January 10, 2001
Dear Everyone:
There has long been a tradition regarding the “Livermore” warehouse at Company. The tradition is: You can get rid of anything by sending it to “Livermore”. I’m not just talking about old records. “Livermore” has always been regarded as a “safe wastebasket” in that you can get rid of things without taking on the responsibility of actually throwing them out.
In the case of actual records, people would box them up, give them a generic description (“Miscellaneous, general”) and make the destruction review date two weeks after their planned retirement date. But they also box up other things. When someone left the company, it was traditional to box up everything in their desk and send it to “Livermore”, be they records or old staplers. Sometimes we find some pretty nifty things. For example, we won’t need to buy cellophane tape for twenty years. Someone boxed up a supply closet and labeled the boxes: “Livermore”.
Another time, someone apparently closed a building, then sent a bunch of UPS units to “Livermore”. A UPS unit is an “Uninterruptible Power Supply”, basically a huge, rechargeable battery designed to keep a computer going when the power goes out. Suppose you’re working on your PC when the power suddenly goes out. Whatever you were working on is lost, plus the computer could be fried, depending on what you had open at the time. One of the office supply chains claims that home PC’s are subjected to 120 power disturbances per month.
But with a UPS in place, when the power goes out, you have enough battery power to last about 15 minutes, plenty of time to save your changes, close all applications and shut the computer down safely. They also act as a surge protector, in case of power spikes and give out an alarm (“beep!”) whenever they detect a sudden loss or spike in power. The more sophisticated (and costly) ones can be programmed to shut the computer down for you should you not be around at the time. They range in price from around $90 to several hundred. When you consider how much one lost file can cost you, if it involves your livelihood, this can be a good investment.
So, when this unexpected boon arrived back at the dock, the call went out, “Who wants a free UPS for their home computer?” I said I’d take three, along with all the bubble-wrap they came wrapped in.
I plugged my PC into one and took the other two up to “Jeannie’s” place for the old Gateway and her Stenograph computer. Shortly after setting the two UPS’s up in “Jeannie’s” home office, we discovered that at least one of them would beep almost every time you turned on the light in that room. This should have been a clue regarding what happened last Saturday (don’t worry, all is well).
Last Saturday, I finally got around to setting up “Jeannie’s” new laser printer and installing the new software in the new laptop PC that she bought at the end of last year. Setting up the printer was easy enough, once I’d cleared enough floor space to get close to where it would be sitting. It’s your standard LaserJet with a toner cartridge. You take the cartridge out of the box, unwrap it, pull the tape that keeps the toner from leaking out during transit, shake it a few times and stuff it into the printer.
Where we ran into trouble was when I turned the printer on. The lights dimmed, both UPS’s started shrieking and “Jeannie” damned near lost her dictionary on the old computer. I quickly turned off the printer until “Jeannie’s” old computer was safely shut down. The dictionary was safe. When we tried the printer again, the UPS that the new laptop was plugged into wouldn’t shut up until we turned it off.
Finally, we turned the printer on and managed to send a test page, which printed fine, except that the desk lamp flickered on-off-on the whole time. “Jeannie” has made a note to get her neighbor to help her wire a dedicated circuit for the computer and printer (or at least recommend someone). That bedroom was never wired for “commercial” use. (She also has a note to buy herself a newer, more reliable UPS.)
With that out of the way, we actually got down to installing the $8000-ish program that she bought into the new laptop. Some of it was a bit confusing, but we got it up and running. And transferring her dictionary proved to be far easier than either of us could have imagined.
She still has some more gadgets to acquire, but she’s nearly up and running in the new system. As she started cleaning away some of the debris from all these installations, I warned her, “Watch out for the tape that came out of the toner cartridge.”
“What tape is that?”
I glanced over and replied, “That would be the tape that’s getting black stuff all over your hands.”
Love, as always,
Pete
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