(no subject)

I bought the second-cheapest TV and the tastiest Tivo. Initiate Operation AssGrow! No, not yet... the Tivo won't work for another week, because I forgot that you need to have a phone line before you can connect machines (such as Tivos) up to your phone line. So my plans to be all studly and not have a land line in my house lasted all of three days. Such are the perils of 21st century life.

Actually I don't plan on surrendering my whole body and soul to the idiot box, no matter how much I natter on about it, because then I wouldn't be able to work on MIGS. (We're starting to think of other names for it but I'll continue to call it MIGS here, for the time being, and you'll just have to live with Take My Breath Away going through your head every time you see it, sorry.) Had a good planning conversation with my co-dev tonight, and feeling optimistic, with my first task cut out for me. So that's good.

(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.)

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( Oh no, another dream description. )

601

OK, I just came back from putting my clothes in the dryer. That was also pretty perplexing. Placing my LAUNDR-O-CARD into a dryer's slot caused its readout to blink "8059" at me. ?! Oh no! I just made the computer from The Andromeda Strain blow up! But the concrete blast doors didn't slam down, so I started to press buttons experimentally.

Selecting a temperature made the "8059" stop blinking. Um, OK. While crouching to peer at the buttons, I saw that the readout was actually trying to say "BUSY"; while standing, I couldn't see the tops of the letters (each formed by the standard "8"-shaped arrangement of, uh, little glowy rectangles), and parsed them as numbers. Fair enough, but... why "busy"? Was it telling me that it was too preoccupied to dry my clothes? Was it having trouble connecting to the LAUNDR-O-NET via dial-up?

So I hit "start", and it set to work as a dryer should. The "BUSY" turned into "20", which I took to be a minutes-remaining indicator, or perhaps "ZO", which meant it had become cynical and French, I guess.

I can't wait to find out what happens next. Can you?!

The LAUNDR-O-MAT Reloaded

Using my keen journalistic powers of observation, I noticed that several of the dryers' digital displays read "20", and others read "00". Further, I noticed that the "20" ones all had blinking LEDs underneath their START buttons, and the "00" ones did not. Thus, I conclude that, due to confusion on the part of the laundromat's patrons or operators, many of the dryers not in use thought that they had received payment and were waiting for someone to put them into action; and furthermore, the dryer I chose happened to be in such a state, and thus signaled its rejection of my attempt to pay it further with its "BUSY" message, though it happily dried my clothes to fulfill an obligation that started before I even entered the building.

I will experiment further with this when next I wash things.

Thus ends Book One of the Horrid Laundry Saga.

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No, rikchik, I can't see the jmac.org WAP (or any other one) from the O-MAT. Thanks for encouraging me to try, though.