1998-2005 TSI: AdDept Client: Proffitt’s

Posted on June 29, 2021 by Mike

Proffitt’s was a chain of department stores based, for the period in which I was associated with the company, in Alcoa, TN. Proffitt’s was the first division in the entity Proffitt’s Inc. The corporation changed both its name and orientation in 1998. The new entity was called Saks Inc. TSI’s relationship with that corporation and the people in Proffitt’s Marketing Group (PMG) has been described here.

Proffitt’s headquarters was four miles south of the airport. I usually stayed at the Hampton Inn at the top of the map. Although the town of Maryville was only about a mile away I seldom went there, and I never went to Knoxville.

I don’t think that I did a demo for Proffitt’s. Rather, the decision to use AdDept there was made by PMG based on the success of the installation at McRae’s that is described here. I definitely remember my first trip to the divisional headquarters. In April of 1998 I flew on Delta from Atlanta and arrived at McGhee Tyson Airport¹, which is also located in Alcoa. I rented a car and drove the short distance to Proffitt’s headquarters, which was in a strip mall that did not have a Proffitt’s store. The mall’s anchor store, if you could call it that, was a Burlington Coat Factory.

By the day that I arrived, the advertising department’s AS/400 was already installed in a closet. Next to it was the system console. There was already a premium on space there, and it got worse very quickly. On some occasions I was required to work in that closet. It was a strong contender for the worst work environment that I had to endure.

The connectivity was also installed and configured by someone else. Specifically, TSI had nothing to do with the selection of the emulation software for the Macs.

Proffitt’s advertising department was not very large. The primary reason for this was that much of the creative and production work had been outsourced to an ad agency in Chicago named Ambrosi. I wrote this about the agency’s practices in April of 2000:

Ambrosi has a minimum charge of $175 for materials. They sent an invoice to Proffitt’s with a line on it with a $175 charge for “eye shadow kit.” Proffitt’s paid it without questioning it. The bill was nearly $20,000 over the budget – for one catalog.

The people: My original contact was the production manager, Tom Henry. All that I remember about him is that he took me to lunch that first day in his Corvette that was not really a Corvette. He said that it was “a knock-off”. I should have asked him to elaborate on the subject, but I did not. I think that we ate at an extremely inexpensive pizza place where you just pointed at the slices that you wanted. I have forgotten the name of the place.

Long after I posted this entry I discovered this photo of a meeting at PMG in Birmingham. Tom Henry is on the left in the shirt with horizontal stripes. On the opposite side of the table are two other people from Proffitt’s: Tom Waltz at the far end and Cindy Karnoupakis in red and white. I think that Tom W. was the manager of the business office before Jim Pierce. Cindy may have been his assistant. Steve VeZain of PMG is waving on the right. I don’t remember the meeting, and I have no firm recollections of Tom W. and Cindy.

I did not work with him much after that day. He was in charge of the department’s computers. Therefore, he had me train some people who worked for him how to check the backups. Leaving this important role up to them was a mistake.

I wrote this about the situation in early 2000:

This installation got off to a very slow start. All the people involved in the project initially bailed out when the data entry started. Three people are now involved – Jeannie Gorman for ROP, Lucy Delk for other media, and Jim Pierce in the business office. Jim, although a very laid-back guy, has more or less taken the bull by the horns in the last few months. They are now using AdDept for closing – accruals and the prepaid to expense journal entry for all media.

Don Alexander² was the Senior VP of the department until July of 2000, but I do not remember dealing with him much. In fact, I remember very little about most of the people in the department until Marianne Jonas came from McRae’s to become the Advertising Director in August of 2000.

Jim Pierce handled the finances. His assistant was named Charlene. Christi Bullock worked with her. Jeannie Gorman scheduled and purchased newspaper advertising. Lucy Delk handled other media. I also took a photo that included a woman named Cindy. I don’t remember any of these people very well. I need to rely on the notes that I have discovered, and they do not begin until 1999. Furthermore, my research has been unable to determine anything about their subsequent lives.

Hardware issues: Most users of the AdDept system on AS/400’s experienced few if any problem with their hardware. If they did, they solved it themselves or got the IT department involved. My notes from Proffitt’s for 1999 and 2000 are replete with references to SNAFUs attributable to hardware. On July 13, 1999, I wrote “Evidently the power failure at Proffitt’s fried their fax modem.” This modem was used to send insertion orders automatically to the newspapers. If it was not working, Jeannie had to print the orders and send them one at a time via a fax machine.

The very next day I wrote the following about an incident handled by Jamie Lisella² at TSI’s office:

Jamie got frustrated with Proffitt’s. As usual they have no one who is both willing and able to do something, in this case switch the modem cables for IBM.

TSI also had an HP Laser Jet 5 in its office.

TSI even was called about very trivial printer issues. This note is dated exactly two months after the modem cable problem:

Their HP 5 printer wasn’t working. The Powersave feature was on. I think when they had a power failure it may have reverted to the factory settings. I turned it off and restarted it. I printed out five copies of my write-up of how to take care of this. Maybe someone will read it this time.

In April of 2000 much of my attention was dedicated to getting TSI’s insertion order project, A^xN, operational. I needed to document potential benefits vis-à-vis having the computer generate faxes.

I asked Jeannie Gorman to try to think of everything she hated about faxing insertion orders. She told me that she has to fax about one in ten by hand because they do not go through. While I was in the computer room I heard several busy signals.

The Disk Crash: In all of the time that TSI worked with IBM midrange systems, only one catastrophic disk failure² ever occurred. It happened at Proffitt’s in late November or early December of 2000, only a few months after Marianne Jonas had moved to Tennessee from Jackson, MS.

One problem with IBM midrange and mainframe computers was that they were so reliable that users sometimes took them for granted. When I set up the system for Proffitt’s I programmed backup jobs that ran every night. All files used by AdDept were saved to tape. A different tape was used every night. They were recycled weekly. So, if there was a failure on Thursday, they could restore from the Wednesday night tape. If, for some reason that tape could not be used, the Tuesday night tape could be used, and so on. Total system saves were done whenever a new version of the operating system or a new set of PTFs⁴ was installed.

The process could not be completely automated. Someone had to change the tape every day and check to make sure that the backup completed normally.

Every multi-user system must have some method to prevent one user from overriding what another user has just done. On the AS/400 this was done at the record level. So, if one person was working on an ad or an invoice, other users were prohibited from deleting or changing information about that ad or invoice while the first person had the record open for editing. When the user finished working on an item or closed the program, the locked record or records were released. This occasionally caused problems when someone called up a record in a program that allowed editing and left the program open.

IBM’s backup procedure was also affected by locked records. It could be set either to skip backing up the locked files altogether or to back up the previous version of the locked records (called “Save While Active”). The latter sounded like a good idea, but it ran the risk of leaving some files out of sync with others. Besides, the backup was only really useful if all the files on it were complete.

When the disk drive was reported faulty, IBM replaced it with a new one. At that point it was discovered that the backup tapes for every day of the previous week were incomplete. The last usable backup was from the system save tape from more than a month earlier. Evidently no one had been checking the backup logs.

When these facts were reported to TSI I ordered an “all hands on deck” response. The problem must have been discovered on a Friday. Jamie made a reservation for me to fly to Alcoa in time for business hours on Monday. Denise Bessette⁵ and I worked out a plan for getting as much of the data as possible back on the system while retaining the system’s integrity. We also devised ways of checking the consistency of the data and printing lists of records that should have matched but did not.

