Maybe now Otis can remove the ‘Door Close’ button

The new Google computer will not have a ‘CAPS LOCK’ key.  I guess the people at Google feel it is unnecessary.  My understanding is they will replace it with a ‘search’ key.

Perhaps now the elevator people can either remove the ‘door close’ button or install one that actually works.

I recall, but cannot find, a list of clauses finishing the sentence, “If God were a man, ….”  One of them was “pushing the elevator door close button would work with a promptness that might cause injury”.

I did find many people questioning whether the buttons actually work.

At Snopes, people are debating the question.  At The Straight Dope, it is claimed that:

The grim truth is that a significant percentage of the close-door buttons in this world, for reasons that we will discuss anon, don’t do anything at all.

Naturally, this is not something the elevator companies wish to have widely known, lest there be social unrest. When I talked to the folks at the Otis elevator company in Farmington, Connecticut, they were all innocence.

At wikipedia, it seems that the button works when the elevator is being used in non-standard ways:

This mode was created for firefighters so that they may rescue people from a burning building. The phase two key switch located on the COP has three positions: off, on, and hold. By turning phase two on, the firefighter enables the car to move. However, like independent service mode, the car will not respond to a car call unless the firefighter manually pushes and holds the door close button. Once the elevator gets to the desired floor it will not open its doors unless the firefighter holds the door open button. …

and with “Independent service”: The elevator will remain parked on a floor with its doors open until a floor is selected and the door close button is held until the elevator starts to travel. Independent service is useful when transporting large goods or moving groups of people between certain floors.

As the Straight Dope suggests, maybe I need to visit Farmington:

Among other things, I was told that the close-door buttons at Otis HQ (which, the views of the cynics notwithstanding, is not located in a one-story building) always work like a charm.

This is comforting news, needless to say. I would suggest that any harried city dweller who has never seen a close-door button that actually did something might want to make a field trip out to Farmington to inspect the genuine article.

Early Hallowe’en festivities

WordPress doesn’t allow video uploading without paying for an upgrade, and Youtube has “voluntarily disabled this functionality [ the uploading of video] on kr.youtube.com because of the Korean real-name verification law.” *

So, to see the terrified teachers and hear the terrified students at my university, you need to visit creativitiproject.

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*I prefer to link to sites when I quote from them, but it looked like the link for my personal page – accessible only after signing in.

Letter of intent

I was asked by my university about my intentions for the new year:

 

Your committee work record form and letter of intent are required for your 2010 evaluation.
Thus, please submit them to the office by Monday, October 11 (6 o’clock)

 

1. Letter of intent (Re: renewing your contact)

- You can use your own wording (informal).

So, I can be informal, but what does that mean, exactly?  I decided to cover my bases, you know, to cross my ‘i’s and dot my ‘t’s.

Various identifiers have been blurred or covered.  Click to bigify.

For the curious, my university has a policy of linking rookie teachers to veterans for assistance through the red tape.  They could probably cut the red tape and have less need of the buddy system, but deliberately giving a buddy to new teachers does make the rookie feel like they plan ahead.

Oh, and I don’t actually know anyone who let their students out early, but the empty threat is a proud component of gossip, I believe.

Uh, what is ‘the Q.T.’ anyway?  Danny DeVito said it all the time in LA Confidential, but i I only know it is related to gossip.

Finally, now I see the spelling error that they will use as the reason for my dismissal!  Dang it!

It’s ironical

Ex Alaskan Senator died in a plane crash recently.  First, as always, my condolensces to his family.

Second, I learned about his death from my Salon feed on Google Reader.  There were a few reports on the event, including these two: (the first is a screen shot)

An interesting choice of ad for Google to place there!

Salon had a few other news reports, then came the headline,

Unfortunate contextual advertising watch, Ted Stevens edition

I’ve had to tweak this post a little.  The blue text above is a link, even though the underlining appears to have disappeared.

At the Huffington Post, news of Stevens’ death was followed by an ad for a remote control plane named “nitro planes”.

I guess this isn’t hypocrisy because Salon doesn’t control what ads Google adds. Still, it is ironic.

I played with guns

Salon has an article about two parents living in Texas and trying to keep their child from playing too often with guns.

