True to his word Top Cat emailed the right people inside our company. He knew which cages to rattle I suppose. Impressed with his follow through I finished reading his emails and attached forwards from other employees feeling like Top Cat meant what he said. In my eyes he had more credibility. More importantly he made the right decision to question our poor handling of BAMA.

Factory Peasant,

Looks like it is solved. Thanks for bringing this up.

Top Cat
FY05: How will We delight our Customers today?

———-

Hello all,

I just exchanged VMs with the owner of the BAMA website and think all is well. We have sent him a copy of a license he is happy to sign. He can then return the manuals (all 530 of them) to the site. To make sure this doesn’t happen again I’ve asked legal to draft a new more user/customer friendly policy and they have agreed. I have also corresponded with almost all of the BAMA users that sent complaining e-mails to our lawyer.

I’m just waiting for an LSCA input to launch the lawyer on writing the new policy.

Mike

———-

In parallel with Top Cat I continued following public discussions on Yahoo equipment forums. Rather wisely, Bill and Dave’s company planted an employee on the forums to help ease the situation. Many Yahoo forum users reacted negatively to our heavy-handed policy against BAMA. Lurking on the forums for some time I watched an employee named “Dave” run public relations interference and solicit suggestions from the forum community with regards to other product documentation they would like to see on our customer-facing website. Prior to the arrival of Dave I used the Yahoo equipment forums on the down low to help people fix their gear or source parts we were not willing to assist them with. In order to throw Dave and any other sneaky employees off my trail I posted to the group infrequently using my alias. Sometimes I deliberately answered forum user’s questions incorrectly or acted like a wingnut just to keep them thinking I was not working for Bill and Dave’s company. After laying low over a period of a couple of weeks and reading Dave’s posts I decided to email him from inside the company to see if there was anything I could do to help.

———-

Hi Dave.

I’ve been following your posts on the Yahoo equipment forum and I wanted to say you’re doing a great job on this. I assume this is happening as an offshoot of the XXXXXXX vs. BAMA episode that took place recently, as well as finally addressing a customer feedback issue with regard to the lack of content on the main company website. This is all really positive and I’m very happy to see it taking place. It’s excellent PR for the company and it will demonstrate to customers we offer some form of support long after a product has been discontinued. It will also be useful to some of us here working in the product lines.

Recently we had a customer 837X RF Sig Gen come back to the factory for warranty repair. Unfortunately when the 837X line was sent into obsolescence and discontinued earlier this year everything as far as documentation was jettisoned from the line. Our technicians didn’t even have a product manual anywhere on site to help with troubleshooting the box and when they checked the XXXXXXX website they were extremely frustrated to discover no .pdf of the service manual was available. So, adding these manuals to the company website will be helpful to external customers as well as internal employees.

I’m sure you’re already aware of the resources available to you for processing manuals into electronic form, but just in case I’ve forwarded along some info from Mike K. He mentions a fairly quick process for scanning service manuals but I have no idea if this is already available to you. In any case good luck with this. If there’s anything I can do to help out feel free to hit me up, I’d be happy to volunteer some of my own time to expedite the project.

Factory Peasant

———-

Factory Peasant,

I’m smiling as I write this. I actually work for Mike K., and I just sent out 3 minutes ago a request to support people across EPSG to track down manuals for this very reason. My message is attached in case you want to forward it along to anyone. I’m trying to make Mike’s “quick process” into something more robust and ongoing. The drive for it comes from consistently strong customer feedback that content for older products is one of the key things missing from our site. We think it will boost ACS/customer satisfaction scores to add these manuals–that’s the bottom line.

I also was in contact with the BAMA folks during their struggles with us, and I will probably approach them to use some of the scans they currently have out on their site. This effort isn’t a result of the BAMA incident, but that certainly points out the importance of these old manuals to our customers. The reception I’ve gotten from the Yahoo group has really been heartening!

I’ve also spoken with Jim S., our legal beagle. We’ve standardized our approach to these manuals providers to let anyone who asks place out-of-support manuals on their sites IF it’s for free. I’ll be mentioning that as I work with customers in the Yahoo group and other places.

Thanks for your support. Please feel free to direct anyone with good support ideas my direction!

Regards,

Dave

———-

Sometimes, things can work out pretty damn good after all.

Hi Pattie and Mike,

I got this escalation from one of my employees and promised I’ll come back to him with some explanations.

Are you aware of this?

Mike, why don’t we have those documentations available on our site?

Please let me know what your take is on this.

Thanks,

Top Cat
FY05: How will We delight our Customers today?

