AgPerson

The Village residence hall houses 220 people for 8 months out of the year. There are eight washing machines for clothing that charge 75¢ per wash. Let us assume each student does one load of wash per week. That works out to $82.50 per machine per month, or $660 per machine for the academic year. Assume that Brandeis gets a cut of that (since they always do). Let’s say 20%. So Conway, the company that provides the machines, makes $528 per machine per year.

Conway has the cost of the machine, let’s estimate that a high-grade vending washing machine costs $3500, just to choose a figure. There is the maintenance cost involved in emptying the machine of quarters every week and performing maintenance. Using these figures, it would take Conway almost 7 years to pay off the machine, not including labor costs and upkeep. I doubt the machines last 7 years, so I guess these numbers are off — people must be doing more loads of wash per week.

We’ve gotten this far, so let’s just assume that our numbers are valid, even though they probably aren’t. The washing machine in my basement serves 16 (I think) people, most of the year. For simplicity we’ll say that everyone does one load of wash a week for all 12 months of the year. The cost per load here is $1.75, so this works out to $1344 for the machine for the year. Wow! To be fair, let’s assume the landlord takes 20%, just like Brandeis. That knocks the revenue down to $1075.

Conway is making $528/year providing a machine to Brandeis, but they are making $1075/year — double — providing the machine in my apartment. Wow. What a rip-off.

I’ll link to Seth’s writeup when he writes it up. Avenue Q won best musical and Idina Menzel got best female lead. Both deserved it. I wanted Wicked to get best musical, but that’s only because I found AQ a bit less exciting the second time through. In contrast, the first and only time I saw Wicked it was in highly obstructed seats that didn’t let me see much of the action, and none of the set. So I’m not sure what that says. That AQ won best musical says many things. One, it’s a wonderful, quirky, completely different kind of show, and in New York that kind of thing can be rewarded, as opposed to Hollywood where it is generally shunned. Two, well, it did make a lot of money. Three, it was kinda the fad. With previous years full of revivals and boring new stuff, something fresh just caused everyone to jump up and shout hooray, even if it isn’t necessarily the best thing out there.

I mean, I think it’s almost the best thing out there. I think Wicked beats it by a hair. But I’m not a theater critic, I know very little about the theater scene, and my opinion is probably wrong. And I’m still very happy. Congratulations to Avenue Q, you all rock. And maybe you’ve finally found your purpose? 😉

Spent most of the day sitting indoors, reading about web design. I’m especially loving Design By Fire. Dinner with Nat was supposed to be at a Chinese place but we didn’t find it, so we ended up at Cheesecake Factory instead. Yum. Then some music library organizing before bedtime. I have about 4000 songs that still need to be tagged and organized…I’ve been holding off on doing that for over a year now. 🙂

I have an Olympus C-750 digital camera, which my family bought for me for my birthday. It’s basically what I asked for in a camera…big zoom lens, powerful flash. But I’ve used it very little in this last year, and I think a lot of the reason for that is that:

• It’s fairly big and bulky compared to other digital cameras
• It doesn’t do very well at low light levels
• Auto focus is pretty slow
• Camera takes too long to “warm up”

Mostly I take very quick pics of people, surroundings, and action. The C-750 is much better at shots where you have some time to set up and focus and properly light. I don’t really do that.

So I guess the question is, if I get rid of this camera, will I be able to find something tiny, light, with a good zoom, that takes good pictures in the dark, focuses very quickly, and can go from “off” to “shoot” in a second or less? Does such a beast exist? Am I going to have to go and start reading lots of reviews? *groan*

Two days ago I had a craving for a chili burger (or “chili size”, whatever). Yesterday I had the same craving, so I went on down to Johnny Rocket’s and ate one. And today I have the craving again! What’s up with that? I thought I was getting pretty happy with salads and sandwiches and such, and doing well without burgers and french fries. Apparently not…

Late to rise, late to work. Did some odds-n-ends work before the weekend. Doing lots of OpenACS research (i.e. skimming docs and reading bboards) to look at the viability of using it for content management. Dinner at Johnny Rocket’s with Aaron Braver, who just got back to campus. And then more ACS research. 🙂

Woke up late and went to work. Met with John Cummings about the gameroom and had a short check-in with Josh Simmons about the facebook viewbook. In the process of trying to get Josh’s check, stumbled upon Michael LaFarr’s going away party and talked to Maggie, who would be happy to take our old pool tables off our hands. Hung out with Nat, Ian, and Igor at Uno’s and then with Nat and Ian in Nat’s room in Grad, which he just moved into. Then home for sleep at a reasonable hour, or at least more reasonable then of late.

I had fun walking to Moody street the other day, and tonight when I got home I found that my traditional parking space of the last week was occupied and so was everything else around, I ended up having to part about three blocks away because there is no parking around the school. I didn’t mind the walk to the apartment, except that it was a little cold and I was sans coat, but I did feel I could probably be doing better with a bicycle. I’m all about taking things slow, but for some reason walking any distance just makes me very impatient. I think it’d take about an hour to walk to work every day, but more like 15-20 minutes on bike (I wouldn’t do well on the hills).

If I were to get a bike, though, I’d have to contend with the scary roads (no bike lanes) and figure out what to do with it when summer ends.