THE CRAWFORD SAGA
EPISODE 1: THE CRAWFORD IDENTITY
"Have you identified the data we need?"
"Of course. We need explosion strength, command rating, docking points, and the year in service added to every SSD in the whole game system."
"You haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting it, you know."
"Watch and learn, Grasshopper."
"You mean, ask for more and settle for what you wanted?"
"No, I mean ask for something else entirely and get what we want by accident when SVC thinks it was his idea."
"Maybe you can trick SVC, but you will never get it past Petrick. That guy is not going to fall for any of your tricks."
"Watch and learn, Grasshopper."
EPISODE 2: THE CRAWFORD CONSPIRACY
"Ok, people, listen carefully to your assignments. Rodent, you ask him to add the ship names to every SSD. Hummingbird, you ask him to list the spare shuttles. And Grasshopper, ask him for final construction dates. He'll really hate that one."
"Why do I get the one he'll hate?"
"Somebody has to do it."
"But, Tos, why does it have to be me?"
"Because I said so. Now just do it, and I'll let you ask him the easy one next time."
"Ok, ok, but what are you going to do?"
"Stay out of his way until you guys get him good and rattled, then close in for the kill."
"Oh man, you get the good job!"
"Because I'm the only one who can get it done. Now get busy."
EPISODE 3: THE CRAWFORD PORTFOLIO
"Things getting to you, Steve?"
"Yeah, Tos, they want spare shuttles and ship names on the SSD."
"How dumb."
"Yeah, but it's just distracting me from what I need to be doing."
"You mean on-line porn?"
"Well, maybe later. For now, R9 needs to get done so I can work on GURPS Romulans."
"Well, maybe if you offered them something, something else, something there is a legitimate need for?"
"Like what? Empire symbols? I can do those easy enough. Yeah, those would be swell. Pretty, and already on file."
"I had another idea...."
"As long as it's something I don't have to check against the MSC."
"Wow, look at the time, I have to go wash my car. Maybe we can pick this up later."
"Yeah.. ok... klingongurlz.com...."
EPISODE 4: THE CRAWFORD ENIGMA
"Danged if I can figure out what Tos is after, but I will."
"I dunno, Petrick, he hasn't even spoken up."
"Steve, with that many people asking for that much nonsense, there has to be a master plan. And Tos has to be at the bottom of it. Nobody else would even try to pull something this arcane. Where there's that much smoke, Tos is setting something on fire. Until I figure out what his smokescreen is covering, I'm viewing this whole thing with deep suspicion."
"It's more a matter of curiosity for me, but even so, I was thinking ..."
"Stop that at once!"
"No, really, Petrick. I know we cannot add anything to the ship data table."
"There is just no room!"
"Precisely. So, what do you think of this?"
"This? I think this is eight meaningless numbers in a little box. Is it the ship's zip code? Does Crawford want the ID code of each ship's computer so you can tap into the computer and drop its shields?"
"Very funny, Petrick. No, that's four numbers from the master ship chart. I figure people can remember that the one in the lower left is the docking points."
"Stop this foolishness right now!"
"Oh, don't be a party pooper. The one in the upper left is the year in service, which you can tell since it's three digits."
"This way madness lies!"
"And the one in the upper right is command rating."
"Run! Flee! Hide! See: Escape!"
"And the one in the lower left is ..."
"Did Crawford put you up to this? That WAS a stripper I saw leaving the office at midnight last night, wasn't it! Admit it!"
"Nothing of the sort. That was my sister. Anyway, this little box is all my idea."
"I seriously doubt that."
"That it was my idea?"
"No, that you have a sister you have never mentioned once in the fifteen years I've known you!"
EPISODE 5: THE CRAWFORD ALTERNATIVE
"How's it going, Steve?"
"Oh, hi, Tos. Just fine, I guess. Petrick is all upset."
"Oh, what about?"
"That little box I was going to put on the SSDs. He thinks it's just confusing."
"Well, I could see it would be. You can't expand it into a full table, of course."
"Of course not, there isn't any room."
"Well, as an alternative, maybe you don't need a whole table, just a hint, a clue, what each number is."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, instead of just a number for command rating, put a 'C' beside the number."
"Hmm.... no, that won't work. One letter is just more confusing."
"Well, I'd hate to see things confused more. You cannot put 'command' or 'cmnd' of course."
"Four letters, no room. But perhaps two?"
"Do you mean put 'CR' beside the number?"
"Yes, yes, I think that would do it."
"Genius, Steve, pure genius! But then..."
"Do you foresee a problem?"
