H.I.T.S. 10-21-12
I was reading online last week about how when dates like 10/11/12 occur, more than 4 times the usual number of couples get married on that day. Here are the stats for some recent popular wedding dates: 11/11/11 had 24,902 weddings and 9/10/11 saw 37,000 weddings. The most popular, however, was 07/07/07 with 54,054 weddings. Pretty amazing, eh?
I was also amazed not to hear anything more about the much-rumored mini iPad, but I read that at the Chinese factory that creates products for Apple, there have been fights between the workers and the foremen because of the stress of producing enough units for the big launch and the complexity of assembling them, along with Apple’s strict demands for top quality. The date for announcing the iPad Mini has been moved from the 17th to later in this month.
In the interim, Apple unveiled a classy looking line of new iPods and you can see the new models at http://www.apple.com/ipod/. They look completely different, not only with all the colors, but I think they look a lot like smart phones as well.
For some reason, a thought popped up in my head last week on a subject I’ve not recalled in over 30 years and it’s about living in England all that time ago. I doubt that our readers are familiar with coin meters for electricity, so let me explain.
When I lived in England, it was an option for households to have coin-operated electric and gas meters installed in their homes in order not to face the possibility of a huge bill in winter. I recall that my Mum had one of these for gas.
In a cupboard in the front room, there was a green gas meter with little dials that indicated how much gas you’d used. At certain times, the gasman would come into your house and empty the meter of shillings and sometimes they’d even give you back a “few bob.”
I also remember a news story that some resourceful (but crooked) person made molds of shillings in clay and then made ice “shillings” with water. They then shoved them into the gas meter to pay for their winter heating. This person even cunningly drilled some small holes near the bottom of the meter for the water to drip out of when the “shillings” melted.
They were caught, of course, when the meter reader came to empty the meter and there were no coins inside, but the meter read that lots of gas had been used.
Just to show that tricks like that are timeless, I read last week a newspaper article on Twitter from Blackburn’s local paper. The electric company found that on one downtown main street, three or four businesses were illegally connected to the power grid.
The power company shut down the electricity for about four days to sort it out and the shop owners claimed losses of thousands of English pounds due to lack of electricity. The electric company stated how dangerous these kinds of illegal hookups are.
Before I leave the subject of meters, I was shocked to find that the coin-op meters are probably even more popular today than they were way back when, even in other parts of Europe. Looking online, I found numerous companies who sold coin operated meters, citing savings to landlords who presently offered electricity included.
They pointed out that many tenants leave their apartments with all kinds of things switched on, including A/C, and how much money the landlord would save because the tenant would pay via a coin-operated device.
To further shock you, I recall going to a school friend’s house as a child. We were watching TV when it suddenly went off. My friend shouted to his mum that we needed “more money for the TV.” I was amazed to see my friend shove a coin into this little box on the back and the TV came back on.
At that time, many people in England rented their TV’s from a local company because not only was it cheaper than buying a new set, but if the TV had problems, the company had repair men who fixed it for free.
The coin box TV, however, was for the even poorer people. Imagine kids today with X-Boxes or PlayStations that were coin operated. They’d go crazy. Thanks to technology, however, most of us have two or three TV’s, along with cable or Dish.
Speaking personally, I don’t miss those days at all. Have a great week and happy surfing.