Internet Insanity

[Jim Cassedy]

Many arcades have machines which will turn a credit card into
tokens. (Or bills, too.)

Exactly, Mike! Our machines are operated by some outside concessionaire,
and I assume the theater gets a cut of the of whatever the games take in.
There is an ATM-like machine near the games that can take cash or credit
cards and dispense the the gaming cards. The theater staff has nothing to do
with the game operations or handling money for them. Occasionally a customer
will go to the box office and claim they lost a dollar or some change in the
machine that dispenses the game cards, and the boxofficeperson will usually
take their word for it, and refund their lost money from the theater cash-box,
and they have some sort of 'refund log' they keep for the game-guy and
the next time he comes in they sort it all out.

Ryan Gallagher commented that "nobody carries cash anymore". The other
day I was with a friend in downtown San Francisco when we were approached
by a vagrant asking for 'spare change" and it occurred to me that on most days,
the panhandlers on the street likely had more cash/change in their pockets
than I did. I rarely have any actual cash/change on me any more. I'm sure
there are whole months that have gone by during which I've carried zero
amount of currency. I do keep a couple of $20's stashed at work, in case
my UBER app stops working & I need to call a cab or something or if I
want to grab lunch for myself at a sidewalk street vendor of which there
are many here in SF, but even a lot of those people have wireless credit
card terminals or an app on their phone that scans cards. So far this
month, I haven't left the house with any cash on me yet.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I have not carried cash since COVID, mainly because I am immunosuppressed due to the kidney transplant, and cash is a good way to spread germs. But I will stop at my bank and get some if needed. We also buy some food fresh directly from farms which are not too far away, fresh bread, bacon, eggs veggies, etc are but a number of items we get. Forty organic eggs for $15 today is a good deal even back when eggs were cheap. My better half makes and sells pottery at shows, and she will take cash or Venmo only. But the cash is deposited into her account the next day. Debit cards, etc, are safer ways to pay these days.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I have not carried cash since COVID, mainly because I am immunosuppressed due to the kidney transplant, and cash is a good way to spread germs. But I will stop at my bank and get some if needed. We also buy some food fresh directly from farms which are not too far away, fresh bread, bacon, eggs veggies, etc are but a number of items we get. Forty organic eggs for $15 today is a good deal even back when eggs were cheap. My better half makes and sells pottery at shows, and she will take cash or Venmo only. But the cash is deposited into her account the next day. Debit cards, etc, are safer ways to pay these days.

I’ve been slow to adopt “tap to pay” or putting payment methods on my phone. But if I was immunosuppressed I’d be all over it. Everyone will have touched those PIN code keypads!

[Ryan Gallagher]

Exactly, Mike!

Also Jim, something else weird is going on with your posts. Last several the quote blocks are not reacting to the markup, I wonder if some characters are being “escaped” on your end, that might also explain the broken images?

EDIT, weird, after the page reloaded when I posted that, they showed up quoted properly. Maybe that one is on my end.

[Ed Gordon]

...
My initial reaction after reading the first paragraph is that Internet access is now as important as electricity to many businesses, because without it, you simply can't do your core business; and that therefore, loss of Internet service should be factored into disaster planning that publicly traded companies are required to do by law, and private ones and nonprofits should also do if their leadership has any sense. That could be as simple as having a cellular router/access point available as an alternative, all the way up to more robust and pricey strategies....

Having a second ISP via cellular would certainly keep your business running if the power outage was not wide enough to take out the power to Cell towers. I see that you can get Cell based ISP service for as little as $35/month. That is a pretty inexpensive insurance policy.

[Ryan Gallagher]

Having a second ISP via cellular would certainly keep your business running if the power outage was not wide enough to take out the power to Cell towers. I see that you can get Cell based ISP service for as little as $35/month. That is a pretty inexpensive insurance policy.

This is all pretty academic for Jim, the theatre in question i believe is a national chain, where such decisions are done at corporate, nor are such decisions left to projectionists. But for every indy cinema it's great advice.

[Jim Cassedy]

> I wanted to file a final update on this. The waterlogged network equipment in our terminal
room was replaced, and we had two technicians (one from the ISP, and one from the local
transport carrier) in the terminal room, as well as several network techs online. . and our
internet was restored just before noon on Friday. Fortunately, earlier in the week, I had
preemptively downloaded at home all the 'missing' KDM's as well as several independent
features we were going to need for the weekend, and just by luck, all of our 'first run' feature
content had been electronically sent to our "Deluxe Box" before we lost the 'net, and there
were two features which had come by satellite, which of course, wasn't affected by the internet
outage. So, I pretty much already had all the content we needed, and once the show times
and auditorium assignments came from corporate HQ, it was a fairly easy job to get our
TMS schedule populated with all the shows through the weekend. We only 'lost' one show.
My supervisor down in Los Angeles knew that I'd had a long, stressful week, so he let me
leave early and he completed all the scheduling remotely. The only thing I really had to
take care of before I left, was to make sure the pinball machines were all back online.
There is a local group of pinball enthusiasts who show up on a semi regular basis, and
spend an hour or two on the games and at the bar. The box box office person told me
they came one night this past week and were disappointed when they found out all the
games were down. I think we have about 20 games, which are an assortment of newer
ones and a few of the old completely electromechanical classics. I'm not sure who owns
& services them, but some of the games get switched out every few months. They are
all located on what was at one time the mezzanine between the upper & lower balconies,
back when this place had almost 3000 seats, But the elevator doesn't stop on that level.
So I think what they do is rather than haul those heavy games up two flights of stairs, they
take the elevator to the floor above the mezzanine and carry them down one flight. It's
much easier that way when not fighting gravity.