Day: August 4, 2006

Orgismo.com => Japan Railway passengers to generate electricity at train stations

The East Japan Railway Company… …is testing an experimental system that produces electricity as people pass through ticket gates. JR claims that this sort of human-powered electricity generation system may provide a portion of the electricity consumed at train stations in the future.

Having been in a Japanese train station at rush hour I know that there’s a vast amount of energy surging through the building, so this seems like a great idea.

But knowing the Japanese, they’ll adopt this on the subways and perhaps even implement a little system to redirect some of the electricity generated and impart a mild shock into the genitals of the men passing through the gates – just to get them in the mood to read their hardcore porn and grope the female passengers.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Technology

What’s Swedish meatballs without noodles?

I’ll tell you what: It’s not enough food. You have to eat more meatballs to fill up than a proper Swedish meatballs and noodles dish.

IKEA, being Swedish, doesn’t serve noodles with their meatballs. Just because the Swedish invented the Swedish meatball does not make it right to serve them without noodles.

In any case, they don’t and so here’s the problem – you have to eat more to get a filling meal. Their meatball dinners come in 10, 15 and 20 meatball sizes, but the 15 meatball “regular” plate is their featured item.

So what’s the difference between the 15 and the 20 meatball plate?

Answer: Apparently not enough. That is, visually not enough for the clerks to be able to tell them apart when they rang them up. It used to be every time we went to IKEA, I would ask for the 20 meatball plate and get charged for the 15 meatball plate. Of course, that makes it a great deal for me, but, by the same token, probably a crummy deal for the poor slob who purchased the 10 meatball plate and gets charged for the 15.

That went on for a long time, but apparently someone noticed the meatball inventory wasn’t matching revenues and suddenly they began sending “signals” with the food to the cashiers.

15 meatball plates now have a flag with them, while the others do not.

While this system appears to be more reliable, it’s subject to a classic “man in the middle” attack. All you have to do is insert your own “message” (little swedish flag) into the packet (the 20 meatball plate) between the source (server) and destination (cashier).

Violà! The destination misreads the packet and abnormal results occur.

Disclaimer: The Lone Locust does not endorse fraudulent activities designed to get 5 free meatballs. It’s not really worth it, is it?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Ikea

The Ted Lee Experiment => When bad customer service turns good

Today I got a call from a man from Apple who identified himself as Steve Job’s personal assistant. Jobs had gotten my email and instructed his assistant to make the necessary calls to get my laptop fixed and returned back to me in time for WWDC. His assistant also mentioned that Steve found my line about “going to WWDC without a laptop is like going to war with a bannana” funny. Ha. I made Steve Jobs laugh today. How about that.

So, does anyone know any particular type jokes that Steve Jobs likes?

I’ve got to haul mine into the Apple store on Monday and desperately cannot be without a computer while it gets repaired. I wonder if “iJoke: The biographical story of Steve Jobs’ Sense of Humour” is available at the Apple store?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Computer, Mac, Macbook, OSX, Problems

We finally put together Michelle’s new IKEA bed.

Usually, I don’t find IKEA furniture particularly difficult to assemble, but this was just a royal pain.

It wasn’t difficult to understand or follow the directions, it’s just when you start with a bag of hardware the size of a 10lb bag of supermarket ice, you know you’re in for an evening’s fun.

We moved the bed to the opposite side of the room from her old bed so that, during the night, when she bumps the walls, she’ll stopping waking up her brother in the next room.

Now she’ll be waking us up.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Ikea, Kids