prog | (no subject)

A laundromat just opened across the street from the Arbitrarium; good timing! Its new-fangledness is confusing people, though. It showed no interest in the pocketful of quarters I brought; instead, it uses a proprietary debit-card system, and while many people there were happily washing their clothes for great justice, I saw two others (who I think were, previous to this, strangers to one another) trying to help each other puzzle out this unusual currency. I myself was briefly confused by the fact that initially obtaining the card costs a dollar in and of itself, and that the slots that accept the cards don't pull it into themselves, but rather physically stop the card halfway in, and read it like that. To people used to putting cards in ATMs (which is to say, everyone), this behavior means "you've put the card in wrong". And so you get people saying "?" and pulling out the card when the machine is still reading it, causing it to say "squeep!" and then putting the card in the other way, which really is wrong, and so the machine says "skronk!", leaving the confused human no better off than before. This, I feel, represents sub-optimal design.

(Also, the name of the laundromat is LAUNDR-O-MAT, and naturally want to voice some OBJECTI-O-NS to this, but , really, I'll just let it go.)

Last night's dream: Traffic on I-95 (or a road like it) was really bad, at least for people on foot or on bicycle, such as myself. I waited among a crowd a police officers standing in the middle of the road, in a "safe" section cordoned off by orange cones, and tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to merge into traffic. Then I got the idea to ride my bike exactly down the center stripe, and through the use of a small device like a laser pointer, dragged one of the orange cones alongside me, in the actual lane, where it acted as my proxy. Maneuvering it among the crowded cars proved challenging and fun. [I think the dream imagery in this case came from my driving around strange parts of Cambridge last night, and a TV ad I saw a couple of times that same night where a woman manipulates the sun by moving a piece of candy around in the air.]

Eventually I made it to my destination: the home of a Davis Square-area artist who sculpts using the same sort of light-tool. Perhaps I was interviewing him for an article. We spoke at length about his work, and at some point his wife appeared to show me a painting she had made. It was oil-on-canvas, but made to look like she had used one of the light-things; an impressive illusion. The couple talked to me about the painting for some time, but I became bored quickly and, wielding my own light-tool, wrote "davis square" in bright pink serif lowercase letters on the artists' floor, perhaps hoping to impress them with my own work. Not sure what they made of that, if anything.