Automated Departure Message

Symbolics was a Lisp Machine company (1980-1996) and incidentally also the first .com domain name (symbolics.com). If memory serves, it had something like a thousand employees at its peak. It was an extraordinary place to work, with amazing products and some of the most talented coworkers I've ever had the pleasure to work with, doing work that was decades ahead of its time.

There have, of course, been a great many important advances in speed and functionality of computers, computer languages, and computer interfaces since that time. But even now, almost three decades later as I write this, there are features of that programming environment that are unparalleled in modern computer environments. It was a travesty that this evolutionary line was cut short, but as I often say, “you can be the lizard best adapted to life in the desert, but if you can't swim on the day of the flood, your time is up.” And so the company fell for reasons that had little to do with the technical capability of the products.

Layoffs came depressingly often as the company size fell to I think a couple hundred before it hit me. With each round, we got more and more efficient about them. I vaguely recall that for the early layoffs they had people in to help us manage our grief, or some such hand-holding. After a few, we could recognize the signs that one was happening as we arrived, so we just headed to the room where we'd get the list and then headed to our offices to read all the departure messages. We got it down to where we were back to work within an hour or two.

At some point, I started to see trends and patterns in the messages, and we were a company that was always trying to automate every last detail of routine action, so I joked about Zmacs, the Lisp Machine's Emacs-like text editor, needing a command called something like m-X Insert Departure Message to help you compose your departure message via form-filling. On further reflection, it seemed both easily doable and potentially useful, so I implemented it.

Ellen Golden, a senior documentation writer and long-time colleague and friend, was kind enough to write me a documentation page:

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Author‘s Notes:

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For those not familiar with the Lisp Machine keyboard, it has a lot of shift keys. Shift, Control, Meta, Super, Hyper, and Symbol were the ones Symbolics keyboards used in the timeframe this story is about. The notation “m-X” (sometimes written, and always pronounced, “Meta-X”) was the chorded key combination that, when issued, prompted for a long-named editor command (“Insert Departure Message” in this case). Of course, you got command completion on the name, so you rarely had to type all of those characters. And, like all things LispM, it used a completing reader much better than modern completing readers. (You could just type something like m-X I D M and it would figure out the rest, since there were probably no other commands with words that started with those sequences.)

I've done slight editing on the picture of the doc page to contract out some vertical whitespace and fix a typo. The greenish tint is something my editing tool, GIMP, did without me asking. The original was black on white. But it gave it a sort of aged look, and it set off the picture nicely, so I just left it.

I was actually laid off twice. This refers to the second time. The first time got cancelled. Story for another day, though if someone else has already told that story, please suggest a hyperlink. :)

No Halfway Measures on Climate

I have been frustrated over the failure of some Democrats to understand the urgency of the 12-year window. Some Democrats get it, others do not. But whether they get it or not, this is the issue that mankind faces, an issue that will determine all future history in dramatic ways.

This is not a time for compromise. The physics will not allow it. Better to fail trying than to give up the entire game by thinking it unwinnable, as Nancy Pelosi seems bent on doing. Shame on her. That is not leadership. Lately I look to Elizabeth Warren for leadership among the Democrats. She understands that sometimes you can't pick the timing or worry about appearances but must do what needs doing.

And addressing Climate needs doing. Climate Change is a cancer. It must be treated early and properly. If we wait too long, no treatment will be possible. There is nothing radical about an aggressive response to an existential threat to humanity. There is nothing moderate about a take-your-time or middle ground approach to the Climate Crisis.

Jay Inslee is right that we need a climate-change-only debate. There are some good policy proposals out there for discussion, including these:

