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["Lynda" <lurine AT com-pair.net>]

Bill now works for AIG.

Lynda
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."  Aldous Huxley


      How To Build A Better Toaster
      ======================

      Day 1:  My boss, an engineer from the pre-CAD days, has successfully 
brought a generation of products from Acme Toaster Corp's engineering labs to 
market. Bob is a wonder of mechanical ingenuity. All of us in the design 
department have the utmost respect for him, so I was honored when he 
appointed me the lead designer on the new Acme 2000 Toaster.

      Day 6: We met with the president, head of sales, and the marketing vice 
president today to hammer out the project's requirements and specifications. 
Here at Acme, our market share is eroding to low-cost imports. We agreed to 
meet a cost of
      goods of $9.50 (100,000). I've identified the critical issue in the new 
design: a replacement for the timing spring we've used since the original 
1922 model. Research with the focus groups shows that consumers set high 
expectations for their breakfast
      foods. Cafe latte from Starbucks goes best with a precise level of 
toast browning. The Acme 2000 will give our customers the breakfast 
experience they desire. I estimated a design budget of $21,590 for this 
project and final delivery in seven weeks.  I'll need one assistant designer 
to help with the drawing packages. This is my first chance to supervise!

      Day 23: We've found the ideal spring material. Best of all, it's a 
well-proven technology. Our projected cost of goods is almost $1.50 lower 
than our goal. Our rough prototype, which was completed just 12 days after we 
started, has been servicing the employee cafeteria for a week without a 
single hiccup.  Toast quality exceeds projections.

      Day 24: A major aerospace company that had run out of defense 
contractors to acquire has just snapped up that block of Acme stock sold to 
the Mackenzie family in the '50s. At a company wide meeting, corporate 
assured us that this sale was only an investment and that nothing will change.

      Day 30: I showed the Acme 2000's exquisitely crafted toast-timing 
mechanism to Ms. Primrose, the new engineering auditor.  The single spring 
and four interlocking lever arms are things of beauty to me.

      Day 36: The design is complete. We're starting a prototype run of 500 
toasters tomorrow. I'm starting to wrap up the engineering effort. My new 
assistant did a wonderful job.

      Day 38: Suddenly, a major snag happened. Bob called me into his office. 
He seemed very uneasy as he informed me that those on high feel that the Acme 
2000 is obsolete - something about using springs in the silicon age. I 
reminded Bob that the
      consultants had looked at using a microprocessor but figured that an 
electronic design would exceed our cost target by almost 50% with no real 
benefit in terms of toast quality.  "With a computer, our customers can load 
the bread the night before, program a finish time, and get a perfect slice of 
toast when they awaken," Bob intoned, as if reading from a script.

      Day 48: Bill Compguy, the new microprocessor whiz, scrapped my idea of 
using a dedicated 4-bit CPU. "We need some horsepower if we're gonna program 
this puppy in C," he said, while I stared fascinated at the old crumbs stuck 
in his wild beard.  "Time-to-market, you know. Delivery is due in three 
months.  We'll just pop this cool new 8-bitter I found into it, whip up some 
code, and ship to the end user."

      Day 120: The good news is that I'm getting to stretch my 
mechanical-design abilities. Bill convinced management that the old 
spring-loaded, press-down lever control is obsolete. I've designed a 
"motorized insertion port," stealing ideas from a CD-ROM drive. Three 
cross-coupled, safety-interlock micro switches ensure that the heaters won't 
come on unless users properly insert the toast. We're seeing some reliability
      problems due to the temperature extremes, but I'm sure we can work 
those out.

      Day 132: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.  We've 
replaced the 8-bitter with a Harvard-architecture, 16-bit, 3-MIPS CPU.

      Day 172:  New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.

      Day 194: The auditors convinced management we really need a graphical 
user interface with a full-screen LCD. "You're gonna need some horsepower to 
drive that," Bill warned us. "I recommend a 386 with a half-meg of RAM." He 
went back to design Revision J of the PC board. Day 268: New schedule: We now 
expect delivery in three months. We've cured most of the electronics' 
temperature problems with a pair of fans, though management is complaining 
about the noise. Bob sits in his
      office all day, door locked, drinking Jack Daniels. Like clockwork, his 
wife calls every night around midnight, sobbing.   I'm worried about him and 
mentioned my concern to Chuck.  "Wife?" he asked. "Wife? Yeah, I think I've 
got one of those, and two or three kids, too. Now, let's just stick another 
meg of RAM in here, OK?"

      Day 290: We gave up on the custom GUI and are now installing Windows 
CE. The auditors applauded Bill's plan to upgrade to a Pentium with 32 Mbytes 
of RAM. There's still no functioning code, but the toaster is genuinely 
impressive. Four circuit
      boards, bundles of cables, and a gigabit of hard-disk space.  "This 
sucker has more computer power than the entire world did 20 years ago," Bill 
boasted proudly.

      Day 384: Toast quality is sub-par. The addition of two more cooling 
fans keeps the electronics to a reasonable temperature but removes too much 
heat from the toast. I'm struggling with baffles to vector the air, but the 
thrust of all these fans spins the toaster around.

      Day 410: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.  We 
switched from C++ to Java. "That'll get them pesky memory-allocation bugs, 
for sure," Bill told his team of 15 programmers. This approach seems like a 
good idea to me,
      because Java is platform-independent, and there are rumors circulating 
that we're porting to a SPARC station.

      Day 530: New schedule: We now expect delivery in three months.  I 
mastered the temperature problems by removing all of the fans and the heating 
elements. The Pentium is now thermally bonded to the toast. We found a 
thermal grease that isn't too poisonous. Our marketing people feel that the 
slight degradation in taste from the grease will be more than compensated for 
by the "toasting experience that can only come from a CISC-based, 32-bit 
multitasking machine running the latest multi-platform software."

      Day 610: The product ships. It weighs 72 lb and costs $325.

      Bill is promoted to CEO.

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