The vice president of CPM II (Crazy People Manufacturing II, not the company’s real name) returned from his vacation Monday (Hawaii). The company makes airplane parts. I’m not exactly sure which specific parts, but they are integral to keeping the plane up in the air, rather than just decorative trim along the outside of the seats. Anyway, he called me in a panic because the “Custom Manufacturing Management Program” wasn’t working. He told me that it was “unable to execute because of insufficient disk space”.

Then he asked me what that meant.

I told him, “Bob, first of all it means that you have insufficient disk space for the program to run. What this means is… that there isn’t enough space on the hard drive for the program to run. This probably because the database is now so big that it’s filled up the entire hard drive that it’s on. This is because Microsoft Access databases do that when their tables are repeatedly populated by using the ODBC import feature…. Unless you run the Microsoft Access Compact facility several times a week… Like I keep reminding you to do… Bob… You have been running the compact facility… Haven’t you?”

His response was, “Hey, wait, my chief engineer just came in. Uh huh, he says that the problem is your database. It’s so big that it’s filling up the whole hard drive. He says we should just delete it.”

I coughed a little before I said, “No Bob. Don’t do that. Just run the compact facility. That will compact the database. That will make it smaller. If it’s smaller, there will be lots more free room. Do you need help running the compact Bob? I can talk you through over the phone.”

“But wait, I don’t know how to run the compact. Wait, the engineer says that he knows how to run MS-Access compact. What do you think I should do?”

“Bob, in that you use the “Custom Manufacturing Management Program” to run your business, and without it you can no longer run your business, and if you delete the database then both it and the program will disappear, and then you will not be able to run your business, I think that you should have the engineer run the compact. That’s what I think… Bob”.

“OK, now we’ve got a plan. You know, you’re my favorite… you know, person… person that I get stuff from… you know what I mean.”

“You mean vendor Bob? Yes, I know. Good-bye Bob. I’m hanging up the phone now.”

At least they’re not doing anything important, like making airplane parts…
Oh, wait a minute.

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