• H.R. 9. Climate Action Now Act
  This bill requires the President to develop and update annually a plan for the United States to meet its nationally determined contribution under the Paris Agreement on climate change.
• H.R. 763. Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act of 2019
  This bill imposes a fee on the carbon content of fuels, including crude oil, natural gas, coal, or any other product derived from those fuels that will be used so as to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
• H.R. 3761. Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act (OFF)
  This bill transitions away from fossil fuel sources of energy to clean energy sources (e.g., energy efficiency, energy conservation, and renewable energy).
• S.Res. 59. A resolution recognizing the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal.
  This resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal.
• Beto For America. Taking On Our Greatest Threat: Climate Change
  A four-part framework to mobilize a historic $5 trillion over ten years, require net-zero emissions by 2050, and address the greatest threat we face.
• Inslee for America. America's Climate Mission
  Building a Just, Innovative and Inclusive Clean Energy Economy.
  Subsequent to publishing this article, Inslee announced a lot more specifics. To read his position paper on the “Evergreen Economy,” which he refers to as a refinement in detail to the abstract concept of a “Green New Deal,” click here.
• Warren for President
  Subsequent to publishing this article, Elizabeth Warren published Our Military Can Help Lead the Fight Against Climate Change and My Green Manufacturing Plan for America.
• Bernie Sanders Subsequent to publishing this article, Bernie Sanders came out with his Green New Deal which has been lauded as very ambitious. He also made a great presentation at the MSNBC/Georgetown climate event, September 19.

I have my own preferences and concerns, but we can't let the perfect be enemy of the good. We need to discuss all of them, respectfully. We need to collaborate among them, understand that each has good points that might be combined or borrowed from. We need to move ahead on as many of these as we can or we will not make the 2030 deadline set for us by physics.

I said it already, but it bears repeating: The physics part is not something we can compromise on. It's what we're given. Physics doesn't grade on the curve. It doesn't care about the complexities of politics. It doesn't award trophies for trying or meaning well. We will either take necessary action in the time allotted, or condemn our descendants to live forever with the unhappy consequences, assuming the happy case that human extinction is not one of those consequences. I recommend David Wallace-Wells' book The Uninhabitable Earth if you need a visualization of what such a future world might look like.

I'll close here with one more appeal to metaphor, from a recent tweet of mine:

Climate is a train out of control, accelerating. Delay lets it accelerate more. Biden wants to schedule serious braking for another day. Physics says no, that if we delay, the brakes won't later be strong enough to use at all.

Denial = Delay
Centrism = Delay
Delay = Catastrophe https://t.co/8vngZKNFqM

— Kent Pitman (@KentPitman) May 10, 2019

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Article and comic image ("Gray Matters: Halfway Measures") copyright © 2019 by Kent M. Pitman. All Rights Reserved.

Included public domain Elephant image obtained from Wikimedia.

Included Donkey images, before modification for this use, was created by Steven Braeger, placed in public domain, and obtained by me from Wikimedia.

By the way, it was the utter maddening nature of this news story that drove me to write this piece: Exclusive: Presidential hopeful Biden looking for ‘middle ground’ climate policy.

Flexible Support Options

Quite some years ago, I worked at a company that has long since vanished from the technology landscape. I loved working there, but it occasionally made strange marketing and internal administration decisions that drove me nuts. To cope, I often wrote parodies of the policies, mailings, and whatnot and posted them on my office door. In retrospect, I suspect the kinds of issues I had were completely generic to the computer industry, and so I have friends who may find some of these issues are relevant even today.

Here's one of them that came up in response to a bundle of several support options the company offered for one of our products when really we only had one guy—named Dan—who was on the other end of all that support, no matter how many different ways the support was offered. In writing this, I followed the basic structure of the actual marketing press release, making adjustments as seemed necessary to make the text read in a way that I felt was more accurate. You can probably guess how it originally read:

A Broad Range of Dan Options Now Available for OurBigProduct

OurBigProduct’s Adaptable Customer Services (DAN), the Cool Technology Group’s new support program, has been expanded especially for you, the adaptable customer. These new products compound the service requirements of the increasingly sophisticated product claims made by OurBigProduct. Through the combination of enhanced service claims and promises, you have increased flexibility in your decisions about how to feed our revenue stream.

Full Dan is the complete OurBigProduct software support offering designed to ensure that you are always at the leading edge of OurBigProduct technology. Full Dan includes Dan’s phone number, Dan’s home address, and a picture of Dan so you can spot him on the street and ask him questions. Each participant in this service option is entitled to Dan’s full-time cooperation on any project you undertake.

Basic Dan is a lower priced service option designed to help chintzy OurBigProduct customers keep whatever money they can scrape up coming our way without our having to do anything specific.