———-

Top Cat,

Mike

Returning to my desk I decided to hit the BAMA website and see if I could find a copy of our lame-ass legal threat letter. Sure enough after logging onto BAMA’s site I scrolled down about one third of the way to find in bright red letters a news article linking to a .pdf copy of our lawyer’s stupid shit. Reading it made me realize how adept we are here at shooting ourselves in the feet. I was also kinda angry. So I followed up with an email to Top Cat that better summed up my thoughts. I didn’t even give Top Cat the few days wait to see what may or may not happen. Fuck it, let’s do this now I thought. Sitting at my technical workbench I hammered out the following email:

———-

Hi Top Cat.

Thanks again for taking the time to talk with me this afternoon. I do appreciate it. To follow up a little further and clarify, I found a letter from Bill and Dave’s company to BAMA regarding this issue and I’ve attached it for you to read. Our Corporate Counsel, James S. mentions BAMA was “marketing” our product manuals from their web site, but I am certain BAMA was providing them completely free of charge. The problems I see here are:

1. We are forcibly removing a useful source of free public information about Bill and Dave’s legacy products that we as a company are not providing.
2. Negative public relations towards Bill and Dave’s and a perception that we refuse to offer the most minimal support for our older products.

I hope some sort of compromise between Bill and Dave’s company and BAMA can be worked out soon. I’d like to suggest that we make .pdf’s of our obsolete/legacy product manauals more available on our main external website. This would eliminate situations like this from happening in the first place, and be useful to customers as well as our own employees. I believe it would also foster a perception that we continue to offer valuable information and support long after a product is no longer in service life.

Thank you,

Factory Peasant

———-

Via email to: k4xl@arrl.net

Re: Copyright Infringement

Dear Sir or Madam:

It has been brought to our attention that you are marketing via your web site http://bama.sbc.edu/ materials as to which the copyright rights belong to XXXXXXX Technologies, Inc. These include but are not limited to manuals for XXXXXXX (formerly Bill and Dave’s) products.

This will confirm that XXXXXXX owns the copyright rights to those materials and to all other such materials for Bill and Dave’s company or XXXXXXX test and measurement products. XXXXXXX has not consented to you copying or distributing them. If you were not previously aware that a copyright owner has the exclusive rights to copy of publicly distribute its works, or if you have been under the mistaken understanding that you have XXXXXXX’s consent to do so, this is to correct that misunderstanding. Further, any implied consent is hereby revoked effectively immediately.

In the absence of a license from XXXXXXX, you must immediately stop copying, publicly distributing, and advertising these materials, and remove them from your site.

Sincerely,

James S.

Corporate Counsel

I scheduled an Open Door meeting with Top Cat for earlier today. Invoking the Open Door policy with upper level management is always risky, but I had a gut feeling that Top Cat would be willing to listen and act on what I had to say. He’s got some clout with management teams elsewhere in the company and he appears to be well-known by them. Thoroughly disgusted with corporate over the BAMA legal threat I decided to work through management and attempt to beat them at their own game. Armed with a copy of W’s email asking me for help I walked over to Building 4 early this afternoon and sat down to talk with Top Cat in his office concerning this issue.

Top Cat is an odd character. I have heard he worked for twenty years in our Singapore division and is of French descent. He pronounces his name radically different from the way it’s spelled which strikes me as pure comedy. In his office he has a surfboard against a wall and some framed sports jerseys with autographs on them. As I mentioned in the past Top Cat has a habit of communicating directly with employees through daily emails. In his mind I’m sure Top Cat thinks he is doing everybody a favor with his weekly reports and write-ups during overseas business trips, but he has rubbed many employees wrong by doing so. His tone frequently comes across to them as insensitive and naive. Some have judged him as being entirely out of touch with reality. My opinion of him is that he genuinely cares about the company and our customers however he does not fully grasp what is going on at any given time. I can only speculate as to the reasons why.

At two o’clock sharp I met with Top Cat and sat down in his office to discuss the BAMA episode.

I said to him, “There’s something I am concerned with. Earlier this week I received an email from a long time customer of ours that disturbed me. I would like you to take a few moments to read it keeping in mind I have removed his full name and the name of his company.”

Top Cat asked, “Is this something that I should be aware of?”

“Well, yes. Uh, no. I mean I don’t think this is an issue you already know about that is why I am bringing it to your attention now. You should be informed of this.”

I placed W’s letter on the table in front of Top Cat and he began to read.

Factory Peasant,

It appears that lawyers from Bill and Dave’s company have descended on one of the many on line manual sites (which are totally free), in this case the widely used BAMA site, and told them to remove all Bill and Dave’s content or be sued for copyright infringement. These older documents in question clearly show they are from Bill and Dave’s company, and that Bill and Dave’s company is the copyright holder.