When I arrived at Proffitt’s Marianne escorted me to a conference room, closed the door, and screamed at me for a very long time. She said that it was irresponsible of me not to tell the people involved how to check the tapes. I explained that I had shown the people at Proffitt’s how to do this, and I had shown the two IT people whom she had designated how to perform this task at McRae’s. I also showed her the letter that I had sent to all of the divisions emphasizing how important it was to check the backup logs. It also explained the service that TSI offered for $150 per month whereby a TSI employee would sign on and check the logs every morning. Employees in the advertising department were notified if anything was amiss. Parisian was the only division that purchased this service.

Marianne was not persuaded or even mollified in the slightest by any of these facts, but she let me go on with my work to salvage as much as possible. The notes below include a lot of technical jargon, but at least they show how much effort I made to righten the ship. I have inserted footnotes to explain a few items.

Proffitt’s Recovery Journal
1. Sandy located all of the files missing from the save tape.
2. I used CHGJOB to bring all of the missing files up to speed.
3. I created records on the season file⁶for 001, 002, 011, and 012.
4. I deleted all logical files⁷ with 00 in them. These files were ones on the system save tape that were overridden by the ones on the nightly save tape.
5. I deleted all logical files whose source had been changed since 1/1/01. I then created them again.
6. I wrote a program named CRTPROFJCS to create DPJCSUM from DPJCSXMO. I ran it for 001, 002, 011, 012, and 021.
7. I created a logical file named DAACTSTAD2 to use in my program to create ads in 001 and following.
8. Dave Weeast left Jim a message that I should IPL⁸. I did so.
9. I used SQL to set the values of the latest projections in DPJCSUM to the sum of the open purchase orders plus the actual invoices for 001, 002, 011, 012, and 021. I did not change the original estimates. I tried to explain this to Marianne and to find out whether I should, but I couldn’t get her to understand what I was talking about.
10. I set up the user profile and the directory entry for Marianne, Ivy, and Phyllis Compton. These were the only people that had records in DAUSERS but no user profile.
11. I change the system value QINACTIV to 180. I also scheduled a job to end and start the interactive subsystem at 1 a.m. Bill⁹ said that we should do both of these things.
12. Marianne seemed to think that the store cost accounting would be worthless, but I still think that it is better than nothing for 002 and for the past.
13. Dave Weeast could not get the Mac network to come up. Daniel Moore¹⁰ came in at noon on Monday. Evidently it was never plugged back in. After he plugged it in it worked OK.
14. The HP network printer did not work. The IP address was wrong. I got the new one from Daniel and gave it to Dave Weeast. He changed the address, and it worked fine.
15. I changed DAACTSTAD2 to sort by expense class and month before ad number, so I could do a month at a time.
16. After a great many false starts I was able to get a program called CRTPROFADS to create the ROP ads for 011. It did not put in headlines. I set the columns and inches to 1 each. I set the ad type to 2 (B&W). I used defaults for everything else, borrowing the code from DM021 and DM041. I used storewide as the principal participant and assigned it 100% of the costs.
17. I wrote a query named ROPSEQ10 to extract the first pub on every ad. The results were stored in FEB01ROP, MAR01ROP, etc.
18. I wrote a program named RPFIXCI to calculate the column inches for each ad. It also deduced the ad type – black & white (2), one-color (6), or full color. I then changed the ad types in option 9 for the color ads and the size in option 1 for all ads.
19. I wrote a query named ACTST0011M to get the costs for each insertion in DAACTST. I wrote a second query named CHK0011M to compare this file with DMPSDET and report the discrepancies. I then fixed the obvious ones and kept the short list of the remaining ones.
20. I ran CRTPROFADS and RPFIXCI for February and March. I also did step 19 for both months. The March files and queries have 0012 instead of 0011.
21. The CPU attention light seems to be permanently on with SRC A6001730. Dave Weeast said that it is was OK.
22. Marianne complained about getting stuck in the “Cost” column in DM029 if she accidentally puts something there. I changed DM029S to accept blank, which is what they put in 90% of the time any way.
23. Jeannie did not put in a tape on Monday night, so we could not check the backup. She did put one in on Tuesday.
24. On Monday I worked in an office that had been turned into a shrine to Dale Earnhart. On Tuesday I worked in the closet in which they keep the AS/400. No kidding.
Issues
1. Marianne would like to be able to lock quantities in DM025.
2. I only got through March 2001. I ran CRTPROFAD3 but got no farther.

While I was at Proffitt’s I spent a little time researching what could have caused this problem. I was pretty sure that everyone turned off their terminals or PC’s before leaving every evening. I was quite certain that no one ever worked so late that their session would overlap the period scheduled for the backup. Moreover, there were only a few other scheduled jobs, and none of them locked records for important files.

Eventually I discovered that one person—a Mac user—did not close active AS/400 sessions before turning off the computer. The third-party emulation software running on the Macs, unlike the PC software that had been written by IBM, failed to notify the AS/400 that the session had ended abnormally. So, the job was still running, and records were locked. That user was Marianne herself.

When I left on Tuesday evening, I thought that the system was in pretty good shape. I left Marianne with a list of the ads that were still inconsistent and told her what needed to be done to fix them.

My recollection is that instead of proceeding as I suggested she decided to delete a large number of ads and have her employees key them in from scratch. That, of course, was her right.

Needless to say, TSI sent an invoice to Proffitt’s for the two days that I spent there. We did not bill them for any of the employees’ time. Marianne refused to pay the invoice. She insisted that the whole mess was TSI’s fault, and Proffitt’s would not pay.

The next time that I was in Alcoa I asked for a meeting with the man (whose name I do not recall) who replaced Don Alexander as Senior VP. I explained the situation to him. The invoice was promptly paid. I never mentioned anything about this to Marianne, and she never said anything to me. Our relationship thereafter was cordial but a little distant.

The Atmosphere:The trip to try to recover Proffitt’s files was no fun, but I went there a number of times, and I had quite a few memorable moments. I usually stayed at the Hampton Inn that was near the airport but not so near that the air traffic disturbed me. One night I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was the Guest of Honor. I received a basket of fruit and, I think, a bottle of wine.

My favorite place to eat was within walking distance of the Hampton Inn. Here is what I wrote about El Sazon¹¹ in September of 1999:

I treated myself to chicken chimichanga last night at El Sazon, a nice little family-run Mexican restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. It came with rice, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, chips and salsa. I also ordered iced tea with a free refill. My bill was $8.34 with tax. Things are a little cheaper here.

I wonder what you can get for $8.34 today.

My favorite place in all of Tennessee was Springbrook Park, which was about halfway between the Hampton Inn and Proffitt’s. It contained a 1.4 mile dirt path that wound through some very interesting scenery. I vividly remember jogging there nearly every night while listening to opera arias on my CD player or Walkman. Here is how I described one of those experiences:

I had a delightful seven-mile run yesterday evening. It was close to 70 with a gentle breeze. I love running in Springbrook Park – through the woods, alongside the brook, around the fountain, across the wooden bridge, up towards the playground. A few dog walkers, a few amateur joggers who never seem to do more than one lap, a few strollers (mostly in pairs), a lady just sitting in the sun on one of the many wrought iron benches, and two adolescent girls using a jar to catch something in the stream and then — on the next lap — painting each others’ faces with mud divert my attention momentarily from Professor Greenberg’s¹² dissection of Verdi. The very end of the path is steeply uphill. On the last lap the tape had run out, and my calves started to cramp, but I liked the feeling. It meant that I was pressing just enough.

