My life as a database

[randy_byers]

I've been walking to work along the Burke-Gilman trail for over twenty years now. (Eventually I'll get there!) Over the years I've tried several times to remember where it was that a certain old friend of mine used to live back in, oh, 1986 or so. It was an apartment with a balcony just up the hill from Lake Union, and we had some crazy good times in that apartment, back when I was still doing my best to live the rock'n'roll life style. Memory said it was on Eastern Avenue, but every time I've looked at the apartment buildings on Eastern Avenue in these past twenty-odd years, none of them have looked familiar. Eventually I concluded it was actually on 1st, because a couple of the apartment buildings on 1st looked more or less the way I remembered the building looking.

So this morning on the walk to work, I was thinking about my little black address book, because I was wondering whether I should take it with me when I leave for Mexico tomorrow morning. The answer to that question was No, but in thinking about the address book I started thinking about how I don't use it as much as I once did, because I now have an address database on my PC that I use more often. And I was thinking about what addresses I have in my address book that aren't in my database, and whether I should transfer them.

Then I got to 1st and went through that whole thought process about my old friend's apartment again, as I have occasionally done in the past. I looked at the apartment buildings, and a couple of them looked like likely candidates, but which one was it? And it suddenly occurred to me, because I had been thinking about it for other reasons, that my little black address book is so old that it might actually have my friend's old address in it. So I pulled it out of my bag, and sure enough there was the old address. It was crossed out (along with four or five subsequent addresses for the same old friend), but I could still see that the address had been on Eastern Avenue after all.

Well. This illustrates the process by which false memories are formed, for one thing, because I really had convinced myself that the apartment had been on 1st. But because my current job is all about databases, it also got me thinking about how if I'd transferred all the current addresses from my little black book into my address database and thrown the book away, all the historical addresses would be lost, and I quite likely never would have gotten rid of my false memory. Not that it matters much, in this particular case! Yet I immediately realized that I'd already overwritten addresses in my address database a number of times, and I began to wonder how I could replicate the historical aspect of my little black book. Well, obviously I would need date ranges on my address records. So I started thinking about the best way to configure the date ranges, and about how to replicate the crossing out of old addresses so that I didn't use them by mistake ...

And I realized that I am sooooooo ready for a vacation in Mexico.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I keep a pocket calendar with an address book section in the back, that's replaced every year. Back before home computers, and when I had few contacts, I wrote the addresses out every year, but now I keep a text file on my computer and print it out and paste it in. I'm not interested in switching to an electronic organizer, and I keep all the old address books dating back to when I was 18, so I have all the old addresses and old appointments too. Very useful when I wanted to compile a list of all the books our Mythopoeic Society branch has discussed.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

You're certainly more organized than I am on that front! The closest thing I have to that is a list of every book I've read since I started college. I also keep my old calendars, where I note things I've done socially, and that's come in useful a few times. I've also used my old convention badges a few times to figure out when I first met certain people, and the like.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

On that front, but not others. I have a box where I've dumped all my old convention badges (include the infamous hospital bracelet from Big MAC), but the only times I've ever gone through it are when wanting to wear an old badge for an anniversary con. And I couldn't possibly keep a list of the books I've read: far too many I only read parts of (either not bothering to finish, or, if it's an essay or story collection, random bits and pieces), or at intervals over long periods of time, with no idea of when, or possibly if, I'll finish them.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

My list of Books Read is admittedly pretty arbitrary in a number of ways.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

An amusing story.