Tektronix has already publicly discharged all their older stuff into the public domain for free, and posted notices to that effect. Very admirable. The Bill and Dave’s policy is to forbid this copying or transmission. Now, what makes this especially Bill and Dave’s-like, is that they offer much of this for free off their own site, or don’t offer it at all for any price, in either case, it is hard to perceive the harm involved..

In addition, the lawyer from Bill and Dave’s corporate intimated that a free license to offer this is available, but BAMA failed to secure one. They weren’t then offered one, just told to cut it out. The net is alive with rumblings over this, and none of it is Bill and Dave’s company-positive.

W

Top Cat finished reading. I gave him a few moments to think about W’s email and then I offered my viewpoints.

“I see a number of serious problems here. As I am sure you are aware we have been receiving an increased amount of negative customer feedback on a wide range of issues. There is a growing perception in the industry that we as a company do not offer an adequate level of support to customers. By threatening a popular website like BAMA we are adding more fuel to the fire in that regard. Also, this incident was big news globally within minutes of the legal threat being made public. The last thing we need right now is more negative public relations and that is exactly what this episode is generating. BAMA is used by a wide range of people including electronics students.

“Consider that documentation and manuals for older products are not only useful to past customers, it’s useful to current customers and even our own employees. For example we frequently have to service gear for instrument lines from other divisions. A product group may have a specific use for an older piece of gear that is not replaceable. When it comes to us for repair and troubleshooting we can’t obtain an instrument manual from our own company website which makes the whole repair cycle more difficult. Lately technicians in my area are complaining more often about this. They’re frustrated, and this is such a simple thing to fix. Not including this kind of information on the website is insane. It doesn’t cost much to scan an instrument manual into electronic format and post it on the web. If a small competitor like Tektronix can publish their old material online free of charge why can’t we?”

Top Cat asked, “May I keep a copy of this letter?”

“Yes. That’s for you.” I said.

“I will investigate. Please understand it might take some time so if I don’t respond back to you I have not forgotten.”

“No problem but if I don’t hear from you would you mind if I follow up in an email to you?” I asked him.

Top Cat nodded that would be fine. I thanked him, stood up from his table and went back to work. I thought to myself this would be interesting to see if he actually follows through with helping BAMA.

During the past week I have been busy as hell. Loyal customers of Bill and Dave’s test and measurement products who cannot get any support from our service centers have discovered I am the last stop inside the company for a shred of support. In my spare time and on breaks, I research our legacy products and provide information the company is unwilling or unable to provide. It is a sad state of affairs. A few months ago I asked the Bossman if he would be willing to hook me up with an engineering account so I could research our records for Nixie tubes. That’s a personal project of mine. Knowing that we were major manufacturers of Nixies back in the 1960s and 70s I figured we had to have some pretty good records scanned into the company’s internal databases by now. Sure enough, I was correct. Once I got in there I downloaded all kinds of good data sheets and engineering drawings.

Our company is out of control in many aspects. For example, not long after Bossman authorized an engineering account I got a weird email from a division in Scotland informing me I had to upgrade to a hotrod laptop computer. At first I thought the email was some sort of a joke, but it turned out there was no oversight on their part as to whether or not I was in fact an engineer. They only saw me on the system logging in to the engineering databases on an old PC therefore I automatically qualified for a new computer no questions asked. I fucked them and took the fastest laptop they had. Since then my research efforts have been drastically more efficient. Thanks, corporate chumps.

There are a number of factors that are placing long time customers in a nasty situation. One, when we obsolete a product or instrument line we don’t have equivalent platforms available to replace them with. Marketing says we do but the plain reality is we don’t. All a tech-savvy customer has to do is look at the performance specs of the new replacement product. If the specs do not meet or exceed the specs of the previous instrument it is not an equivalent box. Period. More often than not this is the case. Two, we do not offer any product support on legacy equipment unless the customer paid for long term extended service or had it in their contract with us up front to provide up to ten years worth of support after reaching obsolescence. That means once a product is jettisoned there is no online manuals available from our external website, no part information, no schematics, nothing. Basically Bill and Dave’s company takes you on a cruise out into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, kicks you overboard, says “Peace!” and keeps on sailing.

Part of this is a shrewd marketing strategy to force customers into buying our new crap. Service call centers won’t help you with part information, JEDEC numbers so you can source parts on your own, manuals, or anything really. That’s where I come in.

