up and atom!

We went to bed fairly early last night, about 9 PM. At 3 AM I awoke because Lisa was getting up. She was in a lot of pain and had to get out of bed and into a more comfortable chair.

Normally I won't make coffee at 3 AM when she asks me to do so. This time I agreed without argument because we had gone to bed so early. We had been asleep for about six hours and, when her pain strikes, I have to be flexible. I don't need to go out to work today so I got up too. Now she's sound asleep in the recliner while I sit up in bed waiting for her to need me for something.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I worked at [unnamed major nationwide clothing retailer] again, setting up checkouts. I had been at that same store a month ago replacing machines. Now the corporate masters have rearranged things, removing 5 of 12 checkouts and moving the remaining 7 systems to a new layout that corrals customers in finest Temple Grandin style: one great snaking queue, so that whomever stands at the front of the line will end up with the next available checkout clerk.

An overnight construction crew tore out the old checkout lines and built a new one along the front wall of the store. In the process they did their best to set the checkout computers, printers, scanners etc. where they belonged. They did a pretty good job (only a few devices improperly connected) but did not realize that each computer "knows" which checkout number it is. For example: the computer at checkout #1 has an internal name like "Register1", checkout #2 is "Register2", etc.

Well now. This was a two-day job, so that they wouldn't have all of the checkouts out of commission at once. I didn't bother dealing with the registers' internal names on the first day, but on Day 2 I made sure that everything was A-OK before leaving. The first thing I did when I got there in the morning was to discuss the naming scheme with the IT phone support team. It turned out to be much easier to swap the machines around into the correct locations than it would have been to reset their internal names remotely.

I mentioned that they had reduced the number of checkouts from 12 to 7. The machines that were left had been placed out of order; 1 and 2 had to be swapped with each other, as did 3 and 4. The computers at 5, 6 and 7 thought that they were 12, 9 and 10 respectively. The old equipment was piled up in the stockroom and that's where I had to go in order to find 5, 6 and 7. None of the registers were labeled, so I had to plug a monitor into each one and boot it up to find the correct units. Being a semi-responsible adult, I marked each with the correct number so that whomever has to work on them next will be able to identify them.

In the end it all worked out well. There was debugging to be done along the way (a malfunctioning scanner here, a bad card reader there) but there were five register systems in the back room that I could cannibalize for parts. I even pulled the "Enter" key off of one old keyboard and pressed it onto another that was missing that key but was otherwise in relatively good shape.

Overall, I enjoyed my two days there and the customer was pleased with my work. I hope they send me back to this retail chain again; their systems have become very familiar and I have learned a lot about their idiosyncrasies.

On another note, today is the 50th anniversary of my parents' marriage. We lost Mom four years ago but she lives on within all of us.