[3372] in Humor
toaster
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew B. Greytak)
Fri Nov 24 10:11:41 2000
Date: Fri, 24 Nov 2000 10:11:32 -0500
To: humor@mit.edu
From: "Andrew B. Greytak" <agreytak@MIT.EDU>
>>>
>>> Subject: 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 Starbuck's goes best with a
>>> precise level of toastal 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. Toastal 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 companywide 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 toastal-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
>>> toastal 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 microswitches 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: Toastal 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 SPARCstation.
>>> 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
>>> multiplatform software."
>>> Day 610: The product shipped. It weighs 72 lb and costs $325. Bill was
>>> promoted to CEO.
>>
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Bardeen Greytak, MIT '00
<agreytak@mit.edu>
169 Rindge Ave
Cambridge, Massachusetts
