Tuesday, 29 Jul 2008

How to Buy Something from a Vending Machine That Demands Exact Change when All You Have Is Bills

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit
Ever crave something from a vending machine and slip your dollar bill into it only to have it spit back out and see the error message ‘Must Use Exact Change’? If your vending machine isn’t a solitary vending machine, here’s how you can make one vending machine turn your bills into change that you can then use on the original vending machine - or anywhere else.
This method could of course be used anytime you need change for any purpose, it’s not limited to vending machines.

Steps

1. Locate another vending machine that accepts paper currency (bills)
2. Determine if the machine has change in it (A) Insert a dollar bill. B) If the machine accepts your bill then it has change in it.
3. Press the “Cancel” or “Return Money” button/lever.
4. Abracadabra! Your $1 in change appears in the coin return slot.
5. Note #1: The reason this works is because vending machines are designed to validate paper currency and suck it in to the machine, but they are NOT generally designed to spit bills back out. So, once the paper currency has been verified and sucked into a vending machine with coins and you have $1 in credit in the machine - when you press the coin return/cancel button/lever it will return $1 in credit with the only currency it can spit back out - coins.

Warnings

• This may not work for ALL vending machines.
• Be prepared to have your bill changed to the smallest coinage the machine accepts (in the US that’s generally a nickel)

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world’s largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Buy Something from a Vending Machine That Demands Exact Change when All You Have Is Bills. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Monday, 7 Jul 2008

Sunday I had a complaint on my cover sheet from the paper. The note said “Delivery complaint: Customer says missed paper 7/5. Person said they told delivery person not to deliver papers but changed his mind. Customer wants back papers delivered ASAP!”. Funny, they didn’t ASK me to hang onto their papers for them. How can they COMPLAIN that they didn’t get a paper AFTER THEY TOLD ME NOT TO DELIVER THE PAPER ANYMORE?!?!?!?! I bet the person left a note in their door telling me they want to start getting the paper again. Which would be all well and good if I were walking up to their door every morning delivering the paper to their door BUT I AM NOT BECAUSE THEY TOLD ME TO STOP. Seriously - would you stop your car every day get out and walk up to the door to check to see if they left me a note? Would you if you had given them your name and number on several occassions over the years? I’ll let you in on a little secret, I wouldn’t. and I didn’t. I assumed they would CALL me or call the journal to resume service. It NEVER occurred to me that they would COMPLAIN about not getting the paper after they told me not to deliver it.

Monday, 7 Jul 2008

I read a post on i09 in a thread about ‘cute sidekicks’ in sci-fi movies, and like most topics it went pretty far afield. After someone raised R2D2 and C3PO, one person used them as a great metaphor for the IT industry.

Here it is:

Post by “Bloodboiler at 02:56 PM on 05/03/08

“It’s a shame how little attention R2-D2 and C-3PO have gotten. Their relationship with their users has layers upon layers of depth.
Basically you have a moron who you can understand but who doesn’t shut up, and then you have a smart trans can who understands you but can only communicate in a language that only the moron understands.
If you take only the trash can, you can work with it by giving orders, but it can communicate back with only onomonopoetic whistling.
If you take only the moron, it can work as a translator, but is otherwise useless and annoying.
Finally, if you take both you can communicate and work with the smart trash can, but you have to put up with both constant onomonopoetic whistling and constant blathering of a moron.

What a marvelous image of the whole IT industry. If you combine two crappy technologies you can get something that works, but you also get worst features of both in the same time.”