Animal, Mineral, Vegetable
I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been playing this 20 Questions game for nearly an hour.
I was skeptical at first, but the fact that it guessed "compass" correctly on its first try had me convinced. Other items so far include the following:
Coffee mug warmer — Never got it (its closest was paperweight).
Scallop — Got it second try, but its first guess was oyster, which is pretty close.
PDA — Got it right.
Gnocchi — Never guessed it, though its other guesses were couscous and pierogies.
Sense of Humor — It guessed joke. I figure that's good enough, right?
Anyway, you get the idea. Somebody put together a really nice neural net for this thing.
* * *
Speaking of odd programs, whoever wrote the logic governing the elevators at work must have aspired to a career maintaining the HAL 9000 or something. For an unassuming set of four glass lifts, those things are the oddest, quirkiest, most complexly acting elevators I've ever experienced.
For example, a phenomenon which happens fairly frequently during off hours (like tonight, which is what got me to thinking about them again) goes like this: I walk to the elevators on the second floor, on the way to head out to go home, and one of the elevators is visible idle behind one of the glass doors. I push the Down button. However, the elevator in front of me, instead of opening, drops down to the first floor, and another elevator comes down from one of the higher floors and opens for me. Strange.
Even more strangely, these elevators have a soothing female voice which tells you which floor you're on. "Second floor," they say, and so on (though, actually, they seem to be oddly quiet lately — perhaps the sound has been turned off). The elevator voice even complains if the elevator is too full, and asks someone to exit. What follows that little announcement is always a self-conscious silence, as all the people on the elevator bow their heads and sort of look around to figure out which person should step off to appease the elevator spirit. Not a good moment to be a larger individual.
Anyway, after a couple of years of "First floor. Going up. Second floor." every morning, and "Second floor. Going down. First floor." every evening, I'd become fairly accustomed to the elevator talking to me, and had long since begun to ignore it – that is, until one sleepy morning when I had to go into work early, stepped into the empty elevator by myself, and was immediately greeted with "Good morning!"
At first I thought I had imagined it, or that "Good morning!" was always what the elevator said but I'd just never really paid attention. I would have given anything for there to have been just one other person on there at the same time to compare notes with, or that the elevator would have even said it a second time so I could be sure, but the quandary was left to me and my own fuzzy memory. I nearly caught myself saying "Excuse me?" to the elevator to get it to repeat itself, until I realized how utterly psychotic this would have been (oh, what kind of world we live in, that the elevators are allowed to talk to us, but we're crazy to talk back).
By lunchtime, the elevator was back to its standard "Second floor. Going down. First floor." routine, and the few people at work I ventured to ask about the change in routine either claimed not to have noticed or said they didn't hear anything different.
I still promise I wasn't dreaming, though.
* * *
I've spent the last 3 weeks looking for the corn dog love animation, and I finally found it again. I'm so happy. Yay!
"It's a love story. It's not about the corndogs, that you eat."
So now I can eat my 50% dolphin safe tuna fish sandwich and go to bed happy.
I was skeptical at first, but the fact that it guessed "compass" correctly on its first try had me convinced. Other items so far include the following:
Coffee mug warmer — Never got it (its closest was paperweight).
Scallop — Got it second try, but its first guess was oyster, which is pretty close.
PDA — Got it right.
Gnocchi — Never guessed it, though its other guesses were couscous and pierogies.
Sense of Humor — It guessed joke. I figure that's good enough, right?
Anyway, you get the idea. Somebody put together a really nice neural net for this thing.
* * *
Speaking of odd programs, whoever wrote the logic governing the elevators at work must have aspired to a career maintaining the HAL 9000 or something. For an unassuming set of four glass lifts, those things are the oddest, quirkiest, most complexly acting elevators I've ever experienced.
For example, a phenomenon which happens fairly frequently during off hours (like tonight, which is what got me to thinking about them again) goes like this: I walk to the elevators on the second floor, on the way to head out to go home, and one of the elevators is visible idle behind one of the glass doors. I push the Down button. However, the elevator in front of me, instead of opening, drops down to the first floor, and another elevator comes down from one of the higher floors and opens for me. Strange.
Even more strangely, these elevators have a soothing female voice which tells you which floor you're on. "Second floor," they say, and so on (though, actually, they seem to be oddly quiet lately — perhaps the sound has been turned off). The elevator voice even complains if the elevator is too full, and asks someone to exit. What follows that little announcement is always a self-conscious silence, as all the people on the elevator bow their heads and sort of look around to figure out which person should step off to appease the elevator spirit. Not a good moment to be a larger individual.
Anyway, after a couple of years of "First floor. Going up. Second floor." every morning, and "Second floor. Going down. First floor." every evening, I'd become fairly accustomed to the elevator talking to me, and had long since begun to ignore it – that is, until one sleepy morning when I had to go into work early, stepped into the empty elevator by myself, and was immediately greeted with "Good morning!"
At first I thought I had imagined it, or that "Good morning!" was always what the elevator said but I'd just never really paid attention. I would have given anything for there to have been just one other person on there at the same time to compare notes with, or that the elevator would have even said it a second time so I could be sure, but the quandary was left to me and my own fuzzy memory. I nearly caught myself saying "Excuse me?" to the elevator to get it to repeat itself, until I realized how utterly psychotic this would have been (oh, what kind of world we live in, that the elevators are allowed to talk to us, but we're crazy to talk back).
By lunchtime, the elevator was back to its standard "Second floor. Going down. First floor." routine, and the few people at work I ventured to ask about the change in routine either claimed not to have noticed or said they didn't hear anything different.
I still promise I wasn't dreaming, though.
* * *
I've spent the last 3 weeks looking for the corn dog love animation, and I finally found it again. I'm so happy. Yay!
"It's a love story. It's not about the corndogs, that you eat."
So now I can eat my 50% dolphin safe tuna fish sandwich and go to bed happy.