Last week I provided service and parts to customers all over the United States and Canada, South America, Australia, and even Serbia. I have access to hundreds of obsolete product manuals on microfilm as well as tens of thousands of component data sheets and drawings also on microfilm. Most remaining divisions don’t have these records anymore and even our main manual library in Silicon Valley is lacking in material. Armed with these resources, decades of the company’s newsletter “Bench Briefs” and my engineering account I have been kicking things into high gear. I’ve cut deals with technicians in vintage departments to get desperate customers unavailable components and cross reference parts to industry standard items. My whole goal is to keep customers swimming rather than sinking. I’m having a good time doing it, too. All of this is under the radar so to speak. Nobody in management or outside of this division will ever know about what is going on.

Microfilm records are badass. The only problem is some genius decided to throw away one model of microfilm reader. They kept the ones that weren’t meant for the abundance of our records so they have to be focused manually and are a pain to print out. We can’t do anything right around here anymore. Printing manuals for a desperate customer is tedious and time consuming. I recently decided to provide those only if they were for a simple unit like a digital time clock or a basic frequency counter. Otherwise the paperwork is a beast to deal with.

W emailed me a few days ago with some bad news. Looks like the management fuckups pulled another boner that I predict is going to backfire on us heavily. Since we don’t provide instrument manuals for old equipment on our website as a courtesy, a privately run website called BAMA has been collecting our material for distribution in electronic format and making it available free of charge to anyone who wants it. BAMA stands for “Boat Anchor Manual Archive.” What are you going to do with an old oscilloscope that you can’t figure out how to trouble shoot or operate? Tie a rope on it and throw it overboard to anchor your Chris Craft. That’s about as useful as it’s going to be if you can’t figure out how it operates or how to fix it.

BAMA is a popular website for ham radio enthusiasts, electronics students, retired engineers, and huge nerds like me. Corporate decided BAMA is committing copyright infringement by providing our obsolete equipment manuals even though we don’t have physical copies of them anymore. Hell, some of that documentation is even useful to techs working on instrument lines internally to keep critical pieces of gear alive. So, our legal team descended upon BAMA with a threat letter. Cease providing manuals or be sued into oblivion. Brilliant. With all the bad publicity we’ve already got this was not what we needed right now. W told me the news of our legal threat went worldwide within 80 minutes of hassling BAMA. The news spread like wildfire on Yahoo message boards, electronics websites, etc. That’s how W found out about it and he’s asked for my help in rescuing BAMA.

I thought about it for most of today and I may have a plan on how to get BAMA out of this mess.

Walking along a gravel driveway I looked up to see Autumn’s house. It was a large well maintained Victorian with a wide open porch wrapping around the whole building. The place was five or six stories. I couldn’t remember how many years she had been living there but I knew it was a long time. The front yard was immaculately groomed with tasteful arrangements of brightly colored flowers placed along the driveway’s edge. To my right I glanced over to see Autumn had planted a garden of sunflowers that had grown quite tall. In the distance on her property there was a single, giant oak tree.

Stopping for a moment I looked upwards towards the sky. A few wisps of pure white clouds were here and there, but it was a mostly calm clear blue day. Peacefully still air. With each footstep forward my black wingtips crunched down hard on clean gray shale. Then I remembered I had to be extremely quiet. If I made enough noise her dragon would hear me, and I’d be toast. The last time I was here I got caught.

Autumn’s house is guarded by a dragon. I may not have mentioned that before. It’s one of those flying fire breathing types with an extra bad temper. Fortunately it’s eyesight is rather poor, but it’s lacking vision has been more than made up for by it’s keen hearing abilities. I would have to creep through her house to the very top floor without making a sound. Standing at the front door I placed my hand on it’s decorative iron latch and silently let myself in.

Suddenly I was standing on the last step of an endless flight of stairs. I teleported to the top floor of the house.

Near the attic is where Autumn dwells. Why she chose to live and sleep there I never really understood. But that’s the way it always has been. Autumn’s bedroom door was wide open. Walking stealthily as possible on hardwood flooring I arrived in her doorway. Without saying anything Autumn seemed to already know I was there, she sat up from her desk and stared at me. My unannounced visit had interrupted her afternoon reading. Autumn looked beautiful, her jet black hair shone brightly in sunlight coming from a nearby window. She was wearing a long, flowing cream colored dress that hugged her curves nicely. Her lips were the color of blood.

Opening my mouth to speak Autumn swiftly rushed up out of her chair and across the room to where I was standing. I needed to tell her something.

“I…”

Autumn’s hand rose up towards my mouth. Placing a finger across my lips she said sternly, “You have to be quiet. You know this. Don’t say anything or it will hear you.”

“But… I…”

“Be quiet.” Autumn frowned.

