October 13, 1988
Dear Everyone:
Pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
[Northern California was experiencing a phenomenal drought at this
time.]
My September cough is making a feeble attempt at showing up (you’re late!). I don’t know if it’s because the drought curtailed the growth of whatever it is that throws out spores at this time of the year, or if it just doesn’t know that it’s autumn. A lot of the trees haven’t even started to turn their colors yet. And last night was the first time I had occasion to wear my Ashland sweatshirt, walking over to Fry’s for a carton of milk.
[Ever since I was
about two years old, I’ve had a cough that always begins sometime in
September. According to our
Mother, she first took me in to the doctor (who happened to be my
godfather at that time) and announced:
“The kid has the croup!”
The doctor listened for a moment and pronounced:
“The kid does not have the croup.
The kid is allergic to something in the air.”
Mother:
“Well, what the hell is she allergic to?”
Doctor:
“How the hell should I know?
She’ll grow out of it.”
On occasion, I tried
to convince our Mother that I was allergic to school, since it also
begins in September, but she didn’t buy it.
Nevertheless, it (the cough) frequently developed into full-blown
bronchitis which kept me out of school, and eventually, work for days or
weeks. In time, I did get
over the worst of it, but still get a cough in the Autumn.]
My rule about always buying something before you run out of it falls just short of milk. For some reason, if you buy milk before you run out of it, you don’t drink it all in time and it goes sour.
“Jeannie” and I went to see Alien Nation. It’s your basic cop movie with two cops from different cultural backgrounds who end up best buddies. In this case, James Caan’s partner is from another planet. He’s really a very nice person, even when he gets drunk on sour milk (he’d like it at my place – and the sour milk wouldn’t go to waste). An enjoyable movie, but don’t go unless you can get in for the bargain matinee. It’s hardly worth full price.
Our fearless leader, “Hubert Sager”, who broke his leg last weekend, is back at work today. He’s arranged for a wheelchair in his office and is going to use crutches to get to and from work. It was a pretty bad break, requiring 4½ hours of surgery, some pins and a plate to put it back right. But the doctor says it’s healing nicely.
Only trouble is, I hadn’t got around to mailing his Get Well Card to him. I sent it over in the inter-office mail this morning. Oh, well.
I can’t believe I’ve gone almost a whole week without attending a single class or training session! Thank God (something or other).
Now I’m working on pulling boxes to be destroyed at the warehouse in “Hobby”. I don’t actually pull the boxes; I let “Lewis” in “Hobby” do that. What I do is identify which boxes are to be destroyed.
We’re supposed to go through an elaborate system of screens until we get to the Destroy-Pull screen to enter the box numbers; but “Rowena” and I circumvented that early in the game. Now we create a file outside of the system and then sneak it in while no one’s looking. It goes much faster that way.
But we still have to hash the boxes to make sure they’re right. We wouldn’t want to destroy the wrong box, would we? (Right, who cares?) Anyway, after we’ve stuck in the file with all of the information, we go back into the system and order it to hash. The computer adds up the last 3 digits of each box number (total 7 digits but the first is always H for “Hobby”) and give us a total. Then we go to the calculator and manually add up the last 3 digits of each box number. If the hash and the total on the calculator match, all’s right with the world. If the hash and the total DON’T match, well then we have to find which box(es) are wrong; and are they wrong on the calculator or in the computer? I don’t much like it when my hash and my calculator don’t match.
Why do we hash only the last 3 digits of the box number? Good question. Because that’s the way it’s been done in “Livermore”, and it works for them. Unfortunately, it’s based on the premise that the box numbers being entered are sequential and therefore the first 4 digits will usually remain the same for long periods. Not the case here, but nobody wants to have to add up all 7 digits of each box. (Did I mention that we’re talking about 3300+ boxes here?)
Why do we call it hashing? Another good question. I have no idea. Maybe somebody named Hash thought it up.
If I ever get my hands on him, he’s dead meat.
Everybody pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |