Hi! Ed,

On Mon, 17 Feb 14, you wrote to me:

 EV> The first Lock was 600 feet long by 110 feet wide. The second Lock 
 EV> was 1200 feet long by 110 feet wide.

Wow!  That second one is roughly the deck size of the USS Essex amphib
assault ship!  (I mention that ship as there is a Fidonet sysop who used to
serve on the ship till quite recently.  I just checked my notes on the
Essex.)

 EV> Where I worked, the water level inside the concrete lock walls went
 EV> up or down to get traffic through.

Ah-ha!  Fascinating work.  Never a dull moment, I guess.  And, never the
same day over & over again... I reckon.

 EV>> I am at 38 Degree North Latitude and the past week and a half
 EV>> we've had that Dirty Old White Stuff on the ground.

 PQ>> Count yourself as lucky.  :)  I have never seen 'white stuff'
 PQ>> on the ground except for those times after heavy hail storms,
 PQ>> and even then it was small marble-sized stuff... many, many
 PQ>> years ago.

 EV> You said "on the ground", so I take that to mean that you have been
 EV> on a moutain top and experienced what snow is all about, correct?

Nope.  Not ever.  (I was talking about hail stones.)  We don't really have
mountains here, according to a lady from Albania I met a few years ago. 
Just a few bumps in the terrain, as much of Australia was scoured by ice
sheets for millions of years.  The closest we have to snow-capped mountains
are 'the Alps', down south, close to Melbourne.  I've been to Melbourne but
not to the snow fields.

 EV> I was on vacation in June and drove through a mountainous area where
 EV> there was show on each side of the road, I was in the State of
 EV> Montana.

That is a beautiful part of the states, from what few photos & movies
I've seen.  I'm also guessing that the countryside you live in is a
beautiful locale as well.  You are a lucky man, Ed.

Cheers,
Paul.

... You can tell a C programmer by the keyboard dents in his forehead.
--- Paul's Win98SE VirtualBox