we were going to reduce the 2 hour drift to 15 minutes, then i brazenly chose 30 seconds. 2 * 15 is 30 seconds which is our blocktime. we decided not to go with that as blocktimes do vary a bit.
No, you didn't. You copied and pasted code from peercoin without fully understanding it, a la
https://github.com/peercoin/peercoin/pull/93/commits/4281cb55b04600189bff4f0c8a92e042b34e75f8.
2 * 60 * 60 makes sense as a way to show
**2** hours.
2 * 15 doesn't make any sense, if 30 seconds is your desired value. You'd simply just write 30 if that were the case.
2 * 15 is a mistake made by a programmer trying to depict 15 minutes, as the comment indicates.
In this case, you weren't even the programmer who made the original mistake. You were a copy & paste monkey who didn't catch it. Which is fine, but rather than own up to your mistake, you try to invent a reason to make yourself look better.
This is not trustworthy behavior.