May 16, 1996
Dear Everyone:
The past few weeks,
we’ve been having problems running certain reports in
Versatile.
We knew if we called
Zasio, the first thing they would suggest was running a Database
Integrity Check. So we cut
out the middleman and went straight to the Database Check.
Problem is, we’ve got a whopping big database (over 500 megs and
growing daily). And no one
can use the system while the check is running.
We tried running it
overnight on Wednesday, but something happened to stop it in the middle
of the night. So we decided
to try it over the weekend.
I started the process Friday night, then came into the office Saturday
morning, only to find that it had stopped again, this time for a
different reason. Started it
again, and it stopped 10 minutes later.
Get the feeling that Somebody Up There doesn’t want this
integrity check to go through?
Finally got it going
again on a different PC and the third time was lucky.
The system kept going and was still going when I left to get my
hair cut (the appointment was made eight weeks in advance, so you don’t
just blow it off). When I
got back from the salon, the system was
still going (hooray!).
With that, I settled
down to spend the rest of the day baby-sitting the computer.
Before you start to feel too sorry for me, “Livermore” has a
large television monitor and
VCR (for educational tapes), and I had brought all of my deferred
viewing with me. I just
rolled the TV cart (industrial-size) over to where the computer was and
the two of us watched TV all day.
By 5:30, the system was well into working its way through
database #11.
By 7:15 Sunday
morning, it had moved on to database #13, the largest database in the
group at about 175 megs.
By Sunday afternoon, it was in database #21.
And by 7:45 Monday morning, exactly 48 hours after starting the
process, it wasn’t finished.
But it had gotten as far as database #31.
Unfortunately, once you stop, you have to start over again with
#1. Nevertheless, we had to
stop the Integrity Check so people could get into the system.
So, the Bad News is,
the Check wasn’t finished.
The Good News is, it didn’t find any non-recoverable files (up to #31)
and the reports have been running properly since then.
We’re happy with the results and are already planning on having
another go at it over the
Memorial Day
Weekend. We figure if it can
get through 30 files in 48 hours, it should be able to finish all 44 in
under 84 hours.
Hopefully, by then,
gas prices will have gone back down a bit.
I used almost a full tank shuttling back and forth between
"Pleasant Hill" and “Livermore” all weekend.
On the plus side, you pretty much have the freeway to yourself at
the ungodly hour of 6:45 on a Sunday morning.
Movies...
“Jeannie” and I
managed to see
Twister
in between trips to “Livermore” to check on the computer.
This is the first of the big summer action films.
Long on action, short on plot.
However, it’s no sillier than a
busload of
people that will explode if it drops below 50 mph.
This one is about people who chase
tornadoes.
Actually, there are
two groups of tornado chasers.
One group is funded by unspecified “corporate sponsors”.
Since everyone hates Big Business, these are the “bad guys”.
They drive sleek, customized, coordinated mini-vans and wear
matching shirts.
The other group turn up their noses at corporations and scrape by on grants. They don’t dress alike. They look like the director placed a call to central casting and said, “Send me up an assortment of geeks and nerds.” They drive what “Jeannie” instantly dubbed, “a ragtag, fugitive fleet” of beat up second-hand trucks and campers.
Both groups have a
gizmo that’s supposed to be able to give them all kinds of data on
tornadoes if they can just get the thing up inside one.
Whoever gets his gizmo up a funnel first wins, and the race is
on.
The plot goes:
See the tornado.
Chase the tornado. Get
creamed by the tornado.
Rinse. Repeat.
It’s tricky because tornadoes change their minds faster than
“Jeannie” in a restaurant.
The “bad guys” have
lots of state-of-the-art scientific equipment.
The “good guys” have notebook PC’s held together with duct tape
and “instincts”. And there
is the Necessary Novice who knows nothing about tornadoes so the
meteorologists can explain things to the audience.
Also, for some unfathomable reason, all tornado chasers have a
deep, abiding loathing for television
weathermen.
The people who made
this movie are not going after an
Academy Award
for Best Screenplay. They’re
after the Big Techies like Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Editing.
What does the inside of a tornado sound like?
Most people who’ve been closer to a real tornado than they
probably wanted to, when asked what it sounded like, respond that “it
sounded like a freight train”.
But, really, how many people do you know who have ever actually
heard a top-speed freight
train? I’ve heard plenty of
freight trains in my youth, but they just went clickety-clacking at
about 15 mph.
That’s not what
these tornadoes were doing.
The action scenes are strictly edge-of-your-seat.
And there really are some clever lines.
(I especially liked the part about the cow.)
But if real tornadoes are like the ones in this movie, the
mid-west
can keep them. I’ll stay
safe in California
with our well-mannered
earthquakes.
Love, as always,
Pete
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