The atmosphere at the Proffitt’s building was also remarkable. The shrine to Dale Earnhardt had a serious competitor for most unusual workspace in the advertising department. One lady’s cubicle was filled to the brim with Warner Brothers cartoon characters—cutouts and stuffed versions of Bugs, Porky, Sylvester, and all the others.

In 1998 the University of Tennessee, located in nearby Knoxville, won the national championship in football. At the beginning of the 1999 season enthusiasm for the prospects of the Vols was at a feverish pitch, and Proffitt’s participated. Here is what I wrote about the most obvious manifestation.

Proffitt’s has put up a whiteboard across from the lunch room. Employees are encouraged to write their predictions for the Tennessee-Florida game. All day long yesterday people were standing around the board, which has also sprouted derogatory comments about various Southeast Conference schools.

After Marianne Jonas arrived, the atmosphere in the department became more serious. On the first occasion in which she invited me to Alcoa she did not let me rent a car. Instead she told me to stay at the Hilton at the airport. She personally drove to the airport and picked me up the next morning. I complained to her that my room was a very short distance from the end of the runway where the delivery service planes departed from between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning. I got very little sleep because of the roar of their engines.

I needed to use cabs to get back and forth to the hotel for the rest of that trip, but thereafter she let me rent a car and stay at the much cheaper Hampton Inn.

Epilogue: In 2005 Saks Inc. sold the Proffitt’s and McRae’s stores to Belk¹³. The administrative offices in Alcoa were closed. Within a year all of those stores were converted to Belk stores or closed.

To the left is a photo of the Belk store in Foothills Mall in Maryville, TN. It was formerly a Proffitt’s.

1, McGhee Tyson Airport serves the greater Knoxville area. It is located south of the city in the town of Alcoa, which was named for its biggest employer, Alcoa Corporation.

2. My on and (mostly) off relationship with my sister Jamie is addressed in several blog entries. My relationship with the Lisella family is detailed here. The big crisis that developed shortly after her modem incident is described here.

3. Later versions of the AS/400 circumvented this problem using a technique called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) by which a set of disk drives could be recovered from redundant information on the remaining drives when one failed.

4. PTF is one of hundreds of three-letter abbreviations used by IBM. It stands for Program Temporary Fix. Every few months IBM would release a new set of PTFs for problems in the operating system or in IBM-provided programs.

5. More information about Denise can be found here and in many other blog entries.

6. The season file had two seasons per year. 001 was the spring season of 2000; 002 was the fall season of 2000. The two seasons that began with 01 were for 2001. Thus there was a mixture of past, present, and future on the file.

7. A “logical file” does not contain data. It contains pointers to data that may be sorted in a different order and may not include all of the records.

8. Dave Weeast was in charge of all AS/400’s for Proffitt’s Inc. More information about him can be found here. IPL, which stands for Initial Program Load, is IBM-speak for rebooting the system.

9. I am not sure who Bill is, maybe Bill Giardina, who worked in IT at McRae’s. That installation is described here.

10. I don’t remember Daniel Moore.

11. El sazon means “the seasonings”.

12. Robert Greenberg made a series of recordings for The Teaching Company (which subsequently changed its name to The Great Courses). They analyzed various aspects of classical music and opera. Sue Comparetto and I also attended a few lectures that he gave in association with performances by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

13. The advertising department at Belk was in a huge complex in Charlotte, NC. It used AdDept to manage its advertising. The details are posted here.

1991-2007 TSI: AdDept: Federated Department Stores/Macy’s Inc.

Posted on June 24, 2021 by Mike

TSI’s dealings with Federated and Macy’s Inc. Continue reading →

For more than a decade after TSI began marketing AdDept, its software system for retail advertisers, the chain of department stores now known as Macy’s Inc. was called Federated Department Stores (FDS). The company was acquired in the eighties by Robert Campeau, a Canadian real estate magnate. For a short time it was merged with Campeau’s other stores and called Federated and Allied Department Stores. In 1992 the company emerged from bankruptcy as FDS, the same year that Macy’s filed for Chapter 11 protection. In 1994 FDS found enough cash in the cushions of the sofas in the furniture departments of its stores to purchase Macy’s shortly after Santa’s favorite retailer emerged from its own bankruptcy. Details of the takeover can be read here.

In the early nineties I was just beginning to learn about retail in America. It shocked me that a bankrupt company could stiff all of its vendors and then have the wherewithal to buy another company of about the same size. A lot of craziness like this happened in the nineties. I never did figure it all out, and the two companies involved in this transaction were a thorn in the side of TSI for the rest of its existence.

I don’t know why Val used a photo that cut off her chin.

In 1992 FDS had eight regional divisions. Each division produced and placed its own advertising from the divisional headquarters. The first FDS division that contacted TSI about purchasing the AdDept system was the Bon Marché, which was based in Seattle. I was called by Val Walser¹, the Director of the Advertising Business Office there. She had received one of TSI’s mailings in late 1989 or early 1990, and she thought that the system might be what they needed. I talked with her in person twice, once at the Retail Advertising Convention in Chicago and once in Seattle. I gave Val a private demonstration in Chicago, and I showed the system to the rest of the team in Seattle. Those encounters have been described in some detail here.

I don’t think that I knew at the time that the Bon Marché was part of FDS. Even if I did, I don’t think that I realized then that the parent company was about to declare bankruptcy. I was inexperienced; I probably made some errors in judgment. Perhaps I made a mistake by proposing a system that would only be minimally sufficient for their existing operation. Maybe we did not follow up often enough or in the best way.

Although Val informed us that she had requested funding for the system, it was never approved, and after a while we did not hear any more from her. We continued to send materials to her periodically. Until I began the research for this entry I was unaware that she had any involvement in deploying a system that was initiated by the FDS division most distant from Washington, Burdines in Florida. Val apparently oversaw the development of the administrative part of the FedAd (or whatever it was called at that time) system. By then her division was known as Macy’s Northwest, which was folded into Macy’s West, a long-time AdDept user, in 2008.

TSI’s fruitless contacts with Burdines have been documented here.

From the beginning I thought that Jordan Marsh, the Boston-based department-store chain, would be a valuable customer for TSI. Like the Bon Marché, Jordan Marsh was actually part of the Allied group before Campeau acquired Federated and merged all the stores into one gigantic chain. At one time there were also Jordan Marsh stores in Florida and San Diego, but by 1991 all of those stores had closed or were no longer controlled from Boston.

Kate Behart, whose career at TSI is described here, arranged for me to do a demo for people from Jordan Marsh’s advertising department at an IBM office. I don’t remember any of the names of employees at Jordan Marsh. In fact, the only things that I remember about our meeting with them were that Kate was very upset that I had used the word “gals” at one point and that they informed us that they wanted our system.

I am sure that Kate must have followed up on the presentation. She was very conscientious. However, nothing came of it.

Bloomingdale’s, the high-end department store with headquarters in New York City, contacted TSI several times. The last of these exchanges of telephone calls was handled by Doug Pease, whose successful marketing career at TSI is detailed here. We certainly sent them detailed materials about AdDept and the AS/400. I might have done a demo for them at the IBM office. I clearly recall that we went to their headquarters in Manhattan and gathered specs about their needs. I can still picture the Manager of the Business Office, who wore a three-piece suit and had a long pony tail. Guys with pony tails were not unusual in the creative and production areas of advertising departments, but he was the only one that I ever saw in the financial area.

