There was a white box van in front of me on my drive home from the grocery store. On the back, it said “A&S; Meats & Poultry”. At first glance, I thought it said “ASS Meats & Poultry”. Sometimes it’s absolutely vital to spell out the word “and” in full.
Phwoar
I’m just back from seeing Adrian Bedford at the first stop of his book tour — a reading at The Grind Café. It was excellent to finally meet Adrian and Michelle. It’s an example of the power of the net to allow people to make connections all over this floating ball that we call Earth. Neat stuff.
If you haven’t met Adrian yet, I’d highly recommend it, as he’s a clever and witty guy, and he’ll sign your copy of Orbital Burn, absolutely free! Even in the short time we were able to chat, he imparted a great deal for me to mull. I’m mulling even now. Principally, his advice was to start small and work my way up, which seems far more sensible than what I was doing. I started with an epic, 1,500-year plot and worked up from there, expecting to finish in a couple of months. Maybe that was a bit too much for my first attempt.
I wish Adrian and Michelle all the best as they wend their way across the continent, stopping in Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Toronto, New York, and finally Boston for the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention.
Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…
It must be a sad sign of my geekdom that I didn’t even notice when my cell phone stopped receiving calls or taking messages. Honestly, I’m so wired to the net that I conduct almost all of my exchanges via e-mail and chat. While I was happily e-mailing with everyone, I didn’t notice that my last received call was on August 5th. No voice messages.
So far, only one person has sent me an angry e-mail, and I’m truly sorry about not calling back. If you called and left a message since the 5th, please try again by e-mail. I’m not ignoring you. I’m just oblivious to finer points of operating this “telephone” device.
Ends in X
Yesterday “Raised by Penguins” got its ISBN, and I was surprised to see that it ends with an X. That’s right, nine digits, followed by the letter X.
Confused and bewildered, I Googled for some kind of explanation for this aberrant character. I found it here: Mathematics and Writing in Action: The International Standard Book Number Check Digit Scheme.
The ISBN Check Digit Scheme
For a1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a10, the ten digit ISBN, the check digit a10 is appended to the nine digit identification number a1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9 such that a10 satisfies the equation
10a1 + 9a2 + 8a3 + 7a4 + 6a5 + 5a6 + 4a7 + 3a8 + 29 + a10 = 0 (mod 11)
If the check digit a10 is 10, the letter X is used instead.
The remainder when a number is divided by 11 could be any digit from 0 to 9 or the number 10. Since the ISBN scheme uses modulo 11 arithmetic and wants the check digit a10 to be a single character, it assigns a10 the value of X when 10 is to the check digit. The ISBN for the book Linear Algebra and its Applications, by David Lay, is 0-201-52032-X. The X indicates that the check digit is the number 10.
So X, as it turns out, is a legitimate character for an ISBN, and my book has one. Great, except that the catalog form at Cafe Press rejects any letters in the ISBN.
Furtive conversations
A rumour was spreading. Words were exchanged in hushed tones by the photocopier. In furtive conversations in darkened corners, news of its arrival passed among the cubicle dwellers of the sixth floor.
I was cleaning my coffee mug when I heard. I won’t reveal names, so let’s call her “X”. Her name doesn’t really start with an X, so don’t look for her in the company phone list.
“Do you, uh… hold on.” she began, and checked the door to see if it was clear. She leaned towards me confidentially and indicated my coffee mug. “Do you drink coffee?”
As I dried my mug, I confirmed that, yes, I drank coffee. I turned and shuffled towards the vending machine, wondering where exactly X was going with this.
“You know about… upstairs, right?” she asked. No, I hadn’t, I said, and just as I reached to select a cup of “Hawaiian” blend from the vending machine, she grabbed my wrist and said, “It’s true. It’s TRUE. They have real coffee. I’ve seen it.”
“What?” I recoiled involuntarily.
X pressed on, “The others think I’m mad, but I found it! The fabled COFFEE MAKER OF THE SEVENTH FLOOR!!!” Her shouts prompted a nearby cubicle dweller to shush her. She pulled me physically away from the vending machine behind the water cooler. “You don’t need to drink this… this… filth,” she spat. I wiped my face with my sleeve.
“Thank you,” I said, “for the tip. I just wanted a cup of coffee really.”
“No!” she hissed. “You must find it. You must seek the Coffee Maker of the Seventh Floor and drink of its…er…”
“–of its coffee?” I suggested.
“It is not merely coffee,” X sneered. “It is the purest of sources. It is the black nectar of the gods.”
“That sounds…uh…nice,” I agreed, glancing at my watch.
“Yes,” she nodded. “It is… nice.” At that, X slipped a scrap of paper into my hand and slipped out of the kitchen, pausing only to say, “It is up to you. Find the source and bring back a thermos. A thermos filled with the nectar of the gods!”
“Ssshhh!” said the cubicle dweller.
Back at my desk, I examined the scrap. It was a CD liner from the MSDN CD library. On it, in red ink, was a hand-drawn map that led to an “X”, beside which it said “coffee maker”.
So it began: my quest for the the fabled Coffee Maker of the Seventh Floor. I would not rest until I found it, if only because I was afraid of being cornered by X by the coffee vending machine again.