"Well, year in service would be three letters..."
"I see ... I have it, we'll just put 'YS' so all of the identifiers are two letters."
"Two?"
"Yes, DK for docking and SS for spare shuttles."
"Do you really need spare shuttles?"
"Do we really need any of this?"
"As an alternative, could you put explosion strength instead of spare shuttles?"
"Perhaps, but 'ES' might be confusing. Perhaps 'EX' instead?
"Genius, Steve, pure genius."
EPISODE 6: THE CRAWFORD SOLUTION
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing, really."
"It LOOKS like those little tables with the mysterious numbers."
"Not really. Totally different."
"No, now it has letters and is twice as big. I thought we agreed to drop this."
"Well, when it was just numbers and was confusing, we had no choice but to drop it."
"But now that you made it twice as big, it makes PERFECT sense."
"I am glad you agree."
"I most certainly do NOT agree!"
"Oh, don't be a party pooper."
"Poop is one word for it. Why are you pursuing this insanity?"
"Think how many replacement SSD books we'll sell from the print-on-demand system."
"Look how many SSDs there are that I have to upgrade."
"The amount of work is trivial. Less than two minutes per SSD."
"Times two THOUSAND of those SSDs."
"I did all the boxes for R9 myself. No extra work for you."
"Uh huh. And you got the data from where?"
"That draft MSC you gave me."
"Uh huh. The one before we processed the reports and made 700 changes?"
"That would be the one. What's your point?"
"Yes, what IS the point to any of this?"
"Is that like 'Who's on First?' or something?"
"Or something. Look, with that many changes, we don't have time to do it."
"Oh, they're already on the SSDs."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah, I was down here late last night."
"I thought you were doing on-line porn?"
"No, no, sacrifices had to be made, and I spent the time on the SSDs."
"Ok, so now we JUST need to update 80 little boxes with 320 items to the post-report changes."
"Over a hundred, actually, counting the ones for each of the pods."
"Sigh. Ok, let's get busy, I guess."
"Wow, look at the time. I have to take Leanna to lunch."
EPISODE 7: THE CRAWFORD SUPREMACY
"I have 247 orders in the backlog file for C3. Are we ready to print the revised SSD book on the Kyocera?"
"No, Leanna, we are not."
"Well, Petrick, you told me that the Master Errata had only three items. So, figure, what? Five minutes and we can have them printing?"
"No, Ma'am. It will take the rest of today, all of tonight, and most of tomorrow."
"To make three changes? You can do eight SSDs per day from scratch. Why do three changes take two days?"
"It's not three changes, Ma'am. It's something over 100 changes, counting the pods and ground bases. All of those changes involve four items of data to look up and type in. Then we have to make a spot to insert the chart, and some of those SSDs will have to be rearranged to make room. Then figure another couple of hours to check the items, all 400 of them, on the proof and correct any typos. Like I said, all of today and most of tomorrow."
"What the ...? Please explain this to me."
"Well, the new Crawford Chart has to be added to every SSD. Which means looking up four numbers, typing them in, making the chart fit, and then printing it out and checking it against the MSC and the errata for the MSC. And every time we update the MSC, we have to check every SSD."
"Well, fine, take the time to do it right, we sold three copies as spare parts. But no more of this."
"Uh... no, once we start, we cannot ever do an SSD, a new one or a reprint, without it."
"Sigh. Well, at least the C5 and F2 playtests are moving forward. We have lots of orders for those."
"Better tell the distributors to expect them a month late. We have to include the charts on them before we can do more playtesting, then update the charts every time we get a series of reports."
"Who authorized this Crawford thing?"
"He did."
"Ok, hubby, what's up with this?"
"Well, I didn't want to go ahead with the Crawford project, but Petrick insisted that he could handle it. In fact, he staked his personal reputation on doing it efficiently and quickly."
"By the way, Leanna, did you get a chance to talk to Steve's sister when she was in town last week?"
"What sister?"
"Never mind that, Honey, Petrick and I are just exchanging ... jokes. Yeah, it's a guy thing. You wouldn't understand. At least I hope you don't. Anyway, this little chart is no big deal, really. Well, not much. And I did them all myself for R9."
"It's adding two days of work to every reprint, and a week's work to every new product! Leanna, can you talk some sense into your husband?"
"Never could before."
"Wow, look at the time, Honey. We were going to lunch?"
"I am. You don't get lunch until these charts are finished. Or dinner. Or a place to sleep."
"Yes, Dear."
Copyright (c) 2010 Stephen V. Cole
"Have you identified the data we need?"
