Synchronization
I live this typical life of a student with long nights and half my days spent passed out (whether in class or not). Although I have a very relaxed demeanor, I do have horrible periods of stress that don’t, however, last as long as they should.
I do spend half my time fretting about little issues that most people cannot be bothered with, or in fact, not notice. And while this is all happening, I tend to miss the larger issues most people concern themselves with.
My friends tend to ignore my tiny abnormalities, probably because I accept them.
(WHAT? If you’re one of my friends and reading this, and trying to figure out just WHAT little abnormalities you have, I’d be glad to point them out. Also note that that probably is the reason I am your friend. But this is a completely different topic for another day.)
I tend to make time to see my friends (regardless of which parts of the country they stay in) and hence have become accustomed to driving from my current location to destination. Being the lazy, unhurried student that I am, I tend to choose different routes to the destinations every so often. In South Africa, that apparently is a must. I, on the other hand, just do it for the scenery, as grey as one may perceive it to be.
On the drive to Sandton this afternoon, I turned into Jellycoe Road which has 5 million robots between Jan Smuts and Oxford Road. I always tend to test these kinds of roads. If the speed limit is 60km/h, surely if one is to say TRAVEL AT THE RECOMMENDED SPEED, one should be able to comfortable drive through each traffic light without slowing down. However, in this road, its PERFECTLY synchronized in such a manner that if you pull away from robot A, robot B would IMMEDIATELY flicker orange and switch to red. I have traveled this road in both peak traffic and happy-go-lucky driving time, I still cannot find any reason why this approach should work, when clearly it’s not helping anyone except the frustrated drivers become MORE FRUSTRATED!
Being a computer scientist (and I’m sure some other branches of science may be interested in this), I am compelled to wonder if there isn’t a better approach. Obviously, it seems obvious in this case. It also befuddles me as to how these robots could have been set up without consulting someone as extremely obsessive about synchronization as what I am (engineers not included in this goodie pack).
And then I have to sit back and wonder if I’m being extremely obsessive. Should I just let this go? Is this one of the little annoyances I should just let go?
If so, would Schindler’s Lifts allow me to write a decent algorithm for an efficient and effective elevator?