“I… mi…”

With a strong rush of wind a huge hole opened in a outer wall of Autumn’s vintage house. I could see blue sky outside through that gaping void. The dragon materialized out of thin air and came flying through the wall. Down the hallway like a Japanese Kamikaze pilot, it was headed for me on a collision course. Autumn saw it at the same moment I did, and she gracefully took a few steps backwards away from me through her bedroom doorway. There was nowhere to hide, nothing I could do. I was caught again and I knew it. Flying with fury and speed I was knocked backwards by the dragon’s passing body. As I was falling away, Autumn continued to stand there blankly staring at me. I had made a long tiresome journey to say something to Autumn. Once again it was a wasted effort.

Barely managing to speak, I said “I miss you.”

Autumn couldn’t hear me of course. There was too much noise coming from the hallway commotion. It didn’t matter anyway because I fell backwards over a wooden railing and did a somersault into nothingness. Free falling downwards into total darkness I couldn’t see anything beneath me. I was picking up speed descending towards a bottomless pit. High above Autumn’s house became a tiny speck far away, then eventually it disappeared and was replaced by thousands of stars. They were everywhere in all directions as far as I could see. A terrible sense of despair and sorrow, welled up inside me. I was feeling pain in every part of my body as I continued to fall.

With a strong shock my whole body jumped and twitched into consciousness. I was sleeping on my stomach in the exact position I had been free falling. Rolling over in bed I immediately kicked off my covers and sat up. Placing my face in my hands I continued to feel a great sense of loss. I sat there like that motionless for quite a while shaking myself free of a sleepy confusion and a vivid nightmare.

Today was going to be a difficult day.

At home I sit in front of a television or a computer. At work I sit at a technical workbench all day long. For years this has been my daily routine. I’m out of shape and due to breaking up with Autumn I am stressed to a level I have not experienced before. Hence the extreme anxiety diagnosis from that emergency room doctor. Knowing nothing serious is medically wrong with me I decided maybe now is the time to start working out at a gym or fitness center. If I can beat myself up on gym equipment enough I hopefully can become tired and sleep better. Probably help out with the stress, too.

Between the cafeteria and Building 2 there is a well equipped gym for employee use. Bill and Dave’s company spent a ton of money loading the gym up with all sorts of exercise machines. I haven’t taken advantage of that benefit until now. Today after my shift was over I decided to stop in there and ride a stationary bike. Nobody else was there, I had the whole facility to myself.

DJ Danny Mac burst through the gym’s double doors about twenty minutes into my session on the bicycle. He was wearing his usual attire, long sleeve khaki button up collar shirt with jeans. He had a pencil jammed behind one ear and a small yellow paper notebook in his hand. You will never see him leave his notebook behind. Without missing a step he dropped his notebook on the ground, leaped onto a machine and started doing rapid pull-ups. He didn’t say anything to me but DJ Danny Mac noticed I was present.

I watched him as he tore it up. No breaks on the machine he was using. For such a scrawny little guy I was impressed at how many repetitions he cut loose without breaking a sweat. Just as fast as he had barged into the room he dropped off the machine, picked up his ratty notebook and walked over to where I was riding.

“What are YOU doing in here?” He asked. DJ Danny Mac seemed surprised and intently curious at my presence in the employee gym.

I explained that I was going through a bad time because of a relationship ending and my reasons for wanting to tire myself out before going home. He listened to my story about Autumn and the emergency room visit, nodding occasionally. When I finished up with my reasoning for wanting to get in better shape DJ Danny Mac smiled wide and said, “Most Excellent.” Then he shoved his way through the gym’s double doors and was off like a shot.

Many of our coworkers don’t know this, but DJ Danny Mac is an ex-Marine. You wouldn’t ever peg him for it due to his small size and mild demeanor. Frequently TT makes fun of him when he’s out on the instrument line. She will get his attention and knock with her fist on the edge of a workbench and ask him, “Do you know what that is?” He shakes his head no and then TT will say, “That’s you trying to get out of the closet!” She’s rough on the crew sometimes, but so hilarious. The guy is married and has kids though. TT enjoys beating him down for no particular reason. DJ Danny Mac just doesn’t look like your stereotypical leatherneck Marine type. It’s his motivated, unstoppable drive that kind of gives him away. I didn’t realize it before today, but he must go back and forth between the Engineering department in Building 4 and our production line in Building 2 dozens of times a day. With each trip I suspect he stops in here to churn through pull-ups like they are nothing and then continues on to his next project out on the shop floor. That’s very Marine-like and it’s one of the things that sets those guys apart from the rest of the services. High motivation.

