May 21, 1993
Dear Everyone:
You remember Ogden, the Notebook PC? When
“Jeannie” and I went to Disneyland, I turned Ogden over to “Sally” so
that she could do some work at home that weekend.
Then, because “Sally” hadn't been
able to finish said work, she needed to keep Ogden a little while
longer. Consequently, I have been
Ogden-less until this week.
But, now, Ogden is back and
he has a new friend, Mordecai.
Mordecai is an IBM® PS/2 color monitor. When
I heard that “Murray” was going to be replacing some of the PCs in the
Records Center, I got into line to ask for a monitor from one of the old
PCs that were being surplus. Why
would I want a monitor? Because
Ogden has a port behind his back panel that allows you to hook him up to
a standard monitor. And the
display on a color monitor is so
much easier to see than the "sixteen shades of gray" that Ogden's screen
makes do with.
And why was “Murray” willing to give Mordecai up?
Easy.
Mordecai is
old. Four years.
That's pretty old in computer
years. The next time you see a
rerun of
WarGames
on TV, check out that kid’s dual floppy disk drives.
Ancient!
The movie was made 10 years ago.
According to “Paul”, the computer expert at “Livermore”, Mordecai has
been sitting in the back of the warehouse for years, working hard and
collecting dust. A lot of dust.
Being a CRT (cathode ray tube),
and therefore an electrical device, Mordecai naturally creates an
electromagnetic field around him which, in turn, attracts dust through
static electricity. “Paul” said
that the CPU had an inch of dust inside it.
(CPU means "central processing
unit", a technical term referring to the part of the computer that
actually runs things. Another
technical term for this is "the guts".)
Of course, the first thing I did when I got Mordecai home was give him a
bath. (No, not
really, what kind of a dip do
you think I am?) I spread paper
towels on the kitchen counter (on the
paper, Mordecai!) And went
over him with a cloth moistened with Formula 409® until it stopped
coming up black.
Now I'm looking forward to many happy hours of working with Ogden and
Mordecai. Good thing, too,
because I've just been assigned another Project, of which I will be the
Team Leader. We're going to find
a replacement for CRMIS.
I know what you're thinking. "What,
again?
You've been doing that for
years!"
And you're right. We've been
"replacing" CRMIS for longer than Mordecai’s been on this earth.
However, like Bullwinkle the
Moose and his perennial Rabbit-Out-of-the-Hat-Trick:
"This time,
for sure!"
It's going to involve many hours
of hard work, but we are
going to find a replacement for CRMIS.
Either that, or we’ll be keeping track of 600,000 boxes using a size 7½
rhinoceros.
Love, as always,
Pete
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