Sitting at my faux-wood desk in purple, faux velvet bell bottoms, I studied my new workbook: "Here Comes The Metric System!" It was 1975 and a fractionless future beckoned.

Following several years of intense study that included the development of a fancy logo and a government agency with its own acronym (USMB), Congress passed The Metric Conversion Act. The USMB would oversee an orderly transition to metrication. Voluntary conversion would commence as soon as a schedule could be agreed upon. In 1981, that schedule turned out to be never and Ronald Reagan disbanded the USMB in 1982. There went the metric system.

The rest of the world, of course, if fully on board, metric-wise and so for our international friends, we now offer a metric rain gauge and/or a metric replacement tube. It measures 15 centimeters of rain in easy, fractionless increments.