Doug followed up on our visit with several telephone calls. At one point he became certain that Bloomies would buy the AdDept system. Nevertheless, not long after he had voiced his certainty, he got the telephone call that dashed his hopes. He never told me the details, but he was visibly upset about it.

One of the biggest disappointments in my career was not being able to land Liberty House, the department store in Hawaii and the Pacific, as a client. When Doug, Sue, and I flew out to Honolulu in December of 1995 to meet with Karen Anderson (detailed here), Liberty House was an independent chain of stores that included both department stores and much smaller stores in locations convenient to tourists. Those stores specialized in “resort ware”.

Our presentation went very well. Karen told Doug in a subsequent conversation that she had requested funding for AdDept, but there was a freeze on capital purchases. The freeze persisted until the company entered bankruptcy in 1998 and closed most of the resort stores. When it emerged from bankruptcy it was gobbled up by FDS. At that point the remaining stores were relabeled as Macy’s, and administrative functions were transferred to Macy’s West in San Francisco, one of TSI’s clients.

So, this was as close as we came to a victory in our dealings with FDS/Macy’s Inc.. Many of the newspapers that had been used by Liberty House still subscribed to A^xN in 2014.

AS/400s at FSG. I thought that I had a photo of Len, but I cannot find it.

At some point the AS/400 systems used by the three Macy’s divisions that used AdDept—Macy’s East, Macy’s South, and Macy’s West—were moved to the headquarters of Federated Systems Group (FSG) in Alpharetta, GA, a suburb of Atlanta. I flew down there to consult with Len Miller², who was in charge of all of the FSG’s AS/400s. I don’t remember exactly what the agenda for this meeting was, but I remember that Len said that long-range plan of FDS was to replace the AS/400 systems with home-grown software running on other platforms. However, he assured me that at that point—soon after the merger with the May Company—it was a very low priority. They would still be using the AS/400s for several years.

My other vivid memory of that day was when we passed a room that contained perhaps twenty desks. At each desk sat someone working on a computer. All of the people were IBM employees who were consultants for Federated.

Len’s predictions both turned out to be true. All of the divisions except Bloomingdale’s were eventually folded into one gigantic Macy’s run from the Herald Square Building in Manhattan. The plan was apparently to use the system built for Burdines and the Seattle division, but it did not have all of the features that the people in New York needed. For several years they maintained AdDept in order to run the Loan Room (merchandise loaned to photo studio for shoots) module that TSI wrote for Macy’s East in the early nineties.

In May or June of 2005 I received a telephone call from Robin Creen³, whose title was Senior Vice-president of Macy’s Corporate Marketing. She wanted me to come to New York to discuss the AdDept and A^xN systems. I made an appointment and took Amtrak to Penn Station. Robin instructed me to use the executive elevator at one of the 34th St. entrances rather than the employee’s entrance that I had always used on the other side of the building.

Robin’s office was not in the advertising department. It was on executive row. I don’t remember too much of the meeting, and I cannot locate my notes. I recall that I only got to meet with her once or maybe twice, and I never heard from her or about her again.

I did, however find a copy of a letter that I sent to her on October 7, 2005. Here is the text:

At our last meeting you told me that it was still too early to talk about the future of the existing May Company divisions. Since there have now been several definitive press releases about the makeup of the new Macy’s after the merger, I assume that those restrictions no longer apply.
Needless to say we are concerned about what effect the realignment will have on TSI. We have spent the last 17 years developing AdDept, the software product which has become the standard of the industry for administration of retail advertising departments. The May Company was our largest client.
We know that Federated Department Stores has been working with its Florida division for the last decade or so on a system which overlaps considerably with ours. I am sure that the company has by this time invested a considerable amount of time, money, and manpower in it. It may surprise you to know that I was supposed to be an integral part of the original plan. I met with Mike Rafferty and Gilbert Lorenzo in Huntsville, Alabama, back in the mid-nineties. Their plan at that time was to use AdDept for the accounting functions.
They wanted us to convert our system to run on a PC network using a home-grown relational data base and Microsoft Visual BASIC on each client. To me this seemed like a huge step backwards for us. Their approach would definitely have improved the appearance of AdDept’s front end and provided an integration with the production area, but no one could explain to me how we could possibly support such a system in many locations. The principal problem was that with their proposed architecture someone—presumably TSI—would be required to support both server software and client software. We have never had to support clients—the individual desktop PC’s and Macs. At the time networks were unreliable, Windows was not a mature product, and the Internet was in its infancy. TSI was already supporting a half dozen or more companies, including the two Macy’s divisions, which at the time were not affiliated with Federated. I honestly think that had we participated in the project at the level that they expected, TSI would not have survived as a company. Gilbert and Mike must not have liked my attitude, because we never heard from them again.
Since that time, as I wrote you earlier, most of the rest of the department stores in the country—as well as several other large retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods—have successfully implemented AdDept in their sales promotion departments. They were able to get affordable systems tailored to their requirements. AdDept is not a sexy system, but it gets the job done.
No one in the entire country—no one—has the experience that TSI has garnered over the last 17 years in understanding the intricacies of administration of advertising systems. We are offering that experience to Macy’s Marketing. Four of the seven newly aligned Macy’s divisions—East, West, Midwest, and whatever the Marshall Field’s division is called—are long-time AdDept users. Lord & Taylor also uses AdDept. Moreover, a large number of May Company employees have considerable experience using AdDept in many different areas. If I were in your shoes, I would consider this as a valuable asset.
TSI has a very strong relationship with its users—both at the corporate and division level. If you talk with the people at the May Company, I am sure that they will verify that we have always done what they asked, that we do an excellent job of supporting our product, and that we give them a lot of bang for the buck.
There is one big additional factor. We are not on their payroll. When they wanted to spend money to make the system do new things, they used us. When they were tightening their belts, they did not have to worry about paying the salaries of programmers, system architects, data base administrators, etc.
So far in our discussions TSI has done most of the talking. What we would really like now is to learn what you and the other people in Federated’s management need to get out of the system. A goal-oriented approach works best for us. We have moved mountains for other clients, and we would definitely appreciate the opportunity to tell you how we would attack your biggest problems. We have never shrunk from such a challenge in the past. Our track record in this regard is essentially flawless. If someone will tell us what they need, we will provide it.
Do you think that we could schedule a face-to-face meeting with you and whoever else is involved in this project about this challenge? We have always been straight-shooters, and we would be eager to listen to whatever you have to say.

My last two encounters with Macy’s were both about insertion orders for newspaper advertising. TSI had developed and successfully marketed an Internet-based system for insertion orders to newspapers. Macy’s West, Macy’s South, and most of the May Company divisions that FDS acquired in the merger used it, and they all loved it. We called it A^xN, which was pronounced “A cross N”.

I knew that, compared to our other AdDept clients, Macy’s East used a small fraction of the programs that comprised AdDept. Still, they were entering the ads, and, therefore, they were a good candidate to use A^xN. I wrote to the Media Director, whom I had never met, and requested a meeting about A^xN. He seemed very interested. We scheduled a meeting, I made a dozen or so copies of our sales materials for A^xN, I packed them in my briefcase, and I boarded the 6:30 train again. I was alone because TSI had no marketing/sales person at the time.

The meeting was not what I expected. It was conducted by a man named Roman from the IT area, not the advertising department. My presentation was very well received. Roman said that it was very impressive.