"Of course. We need explosion strength, command rating, docking points, and the year in service added to every SSD in the whole game system."
"You haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of actually getting it, you know."
"Watch and learn, Grasshopper."
"You mean, ask for more and settle for what you wanted?"
"No, I mean ask for something else entirely and get what we want by accident when SVC thinks it was his idea."
"Maybe you can trick SVC, but you will never get it past Petrick. That guy is not going to fall for any of your tricks."
"Watch and learn, Grasshopper."
EPISODE 2: THE CRAWFORD CONSPIRACY
"Ok, people, listen carefully to your assignments. Rodent, you ask him to add the ship names to every SSD. Hummingbird, you ask him to list the spare shuttles. And Grasshopper, ask him for final construction dates. He'll really hate that one."
"Why do I get the one he'll hate?"
"Somebody has to do it."
"But, Tos, why does it have to be me?"
"Because I said so. Now just do it, and I'll let you ask him the easy one next time."
"Ok, ok, but what are you going to do?"
"Stay out of his way until you guys get him good and rattled, then close in for the kill."
"Oh man, you get the good job!"
"Because I'm the only one who can get it done. Now get busy."
EPISODE 3: THE CRAWFORD PORTFOLIO
"Things getting to you, Steve?"
"Yeah, Tos, they want spare shuttles and ship names on the SSD."
"How dumb."
"Yeah, but it's just distracting me from what I need to be doing."
"You mean on-line porn?"
"Well, maybe later. For now, R9 needs to get done so I can work on GURPS Romulans."
"Well, maybe if you offered them something, something else, something there is a legitimate need for?"
"Like what? Empire symbols? I can do those easy enough. Yeah, those would be swell. Pretty, and already on file."
"I had another idea...."
"As long as it's something I don't have to check against the MSC."
"Wow, look at the time, I have to go wash my car. Maybe we can pick this up later."
"Yeah.. ok... klingongurlz.com...."
EPISODE 4: THE CRAWFORD ENIGMA
"Danged if I can figure out what Tos is after, but I will."
"I dunno, Petrick, he hasn't even spoken up."
"Steve, with that many people asking for that much nonsense, there has to be a master plan. And Tos has to be at the bottom of it. Nobody else would even try to pull something this arcane. Where there's that much smoke, Tos is setting something on fire. Until I figure out what his smokescreen is covering, I'm viewing this whole thing with deep suspicion."
"It's more a matter of curiosity for me, but even so, I was thinking ..."
"Stop that at once!"
"No, really, Petrick. I know we cannot add anything to the ship data table."
"There is just no room!"
"Precisely. So, what do you think of this?"
"This? I think this is eight meaningless numbers in a little box. Is it the ship's zip code? Does Crawford want the ID code of each ship's computer so you can tap into the computer and drop its shields?"
"Very funny, Petrick. No, that's four numbers from the master ship chart. I figure people can remember that the one in the lower left is the docking points."
"Stop this foolishness right now!"
"Oh, don't be a party pooper. The one in the upper left is the year in service, which you can tell since it's three digits."
"This way madness lies!"
"And the one in the upper right is command rating."
"Run! Flee! Hide! See: Escape!"
"And the one in the lower left is ..."
"Did Crawford put you up to this? That WAS a stripper I saw leaving the office at midnight last night, wasn't it! Admit it!"
"Nothing of the sort. That was my sister. Anyway, this little box is all my idea."
"I seriously doubt that."
"That it was my idea?"
"No, that you have a sister you have never mentioned once in the fifteen years I've known you!"
EPISODE 5: THE CRAWFORD ALTERNATIVE
"How's it going, Steve?"
"Oh, hi, Tos. Just fine, I guess. Petrick is all upset."
"Oh, what about?"
"That little box I was going to put on the SSDs. He thinks it's just confusing."
"Well, I could see it would be. You can't expand it into a full table, of course."
"Of course not, there isn't any room."
"Well, as an alternative, maybe you don't need a whole table, just a hint, a clue, what each number is."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Well, instead of just a number for command rating, put a 'C' beside the number."
"Hmm.... no, that won't work. One letter is just more confusing."
"Well, I'd hate to see things confused more. You cannot put 'command' or 'cmnd' of course."
"Four letters, no room. But perhaps two?"
"Do you mean put 'CR' beside the number?"
"Yes, yes, I think that would do it."
"Genius, Steve, pure genius! But then..."
"Do you foresee a problem?"
"Well, year in service would be three letters..."
