June 16, 1995
Dear Everyone:
Happy Father's Day to all the Dads out there.
Decided to rebuild the Keyword Table in
Versatile
last weekend. I've made better
decisions in my life.
Rebuilding the Keyword Table is actually a two-step process that takes
many, many hours, during which time people can't use the system.
Hence the decision to do it over
the weekend. That part wasn't the
problem. Doing it from home was
the problem.
I didn't really savor the idea of going into downtown San Francisco at
4:30 on a Saturday morning, and sitting around in the office for 8 to 12
hours, waiting for the computer; so I figured I'd use Ogden and a
high-speed modem and run the job from my living room.
Got up at 4:30, fired up Ogden,
dialed into the Versatile
Server (using a Company Calling Card, so the phone bill won't come to me
anymore) and started step one, Queue Keywords.
Went back to bed.
My kind of work week.
Eventually rolled out of bed and decided, since I obviously couldn't do
any other work on the computer, that I would spend the morning cleaning
my patio. Cut back all the ivy
that was growing under the fence. Threw
away some silk plants that had finally faded to just about no color at
all. Swept the patio and filled
several big, green garbage bags. This
is the condo version of working in the garden.
You should do it about every 6
months.
I also took a look at the silk ficus tree, which had numerous years’
worth of accumulated dust and dirt on it, but which hadn't faded because
it always stood in the shade, and decided that it could be salvaged; all
I needed to do was clean it. All
6-7 feet of it. I've done this
before, but decided to try a different tack this time.
Instead of cleaning each and
every leaf while they were still on the tree, I stripped all the leaves
of off the tree so I could clean them comfortably in the living room
while watching things on TV. Filled
a big, green garbage bag with leaves. I
was very careful about which bags actually went into the garbage.
Back to Versatile:
Step One took just about 8 hours,
during which time I could not use my phone, as Ogden was using the phone
line. Amazing the number of
things I thought of to call “Jeannie” about when I couldn't call.
Reaching for the phone.
Checking the phone machine for
messages, even though no one could get through.
After Step one, started Step two: Process
Keywords. Ogden reported 658,580
entries to process and began counting down.
This was just after noon on
Saturday. Everything under
control. Picked up “Jeannie” and
went shopping. We went to
Best, hoping to find
a Spell Checker.
We couldn't find one that
“Jeannie” wanted, but we did find a patio umbrella.
“Jeannie's” current umbrella had
not survived the winter. This one
had the "S" word (“sale”) prominently displayed.
Here was a chance to find out how
well the rear seat of my new car folds down to allow very long objects
into the trunk. It works very
well indeed.
When I finally got home, Ogden was still busily processing keywords.
By the next day, he'd been going
for over 24 hours and was less than half finished.
I spent most of Sunday washing
leaves in a basin on the living room floor, watching old movies on TV,
and checking on Ogden every hour or so.
As each set of leaves was cleaned, I would lay them out on a towel on
the floor. When the first towel
got too full, I started a second towel. Ogden
still processing keywords. Soon
there were towels all over the living room with piles of wet leaves on
them. Sort of like autumn, but
without the rakes and bonfires.
By Sunday night, all the leaves were cleaned, but Ogden still hadn't
finished processing half the keywords. Just
before 11:00, disaster struck. The
modem lost the phone line. Maybe
AT&T's computer decided
that I've been talking to my mother quite long enough.
Or maybe it thought Ogden had
left the phone off the hook. Whatever
the reason, the process had stopped and there was nothing I could do
until I could talk with the technical people at
Zasio Monday morning.
4:30 Monday morning, I'm stepping over piles of leaves to get to Ogden
so I can dial into Versatile
and set everyone's access to "No" until I can call Zasio.
Send an e-mail note to all Users
that the system was unavailable. (Technical
difficulties, please standby.) Called
Zasio from home and left a message. By
the time I got to work, there was a message back:
Not to worry.
Processing keywords could be
restarted and it would just pick up where it left off.
OK for people to use the system
as long as they didn't try to do keyword searching.
I called someone in San Francisco and had them restart the keyword
processing. For reasons you don't
really care to know, it goes much faster in San Francisco.
By Tuesday night, everything was
back to normal.
Except for my ficus tree, which was still standing around nearly naked.
I've been sticking leaves back
on, in the middle of the living room, as I have time in the evenings.
So far, it's about half done.
Lessons learned:
·
Always rebuild the Keyword
Table from a San Francisco PC log directly into the
Versatile Server.
Don't try to use the modem.
·
Pick a 3-day weekend to
wash your trees.
Love, as always,
Pete
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