[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]

February 18th, 2008

February 18th, 2008
10:43 am [Link]	Knowledge, Lost Forever A decade ago, I was the computer book buyer for Waldenbooks. And it was the best job I ever had. Oh, don't get me wrong - working for StarCityGames.com is awesome indeed, but it didn't come with daily crates worth of free sample books. I could get any book I wanted, without asking, like a library that just gave you books. Because as a guy who cut checks for several million dollars each year, selecting what books made it into our vast selection of mall stores, even publishers who didn't put out computer books wanted to keep me happy. Just in case. But the job itself was also made of awesome. Every day I got to come in and guess, using scientific acoutrement, how much the next edition of Using Microsoft Office 97 would sell. I did a lot of math combined with art, and spent my afternoons helping to develop the Expert System that would allow us to predict backlist book sales more efficiently. It was truly great. Plus, every day I got to come in and check my numbers. It was a joy, seeing that I was right on the latest MCSE book and that it was chugging along... Or, when I was wrong, I'd file it away as a bit of knowledge that this didn't work. Every day I checked my top fifty sellers, and every day they surprised me. But today, it occurred to me that I'd lost a vital piece of knowledge: I used to know the ISBN for Windows 95 for Dummies by heart. I had to; it was my top seller, moving well over a thousand copies a week, and every day I had to push out new stock to stores who were running low. Windows 95 for Dummies was the barometer of my overall sales, and I had a customized distribution algorithm I designed especially for it and it alone. It used to fly off my fingers. Now, I'd have to look it up. That saddens me. It used to be such a huge part of my life, that identifying code, and now it's slipped out because it's not relevant. Likewise, right now I have a few items at StarCityGames.com that I have memorized - not my top sellers, but the cards I use as defaults when I'm doing tests on new modules and functions. They're cards that hardly ever sell, so if I screw something up in the course of an errant query, it's no biggie. But I have their IDs memorized. Should I leave SCG, in a decade I'll doubtlessly forget those, too. That makes me a little pre-nostalgic for a knowledge I still possess, but know that will lose. They're important to me and me alone, and soon enough not even that. It's the little things that get me. I remember Waldenbooks fondly - there's a part of me that hopes that one day, I'll just step back into corporate headquarters and they'll offer me a job, and once again I'll be working for a paltry salary, but with free books and fiercely liberal co-workers. But my brain has unilaterally decided that it's time to let the minutiae go. I can't even remember what my password there used to be. My neurons are telling me to let it go. And they're probably right. But every once in a while, I wish for free books and the excitement of daily guessing, and I guess I'll never have that recipe again. As a side note, whenever I'm in a situation where I don't know what the fuck I'm doing or what I should do or why I'm even here, I dream about my first days at Waldenbooks, when I learned so much about marketing and distribution that I thought my head would explode. And I'm usually naked or sick. I'm having those dreams lately these days. (28 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)
Time	Event
02:50 pm [Link]	Stephan Pastis Has Got Me From nuala: As usual, Stephen's a little small for the page, but I still like it. (6 shouts of denial | tell me I'm full of it)
Time	Event
07:52 pm [Link]	Come ON, UPS! My Xbox has, according to Microsoft, been repaired and is on its way back. Daddy needs some Rock Band now, honey. Come on. (1 angry protest | tell me I'm full of it)