He pressed me on whether TSI planned to provide a way to send the layouts for ads over the Internet. This surprised me. I thought that this was a problem that had been addressed years earlier. The market leader was the Associated Press’s AdSend service, but I also knew of several competitors. I said that TSI had no plans to enter that market. I explained that we had neither the infrastructure nor the expertise necessary to compete in that arena. Besides, none of our clients had asked for it, and they were not shy about requesting our services.

He said that we should consider it. Macy’s was looking for someone who could enable them to use the Internet for both insertion orders and the delivery of ads, “because, you know, one-stop shopping is better.”

I had three hours on the train to mull this over. I had made a mistake by letting this remark go unchallenged. It seemed like such a silly thing to say. I thought that they would want expertise and experience, not fewer phone numbers.

If one-stop shopping really was the objective, then I had no chance of ever persuading them to use A^xN. Therefore, nothing could be lost by asking for proof of any real value associated with having one vendor doing both tasks. I knew very well that the people who placed orders for newspaper ads were completely separate from the employees who created the actual layouts and sent them to the papers. This was true at Macy’s in New York and at every other large retailer that I had met with.

We never heard from them after that.

I learned later that Macy’s East’s advertising department had never used AdDept for insertion orders, even though they could have easily faxed the orders from the AS/400. Instead, each coordinator had developed ways to communicate with the reps at the paper. It sounded chaotic.

My last frustrating encounter with FDS (by then known as Macy’s Inc.) occurred in, I think, 2007. This one revolved around Dave Ostendorf, whom I had known quite well when he had been the liaison between TSI and the advertising department at Famous Barr, the May Company division based in St. Louis. Much more about my relationship with Dave and the installation at Famous Barr is posted here.

This is the only picture I could find of Dave Ostendorf. He is on the far left side of the table in the white shirt.

Dave called me about the use of A^xN. He said that the people for whom he worked in Macy’s Corporate Advertising department asked him to find out how much we would charge for an interface between A^xN and the system that had been developed internally. Dave was a very straight arrow. I trusted him (unlike everyone else mentioned in this entry) implicitly.

Of course, I asked for more details, but Dave would not provide them. He was rather sheepish about this. He advised me just to write up a proposal in our usual format with as many disclaimers as I wanted to include. He also specifically warned me not to low-ball it. So, I wrote up a quote for $20,000 that may have set a world’s record for use of phrases like “assuming that”.

A short time after I talked with him Dave resigned his job at Macy’s and moved back to his home town of Indianapolis. Needless to say, no one ever called about the quote. I have always suspected that it had been used as a justification for further investment in the corporate system.

So, my interactions with FDS and its successor Macy’s Inc. were completely fruitless. If FDS/Macy’s Inc. was the Brass Ring of our field of software, it was in sight quite a few times, but we were never able to snatch it.

My only real regret is that I do not completely understand why we continually failed. Our success with every other department store chain was close to universal, and the employees in the advertising departments at FDS and Macy’s divisions seemed enthusiastic about what TSI had to offer. However, in these situations we were up against an amorphous alternative, the system developed for Burdines and the Bon Marché, about which I knew very little.

One thing that struck me when rereading the letter that I had written to Robin Creen. I seemed to be asking for an opportunity to see the alternative. As a debater and a debate coach I was much better on the negative. I seemed to feel confident that if they just told me what they were using or planning to use, I could demonstrate what was wrong with it. Even if our software was lacking in some areas, I felt confident that we knew how to change AdDept to make it better.

Fortunately TSI found plenty of work outside of FDS/Macy’s up until the time that Denise and I were ready to dispose of the business. If some of these opportunities had gone the other way, it seems likely that we would have missed out on some of our other achievements.

1. Val Walser worked int the advertising department in Seattle until Macy’s brought all of her division’s administrative functions to San Francisco in 2008. Her LinkedIn page, which is here, says that she “directed development of a sophisticated, integrated software product, which was Macy’s premier marketing/advertising system managing all departmental functions.” I presume that this refers to the system once known as FedAd that was begun by Burdines.

2. Len Miller apparently still works for Macy’s in 2022. His LinkedIn page is here.

3. Robin Creen left Macy’s in 2008. Her LinkedIn page is here.

4. Dave Ostendorf’s LinkedIn page is here.

1988-2008 TSI: AdDept: Amtrak Adventures

Posted on June 23, 2021 by Mike

All aboard! Continue reading →

Over the course of my years at TSI I probably took Amtrak trains to and from New York City over one hundred times. The easiest way to get from Enfield to New York was by Amtrak. It was not the cheapest, but it was the most comfortable. I actually got a fair amount of work done on Amtrak trains.

During this period there was no Amtrak stop in Enfield. The closest ones were in Springfield, MA, and Windsor Locks, CT. Both places offered free parking. The Springfield station was a slightly longer drive, but it boasted an actual station with modern conveniences such as toilets and heat. Also, there was a ticket counter where one could buy a round-trip ticket. If I boarded in Windsor Locks, I had to stand in line in Penn Station to buy a ticket for the return trip. Nevertheless, because of the thirty additional minutes that I needed to spend on the train if I left from and returned to Springfield, I almost always chose Windsor Locks.

The Windsor Locks train platform was (and still is) almost certainly the least glamorous of all Amtrak stops in the entire nation. At one time there was a train station in Enfield, and an unused station in Windsor Locks still existed in 2020. You can read about the town’s plans for the site here.

Clothing and equipment: In the 1990’s all the males who worked at department stores in New York City wore suits or sport coats with white shirts and ties. I complied with these norms. By the time of my last few trips I may have downgraded to “business casual”.

As soon as IBM finally marketed a true laptop, I bought one. I kept it and all my other materials in a large leather sample case that was extremely durable. It was later supplanted by a large briefcase that Sue bought me.

In 1995 I bought a Thinkpad 701C, the one with a “butterfly keyboard”. You always had to fight the temptation to pick it up by the edges of the keyboard, but I loved it because it was easy to use on a train or airplane. However, I hated the tiny red ball that everyone was expected to use to place the cursor. I always brought a mouse with me. My last laptop was, I think, a Dell. I used it both on the road and as my workstation in the office, where I mounted it into a “docking station” for all of its cabling. It had a big screen, large enough to keep two windows open side-by-side. It had also a “bay” for a second battery or a CD drive. It also was very heavy.

After I bought my Bose headphones, I also brought them, my opera albums, and a CD player with me. Having them on these trips was not as important as it was for dealing with airports, but after some training sessions or vituperative meetings I needed a little Mozart.

Wi-fi was introduced near the end of my train-riding years. I tried to use it, but it was unreliable.

An interesting view of the Windsor Locks platform. Whoever took this photo was rather brave. The grating in the foreground is on a rather short and steep slope that leads directly to the Connecticut River.

The platform: Absolutely no one liked the train stop in Windsor Locks. Its only redeeming features were that the property was evidently not valuable for anything else, and its parking lot doubled as a small park-and-ride area.

The stop had two facilities. One was very important—a pay telephone. On cold winter nights only a few people disembarked at this stop. In the days before cell phones that telephone could serve as a lifeline for for those expecting to be met there and for people whose cars would not start or were absent without leave. I always made sure that I had change, but I never had to use the phone. I suspect that this one will be the last pay telephone in America if it is not already.

The other facility, the shelter, was essentially useless. It only had room for about three people, and it provided little protection for them. Furthermore, the seasoned travelers never stood on the platform in inclement weather. They stayed in their cars until the train’s light was visible under the bridge at the top of the photo. The engineers knew this, and stopped here even if no one was visible on the platform.

