The Hanover Collaboration

Dahndest thing happened to me today. I gave my usual class 4,5 class to a bunch of kids at MIT. Not only that, it was in that crazy fahking Statar Center up in this fancy-pants conference room.

They were all like 25-30 yeah olds so I assume theya all PhD students oha post-docs. So I ask them, “Whya you all wantin’ to drive fahklifts.” They look at me funny and one says, “because we’ve got one.” Fahkin’ MIT kids!

So anyway, I give my whole shpeil as if it’s just anothah day at Home Depot. At first, the kids got boahed just like everybahdy else. But then when I got to the paht when I talk about the “stability triangle” they all perked up. They looked supah interested foah about ten seconds and then the looks changed. Usually everybahdy’s eyes glaze over, but this was different. It looked like some of these kids were gonna spew all ovah the table.

Anyway, at the end I did what I usually do which is tell them the answahs to the test. I was curious how people would do (I’m not even suah they all knew English), but I don’t get paid foah failin’ people.

So then we go down to do the driving tests. You would not believe the shit. When I see theah lift I’m like, “What the fahk is that!” They tell me it’s a fahking robot. Then I figahed it out: These fahking kids have made some kinda flying, time-traveling, autobot fahklift, but then somebody found out and now they’ve all got to get certified oha else OSHA is gonna staht serving up some shit sandwiches.

So I’m tryin’ to do a propah inspection, but theah isn’t a fahking inch of this thing that doesn’t have some kinda shit bolted onto it. At least theah’s still a seat. But then from the seat you can’t see a god-damn thing since theah’s like three fahking laptops right theah in your face. Not only that, when I got out I bashed my head on a fahking particle-acceleratah they’ve got hanging off it.

And then some of the chinks haven’t even driven a cah befoah! All the while I’m tryin’ to get them to turn around without bashing any of the flux-capacitahs on the fahking dock!

At one point, I’m telling this kid, if you get scaahed, just step on the brake. He says, “You can just yell ‘Stop!’ actually.” I try it and, would-you-believe-it, the things stops. I’m like, “You should teach it to undahstand, ‘pick up that pallet and put it ovah theah.’” and the kid’s like “We’re working on that, but voice recognition is tricky.”