"I see ... I have it, we'll just put 'YS' so all of the identifiers are two letters."
"Two?"
"Yes, DK for docking and SS for spare shuttles."
"Do you really need spare shuttles?"
"Do we really need any of this?"
"As an alternative, could you put explosion strength instead of spare shuttles?"
"Perhaps, but 'ES' might be confusing. Perhaps 'EX' instead?
"Genius, Steve, pure genius."
EPISODE 6: THE CRAWFORD SOLUTION
"What are you doing?"
"Oh, nothing, really."
"It LOOKS like those little tables with the mysterious numbers."
"Not really. Totally different."
"No, now it has letters and is twice as big. I thought we agreed to drop this."
"Well, when it was just numbers and was confusing, we had no choice but to drop it."
"But now that you made it twice as big, it makes PERFECT sense."
"I am glad you agree."
"I most certainly do NOT agree!"
"Oh, don't be a party pooper."
"Poop is one word for it. Why are you pursuing this insanity?"
"Think how many replacement SSD books we'll sell from the print-on-demand system."
"Look how many SSDs there are that I have to upgrade."
"The amount of work is trivial. Less than two minutes per SSD."
"Times two THOUSAND of those SSDs."
"I did all the boxes for R9 myself. No extra work for you."
"Uh huh. And you got the data from where?"
"That draft MSC you gave me."
"Uh huh. The one before we processed the reports and made 700 changes?"
"That would be the one. What's your point?"
"Yes, what IS the point to any of this?"
"Is that like 'Who's on First?' or something?"
"Or something. Look, with that many changes, we don't have time to do it."
"Oh, they're already on the SSDs."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah, I was down here late last night."
"I thought you were doing on-line porn?"
"No, no, sacrifices had to be made, and I spent the time on the SSDs."
"Ok, so now we JUST need to update 80 little boxes with 320 items to the post-report changes."
"Over a hundred, actually, counting the ones for each of the pods."
"Sigh. Ok, let's get busy, I guess."
"Wow, look at the time. I have to take Leanna to lunch."
EPISODE 7: THE CRAWFORD SUPREMACY
"I have 247 orders in the backlog file for C3. Are we ready to print the revised SSD book on the Kyocera?"
"No, Leanna, we are not."
"Well, Petrick, you told me that the Master Errata had only three items. So, figure, what? Five minutes and we can have them printing?"
"No, Ma'am. It will take the rest of today, all of tonight, and most of tomorrow."
"To make three changes? You can do eight SSDs per day from scratch. Why do three changes take two days?"
"It's not three changes, Ma'am. It's something over 100 changes, counting the pods and ground bases. All of those changes involve four items of data to look up and type in. Then we have to make a spot to insert the chart, and some of those SSDs will have to be rearranged to make room. Then figure another couple of hours to check the items, all 400 of them, on the proof and correct any typos. Like I said, all of today and most of tomorrow."
"What the ...? Please explain this to me."
"Well, the new Crawford Chart has to be added to every SSD. Which means looking up four numbers, typing them in, making the chart fit, and then printing it out and checking it against the MSC and the errata for the MSC. And every time we update the MSC, we have to check every SSD."
"Well, fine, take the time to do it right, we sold three copies as spare parts. But no more of this."
"Uh... no, once we start, we cannot ever do an SSD, a new one or a reprint, without it."
"Sigh. Well, at least the C5 and F2 playtests are moving forward. We have lots of orders for those."
"Better tell the distributors to expect them a month late. We have to include the charts on them before we can do more playtesting, then update the charts every time we get a series of reports."
"Who authorized this Crawford thing?"
"He did."
"Ok, hubby, what's up with this?"
"Well, I didn't want to go ahead with the Crawford project, but Petrick insisted that he could handle it. In fact, he staked his personal reputation on doing it efficiently and quickly."
"By the way, Leanna, did you get a chance to talk to Steve's sister when she was in town last week?"
"What sister?"
"Never mind that, Honey, Petrick and I are just exchanging ... jokes. Yeah, it's a guy thing. You wouldn't understand. At least I hope you don't. Anyway, this little chart is no big deal, really. Well, not much. And I did them all myself for R9."
"It's adding two days of work to every reprint, and a week's work to every new product! Leanna, can you talk some sense into your husband?"
"Never could before."
"Wow, look at the time, Honey. We were going to lunch?"
"I am. You don't get lunch until these charts are finished. Or dinner. Or a place to sleep."
"Yes, Dear."
Copyright (c) 2010 Stephen V. Cole
posted by Federation Commander at 8:36 AM
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