As soon as I came home from the emergency room the only thing I could think of was to call Autumn. Daylight was upon the world, people were hustling about heading off to work. Ten million dingbat housewife soccer moms were busy fucking up traffic in their mini-vans; taking their kids to school while playing with their makeup and hair in rear view mirrors stopped dead in front of emerald green lights. They descended upon the city like a plague. I expected Autumn must have been at the office by then. I was so strung out that I could hardly function. With shaking hands I dialed Autumn’s work number from memory. A coworker answered. I asked for Autumn which was followed by a long, hesitant pause. The office employee probably recognized my voice and wanted to ask Autumn sneaky-like if I should be put through. Surprisingly, she took the call. I don’t know why I did it, but I told her I was unable to sleep all week and how I checked in to the hospital because of sharp pains in my chest. Autumn listened as I talked for a minute until I had nothing left to say. Her response was, “I’m sorry.”

Autumn’s voice was cold. The phone call ended immediately afterward. There was no point in calling her again. I should not have bothered in the first place.

What was I expecting? I mean what else could she say? If this was a subconscious attempt on my part to win her sympathy or get her back it was futile. I made up my mind that morning never to speak to Autumn again. This relationship breakup was so avoidable and pointless. Thinking about it made me angry. I would treat Autumn just like my father from this day forward. There would be no phone calls, emails, hand written letters, or messages passed through mutual friends. If at some point she tries to get in touch with me I will ignore Autumn completely. She’s a non-person now. Someone who will be shunned and eventually forgotten like a bad dream.

Something else really hit home from my late night hospital visit. For the first time in my life I knew I had no support from anyone close. My mother was dead, I would never speak to Dad again, and my sister rarely had anything to do with me under any circumstances. If I was suddenly ill with a serious condition there wouldn’t be anyone there for me rely upon. If I got into a brutal accident and died nobody would care. This was a sobering moment. If and when news reached my father that I kicked the bucket he would probably be happy about it. I doubt my younger sister would give a shit. On the other side of the family my Aunt and Uncle would probably be the only people I could count on. They would surely be upset if I met with an untimely demise, but it might be weeks after the fact before anyone contacted them.

I felt strange, and suddenly alone like never before.

I haven’t been able to sleep for a week. I can’t stop dwelling about my failed relationship and losing Autumn.

Every night as I tried to sleep a sharp pain in my chest kept me wide awake. Didn’t matter if I turned on my side, lay flat on my back, or rolled over on my stomach. I could not get comfortable. It felt like a corroded railroad spike had pierced me below my heart and was sticking out behind my left shoulder blade. Dwelling on it seemed to make it hurt more. I flopped around like a fish out of water trying to sleep. As days began to pass without any solid rest things at work became more and more difficult. I was unable to focus on what I was doing at any given moment. That’s one of the things that adversely affects me faster than anything else. Lack of sleep. Really fucks me up. On the job my chest discomfort nagged at me but it wasn’t as fierce during the day.

Around two in the morning last night the stabbing pain seemed to worsen significantly and I started to worry something was up, like I was heading for a heart attack. Since I couldn’t crash out and I felt insomniac crazy I decided to fire up the computer and research medical websites for symptoms I was experiencing. Sitting in my office I read page after page of online self-help medical advice. Everything seemed to indicate something was really wrong- which of course made me much more anxious. Thinking about my options I decided to call my insurance company to find out how much a hospital emergency room visit might cost me. It surely would be better to go to the hospital and have them tell me I got a life-threatening condition brewing and catch it before it’s too late. Or they could inform me I’m fine. Either way I’d be better off knowing for sure instead of lying around the house still wondering and worrying about what the hell is going on with my insides.

Last November my HMO went bankrupt. I’d been with them for over a decade. That particular HMO was a good deal. I had premium medical coverage anywhere I went for a reasonable monthly deduction. Eventually I took the HMO for granted. When they financially spun out of control and shut down I wasn’t paying too much attention at the time. So I didn’t make another insurance election choice before a few months passed with a deadline. Bill and Dave’s company chose for me. They put me on a system I’d never heard of before with an unknown medical insurance provider. This was my first time dealing with them as a new customer of their service. When I called I burned twenty minutes navigating my way through a rat maze of useless phone menu choices and canned pre-recorded messages. By the time I finally got to speak with a living person I was fairly irritated. Explaining my situation to a complete stranger over the phone made me feel kind of stupid, but what I really wanted to know was how much loot a hospital visit would set me back.

The insurance company employee did not give me a straight answer. My co-pay is fifty bucks. I wanted to go to a good hospital that is less than a couple miles away from where I live. The insurance minion wanted me to go to a clinic I never heard of located one town away, miles further because it was “in network.” I opted against the late night clinic adventure. It sounded bad. I put on some clothes and drove to the local hospital.

