Entries this day: Bush_Shoe_clip Work ami_Shopping

Bush Shoe clip

10:24am JST Tuesday 16 December 2008 (day 14146)

I snagged this image and put it in my wiki for safekeeping. But, haha, I just realized that any shmo can overwrite the image. I'll put a copies on smugmug, facebook, and airplaneday. Anyway, I believe the reaction from the crowd proves that box cutters could not have been used to hijack airplanes. The logic goes basically like this:

Though the shoe-thrower is obviously angry (and therefore likely dangerous), at least two people immediately react to stop him. They immediately "risked their lives" to stop the guy who was a possible danger to the people in the room.

Now, switch to an airplane. A commercial jetliner, if you will. If three or four dudes jump up with boxcutters, it's unpossible that they woulda been able to get into the cockpit. Other dudes woulda jumped up just as fast as they could take off their seat belts.

If three or four dudes sneakily stealth themselves to kill a couple of people without being noticed, they would be noticed before that tactic would get them into the cockpit.

- - - -

Now, I can think of some arguments against this logic:

* Perhaps people were more keen to stop an attack on the President / in Iraq.

but

Given that Bush's own body guards didn't even enter the room before those two guys had reacted, I doubt the guys who actually brought the guy down were trained to save the US President. They were saving their own asses.

Even though they're in Iraq, the entire roomload of people would die just as easily as an airplane, so that doesn't actually make a difference.

Work

10:09am JST Wednesday 17 December 2008 (day 14147)

Yesterday work was a bit more relaxing than on previous days (for the past 2 or 3 weeks) because I arguably finished the billing project enough that we can start entering data. In fact, I started entering data for a club called Life, going back to when the contract was started in 2007. I entered the data a bit wrongly though, or the billing system could be (way) more intelligent and unapply payments from old invoices and reapply those payments to new invoices if an invoice is dated between the original invoices and the payment. But it doesn't even make sense to say, much less program the system to handle that.

But there is one tweak I plan to make to the GUI today: when creating new invoices, optionally specify for which month the invoice is being created, overriding the automagic calculation that takes today's date and adjusts it according to the contract (do they pay ahead of time, behind time or for current month of service?)

ami Shopping

10:21am JST Wednesday 17 December 2008 (day 14147)

Went shopping with Ami last night: we met at Hachiko and I bounced around on the energy-generating footpads before walking to Tokyo Hands. The big digital display says we've accumulated 7023.0453 (or something that can be rounded to 7 X 10^3) kWS of energy. It must be measuring in kilowatt seconds. Wow! In just 3 or 4 weeks of these 6 squares being set up (4 of which are in a main path of foot traffic) we can power a 50 watt energy saving light bulb for 14 seconds! We only need, let's see:

6 squares/14 seconds = X squares/3 weeks

6 squares/14 seconds = X squares/(3 weeks * 604800 seconds / week)

6 squares/14 seconds = X squares/181440 seconds

X squares = 6 squares * 181440 seconds / 14 seconds

777600 squares

777600 squares and we can power a 50 watt light bulb continuously!!! Woooooo!!

I'm hoping (seriously hoping) that my math / assumptions are flat wrong, and our walking energy could be more effectively put to use.

10:37am JST

Aight; I'm in Shibuya now (have been writing while on the train headed to work). Peace!