For some reason the platform in Windsor Locks was built lower than most. Only one door on the train was ever opened for this stop. One of the conductors had to lower the stairs so that people could enter. He/she (it was almost always a he) would then announce, “Amtrak to New Haven and Penn Station” and then assist people who had luggage or might find the climbing difficult.

After everyone was aboard, the conductors collected tickets. Because there was nowhere to buy tickets in Windsor Locks, most of us who boarded there did not have one. The conductor had to sell each of us a one-way fare. In theory they took credit cards, but often the little machine for processing them on the train did not work. In that case the conductor would need to go inside at one of the subsequent stations so that an agent there could effect the transaction. This was annoying to the conductors and to the passengers who could not understand the delay. I usually paid cash, and I tried to have exact change.

There were usually only two cars on the train that went from New Haven to Springfield. The conductor would announce which door was opening for Windsor Locks as we pulled away from the Windsor station. We all gather up our stuff and moved toward the designated door. Sometimes I was the only person exiting.

As the train slowed down, the conductor opened the door and let down the stairs. He/she helped everyone on the last step.

On one memorable occasion there was a hitch. It was bitterly cold that night, and the door was frozen shut. We were all required to exit on the other side. At any other stop this would have been a minor inconvenience. However, the east side of the tracks in Windsor Locks was covered with gravel, and that gravel was covered with ice that night. It was also on a steep slope toward the frigid Connecticut River, which was only a few yards away. To make matters worse, it was pitch dark on that side. We all descended onto the gravel,. The conductor went aboard, drew up the steps, and closed the door. After the train had departed, we all managed to clamber up over the tracks to the parking lot.

No harm; no foul, I guess.

The conductors: The conductors on Amtrak seemed to me to be both professional and competent. I made a genuine effort to avoid making their life more difficult. On one occasion I did get into an argument¹ with one of them, but his partner resolved the situation in a friendly and reasonable manner.

The seating: The seats were all reasonably comfortable, and there was always room aplenty in the overhead racks. I always tried to sit on the starboard side of the car on the way to the city and on the port side on the return trip. The sun was thereby always on the opposite side, and there was much less glare on my computer screen.

Four seats in every car had electrical outlets. Since Windsor Locks was the morning train’s first stop, it was usually rather easy to grab one of those seats for the first leg. It was much more difficult in the evening and if we had to change trains in New Haven. However, the cars all had the same layout, and I knew which seats had them. As soon as one became available, I would grab my ticket from the luggage rack and moved there.

The stop in New Haven: After we arrived in New Haven in the morning, we usually had to await the arrival of a train from Boston. It would usually park across the platform from our train, and our passengers were ordered to move to the other train. This was necessary because the engines on the Hew Haven-Springfield line were diesel powered. The tracks along the shore used electricity.

In the evening as we approached New Haven the conductors would move those of us going on towards Springfield (as opposed to Boston) to the last two cars, which would then be decoupled from the remainder of the train. The train to Boston would then leave, and a diesel engine would be brought in to transport us the rest of the way. This process took about twenty minutes, during which the train had no heat or light.

The passengers: When I first started to ride to Macy’s a group of eight or ten buyers from Casual Corner, which then had headquarters on South Road in Enfield, rode to New York on the first train every Tuesday. Most of them got on with me at Windsor Locks. Others boarded in Windsor or Hartford. Most people on that train said nary a word. These people, who were mostly women, were very talkative.

For some reason their bosses evidently put a stop to this practice while I was still going to Macy’s on a regular basis. The trips were less lively after that.

For many years a man who was about my age commuted from Windsor to the city. I never talked with him, but whenever I rode Amtrak in the morning I saw him get on at the station in Windsor every day. He often was also on the same train that I took home in the evening. I wondered to myself how he could bear that schedule. In his place I would have been very tempted to move closer to my place of work. If he could cut his commute down to an hour, it would free up twenty hours per week!

This is similar to what Amtrak had in the nineties, but there was always a line.

Train food: No food or drink was available between Springfield and New Haven. There was almost always a “café car” between New Haven and Penn Station. It contained four tables, two at either end. They were usually occupied by conductors or no one.

In the middle of the car was a small bar or, if you like, counter. There was always a line at the bar. For sale were coffee, soft drinks, snacks, beer, hot dogs, pastries in the morning, and a few other things. I would usually buy a cup of coffee and a muffin or a pastry in the morning. The coffee always tasted very bad, but it was hot, wet, and full of caffeine.

In the evening I always tried to buy food before I boarded. A deli and a Roy Rogers with tolerable fried chicken were right across the street from Penn Station. I also found the mini-pizzas at the Pizza Hut inside Penn Station to be edible. If I was unable to get any food before boarding, I might by some chips and hope that leftovers were available at home. After a rough trip I might buy a beer if the person at the counter guaranteed it was cold.

Tracks: There is only one set of tracks on the New Haven-Springfield line. There were so few trains that this was almost never a problem. Once, however, we encountered another train. We didn’t collide, but it took about thirty minutes to resolve the conflict and back up one of the trains to a side-track.

The track from New Haven to the city was owned by Metro North. The track around Bridgeport was banked so steeply that the engineer had to slow down to about ten miles per hour to keep the train on the track. This was still not fixed by the last time that I rode.

The bigger problem was that the Metro North trains had right of way. In the morning the Amtrak train usually had to pull over to a side-track to allow a Metro North express train zoom past. One or two of these could easily cause me to be late for an appointment, and there were no cell phones.

Celebritiess: The closest that I came to seeing a celebrity on Amtrak was when I was in the same car as Joe D’Ambrosio, the voice of the UConn Huskies. I first became familiar with him in the seventies when he was on WPOP. I knew his face from TV, but I would have recognized his voice anywhere. He told sports stories to his travel companions all the way to New York.

I didn’t talk to Joe. All right; I didn’t really talk to anyone. It is difficult for me to recall a single conversation that went beyond “Is that seat taken?” I do recall that on one return trip from New York someone who was probably two decades younger than I was asked me about The Tortilla Curtain a novel by T. Coraghesson Boyle, that I was reading. I told him that the first half was so-so, but it seemed to be improving. Actually, I did not end up liking it very much.

Penn Station: If I did not already have one, my first responsibility upon entering the station in the evening was to buy a one-way ticket to Windsor Locks. There was no way to jump the line.

No, no, no. Check the ARRIVALS board first.

The next step was to check the Arrivals board in the gate area to determine the number of the train and its status. The worst possible news was to see the word DELAYED. That meant that the train was still a long way from New York City or there were known problems on the track.

If I had enough time, and I had not already purchased food for supper, I stopped in at one of the fast food places in the station—usually Pizza Hut, Nathan’s, or an establishment that sold sandwiches. I also always bought a large Diet Coke. The fountain drinks were a much better deal than anything on the train. I would then usually find a relatively secluded seat in the waiting area and read and/or eat.

I sometimes visited the stores that sold books and magazines. I was surprised to find copies of Oggi and Panorama. In my trips after 2002 I always carried my Italian dictionary with me. I purchased a few issues of these magazines and did my best to translate the articles in them. Fortunately there was always an abundance of photos.

