I just finished a major revision...
-
Testing is really boring. Lots of time spent with a simulator that I wrote (now, don't start...) and screwing (ahhhh) around with hardware at 3AM when the club is closed. The biggest problem with a dance club is handling all this cash. For example, there's a club in San Francisco that brings in more than $3 million a year (I've seen the earnings reports!). It's run by a couple Arabs. The Bush administration has no clue how Al-Queda really gets its money. Anyways, it's a cash business. The girl does a dance and the customer pays in cash. The club gets its money at the end of a girl's shift when she "cashes out", in which she is supposed to report how many dances she's done, and the club gets a percentage. To make sure she doesn't lie, there are "checkers" that circulate around and count the number of times each girl is with a customer. The problem is that the girl gets into cahoots with the checker, and they split the "cream", as it were (argh). My client provides a bunch of hardware that runs over Ethernet and a proprietary protocol. The hardware uses these fancy "iButtons" that have a digital code in them that's associated with the dancer, and it activates the booth--whether lights, blinds, transluscent plastic windows, etc. My software logs the "transaction" and debits the dancer's account while at the same time figuring out what the club earns. The dancer has to "charge up" her account by using the same iButton and putting money into a bill acceptor, that I keep track of as well. There's lots of modules of different types (turnstiles, door locks, etc), lots of earnings reports, and complicated schedules. The last part is what I was revising. Clubs have special pricing, like "two for one on Tuesdays", etc., and the program has to keep track of all the different dancer and customer costs for different schedules, which are associated with different module groups. We had a simple scheduling scheme, but it didn't handle all the contingencies, so it needed a major overhall. Hope I didn't bore you with that lengthy explanation. It's really quite a lot of fun! Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
I wish more people would share their work. Beleive it or not I just had a thousand thoughts run through my mind. Heh, not all of them were about programming. Some were about my dinner. Darroll
-
Testing is really boring. Lots of time spent with a simulator that I wrote (now, don't start...) and screwing (ahhhh) around with hardware at 3AM when the club is closed. The biggest problem with a dance club is handling all this cash. For example, there's a club in San Francisco that brings in more than $3 million a year (I've seen the earnings reports!). It's run by a couple Arabs. The Bush administration has no clue how Al-Queda really gets its money. Anyways, it's a cash business. The girl does a dance and the customer pays in cash. The club gets its money at the end of a girl's shift when she "cashes out", in which she is supposed to report how many dances she's done, and the club gets a percentage. To make sure she doesn't lie, there are "checkers" that circulate around and count the number of times each girl is with a customer. The problem is that the girl gets into cahoots with the checker, and they split the "cream", as it were (argh). My client provides a bunch of hardware that runs over Ethernet and a proprietary protocol. The hardware uses these fancy "iButtons" that have a digital code in them that's associated with the dancer, and it activates the booth--whether lights, blinds, transluscent plastic windows, etc. My software logs the "transaction" and debits the dancer's account while at the same time figuring out what the club earns. The dancer has to "charge up" her account by using the same iButton and putting money into a bill acceptor, that I keep track of as well. There's lots of modules of different types (turnstiles, door locks, etc), lots of earnings reports, and complicated schedules. The last part is what I was revising. Clubs have special pricing, like "two for one on Tuesdays", etc., and the program has to keep track of all the different dancer and customer costs for different schedules, which are associated with different module groups. We had a simple scheduling scheme, but it didn't handle all the contingencies, so it needed a major overhall. Hope I didn't bore you with that lengthy explanation. It's really quite a lot of fun! Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
While my post was meant to be joking (lamely), that does sound like an interesting project. What safegaurds have you found effective in preventing the dancers from collaborating with the checkers? That would seem to be an insoluble problem without a second layer of checker checkers, and even that wouldn't be foolproof. "My child was Inmate of the Month at Mohave County Jail" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City, AZ
-
I wish more people would share their work. Beleive it or not I just had a thousand thoughts run through my mind. Heh, not all of them were about programming. Some were about my dinner. Darroll
Not dancers?:-D "My child was Inmate of the Month at Mohave County Jail" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City, AZ
-
