Touring MISD

I took my special commissioner's elevator downstairs today and toured the MISD facilities. I must say we're really doing quite a bang-up job with computer technology. I walked by an impressive array of IBM Selectric typewriters that were being maintained by our resident technical geniuses. Wow. I couldn't imagine figuring out how to even work these modern-day, complicated devices, let alone repair them.



As I walked past a couple of guys refilling their coffee cups, no doubt after a long day hunched over the complex computer code that powers some of our most advanced systems, I headed for the nearest available TELEX terminal. I'm a hands-on type of commissioner, so I wanted to just sit down and see what it must be like for some poor sap working at a precinct to pull up accident report data in preparation for TrafficStat.



I was looking for the mouse for about five minutes before I realized this thing doesn't have one. "What the hell?!?" I thought. Must be some type of new invention, this TELEX thing here. Since I clearly didn't know what I was doing, I summoned over one of the guys who was still standing around the coffee machine (I guess he must have been on a 62P or something, because people who work in big bureaucracies like ours would never just waste time doing nothing).

The first thing this guy told me was that we've actually upgraded many precincts to new Dells sporting those fancy flat screens and all. So we headed over to one of those. I sat down again. Ah, the familiar mouse. Still, I couldn't find where the "accidents" program is. The helpful MISD guy, Bob, told me to open the "MSWS" application. Hmm. Four letter acronyms. "What does MSWS mean," I asked. "I have no clue, commish." A blank window with a green cursor on a black background popped up. "This looks just like the TELEX, Bob. How is this different?" Bob answered that basically "it isn't any different" and this was "essentially the same thing." Computer guys and their vague answers. Maybe there's a position in VIPER open for this clown. "So how do I pull up the accidents?"

What followed was an astonishingly complicated process of typing in more three and four letter acronyms, which Bob dubbed "commands." Eventually we got to some kind of login screen. So I typed in my special commissioner's tax number and the password some minion rushed over to me. The login failed. "Uh, commish, I think you need to call the MISD ICO to get your password approved for this system."

Wow. We're really good at securing these systems. Keeping out pretty much everybody, even our own personnel. Pretty impressive. Well, eventually they resolved it and I was able to login. Another four letter acronym later and I was presented with the accident reporting screen. More green text on a black background. Incredibly complex and advanced looking. I wanted to do a simple search of all accidents that occurred in December in a specific precinct. Bob told me to type another sequence of commands to get to the search screen. Ah, now we're talking. I tried to click the mouse on the "start date" field so I could type something in. "Uh, yeah, uh, commish, you can't use the mouse with this program." I was starting to become annoyed. "So why do we even have a mouse on this thing?" "I really wouldn't know, commish."

Turns out I have to hit the TAB key to get to the appropriate fields because "it's all text based, command line stuff," as Bob pointed out. I see. So I typed in my date range, 20071201 to 20071231. I hit the enter key. And waited for the results. And kept waiting. "Would you like some coffee, sir, while we wait?" "No thanks, it shouldn't take that long."

Turns out that searching for a month worth of accidents actually is a very complex process for our modern 1970s database technology. These advanced IBM System/370 number crunching mainframe servers apparently get very overloaded when everybody is querying them to get ready for TrafficStat. Twenty minutes and 2 cups of coffee later my search "timed out" with an error. Bob said we'd have to go through the whole process all over again.

I cursed at one of my protective detail detectives, got up, and left. This stuff is too complicated. I'd rather forget about the whole thing. We're doing fine with technology. After all, we're the most advanced police department in the world. Who wouldn't be impressed after seeing the IBM System/370 in the "server room"?



No wonder it's so difficult to use and keeps "timing out" and/or "crashing." Look at that thing. Only a genius could figure it out.