Right-To-Copy (RTC) Dan, designed for sites with big bucks, gives you the opportunity to make the most of your revenue-providing capabilities by providing us with lots of bucks even if you don’t want to take personal advantage of Dan. RTC Service permits you to make unlimited copies of Dan, as well as his associated software, hardware, and documentation.

Separate Service is for experienced OurBigProduct customers who see through the above options and want an itemized bill. Available services include software updates and enhancements if they happen, subscriptions to the OurBigProduct Newsletter, telephone and on-site visits from Dan, and Dan’s training seminars.

Perhaps if he'd gotten overwhelmed, we might have added more people rather than just letting him drown, but at the time it seemed outrageous to me. Plus I was younger then, and not terribly patient with or forgiving of things that didn't work as I personally wished they would.

Also, I'd probably be safe using the real name of the company and product, but I don't want to create any embarrassment for anyone so I've changed the names to protect everyone's happy memories. If you know who this is about, please don't volunteer the information. I think it's enough just to look back and smile, perhaps even to learn, from the safety of historical distance.

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Originally published October 7, 2012 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): technology, corporate politics, internal politics, parody, satire, humor, marketing, sales, support, staffing, support options, technical support, coping, dan, history, software, support contract, pricing, support pricing, support pricing options

The Tao of AutoCorrectivity

This was written for RomanticPoetess...

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Originally published July 30, 2011 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): microsoft, microsoft word, ms word, ms/word, word, technology, helpful, spell, spelling, spelling correction, spell check, spell checker, grammar, grammar check, grammar checker, grammar checking, word choice, override, overriding, fix, fixing, check, checker, checking, autocorrect, auto correct, auto-correct, autocorrectivity

"That's How I Operate"

This story is a response to the contest announced by Gary Justis in his post Gushing Fiction, where he asked people to write an essay explaining the identity, name, and function of the item in the above picture.

I didn't see anyone else writing the 500-2000 words he says he requires of his students, so I kept mine short, too. As for it being an “essay,” this probably isn't the most traditional format for that. But I hope it's close enough.

“That looks ridiculous.”

“Well, at least I’m not boring you.”

“That’s a laugh. The truth is you wish you were boring me.”

“Fair enough. But you need to get better. So you’re really going to have to open up a little.”

“I don’t want you screwing around inside my head.”

“It’s nothing personal. It’s how I operate.”

“Oh yeah? With that ridiculous thing sticking out of your forehead? What is that?”

“It’s a doorknob.”

“A doorknob. In the middle of your forehead. Why? To show me how open-minded you are?”

“Actually, yes.”

“It makes you look like Mr. Potatohead.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Just a toy my owner said she had when she was growing up.”

“Do you want to see inside my head? It’s not every day—”

“I’ll take your word for it. Besides, if I don’t open your access panel, I can think of you as closed-minded instead.”

“Another joke. If I hadn’t done a circuit analysis, I’d say your CPU was in top form and didn’t even need this upgrade.”

“Ok, ok. I give up. You can bore into me and do the upgrade.”

“Great. Hang on second while I replace this doorknob with—”

“Something more practical?”

“That’s right. A laser attachment. It’s how I operate.”

“A minute ago you said you operated with a doorknob.”

“Whatever it takes to get you to open up.”

“I think when my neural net matures, I’ll be a surgeon.”

“So you can help other robots like I do?”

“No, so I can have the tools to wipe that silly smile off your face. It’s starting to bug me even more than the doorknob.”

“I’ll look forward to it. I’m pretty tired of it myself. I've always thought it makes me look like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz. Lie back now, and count to eighteen quintillion four hundred and forty-six quadrillion seven hundred and forty-four trillion seventy-three billion seven hundred and nine million five hundred and fifty-one thousand six hundred and fifteen. This should just take a moment.”

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Originally published January 7, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

This post tied for “first runner up” in Gary's contest.

The number, since readers asked, is 2⁶⁴ – 1.

Tags (from Open Salon): stories, thought exercise, writing exercise, exercise, jumpstart, things, mystery, humor, something to do on a sunday afternoon, photo, photograph, interpretation, rorschach, contest, open call, gary justis