The Time Sink

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

If you follow the Daynotes circuit, you've often run across email from a gentleman who signs himself as "JHR in San Pablo". Well, JHR and his alter ego, The Warlock, have spent a lot of time developing a website modeled on the Daynotes theme. Enough, I'll let them tell you all about it.

A new monk was put to work copying manuscripts as part of his duties. A thought occurred and he looked up the head monk with the question, "I notice that we are making copies from copies. Perhaps we should make our copies from the originals to minimize the chance of error?"

The head monk thought for a moment and replied, "You may well be correct. I'll look into it." And with that, the old head monk trudged down to the basement to check some original texts.

Evening came and no one had seen the head monk emerge from the basement and the new monk was tasked with finding him. As he entered the stairway, he thought he heard something. Another flight down and he was sure; he was hearing someone crying. He hurried onward as quickly as he could fearing that the old gentleman had fallen and hurt himself.

As he reached the book room he could hear the old monk sobbing and repeating, "It's supposed to be 'celebrate'; it's supposed to be 'celebrate'."

Not much this morning due to way too much happening at the homestead last night. On the office front, Janeen's back and the normal level of madness has reasserted itself. Year end looms and of course this is when everyone else decides they'd like that something extra from Purchasing. Well, it will just have to wait for a bit longer while we make sure all the data is input and all the numbers are crunched properly.

Now the manufacturer seems to be limiting the availability of the product to the Circuit City and CompUSA chains; they want to bill your credit card immediately for the monthly charges. ...and now have a warning on their site that machines shipped after 03/20/00 cannot be hacked. Uh-huh; by people with more time than money and the inclination to dissect anything with wires. ...like me a few years back (now I have neither <g>).

...and mid-week is here and I'm rather glad for it. I did manage to blade yesterday and balanced that off with the traditional late evening snack of jalapeño cheese dip and low fat chips <g>. Year end inventory is set for Friday afternoon and I cannot think of a better way to end a week. Saturday will be a teaching day; this is one of two "hash" days I have when I can fill in all the bits and pieces they haven't learned yet. Lots of war stories and tales from the EMS crypt. It helps that they have an instructor who predates much of the current EMS system; if they have a question about a particular protocol, I can usually tell the story of the original problem that led to this particular solution.

When I started on that odyssey in 1975, there were no paramedics in the central valley and only a very few of the new EMT-1s. When we graduated, there were only four public service paramedic units and one private sector unit to cover all of our metropolitan area. We quite literally had no protocols and rolled our own procedures for the first few years. ...and it was quite exiting to be on the cutting edge of emergency field medicine.

When I went private sector in 1978 we had six public sector and four private sector units in service in the metropolitan area. Today, we manage an EMS system that receives something like 85,000 requests for service each year. There are no public sector paramedic providers left in the metropolitan area; my firm runs thirty-six basic and advanced life support units to service the area.

...and that would be it for the day, except I cannot help but be a little jealous of Tom's predicament: Here he is celebrating his birthday by himself on a cold snowy day in Saskatoon. I don't dare tell Shelley; she'd be horrified that there was no one there to celebrate with him. Then she'd stop and ask, "He's not like you, is he?" ...and I'd have to answer, "At least a little bit." You see, my idea of a decent day involves a storm blowing outside, a fire in the fireplace, macaroni and cheese on the stove, a cold one near at hand, and either a book or a CRT in front of me. People optional. Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy my family, but I also like occasional downtime. That's why I work and write late at night for the most part. ...and Shelley's learned that my idea of a party involves the immediate family at most (I suspect that this year I'll have to relax my curmudgeon-like behavior).

So here's to you, Mr. Syroid! I'll hoist a virtual on this afternoon at 1300 local (since I'll be on duty) followed by a more workman-like example this evening once everyone's settled in. Enjoy your day; enjoy your email and phone calls; and most of all, enjoy!

...and today is the last day of the fiscal year for my outfit. For those of us on the financial side, life's been Real Busy with all the year-end Stuff. Today Janeen, Joe (seconded to us by Support Services) and yours truly get to engender the wrath of Operations by shutting down the Central Supply Room to conduct a physical inventory (one potatoe, two potatoe, one quail, two Quayles...). We'll do it as quickly as we can manage; but man, does it mess up the timing for servicing the fleet. Our show runs 24x7x365; no time is convenient for Ops. Ah, well, traditionally the auditor brings doughnuts; that tends to mollify the techs who cannot service units until we release goods.

That will cap our week in fine fashion; unfortunately, next week we get to crunch all the numbers. I'm hoping that for next year's party, I'll have cycle counting installed (and a real inventory system); then the auditor and I can just pull spot checks against real-time data and help keep those techs lean and mean (no doughnuts <g>).

But while we're doing that, I don't want you to get any real work done either; drop by http://coolsig.com/ and surrender yourself some significant lost time reading some of the best sigs in your choice of topics. Remember the masthead? I named this site well, don't 'ya think.

...and if that doesn't slow down your productivity for the day, how about working with an interactive flight simulator? Sure to drive some people over the edge.

It's the weekend at last. Well, for some; for others it's just another day in the trenches: write this book, research that problem, teach this class <g>.

Inventory went well yesterday; at least the auditor was pleased. She's not a hard case and we're not trying to hide anything; that makes it easier for all of us. Just a straight physical inventory. ...where you count every single item that you consider disposable goods (definitions vary). Works well for case lots! ...a royal pain if someone's cracked that case: take each one out and count it; put it back in the case and write the count on the case; repeat. Still, we'd made some changes since last year which made the storage room almost a slam dunk; mostly case lots in there with anything partial already noted during check-in. The CSR though... Nearly three hundred discrete items in quantities as high as several hundred. It took us a while. The support techs liked it though: cool downtime.

...a what do the kiddies learn about today? Some real hard facts of life. Like what happens when a train cuts a school bus in half and you're first in. The real world never misses; every semester I get my lead-in to the class on multiple-casualty incidents. ...and before you ask, I quit counting several years into my career; I just remember the incidents themselves. ...and I don't know if I'm going to hit them with hazardous material incidents today or not. Seems easy to me: upwind, uphill, next county!

They've been hanging in okay so far; they only have to manage for a few more weeks. Lee seems to think they've mastered patient exams; maybe the lab reviews next week will be all they need. After that, one more week of lecture and they hit the written and skills testing days.

Well, Netscape isn't saying anything; mozillaZine is saying it's all mistake; but if you dig just a little bit, the Netscape 6 beta is available for download from at least two private sites. With the Daynotes Gang taking sides on browsers and compatibilities...

...and what a weekend. Between chasing down and following up on all the rumors and virii and maybe happenings, I haven't had time to deal with some of my normal routine.