While my post was meant to be joking (lamely), that does sound like an interesting project. What safegaurds have you found effective in preventing the dancers from collaborating with the checkers? That would seem to be an insoluble problem without a second layer of checker checkers, and even that wouldn't be foolproof. "My child was Inmate of the Month at Mohave County Jail" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City, AZ
While my post was meant to be joking It was a good joke! I use it all the time! I think I was too tired to react to it though. Anyways, there are these modules, one per booth, that control the booth. A lot of places are "hands off", so the dancer is behind a screen of some sort, which the module controls. To start a dance, the girl presses her "iButton" against the reader. I get the "dance request" and check her account for sufficient funds. If there are sufficient funds, I tell the module "OK" and it opens the screen for a specified time (which I also give it). At the end of her shift, the girl cashes out anything left in her account. To start her shift, she has to put money into her account. This can be a problem because some people tend to blow their earnings on drugs (I'm totally serious here), something like $2,000 in one night and come back to the club broke, so the club has to loan the girl money. This is also handled by the computer system, and the girl first "works off" her loan. There are two types of account transactions--dances that credit the girls account and dances that debit the girls account. What I just described above is the debit kind. The credit kind is where the customer initiates the dance. Here, the girl touches her iButton to the reader which activates a bill acceptor on the customer's side. The customer puts money in and off she goes. The computer system records the transaction as a credit: the girl gets some of the income and the club gets the rest. At the end of the day, the girl's earnings are paid out. The checkers are only necessary in clubs where the girl has contact with the guy. In this situation, there's a light that turns on over the privacy booth. All the checker needs to do is make sure that all occupied booths have their lights on. This verifies that the girl was authorized by the computer system to do a dance for the guy. Plus, there are cameras everywhere. It's an interesting industry. I met the CEO of the Deja Vu clubs. He started off doing X-rated drive in theatres, then started a dance club. He's been in jail several times for tax evasion. When I met him, he had rented a really expensive car (after flying in on his private jet) and sported probably $50K of jewelry--gold necklace, diamond crusted ring, diamond watch, etc. It's an interesting industry. I'm obviously in the wrong one! Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
-
I wish more people would share their work. Beleive it or not I just had a thousand thoughts run through my mind. Heh, not all of them were about programming. Some were about my dinner. Darroll
I wish more people would share their work. I agree. So what do you do? Got any good war stories? Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
-
While my post was meant to be joking It was a good joke! I use it all the time! I think I was too tired to react to it though. Anyways, there are these modules, one per booth, that control the booth. A lot of places are "hands off", so the dancer is behind a screen of some sort, which the module controls. To start a dance, the girl presses her "iButton" against the reader. I get the "dance request" and check her account for sufficient funds. If there are sufficient funds, I tell the module "OK" and it opens the screen for a specified time (which I also give it). At the end of her shift, the girl cashes out anything left in her account. To start her shift, she has to put money into her account. This can be a problem because some people tend to blow their earnings on drugs (I'm totally serious here), something like $2,000 in one night and come back to the club broke, so the club has to loan the girl money. This is also handled by the computer system, and the girl first "works off" her loan. There are two types of account transactions--dances that credit the girls account and dances that debit the girls account. What I just described above is the debit kind. The credit kind is where the customer initiates the dance. Here, the girl touches her iButton to the reader which activates a bill acceptor on the customer's side. The customer puts money in and off she goes. The computer system records the transaction as a credit: the girl gets some of the income and the club gets the rest. At the end of the day, the girl's earnings are paid out. The checkers are only necessary in clubs where the girl has contact with the guy. In this situation, there's a light that turns on over the privacy booth. All the checker needs to do is make sure that all occupied booths have their lights on. This verifies that the girl was authorized by the computer system to do a dance for the guy. Plus, there are cameras everywhere. It's an interesting industry. I met the CEO of the Deja Vu clubs. He started off doing X-rated drive in theatres, then started a dance club. He's been in jail several times for tax evasion. When I met him, he had rented a really expensive car (after flying in on his private jet) and sported probably $50K of jewelry--gold necklace, diamond crusted ring, diamond watch, etc. It's an interesting industry. I'm obviously in the wrong one! Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Marc Clifton wrote: It's an interesting industry. I'm obviously in the wrong one! Fascinating task, but what a filthy industry. I sometimes wish I had the ability to supress decency and good taste - it is easy to strike it rich pandering to the poor taste of the trash in society - but never for long. You have a stronger stomach than I! "My child was Inmate of the Month at Mohave County Jail" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City, AZ
