I was electrocuted fucking around with an old elevator once. Now I just get on it and travel to my destination. :) A very humbling experience to have happen in front of your peers.
You were electroshocked. It's only electrocution if you die.
List of Special Elevator Modes
171–180 of 214 posts
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#172I found a "mode" in an elevator in India that I have not seen anywhere else: if a destination floor number is highlighted, and you press it twice, it gets cancelled. I have used this magic power just once, when an obnoxious man got on and insisted on having a loud conversation on his phone. Since he wasn't paying attention, I double-tapped his floor number and made him skip. I happened to get off at the floor before…
This has made my day. I have spent much of the last decade campaigning to anyone who would listen for the existence of a feature such of this to nullify accidental button presses in an elevator.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#173The elevator in the apartment building I currently live in has a quirk which adds ~2s to the travel. If you know this quirk you can save the ~2s on each use.
So if you just pick the floor then it waits 2 seconds before closing the door. Obviously the elevator waits for the door to get fully shut before it starts moving.
If you first press the "shut door" button and then the floor button, then the door shuts within any delays, which means the elevator starts moving 2 seconds earlier.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#174If says this about 'Pet Mode' > Does not infect other passengers if the animal has an infection I think this must be a mistranslation. There are very few infectious diseases that a human can get from being around a house pet. I think they mean allergies.
Other pets can, though.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#175Since we’re talking about elevators, it would appear anyone can call the elevator’s emergency phone line. Which is good, but also has unintended consequences: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMdXyQ5ra/
There was a story of a guy who got stuck in an elevator and called for help, but the installer had gone bust and the number had been assigned to a psychiatrist in another county. At first the therapist claimed he couldn't do anything, but when the man pleaded for help, the therapist replied "Well, how does it feel to be trapped in an elevator."...
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#176I found a "mode" in an elevator in India that I have not seen anywhere else: if a destination floor number is highlighted, and you press it twice, it gets cancelled. I have used this magic power just once, when an obnoxious man got on and insisted on having a loud conversation on his phone. Since he wasn't paying attention, I double-tapped his floor number and made him skip. I happened to get off at the floor before…
I literally used that feature earlier today in an elevator in Thailand. The exact method of operation seems to vary among elevators, some require you to hold it, others require more than 2 presses. It's great when you change your mind.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#177I found a "mode" in an elevator in India that I have not seen anywhere else: if a destination floor number is highlighted, and you press it twice, it gets cancelled. I have used this magic power just once, when an obnoxious man got on and insisted on having a loud conversation on his phone. Since he wasn't paying attention, I double-tapped his floor number and made him skip. I happened to get off at the floor before…
I believe your story highlights precisely why more elevators don't include that functionality.
No it doesn't. You can't prevent people from being a-holes and stealthily pressing 10 buttons before leaving the elevator. The feature as described is as useful as pressing a floor to stop on. Perhaps it makes more sense on smaller elevators than it does in large ones. Or perhaps it would make more sense to allow undoing a press only within the first few seconds.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd assume that it would first go to the floor where the button was pressed first, and subsequently collect everyone in the direction it'll go from there. Because that's actually what I feel some elevators are doing because you wait for one for ages. Some certainly do work like that, but newer ones are probably indeed smarter. Then there's the curiously simple system that you'd find in Soviet buildings, the kind buil…
Elevators in former Soviet Union (even those installed long after its disintegration) are quite dumb compared to Western and SE Asia installations in tall buildings.
I stayed in a tall hotel in Dubai (not sure how much of Asia UAE is) for a while and it still took a minute or two for an elevator to arrive. Though they were freakishly fast, Russian ones now feel like they're crawling.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#179The elevator in the apartment building I currently live in has a quirk which adds ~2s to the travel. If you know this quirk you can save the ~2s on each use. So if you just pick the floor then it waits 2 seconds before closing the door. Obviously the elevator waits for the door to get fully shut before it starts moving. If you first press the "shut door" button and then the floor button, then the door shuts within an…
Interesting. Mine has an even longer delay than 2s (3-4s?) so I always press the close-doors button which removes the delay, but it never occurred to me I could shave some additional milliseconds off by pressing the close-doors button before the floor selection button.
Re: List of Special Elevator Modes
#180Donald Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming has, in its first volume, a lengthy section on simulating an elevator. It is a single regular elevator (nothing "special" going on as in the post here), but even so, as he tries to make things precise, you realize how much detail is involved, and get some appreciation for the task of programming. It occupies about 15 pages (plus several pages of exercises and solutions).…
> We often fail to realize how little we know about a thing until we attempt to simulate it on a computer. "Programming is a good medium for expressing poorly understood and sloppily formulated ideas" is definitely on the list of my favourite programming quotes.
I recently tried to implement a simple version of an existing board game ... boy did all those "if you have this card and I have that card except for that special condition and also none of this matters if you play this card" bite me in the end ...