Bells and Whistles Galore

Author © Scott D. Zachary

       My greatest source of joy in life has been my generosity. It was also high on the list of reasons why I would eventually divorce my first wife. Her favorite expression in response to my generous acts was “That’s stupid.” Nevertheless, I usually proceeded along my merry path, pardoning her verbal butchery. Such was the case in this story that took place during the summer of 1988 while I was stationed at Kolsås NATO base in Norway.

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       My nephew Jack came to visit toward the end of June. We went on a road trip with Pramod Vora and his family. Starting from Oslo, we drove the length of Norway, outlining the majestic fjords to the North Cape (Nordkapp: the northernmost point in Europe) where we experienced the surreal midnight sun. Turning south, we drove through Finland’s land of a thousand lakes (a colossal understatement since Finland has 187,888 lakes). We stopped alongside the road in northern Finland (Lapland) to enjoy a cup of coffee. Before Pramod could set up his portable stove, the sky blackened with mosquitoes. Trillions of mosquitoes chased us all the way to Helsinki. We ferried across the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea to Stockholm, Sweden, and returned to Oslo. Jack still had a few days of his vacation remaining after we returned home from our road trip. He expressed some interest in programming. With him looking over my shoulder, I programmed the game of Cribbage on a Kaypro personal computer that I had borrowed. That was a blast, but it hardly satisfied my desire to create practical software.

       My yen was somewhat appeased when German Captain Dieter Ermer and I mathematically proved that a score of “19” in the game of Cribbage was impossible, and then I proved our hypothesis programmatically. That was amusing and somewhat challenging, but I still felt as though I was programming trivia.

       That summer, owning a personal computer became the trend. About twenty American servicemen formed a computer user group. All of us had Commodore 64 personal computers which got their name from the 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM (random access memory). Contrast that with most laptop computers in 2018 that have 4 to 16 gigabytes of memory, where a gigabyte equals 1,024 megabytes, a megabyte equals 1,024 kilobytes, and a kilobyte equals 1,024 bytes. Therefore, a gigabyte equals 1,073,741,824 bytes. Your computers have at least a thousand times more memory than our Commodore 64s used. When I purchased the first Commodore 128 (128K of memory), everybody thought I was hot stuff. (And they were right.)

       Though we never stated it as such, our computer user group’s primary function was to break the copyright infringement protection of the most popular computer games of that time so we could share them. And we were really good at it! The group’s end goal was to play computer games. But I wanted more.

       My favorite author of all time, John D. MacDonald, wrote the following in his book titled Cinnamon Skin:

“Walking back through the mall to the exit nearest our part of the parking lot, we passed one shop which sold computers, printers, software, and games. It was packed with teenagers, the kind who wear wire rims and know what the new world is about. The clerks were indulgent, letting them program the computers. Two hundred yards away, near the six movie houses, a different kind of teenager shoved quarters into the space-war games, tensing over the triggers, releasing the eerie sounds of extraterrestrial combat. Any kid back in the computer store could have told the combatants that because there is no atmosphere in space, there is absolutely no sound at all. Perfect distribution: the future managers and the future managed ones. Twenty in the computer store, two hundred in the arcade.”

Except for a brief spell when I was entranced by the grail of destroying all the enemy’s infrastructure in the game River Raid, I was one of the “wire rim” types. Hence, I wanted something more creative to tackle than just playing games. Everybody can play a game, but not everyone can program it. Bottom line: I wanted to create programs to optimize other people’s lives.

       My break from the pedestrian treadmill came when MSgt Wallace approached me. He had learned of my achievement in cleaning up Chief McNichols’ ham operator software when no other programmers could. My reputation as a stellar systems analyst and programmer on the Command and Control Information System had also been making its rounds throughout Kolsås Mountain.

       Sergeant Wallace pleaded, “My wife Ingrid is the secretary for Tom Olsen, a business owner in Oslo. Tom has built a thriving cleaning equipment and supplies company. He imports all of his inventory, and he’s on the brink of closing the doors only because he can’t prepare adjusted price lists fast enough to keep pace with fluctuations in the foreign exchange rates. He needs a good price list program. From everything I’m hearing, you’re the man who can save his business, Captain Zachary.”

       That’s not trivial! “Sounds like fun! Tell Tom I’ll do it. How quickly can you get me a copy of one of his price lists?”

       “Ingrid can drop a copy off at your house this evening.”

