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Happy Holidays To All Here In 107 Land!

2K views 35 replies 27 participants last post by  cctoronto 
#1 ·
I thought I'd kick off a holiday thread for us!

Happy Holidays to all of you!

I hope that you all have a great Holiday Season,
and a very Happy And Prosperous New Year!

I just went down and spent half an hour giving Penny her monthly warm up and drive around the condo garage for fifteen minutes, reminding me of the coming spring and hopefully some great GTGs in the New Year!

Happy Happy HO HO!

And To All A Good Night!

:)
 
#4 ·
Started mine the other day...moved it forward 3 feet and back 2 1/2 feet after it ran for 15 minutes. After that, there is snow and ice and it ain't gonna see either. Can't believe that we have everything wrapped and don't have to go to any stores. Heckuva deal. Here's wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and whatever other holiday you celebrate.
 
#6 ·
Whatever Holidays you keep, we wish you the best.

Life is to be savored, the bitter and the sweet.

Let us look to the new year with hope and anticipation, but remember those who travel with us only in memory, and hold them dear.
 
#20 ·
Merry Christmas to all...except the hopefully deceased engineer who designed the alternator support bracket that covers the passenger side cylinder head.
I wonder how much trouble they went to to figure out how the maximum amount of fasteners that could be obscured by other stuff.

Guess you can figure out what I am tinkering with today (more gripes to follow)

Rick
 
#21 ·
We spent the better part of yesterday eating and playing at work. Today wasn't much different, but with fewer participants.

The four day holiday weekend has now officially started.

Tomorrow, being Christmas Eve will be my traditional day of shopping for gifts for family and friends. I'm at least smart enough to have already picked up a couple of things for SWMBO "just in case":D, but I've always really enjoyed the laid back and friendly shopping atmosphere then.

That will be followed tomorrow evening by a Christmas Eve family get together and gift exchange, much smaller than in past years, and a likewise small family Dinner on Christmas Day.

To all my friends on Benzworld, I sincerly wish you and yours the best for the Holidays, regardless of which you celebrate, and a happy and prosperous New Year.
 
#23 ·
Best wishes to all for the holiday season.

We are not buying many presents this year, but I did buy one for the SL - a new Flamethrower coil. May install it if it isn't too cold over the holidays.

Graham
 
#31 ·
After midnight now, and all is quiet... not a creature is stirring... not even a nobby...

Merry Merry to all!

Oh, and just to give you an idea of what Santa's issues are right now:

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective


There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical), this works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

Merry Christmas!!
 
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