeping their quart soda bottles were replaced with 2 liter bottles. They don't seem to have noticed. Everything they buy in a liquor store comes measured in liters but as long as the bottles look the same size as what they are used to they don't realize they have been fooled into accepting those 'socialist' metric liters. What's worse, to accommodate their fear of metrification we are now mixing the systems together. For instance marijuana is smuggled in kilogram bundles ('keys') but they buy it by the ounce. Cocaine is bought by the gram. At least every hippie knows how many grams are in an ounce. American's cars come with metric bolts but the metric socket sets they use are designed to slip into their 1/4" ratchet drives. I gave up long ago advocating for the metric system in the US. It was always met with ignorance, closed minds, and worse, anger. Every time I still bring up the metric system I am reminded, painfully, that "half the people I know are below average". Sometimes I think most of the below average people live near me. Dennis PS No doubt I'm going to hear about this! -----Original Message-----
From: TekScopes@... [mailto:TekScopes@...] On Behalf Of fred Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 12:54 AM To be specific. I think you mean, hardware store in the USA. There is a wild outside the US, we use strange things like metric instead of Inch, Celcius instead of Fahrenheit ect. And so there are many tools a " standard over here but as rare as metric in the US. In Holland and as far a I know a big part of Europe, you can buy them everywhere. Even sub 5 euro sets from food-supermarktets like Lidl or Aldi have them included. ( most times a screwdriver with exchangsble bits) i think I have somewhere around ( including bits) 20-30 pozidriv's. Almost all woodscrews here are pozidriv. Also most "parkers" , the selfcutting screws for use in metal. Bolts not with a hex wrench head are almost always Philips but in modern stuf more often torque or Hex. Fred --- In TekScopes@..., "Dennis Tillman" <dennis@...> wrote:
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