       I drove into downtown Oslo that Saturday and met with Tom Olsen at his company on Karl Johans gate. He explained, “Ingrid and I spend 75 to 100 hours preparing a new price list quarterly for our constantly changing inventory, and that isn’t nearly often enough. We need to prepare a new price list at least every month to keep up with exchange rates. We just don’t have time to do it that often. We are continually changing the format of our price list because we add and drop dozens of products every month. Our fifty-page price list is outdated before Ingrid can finish typing it.”

       “She uses a typewriter?!”

       “Ja, Ingrid types it and manually calculates the exchange-rate conversions for more than five hundred products. It’s too easy to make costly mistakes. Plus, the fluctuating exchange rates are killing us, especially now when the Norwegian Krone is losing ground so fast against the Deutsch Mark, British Pound, and the Danish Krone. I’m selling at a loss only because my price list is not up-to-date. I have customers lined up at the door, but if something doesn’t change, I’m going to have to pack it in. Can you help us, Scott?”

       “I believe so. First of all, we need to get you computerized because the program that I’m going to write should enable you to quickly revise your price list at least monthly.”

       “Hallelujah!” Tom’s face sobered. “How much will this cost?”

       “I’ll do it for nothing. All it’s going to cost you is a few hundred dollars for a computer, a printer, lots of paper, and other supplies. This sounds like fun!”

       Tom stared at me, incredulously.

       I went straight home and dove in. I already had the dBase IV Plus programming language on my Commodore 128, but I hadn’t come up with a good solid application to develop. I have one now! Over the next five weeks, I devoted every free second to programming Tom Olsen’s price list software. I implemented bells and whistles galore to make Ingrid’s job as efficient as possible in preparing new price lists for Tom’s company, TOMO Miljøprodukter A.s. In fact, that was one of the few spans of time while stationed in Norway that I largely refrained from drinking alcohol. The rest of the time, I squeezed the limit for a functional alcoholic.

       Tom’s price list program that I created was a copiously beefed-up, specialized word processor which included a database that enabled indexed resequencing/sorting of products on multiple levels, as well as activation/deactivation of products, layered inventory, weighted reconversion of exchange rates, automatic reformatting of the price list, and lots more functionality. Most importantly, I made it simple for anyone to operate. When I couldn’t think of any more ways to speed the creation of their price lists, my task was done.

       In the meantime, Sergeant Wallace had purchased a Commodore 128 for Tom and loaded a copy of dBase IV Plus on it as I had asked him to do. I was so excited that I took a day of emergency leave and went downtown to Tom’s company. I loaded my program from a floppy disk onto Tom’s computer and trained Ingrid for a couple of hours with Tom excitedly peering over our shoulders.

       “This is fun!” exclaimed Ingrid.

       “It’ll take you a day or two this time, Ingrid,” I explained, “but once you have all of your products loaded into the database, it shouldn’t take you more than three or four hours next time to prepare a new price list, no matter how much you reformat it.”

       “You’ve saved my company, Scott. How much do I owe you?”

       “I told you, Tom, nothing. As Ingrid just said, it was fun!”

       Tom grunted. “Then I will have the men in the warehouse at least put some cleaning products in your car.”

       When I left, I could barely drive because my Subaru station wagon was filled to the brim with toilet paper, paper towels, deodorizers, and every imaginable cleaning product. Best of all, looking back today after nearly forty years of developing software, I cannot recall a time when users were more ecstatic, exuberant, and enthralled over a software delivery! That yielded pure joy for me.

       I stopped by Tom’s office in Oslo every two or three months to see how the price list program was working for him. Tom and Ingrid greeted me with the same level of exuberance every time. Ingrid was able to prepare a new price list in three to four hours per month as I projected, instead of the 75 to 100 hours they previously spent. Tom and Ingrid couldn’t wait for the time to come around to prepare their monthly price list. Every time I walked out to my car to leave, elves had filled it with cleaning supplies galore.

       Before leaving Norway, I stopped to say goodbye to Tom and Ingrid. They both thanked me over and over. As I walked toward the door to leave, Tom jumped in front of me, declaring, “You’re not getting through this door until I pay you something for saving my company.” He pulled out his wallet and splayed it open. “I don’t know how much this is, but it’s not enough for what you’ve done.” He emptied his wallet, snatching a thick wad of 100-, 500-, and 1,000-Krone bills and stuffed them into my hand. “Thank you, thank you so much, Scott!”

       I howled all the way home.