I know business is down, talking to clients. I know it is for me.
We'll be rolling out a vaccine before year's end in the US,, I suspect that it will all come back quickly in the US,, but it will take several months before we see the vaccine penetrate into much of the world.
There will be unvaccinated in the US, and there will be outbreaks,, but with some significant vaccine penetration, the virus will have nowhere to go.
I had the virus during the first week of April,, luckily a relatively light case,, especially for my age. I won't give you the number,, but google Xerox 914, and I went to work for Xerox shortly after its introduction.
That beast had a feed clutch that required you to lay on your back, looking up, and drive out a 1/4 pin. The clutch would fail erratically, and the registration would vary wildly.
The customers really didn't mind the varying registration,, back in those days,, things were much less precise. But, the machine used a puff of air to remove (many will remember the 9000 fuser roll) the paper from the drum,, and you had to get on your knees to remove the paper from the drum. We called those mis puffs.
The SF moist air gave us some latitude in the puff timing,, but if you were in Arizona,, the paper stuck to the drum like glue.
The machine operator didn't like the "get on your knees" thing,, so she quickly learned that she could unplug the machine, and the paper would conveniently disappear into the brush housing. Some even learned to immediately place a service call,, knowing it wouldn't be very long before toner started dropping on the passing sheets.
Invariably, the operator would scratch the soft selenium drum clearing the paper jam,, requiring the drum to be polished with Brasso to remove the scratch.
We had a guy in San Francisco go out on permanent disability with crippling arthritis in his hands before we realized that the brasso and selenium was soaking into our skin. Those were simpler times.
I waited until the traffic across the bridge died down,, parked my commercially licensed Xerox station wagon in a loading zone (parking was tough even back then,, and Xerox found out that it was cheaper to pay a commercial license than pay for multiple parking in and outs.
I moved into "duplicators" pretty quickly, and a territory was 25 machines. My favorite was the 2400. Sneaking steel developer into the machine,, and going by weekly,, you never got a call,, hardly.
I "routed" my territory,, trimming my machines, my customers knew that they would see me every week,, so generally didn't bother calling unless the machine was down. By 2PM I was drinking a Guiness/Michelob black and tan,, once in a while bailing out a neighbor tech so he too would get out "on time",, and waiting for 3:30 ,, when I could jump on the bridge before the traffic. Calls that came in after 4PM were held by dispatch until the next day,, they weren't even broadcast to the Motorola radios we carried.
No customer expected to see you before 9AM,, and four hours was considered a very good response.
As I said,, simpler times
We'll be rolling out a vaccine before year's end in the US,, I suspect that it will all come back quickly in the US,, but it will take several months before we see the vaccine penetrate into much of the world.
There will be unvaccinated in the US, and there will be outbreaks,, but with some significant vaccine penetration, the virus will have nowhere to go.
I had the virus during the first week of April,, luckily a relatively light case,, especially for my age. I won't give you the number,, but google Xerox 914, and I went to work for Xerox shortly after its introduction.
That beast had a feed clutch that required you to lay on your back, looking up, and drive out a 1/4 pin. The clutch would fail erratically, and the registration would vary wildly.
The customers really didn't mind the varying registration,, back in those days,, things were much less precise. But, the machine used a puff of air to remove (many will remember the 9000 fuser roll) the paper from the drum,, and you had to get on your knees to remove the paper from the drum. We called those mis puffs.
The SF moist air gave us some latitude in the puff timing,, but if you were in Arizona,, the paper stuck to the drum like glue.
The machine operator didn't like the "get on your knees" thing,, so she quickly learned that she could unplug the machine, and the paper would conveniently disappear into the brush housing. Some even learned to immediately place a service call,, knowing it wouldn't be very long before toner started dropping on the passing sheets.
Invariably, the operator would scratch the soft selenium drum clearing the paper jam,, requiring the drum to be polished with Brasso to remove the scratch.
We had a guy in San Francisco go out on permanent disability with crippling arthritis in his hands before we realized that the brasso and selenium was soaking into our skin. Those were simpler times.
I waited until the traffic across the bridge died down,, parked my commercially licensed Xerox station wagon in a loading zone (parking was tough even back then,, and Xerox found out that it was cheaper to pay a commercial license than pay for multiple parking in and outs.
I moved into "duplicators" pretty quickly, and a territory was 25 machines. My favorite was the 2400. Sneaking steel developer into the machine,, and going by weekly,, you never got a call,, hardly.
I "routed" my territory,, trimming my machines, my customers knew that they would see me every week,, so generally didn't bother calling unless the machine was down. By 2PM I was drinking a Guiness/Michelob black and tan,, once in a while bailing out a neighbor tech so he too would get out "on time",, and waiting for 3:30 ,, when I could jump on the bridge before the traffic. Calls that came in after 4PM were held by dispatch until the next day,, they weren't even broadcast to the Motorola radios we carried.
No customer expected to see you before 9AM,, and four hours was considered a very good response.
As I said,, simpler times
I kept a cycle control just to show newbies how rugged those dups were built.
Comment