Author: DOuG pRATt

Freakin’ Freak-Out

Yesterday I mentioned a very impressive episode of Star Wars: Andor I’d watched. The outstanding series is produced in England, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard the expression “fit for work” in the episode.

Today I walked along what had been, until recently, one of my running routes, listening to an installment of Drew Carey’s Friday Night Freak-Out. One of the songs Drew played is called “Fit for Work”.

The UK band DeadLetter reminds me of the Clash’s long-ago social activism. After getting home I paid £5 ($6.60), £4 more than required, to download a copy of “Fit for Work”.

https://deadletter-band.bandcamp.com/track/fit-for-work

I also recently mentioned Drew Carey’s day job, hosting The Price is Right. The price was wrong for the game show’s theme music.

Andor What?

At last, the promise of what Star Wars could be, that George Lucas was unable to fulfill, is here. Andor is the Better Call Saul of Sci-Fi.

I’m almost done watching season 1. In one of the episodes there is an absolutely brilliant integration of the dystopian existence of Lucas’ THX 1138 into his Star Wars universe, along with a nod to Star Trek’s “Journey to Babel” episode. Season 2 will be out next year.

Now How the Hell Do You Know That?

I don’t know how it’s possible that the second semester of my freshman year of college was 50 years ago, but it was. What a crazy time! Having broken up with my girlfriend at home to pursue Felicia at school, only to let go of her under very sad circumstances, I stuck to my studies. Then I met Karen.

In all sincerity, every one of my girlfriends was amazing. I’ll never know how amazing staying with Felicia would have been, but I was with Karen for a long time and she was extra amazing. While I was working at a restaurant for my summer job, Karen was at Digital Equipment Corporation, where her father worked.

DEC was beyond huge in Massachusetts, being the primary economic engine behind the so-called Massachusetts Miracle that was the basis of Mike Dukakis’ run for president in 1988. If Dukakis, who I met several times when I was a radio reporter, had won the White House, the end of his first term would have been at the start of DEC’s rapid decline and demise.

Before PC’s took over corporate desktops there were text-based terminals, most notably the DEC VT100 series. They were attached at low speeds, typically 9600 bps, to terminal servers that were installed along 10 megabit/sec Ethernet backbones. And I do mean backbone. Those cables were thick!

My first installation with DEC terminal servers was a challenge. Many, but not all, of the minicomputer networks I installed were dedicated to our system. We had our own terminal server operating system that needed to be downloaded from our host systems.

I was at a hospital somewhere, and when powering up our DECServers it was a toss-up whether one of the VAX systems running our operating system, or a VAX running DEC VMS, would be the first to catch the request for a download. Like a chirping baby bird wanting to be fed.

Fortunately, a DEC field engineer was there. We looked at everything together, and once I had a good handle on the problem I called the office to update Brad, who had written the code that was downloaded onto the DECservers. Brad also happened to have been one of my college roommates.

The request for a download was an Ethernet broadcast. It was seen by all nodes on the backbone, and it came from the DECserver firmware. Brad reminded me of what I already knew, that there was nothing he could do to change that. We agreed the best idea was to find out if there was a way to create an exclusion list of hardware addresses, called a MAC address, within DECnet.

The FE was an affable guy who was easy to work with, and I told him that short of installing a completely separate backbone, a fix would have to come from DEC. He said he had no idea, “above my pay grade,” and that “DECnet isn’t even in Tier 1 support. I’ll have to call the escalation center in Colorado.”

He called, and when he had someone on the line he got a gleam in his eye, and a big smile to go with it. “We’re in luck! It’s Karen!” I looked at him intently and asked, “Karen… [name withheld]?”

His jaw dropped, he stared at me and asked, “Now how the Hell do you know that?” I didn’t. All I knew was that “my” Karen had worked at DEC in college, and not in Colorado. But when I saw his smile, and the way he said, “It’s Karen,” I knew it had to be her. Karen has a very sweet voice.