Here in Texas, guns are an integral part of life. Many children have parents who hunt. People living out on ranches need a shotgun leaning in the mud room to take care of that rattler waiting on the front porch. And 200,000 Texans and counting have a concealed carry hand gun permit.

Our son is six; in the past few years I’ve seen him make a play gun out of his finger, a stick, a plastic grabber toy and, once, by chewing a peanut butter sandwich into a gun shape. We’ve also given him a couple of prop guns for imagination play – a pirate blunderbuss that goes with his pirate costume and a play rifle that stays in the closet unless Daddy can play with him….

Could allowing our son to play with toy guns — even to the limited extent that we do allow it — make him less likely to handle guns safely? Or are we just keeping a boy from being fully a boy?…

We are sheltering and shielding our child, protecting him from playing with toy guns, from falling off his bike without a helmet, from exposure to the horrible, violent things humans do to each other. All week, I’ve considered the idea that maybe the parents who graciously had us all over to play that day have the more realistic strategy — let the child watch a show about the reality of what guns do, and let him work it out through his play.

For some reason, it doesn’t bother me when the kids play light sabre battle, duel fiercely with foam swords or “zap” each other dead with imaginary lightning bolts from their fingers. But it really disturbed me to see them “shooting” each other with realistic-looking guns in pantomime of war, mankind’s greatest horror.

I have the same concerns and confusion about what is right, what would be good parenting.  I am not sure if living in Korea, with it’s very strict gun-laws, makes the situation better or worse.  The reality of what guns can do is diffused by distance, as we only see what they can do in TV, which is not a credible source.

Of course, and the author quoted above mentions light sabres, swords are relatively common here- and in even modern gang movies.  Gang members have difficulty obtaining guns, so swords are more common, at least in the few gangster movies I’ve seen (Is Kick the Shilla Moon, a comedy, the right place to learn about Korea?)

And, I let my son play with swords – well, toy swords.

Worse, there is a sharp and dangerous sword in the apartment.  After I received my black belt in Haedong Geomdo, I learned I was able to buy a real sword – you need a sword license here.  I bought one and trained with it.  Without actually being heavy, it is much heavier than my training sword and takes some practice.  It has also tasted blood – mine, when I shaved the back of my left hand in a one-handed swing.

Back to guns, with the understanding that the same concerns apply to other objects.

I had a lot of toy guns as a child.  I shot at friends and family members and if my father grimaced, I didn’t notice.  Nowadays, I am as much a pacifist as anyone in South Korea can be with those crazies (I am using ‘crazy’ literally here) to the north that need watching and an armed deterrent.   I don’t care for violence, don’t want to use violence, but can see it is sometimes necessary.

Did the change come when I first owned a ‘real’ gun?  My father bought me a pellet gun when I was twelve or so.  We had strict rules and he taught me how to use it properly.  There was a seriousness about touching it that hadn’t existed with the toys.

The little guy has a toy gun – with ‘real sounds and flashes’ that a friend of the family bought him.  He uses it sometimes and I am never happy about it.  This summer, I am very likely to buy him -or both of us- a squirt gun, and feel that is very different despite the efforts squirt gun makers go to make them look like regular guns.*  This I will wholeheartedly join him in playing with. Is that a mixed message?

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*We have a spritzer to water the plants.  Are there any other squirt guns that would be fun to use that don’t look like hand guns or rifles?  A small version of a forest fire fighting extinguisher, with a tank on the back and a nozzle and pump, would be great. Suggestions in the comments are (always) welcome.

Its the most wonderful time of the year

April Fool’s Day is one of my favorite days.  Hallowe’en is also high on the list.

This year, I was the new guy at work and wanted to be a little careful.  I wasn’t sure what the limits were. One thing I did was bring a rubber snake of my son’s, ‘suddenly’ find it in my pocket and fling in apparent horror at a student.  Good times.

The other prank, and one with photographic evidence, is changing the names on the bathroom doors.  Just as at my previous university, they slid right right off and were easily changed.  To add to the fun, I add a page in each bathroom naming the person responsible (not me and I have edited the name out of the photos).

In the second picture, urinals and the ‘women’ symbol can both be seen.