The northbound trains in the evening were often late. Some started the day in Florida. I frequently had to kill time in the station, which sometimes led to situations that annoyed me then but amuse me now. I found the following account in my notes for a trip to Lord and Taylor in November of 2007:

Penn station encounters: As I was waiting for my train and holding a Roy Rogers bag, a woman asked me for a piece of chicken. A little later a guy asked me for a cigarette, then two dollars, then one dollar, then a quarter. On Tuesday morning a guy tried to sell me a tourist guide to New York, which he said cost $11, for $10. I was wearing a dress shirt, tie, sweater vest, and dress overcoat and was consulting my laptop at the time. Evidently the guy’s tourist radar was on the blink. He asked me where I was going. I said, “work,” which was the only word other than “no” in any of these conversations.

One evening I heard over the loudspeaker a request for someone who spoke Italian to come to the information desk. I considered volunteering my very questionable services, but then it occurred to me that this was the Big Apple, not Dubuque. There must be at least a dozen people here who could really speak Italian. Besides, my hand gestures were not advanced enough for conversing with a real Italian.

One of my favorite things about Penn Station was the man who made the announcements over the loudspeaker, Danny Simmons². He had an unmatched style. I can still here in my mind his incantation ringing in my ears: “… with station stops of Wallingford, Meriden, Berlin, Hartford, Windsor, Windsor Locks, and Springfield is now boarding on track …” You can listen to some of his calls here.

Someone should certainly have told him that in Connecticut the city “Berlin” is accented on the first syllable.

Train tips: The goal for the return trip was to snag the best seat possible.The priorities were:

On the port side;
Window;
Both seats unoccupied;
With electricity;
Near the café car.

I almost always succeeded at finding a seat that met the first three criteria. I strove to be one of the first ten or so people in line at the departure gate, which was identified by a number and E or W. This was relatively easy. I always monitored the ARRIVALS board. Most people were assembled under the DEPARTURES board. They seemed unaware of two rather obvious facts about through trains: 1) They must have arrived before they could depart. 2) They always departed on the track on which they arrived.

So, if the ARRIVALS board listed the gate as 7, I went and stood by the escalator down to 7E. This pretty much assured me a good position in line no matter how many people eventually congregated there.

It was equally important to find the right car. The trains always went from west to east. I always walked toward the rear of the train until I found a car that met most of my criteria. I then entered and selected the seat by the port-side window. If the aisle seat was unoccupied, I placed my sample case or briefcase on it, opened it up, took out a book or a folder, and lay it beside the case.

I then pulled down both tray tables. If I had food with me, I lay it on the tray table in front of me and took a bite out of something. I inserted the straw into my large Diet Coke, and placed my drink on the tray table for the aisle seat. My objective for all of this was to make the aisle seat seem as undesirable as possible. It would have worked even better if I sat in the aisle seat and put my stuff in the window seat, but I found that that was not really necessary. I almost always was left to myself.

There was no reason to worry about people entering at subsequent stops. On the eastbound evening trains at each stop after Penn Station far more people exited the train than boarded it.

If I wanted to purchase something from the café car, it was necessary to do it before the train reached Bridgeport. The café car closed down well before the stop in New Haven, and there was always a line. In fact, it was usually a good idea to make any purchases before the first stop in New Rochelle. The selection in the café car got worse fairly rapidly.

Distressing events: Uneventful train rides were delightful. Any disruption of the routine was, at best, annoying.

One day the line behind me at the gate was unusually long, and the people in it were mostly college-aged. It was a Friday. Perhaps it was spring break, or the end of a term. In any case, every seat on the train was filled, even the aisle seat next to mine. Furthermore, a dozen or more people sat on the floor in my car. I presume that the situation was similar in all the other cars.

This could not have been legal, could it? It was the only time that I saw this happen. Evidently Amtrak had no way of determining that more tickets had been sold than there were seats.

I can only imagine what the café car was like. I did not dare to abandon my seat just to buy a can of Diet Coke for $2.

A more distressing event occurred on one of my last trips in 2006. I was returning from Macy’s, and I evidently left my Cascio point-and-shoot camera³ on the train. It must have fallen on the floor at some point. I had used that camera on the glorious Village Italy tour that we took in 2005. It is documented here.

In my notes from trips to Lord and Taylor in 2007 and 2008 I twice reported that I had almost lost the small Canon camera that I had purchased as a replacement for the Cascio.

The nightmarish return trip: On many of the trips home I arrived late, sometimes very late. One of them, an extremely hot evening in the summer, I will never forget.

The Hell Gate bridge, which connected the Astoria section of Queens with Randalls and Wards Islands, was only used by freight trains and the “Northeast Corridor” Amtrak trains on which I rode. One summer evening the bridge had reportedly caught on fire (!) and was unusable, at least for the nonce.

So, on the DEPARTURE board appeared the dreaded phrase: SEE AGENT. The good people at Amtrak addressed our group, which by then included everyone who had already been on the train. They divided us up into groups that were determined by our destinations. I was in the group that included all of the stops north of New Haven.

Amtrak, we were informed, had chartered tourist-type buses in Europe) to transport us to our destinations. After about a two-hour delay in which all these arrangements were made, our group was herded onto our bus. The first thing that we noticed was that it did not have air conditioning. The second was that our bus was very crowded. A foul mood prevailed.

Our bus driver cheerfully announced that he had information that the usual route north through Manhattan was experiencing heavy traffic. He had exercised his initiative to plot a route through the Lincoln Tunnel to I-95 in New Jersey. We would then cruise across the George Washington Bridge toward Connecticut.

This news elicited some smiles and giggles of schadenfreude among the passengers. We would get home very late, but we would avoid that horrible Manhattan traffic that would probably drive the other passengers crazy.

And we did indeed drive through the tunnel at a reasonable pace. Similarly, our passage through the Garden State proceeded at a good clip. We could not actually see the poor saps on the other buses inching their way north on the other side of the Hudson, but we could easily imagine their frustrating situation.

However, our collective optimism crashed when we encountered traffic on our own highway just before we reached the George Washington Bridge. In fact, we were not moving at all. Our driver announced that there had been an oil spill on the highway on the New York side of the bridge. It took us more than an hour to cross the bridge. Everyone—including myself–was suffering from the heat. It was surely over 100° inside our conveyance.

After the bus finally crossed the bridge we were required to exit the highway in the northern part of Manhattan. It was dark by then as the bus driver piloted us through hostile-looking side streets of the worst parts of Gotham. I don’t know what the other passengers were thinking about, but I could not keep the first few chapters of Bonfire of the Vanities out of my mind.

At long last we got back onto the interstate. Imagine our relief to see the “Welcome to Connecticut” sign. We passed by our usual stops at New Rochelle, Stamford, and Bridgeport stations and turned north onto I-91. I was familiar with the drive from there to Windsor Locks. it could easily be completed in an hour.

We might have made it that quickly, too, but we had to exit the highway to stop at each of the five Amtrak stations—Wallingford, Meriden, Berlin, Hartford, and Windsor. All of these stations were conveniently located near the railroad tracks. None, however, was easily accessible from I-91 especially by an oversized vehicle like our bus. Of course we also had to wait for the passengers to get all of their gear together. Of course, they had to wait for the bus to stop. Then the exiting passengers had to fight their way up the narrow aisle to the door and climb down.

I did not leave that wretched bus until 3AM, and I still had to make the bleary-eyed drive to Enfield. Of course, the people who went all the way to Springfield had it even worse. I thought with glee of one of them discovering that someone might have broken into his—no, make it her—car while we were on this forlorn journey from hell.

1. The story about the run-in that I had with an Amtrak conductor concerning my book of discounted train tickets has been recounted here.