I gestured for him to hand the phone to me. It was the first time in over ten years that we had spoken. “Karen? It’s Doug. Brad’s on the other line.” Silence. Then a big disbelieving laugh. “HOW ARE YOU????”

We updated each other very quickly, then I explained the details of the problem. Karen said there was an easy fix. “I’ll need a list of the MAC addresses on your DECservers, then I’ll dial in and create an exclusion list in DECnet to ignore broadcasts from those addresses.”

I almost said, “Karen I love you!” but limited myself to, “You’re the best!” Brad was very amused hearing that Karen was fixing our problem. The shared backbone was soon working perfectly, carrying two co-existing, non-conflicting protocols. Ten years later, when DEC was being broken up for sale, Karen took a generous buyout. She continues to live in Colorado.

Steward’s Ship Sinking

Carney Hospital is in the Dorchester section of Boston. I first heard about Carney from Felicia, who was one of the first people I met when starting college. We had clicked immediately, like an instant couple. From the get-go Felicia called me Dougie, and I adored her.

Felicia was very smart, very pretty, and very Roman Catholic. I can still easily bring her Boston-accented voice to mind. Felicia was from Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood, and with the intention of becoming a nurse she was a volunteer at Carney. Back then the girls who volunteered were called “Candy Stripers” because of their distinctive uniforms. Felicia was gifted at learning languages, and she was reasonably fluent in Spanish, which made her especially useful as a volunteer.

At night we’d walk to a park near campus, sit on the swing sets, and talk. Felicia would joke about getting married to a handsome, rich doctor, and I’d say, “For now you’ll have to settle for me.” I had two roommates in my all-male dorm, but Felicia had a single room in her all-female dorm. After our evening walks we’d go to her room to do less talking. (The dorms went co-ed by senior year, when my roommates and I were living in an apartment.)

I heard a lot about Carney Hospital from Felicia. She was going to continue volunteering there during Christmas break, and I was hoping she’d return to campus with a photo of herself wearing her cute candy striper uniform. Felicia did return to Carney Hospital, but not as a volunteer.

During Christmas break I had an extremely bad experience with the abusive stepfather of my girlfriend back home. I couldn’t deal with him anymore, I walked out, and that was that. As I told her decades later, “Technically, I didn’t walk out on you, I walked out on your stepfather.” I convinced myself it was for the best, because I’d be seeing Felicia again. But Felicia didn’t return to campus.

At the start of second semester, freshman year, over the hallway PA I was told there was a call for me in the dorm mother’s office. (No room phones in those days and, yes, there was a “dorm mother.”) It was Felicia’s mother, who said she was pleased to speak with me, because Felicia had been talking about me non-stop since getting home. She wanted me to know, however, that Felicia was a patient at Carney Hospital.

Over Christmas, during a snowstorm Felicia had been in a serious car accident. She was lucky to be alive, and she would likely be in the hospital for months. I was devastated, and I started looking into getting to Boston to see her. Then I received a letter from Felicia, saying she had a long road to recovery ahead of her, her life was on hold, and whatever it was we had hoped to have together, it was no longer a realistic possibility. What was I going to do? For the second time in a month I decided to convince myself that letting go was “for the best.” There are movies with stories like this one.

A couple of years before retiring, I finally visited Carney Hospital. I thought of Felicia each time I was at Carney to do some work in the hospital’s data center. When I knew Felicia, Carney was an independent Catholic hospital. It later became part of the Caritas Christi Health Care system. When Caritas ran into financial trouble a private equity firm took it over, and created Steward Health Care. Steward is a customer of my former employer, in which I continue to hold a financial stake that is sizeable only on a personal basis.

That’s my very long introduction to this item from last night’s CBS Evening News, where you will see a brief view of Carney, which is now a nursing home.

Felicia did become a nurse. She left Boston proper and lives a couple of towns away. Instead of marrying a doctor, she married a state trooper.