When I got to the emergency room lobby not a soul was there. Behind a stylish counter you’d expect to see at your bank a fat blond haired woman wearing a light green jumpsuit and white coat handed me a stack of paperwork to fill out. I scribbled personal information across each page and then was whisked away down a long corridor leading to wide open rooms with dark green curtains. The curtains were on rails in the middle of each room splitting them in two. I was told to take off all my clothes and put on a ridiculous robe made of thin cloth. No sooner had I put on the robe when a small army of hospital staff placed me in a reclining chair, hooked me up to an I.V., pasted white discs all over my chest, and clipped a plastic spring-loaded sensor on my finger. A machine directly behind me and above my head beeped with each beat of my heart. I had little clear plastic hoses under my nose feeding me cool air. If I was feeling stupid before, now I really felt dumb. Nurses fled away from my side of the room. Nurses failed to return. I sat alone for a long time wondering what may happen next.

Chest pain stabbed through me towards my back.

Across from me an old man with a crater-marked bright red nose as big as a golf ball and a head covered in silver white hair lay in a similar reclining chair. The curtains blocking off each side of the hospital room were drawn back so I could see him. He was passed out cold breathing steadily, fully dressed in his street clothes. Beyond him through an open doorway on the far wall, high pitched female voices chit-chatted away. Their conversation was inane. I could clearly hear one woman rambling on and on about her household interior redecoration project, her living room curtains and kitchen redesign. Pages were being flipped in a magazine. Those nurses were completely absorbed in their mundane banter as if it was more important than their own lives.

The old man lying on the other side of my hospital room twitched. I watched him from the corner of my eye. Unconscious, he manged to flick a sensor off his left hand with two fingers. Medical gear began to sound an alarm which shortly thereafter produced an annoyed nurse. Walking next to old guy she picked up the sensor and shoved it with rough force onto a fingertip, then left quickly in a huff. This was interrupting her all-important kitchen cabinet discussion after all. A minute later my geriatric room mate repeated his crime. Without opening his eyes once he ditched the sensor. It dangled from a cord a few inches off the floor, swinging gently next to his chair’s metal frame. Again the nurse came into my emergency room but this time she was visibly angry. She shoved that sensor assembly back into place and with a chiding tone to her voice she told the passed-out man not to remove his heart rate sensor again. He didn’t hear a word she said.

A tall man wearing a bone white coat came out of nowhere and stood next to the red-nosed old guy. He raised his voice enough to practically shout in his ear saying, “Hi Mister Torrance! What seems to be the trouble tonight!”

Fidgety, the old man squirmed a little. His eyes opened and he cocked his head towards the doctor. Mister Torrance appeared to be trying to say something but it wasn’t coming out. His face turned red as he mustered up enough strength to control his body. He yelled, “mmmmmMMMMMmmM uuuuuuUUUNNNNNKKKK!”

Without missing a beat the doctor yelled back at him. “What was that mister Torrance? I didn’t quite hear what you said!”

“MMMMMMMMHHHHhhhh UUUUUUunnnnk!” As mister Torrance shouted unrecognizable words from his lips he allowed himself to slouch further into his chair’s cushions. Whatever it was he wanted the doctor to know he sure put some effort into it. Then he had to lie back and rest like he had just forced a coke bottle out of his ass. I was entirely fascinated by the scene. I propped myself up a little to my right so I could see better.

The old man’s last name made me think of Jack Nicholson’s character, Mr. Torrance in “The Shining.” I remembered a scene in the film. Mr. Torrance sat at the saloon of a vacant mountain resort having a conversation with an imaginary barkeep who poured him round after round of stiff drinks. As Mr. Torrance got up to pay his bill, the barman calmly said to him “Your money is no good here, Mr. Torrance.” With a smile he puts a few crumpled bills back in his pocket and leaves…

Neither the doctor or I could figure out what mister Torrance was saying. Again and again he shouted out the same two mangled words as if his mouth was filled with marbles and somebody had punched him in the face so hard that he had a fat lip. But, as I listened I thought it was starting to make a sliver of sense. The first part, he was maybe trying to say “I’m” or “I am.” The second word still wasn’t coherent enough yet to make any translation.

“mmmmMMMMMM! rrrRRRRRUUUUNNNNNNKKKK!”

I got it before the doctor did. Mister Torrance was trying to tell the whole hospital he was drunk. “I’m Drunk” is what he wanted us to know. Man, to be that far gone he really must be a booze hound. I imagined he must have been hammered on rotgut liquor walking around loose in the middle of the night downtown and passed out cold in a busy street. Somebody must have found him and called an ambulance. That’s how he showed up here tonight I bet.

