I'm becoming increasingly annoyed with people who argue and insult people with completely flawed logic behind their arguments.
Here be the example:
I arrive at the lift on the ground floor. Both lifts are going up, and some working dude who works in the department seems to be fuming.
Me: Been waiting long then?
Him: Yeah, when I arrived the lift was on floor 2. Then it moved up to floor 3. You know what that means? Some lazy sod has used the lift to go up one floor.
Or alternatively, someone on floor 2 wanted to go to say floor 10, someone on floor 3 also did. Both called the lift on their respective floors. The lift stopped at both floors to pick them up.
Then once in the lift some lazy sod did indeed go from G to 2. I seem to remember both me and the guy called them lazy sods and that they should have used the stairs like the sign says to outside the lift.
'We're late and in a rush', she says.
The lift stops at floor 1, but it's full so noone gets in and the people outside the lift decide to use the stairs... stating "it's quicker". Now if you've ever used the Tower Building lift before you'll prolly know that if nobody gets in the lift gets all confused and doesn't move for ages, then it starts to get angry and buzz. Finially it moved off and I pointed out to the silly lazy girls that it'd have been quicker to walk.
"Would it," they asked.
"Yeah," says the worker, "or are you so unfit it takes you a minute to climb two flights of stairs?"
When they'd gone the worker told me that what was needed was a panel to put over the 1 and 2 buttons on the lift, with a padlock, so you could only go to those floors if you were moving something heavy. I didn't bother to tell him the flaws in this idea - such as it being annoying if say I want to go to lecture room 201 from my lab on the tenth floor and would have to go via floor 3. If you're going to do that you might as well only let the lift stop on say every 3rd floor normally.
What's really required is electrocution on the buttons if you press a button for a floor that is say 2 floors or less away. That'd learn the buggers.
OK... so some lazy tw*t has just gone from 1 to 2 in the lift... bloody lazy idiot.
Hmmm... you could stop the lift accepting button presses for the floors either side of it, but you'd still need an override key for the heavy equipment movers. They'd probably get pissed off going up three and down two every time!
I think the best way is for two people (say, me & Ed, just for the sake of argument) to take a lift each. Anyone doing it once gets poked with a cattle prod. Anyone doing it again gets taken to the 15th floor and shown the quick way down.
Posted by: Joe on October 13, 2004 7:38 PMHow about making the lift accelerate really slowly so it takes a couple of minutes to travel 2 floors but the further you go the quicker it is?
Yeah ok, so for multi-drop trips where people are going G to 5, 7 and 10 it would be a right arse so weight it so that the lower floors take the longest and the effect is less pronounced for higher floors where fewer stupid people go. Not only would it discourage people from taking short trips, perhaps it would also encourage people to take the stairs for the last floor in their trip if it stopped there first then you get fit too.
I'm also very in favour of installing a helter skelter slide for downward travel.
Posted by: Mark on October 14, 2004 10:56 AMTo save the arse of the slow lift thing... how about if someone gets on a silly floor and presses a button for +-2 floors it does that stop after it's done all the others.
This saves the people in the lift who are going loads of floors from getting annoyed because the lift has taken ages because it stopped when really someone shouldn't have been using the lift for the short journey. I also means that the short journey takes ages for the lazy people, but doesn't really inconvenience others.
Other than them having to deal with the smell of lazy people for longer.
A helter skelter would cause all kinds of problems, unless you did it with a green light red light thing and had a 'lifeguard' type person there... 'no, not head first' 'oi, not two at once' 'the lights not greeeeen' etc etc.
Or 15 helter skelters... maybe... would they be the kind where you sit on a mat or just on your arse? Who'd take the mats back to the top?
The helter-skelter problem is easy to solve; it is Lec Eng after all.
All you need is a large exclusive-OR gate.
(Yes yes, I know that's not what XOR gates do... but it sounds good, so I stand by it.)
I think mats would be the way to go. We could train African swallows to carry them back up to the various floors. The "mat call" button on each floor would deposit some bird seed in a tray to encourage the swallows.
How about a large crash mat at one side of the tower? Each floor would have a jumping pad ("the plank"), staggered horizontally to avoid being squashed by any over-enthusiastic undergrads.
Maybe the first year egg-dropping experiment could be replaced. You'd pick one member of your group,chuck him off the tower and see if he survives. On the plus side, this would cut down competition for seats in the computing labs.
Posted by: Joe on October 14, 2004 1:12 PM