November 4, 1999
Dear Everyone:
Last weekend, we ran a Keyword Rebuild in
Versatile.
It’s been a bumpy ride ever since.
A Keyword Rebuild consists of two parts.
Part One is called “QKEY”.
This strips all the keyword links from any records or boxes in
the system. No one can be in
the system while QKEY is running or it will mess things up big time.
Part Two is called “PKEY”.
This is the part that processes all the keywords, linking them
back to the correct records and boxes.
It’s OK for people to be in the system, as long as they
understand that any keyword searches they might run may not be
completely accurate, since not all the keywords have been processed.
On Friday afternoon, I locked everyone out of the
system and began QKEY. This
looked pretty good. Where we
thought it would take all night to run this part, it really finished in
about 3-5 hours. Oh, what a
difference a Pentium
150 processor makes.
On Saturday morning, I started PKEY.
At first, it looked pretty good.
The computer was breezing through an average of 503 entries per
minute. I figured it would
take about 28 hours to complete.
This would mean everything would be done long before anyone came
into work on Monday.
No such luck.
Sunday morning, I came in to discover that
Windows had
popped up at 2:00 a.m. because the system knew about
Daylight Saving Time ending that weekend.
(Wouldn’t you know that, out of only two weekends in a year, we
would pick one to do a weekend processing on?)
When the Windows clock popped up, the keyword processing stopped.
No need to panic.
Once you start it up again, it picks up exactly where it left
off, so nothing is lost except time.
I estimated that it would take an additional 15 hours to
complete. Still plenty of
time to finish before work started Monday morning.
However.
The system started finding an excuse to stop processing.
It would display a message:
“System error #785 on #32.”
As near as we could figure, this message first popped up at
around midnight, Sunday night.
Still no need to panic.
A “system error #785” simply means the computer thinks someone
else has opened file #32 (one of the Keyword files) and the computer
can’t open the file until whoever closes it.
Only there isn’t anyone in file #32.
We checked. Over the
past three days, we have started and re-started and re-started the
Keyword processing because it keeps stopping and displaying the error
message.
I have come to a conclusion:
The computer simply doesn’t like being left alone.
As long as someone is right there to restart it again, it seldom
stops. But leave it alone
for five minutes and you’ll come back to “system error…”
It’s just like “Jeannie’s” cat, Monroe.
If you pet her, and she isn’t in the mood, she’ll get under the
coffee table, or the bed, to avoid you.
Pick her up for more than a few seconds, and she’s squirming to
get down. Wants nothing to
do with you…unless you get on the phone.
Then it’s a barrage of “meows” because you’re paying attention to
the phone and not her.
Anyone who thinks that computers don’t have
personalities of their own hasn’t spent enough time with them.
Computers have quirks and foibles just like the rest of us.
And they frequently take on personality traits of their users,
just like people who start to look like their pets.
Trust me on this.
I’m writing this Letter on a Company computer
because it’s set up next to the keyword-processing computer.
I’ll baby-sit this puppy as long as I can Thursday and all day
Friday, hoping to get through it all by the end of next weekend.
And, of course, this puts all the other projects on
hold. Which is one way of
saying, “My empire is expanding.”
Love, as always,
Pete
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