-
Marc Clifton wrote: It's an interesting industry. I'm obviously in the wrong one! Fascinating task, but what a filthy industry. I sometimes wish I had the ability to supress decency and good taste - it is easy to strike it rich pandering to the poor taste of the trash in society - but never for long. You have a stronger stomach than I! "My child was Inmate of the Month at Mohave County Jail" - Bumper Sticker in Bullhead City, AZ
but what a filthy industry. I thought so too, but for a lot of these people, it's just a job. Depending on the location, a lot of these dancers are putting themselves through college with their earnings. And contrary to how the media hypes it, the industry is very tightly regulated, most likely because the spotlight is on it so much. You have a stronger stomach than I! Oddly enough, I once left a company because I didn't agree with the work they were done on Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). This doesn't bother me at all. I think partly because I'm actually not exposed to the "business end" of club operations that much. I'm the guy who actually ran out of a strip joint in Vegas (the one time I went to such a place) because I was so disgusted with how the girls threw themselves at me. Ugh! Overall, I've learned quite a few things about myself in the process. Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
-
I wish more people would share their work. I agree. So what do you do? Got any good war stories? Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Lets see. I am a forecaster for McGuire AFB in New Jersey. The closet to war I got was in bosnia where I was sent as the lone Air Force guy to support Apache helicopters that the Army deployed due to rioting in the area. The Army does not have weather personnel. So I was sent to give weather updates for the forward location. It was the best assignment I have had yet. Comming soon: Korea. Now why is a weather man at a programming site? Well programming is my second love, second to flying. Since flying cost thousands and programming only cost me time, after the cost of VS. In my job the biggest problem we have is that whenever the weather goes bad EVERYONE calls us for the same reason, asking the same questions. Most weather shops then develope a web site that will allow people to seek information there instead of calling. My latest programming projects have been developing an easy to update interface to our web pages. We now deploy our mission planning forecast via a slick, error checking, GUI front end. There are also several other front ends to web pages I developed as well. I also designed and deployed our first website. It's fun. So nothing to exciting on my end Darroll
-
Lets see. I am a forecaster for McGuire AFB in New Jersey. The closet to war I got was in bosnia where I was sent as the lone Air Force guy to support Apache helicopters that the Army deployed due to rioting in the area. The Army does not have weather personnel. So I was sent to give weather updates for the forward location. It was the best assignment I have had yet. Comming soon: Korea. Now why is a weather man at a programming site? Well programming is my second love, second to flying. Since flying cost thousands and programming only cost me time, after the cost of VS. In my job the biggest problem we have is that whenever the weather goes bad EVERYONE calls us for the same reason, asking the same questions. Most weather shops then develope a web site that will allow people to seek information there instead of calling. My latest programming projects have been developing an easy to update interface to our web pages. We now deploy our mission planning forecast via a slick, error checking, GUI front end. There are also several other front ends to web pages I developed as well. I also designed and deployed our first website. It's fun. So nothing to exciting on my end Darroll
Wow. That sounds really fun. It's nice when you can bridge two completely different technologies. Do you have any links to your websites, or are they for Air Force personnel only? Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
-
Wow. That sounds really fun. It's nice when you can bridge two completely different technologies. Do you have any links to your websites, or are they for Air Force personnel only? Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Our main site is for McGuire AFB only. There are actually units on base that cannot access our site due to the way the firewall is set up. We average just over 1000 hits a month. I do have a site that I use for updates, but I warn you it is my win 2000 server running on a cable modem. The URL is http://www.swingtimers.com/Observer/[^]. It will be slow, but it is the cable modems fault. Let me know what you think. Darroll