November 23, 1988
Dear Everyone:
I have spent the greater part of this morning adding up boxes in “Hobby”. The problem is that the computer said that there were 118,343 boxes in “Hobby”, while my calculator said there were only 118,252. A small matter of 91 boxes. Some people might think that 91 boxes out of 118,343 (or 118,252) isn’t much to quibble about; but I didn’t want to turn in my report with a discrepancy in it.
The question was, are there 91 boxes missing; or does the computer have 91 imaginary boxes floating around in its memory bank? After a couple of hours of squinting at a lot of tiny numbers, I found that I had indeed added 2 boxes in 1982 that didn’t exist.
Great! Now I’m only off by 89 boxes.
After more squinting (and 2 pots of tea), I found that I had missed 2 boxes in 1969. Since this cancelled out the 2 nonexistent boxes 1982, I was back to looking for 91 boxes.
I was also beginning to hear, “91 boxes of beer on the wall…”.
FINALLY, after much cross-checking of reports, I found that what I had taken for a misplaced 10 in 1972 was supposed to have been 101. 91 boxes found. 118,343 boxes in “Hobby”. Unless, of course, “Lewis” has added and/or destroyed any boxes since midnight Tuesday when I ran the reports to get the raw data for this job.
At this rate, I’m never going to get back to my PEP codes.
This afternoon, I’m going to try to run a Noah report for a woman in Texas.
No, Noah does not stand for 2 of everything. It stands for Nomad Ad Hoc reporting. Nomad is the name of the program (or is it software?) that I use to build the report. Ad hoc (you could look it up) means something you make up when you need it.
This is loads of fun because there are an infinite number of ways that you can screw up. Computers are wonderful tools, but they have a nasty way of taking everything you say literally. (Never tell a computer to Drop Dead.)
Once I hit the PF key for browse, more or less by accident, before I had set enough parameters and the computer happily went off to browse the entire database. Millions of records. Millions and millions! I had the system tied up until the next morning. There was no way to get out until the computer was finished browsing.
Actually, there is a way out, I found out the next day. But not until after I’d received a terse little note from the computer monitor saying that I had spent too much money. Since I had just passed the Garden Plaza outside my building, where workmen were digging up one fortune in fresh flowers to replace them with another fortune in fresh flowers, I wasn’t too concerned about the cost.
I know “Marshall” would say that the money comes from “different pockets”; but money is money, whether you spend it on chrysanthemums or computer time.
Anyway, each Noah report is a learning experience, especially since I haven’t the faintest idea what I’m doing; and because the User’s Guide hasn’t been written yet. We’ll see what happens. The worst I can do is blow up the whole system, right?
I don’t know when I’m ever going to get back to squaring RCCS with CRMIS.
In other news…
“Jeannie” and I are having dinner with her friend, "Barbara" tonight. "Barbara" “owes” “Jeannie” a dinner because “Jeannie” took "Barbara" (and me) out to lunch one day last month. Apparently, I’m going along because they have hopes that I can figure out how to program "Barbara’s" VCR (she’s lost the owner’s manual). Another computer without a User’s Guide. We’ll see what I can do.
Speaking of VCR’s. If you have one, or don’t mind staying up until 11:00 at night, check out Tattingers on NBC, Wednesday nights. It’s wacky, but nicely civilized.
[This was a short-lived TV series with
Stephen Collins and
Blythe
Danner. It was very good,
which is one reason why it didn’t last very long.]
Christmas secrets…
[As children, we were not allowed to lock the doors to our bedrooms,
even if they had doors.
However, the big exception was near Christmas-time, when you needed
privacy to keep someone from finding out what their Christmas present
was going to be. So closed
doors and the cry, “Christmas secret!” were acceptable for a time.]
“Jeannie” wants dictionaries for Christmas. All kinds. General. Medical. Legal. It seems that the ones she has are all old. Apparently there are a lot of new words out there that she can’t find.
Also, she would like them in paperback, if possible, as she invariably drops them on her foot after looking up the word.
Everybody pray for rain and lots of snow in the mountains.
Love, as always,
Pete
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