Hours passed. A technician wheeled in a mobile contraption and zapped my chest while I wore a heavy vinyl shield across my stomach and legs. Must have been an x-ray machine. I didn’t know how long ago I checked myself in to the emergency room because there weren’t any clocks. Guessing that dawn was upon me I told myself I would not be going in to work today if I was lucky enough to get out of here without any surgery or terminal illness.

While I waited for something to happen mister Torrance passed out again. The bum. Eventually a doctor wearing one of those green jumpsuits came in and pulled up a chair next to me. He had a big gray handlebar mustache that made him look like a wild west cowboy. The doctor flipped through pages stuck on a clipboard and asked me how I was feeling. I told him about the chest pains and that I had lost sleep for a week. Curious, he asked me if anything in particular was bothering me, or if there was something that recently changed at home. I told him about my breakup with Autumn and that I was very unhappy about it.

He asked, “Do you smoke?”

“Nah, I got bad lungs. Asthma. So I don’t smoke anything” I said.

The doctor seemed pleased. “That’s good you don’t smoke. Did you take any medication earlier this evening?”

“Yeah. I took some Ibuprofen.”

“You couldn’t have done anything better for yourself. Ibuprofen will really help out. Okay, so we took x-rays of your lungs and they are clear of blockages. Everything around your heart looks good. Blood tests came up clean, no problems there. Your heart rate is a little higher than normal, but it’s nothing serious. What I think you’re experiencing is extreme anxiety. Go home, and take it easy. Go ahead and use some more Ibuprofen every few hours and if the chest pains become worse all of a sudden by all means come back.”

“So there’s nothing serious like a clogged artery or a tumor or something?”

The doctor said, “Nope. Everything seems fine.”

I got dressed and split.

Blood leaked heavily out of my finger. It stung badly, the pain was like a new kind of motherfucker I had never experienced before. When I fell backwards off a step-stool in my garage one of my Masonic rings caught on a bicycle hook. The gold ring split along a bottom seam where two halves joined. It pried apart just long enough to open, slip past a hook I mounted in an overhead rafter and then bite down hard into my skin as it dragged from the base of my finger nearly to the tip. My weight careening backwards toward the ground provided plenty of force to slice me like a razor. I stood there holding my hand firmly as red oozed around my grasp dripping onto the concrete. Struck with a sense of irony about the situation I found myself in I thought how yet again Autumn was responsible for ruining another beautiful weekend. At least this would be her last opportunity to wreck my shit.

Autumn asked if she could leave two bicycles here. Her brother salvaged both of them from the county dump. One was a women’s frame from the 1960s, black, nearly complete. A three speed vintage cruiser with a chrome headlight on the front fender. If you put some air in the tires it was probably okay to ride. The other was a patchwork of metallic painted mis-colored parts and rust cannibalized from a few garbage dump gems. A rat-rod beast. I agreed to let Autumn keep them here until she could come back for them at some future date. I don’t have much room in my garage to stack them against a wall though so the only short term option was to buy a couple sets of overhead hooks from the hardware store around the corner and mount them into beams running under the garage roof. I lost my balance while placing the third one. Clumsy me. Now I get to bleed everywhere and still manage somehow to hang up broke dick bikes I want nothing to do with. One-handed bicycle hanging is going to be an adventure today.

I think I might need some stitches.

Autumn arrived at my door promptly on time earlier this morning. She was carrying two bags worth of items that belonged to me, left stranded at her apartment. A package she brought contained a set of black iron curtain rods and matching jet black curtains. She had them in her bedroom for the past couple of years. In exchange I had stacked a bunch of stuff that belonged to her next to my front door. Neither one of us had much to say. The moment was unpleasant, awkward, and painful. I invited Autumn to come outside and sit with me on my patio to try to talk but it was no good. Within minutes Autumn couldn’t speak and she said she had to leave. She was on the verge of crying, I thought. So was I. Autumn picked up everything I left for her. She walked quickly out the front door as I watched her pass by the patio on my front walkway to her car. Autumn drove away. I became severely upset.

I couldn’t move. No muscles in my body were working so I sat frozen, immobilized in my chair. A morning cup of coffee was untouched right in front of me on the glass table. By the time I started to snap out of it I took a glance at the kitchen wall clock. Autumn left about two hours ago. There wasn’t anything else to do really. It’s over. Might as well make an attempt at being productive and get those god damned junker bicycles hung overhead in the garage. That’s what I was thinking.

Staring at all the gore in my hand wasn’t making anything better. I stepped into the kitchen and turned on some cold water. Dunking my outstretched hand under the faucet produced a burning sensation I would have preferred to avoid. After rinsing it I grabbed a clean dish towel that was nearby and wrapped my hand in it tightly.