2. Danny Simmons retired in 1994.

3. I replaced the Cascio with a Canon that was much easier to use. When I upgraded for our Africa trip, I gave the Canon point-and-shoot to Sue, but I don’s think that she ever used it.

2000 TSI: AxN: System Design

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Mike

TSI as a nexus between advertisers and newspapers. Continue reading →

The term insertion order was used in advertising to describe a list of detailed information about ads that advertisers provided to newspapers or magazines so that the publication could reserve the space. The design of A^xN, TSI’s clearinghouse on the Internet for insertion orders, only really congealed when I had finished reading Bob Cancilla’s outstanding book about using the AS/400 for e-business, IBM’s word for commercial transactions that used the Internet. The process of determining what TSI wanted to do and how we learned how to do it has been described here.

The Internet servers on the AS/400 in TSI’s office were used in the project. The FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server was used to receive transmissions of data files containing insertion orders generated by the AS/400’s at our client. The SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server sent computer-generated emails to both advertisers and newspapers. The HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) server allowed the posting of web pages on TSI’s website, TSI-TSI.com.

TSI’s AS/400 was connected to the Internet through a T-1 line leased from AT&T. The backup line was a cable connection to Cox. It was seldom, if ever, needed. I can recall no problems with the connection.

AdDept changes: AdDept, TSI’s administrative system for the advertising departments of large retailers, included programs for producing the original insertion orders used to schedule advertising at newspapers and for producing change orders and cancellations. The users at each installation had slightly different methods of selecting the items from the media schedule to be ordered (usually once per week for ROP and once per month for inserts) and different formats for printing or faxing the orders. However, all installations used the same programs for updating the data files with the ordering information.

Newspapers were ordinarily designated on AdDept’s pub table with two “variations”—one for ROP (“run of press”—the pages printed by the newspaper) and one for inserts (the preprinted flyers and coupons inserted with the pages printed by the newspaper). Some needed additional variations for things like the Sunday supplement or the television guide. The pub table contained a field that designated how insertion orders would be delivered. The choices—as designated by a one-character field on the pub table—were faxing or just printing. A new option was added for delivery through TSI’s website on the Internet using A^xN. When a paper agreed to a trial subscription for A^xN, the field was changed for each of its versions. If the paper stopped using A^xN, it was set back to its previous value.

The configuration on each client’s AS/400 was modified so that the FTP server was automatically started every time the system initiated the Initial Program Load (IPL). “IPL” was IBM-speak for booting or rebooting. Most of TSI’s AdDept clients IPLed once a week.

The sections of the insertion programs that updated the data files were augmented. If the pub was using the Internet for insertion orders, new code was executed for each order as a whole and for each item on the order. This code created a file for the order and wrote records on the file for the header (A^xN‘s code for the pub, range of dates, type of order, whether it was a new order, revision, or cancellation, and a few additional items), detail (individual ads), and special instructions that could be for individual ads or the whole order. As records were written, they were logged on a file.

When the user closed the insertion order program, a routine was called to use FTP to send a copy of the file to a designated library¹ on TSI’s server. The original files remained on the advertiser’s system for a while until the system administrator ran the cleanup program.

FTP clients can actually do a lot more than send and receive files, but the configuration of TSI’s server prohibited most of those features.

Processing the orders: The configuration for TSI’s AS/400 was also changed so that the FTP, SMTP, and HTTP servers started during each IPL. Another program that we wrote to monitor the library containing orders also was started at IPL. In the twelve years that this process was active we had zero failures.

The monitoring program examined the contents of the library designated to receive the files. If the library was empty, the program went to sleep for a minute or two. If it found anything in the library, It copied the files to a separate library. For each file that it found it started a batch job to process the file. It then deleted the files from the receiving library and went back to sleep.

The processing programs evaluated each file to make sure that it could read all the records and that none of the fields in any contained invalid information. Since all of this information had been generated by AdDept programs run on the advertising departments’ AS/400s², problems almost never occurred. If any anomalies were discovered, an email was sent to me, Denise Bessette, and a programmer.

After validating the data the program created database files for new orders or updated the records of existing orders. Time-stamped log entries were written for all of these operations.

After the permanent database files were updated, an email was sent to the rep at the newspaper and the coordinator at the advertising department. It simply told them that the insertion order had been posted on TSI-TSI.com and provided a link to the website.

The processing programs were written in BASIC and IBM’s Control Language (CL). The former were used to validate the received file and to update the data files. The latter were used for system-oriented tasks such as sending emails and copying files.

I don’t remember the details of how it worked, but I think that there was also a program that monitored the number of FTP transactions in a period of time. Two of three times the system was the target of half-hearted attacks on the FTP server. We were easily able to repel them.

Setup for the interactive programs: The reps at the newspapers and the coordinators at the advertisers were expected to be able to access TSI’s AS/400 through the Internet using a browser. Therefore, it was necessary to change the system’s configuration on our AS/400 so that the HTTP³ server for the website was always started as part of the IPL. At the same time a second local HTTP server for development and testing by TSI programmers (primarily me) was also configured.

Security was provided by the AS/400’s HTTP server. The scripts for all A^xN pages on TSI’s website (TSI-TSI.com) were placed in a library that was password-protected. The pages that described the company and its products and services were open to the public. Static pages were written in HTML, the language of the web. The scripts for interactive pages were written in Net.Data, the only scripting language that IBM supported on the AS/400 at the time.

The AS/400 had the ability to set up interactive sessions for users who logged in to the HTTP server. If we had implemented this feature, the system could have timed-out users who had entered their credentials and left the connection open. Implementing this would have complicated the development enormously. We decided not to do it until it became necessary. Like all other developers in that era, we were in a hurry to launch the product on the Internet. Since we never encountered any security issues, we never did.

I take it back. Actually there was one security issue. The reps and coordinators tended to store their credentials in their browsers so that they would be filled in automatically on the security screen. When there was turnover, or someone got a new computer or software update, the passwords and user ID’s were sometimes lost. The support people at TSI did not have the capability of retrieving passwords, but they could assign new ones. After each new one was assigned, it was given over the phone to the user. To insure that this solved the problem, the TSI employee stayed on the line while the user signed on. The user was then advised to change the password and, if necessary, talked through that process.

I am sure that both the newspapers and advertisers were happy that we did not automate this process. We only needed to deal with it a handful of times per month. If we had succeeded at convincing more advertisers to use A^xN, we might have needed to automate it.

The interactive programs for newspapers: In the course of research for this entry I discovered the pdf file for the very comprehensive AxN: Handbook for Newspaper Users and posted it here. I had created this twenty-two-page document using PageMaker software in the early 2000’s before we had the first live implementation of the product/service.

The handbook included samples of all the screens and reports. This document was sent to every newspaper when it agreed to participate in the trial period. We provided no training, but no one had much trouble learning to use the system. I must say that I think that I did a superb job. TSI received amazingly few support calls.

The document is more or less self-explanatory. There are just a few things that are worth noting.

The A^xN programs used “frames”⁴. Every interactive screen had three sections that consistently take up the same amount of space on the screen. The “Display” section was always the top area with the light blue background. The “Buttons” area was at the bottom and had a steel blue background. The third frame was “Empty”; that is, it had no space on the screen reserved for it. For each page there was a master script that loads the scripts for the three frames.

When a user clicked on a button, the empty frame was loaded with the appropriate script and executed. So, for example, if the “Confirm” button was clicked on after an order had been selected, the script in the empty frame would check to see if anything was in the “Confirmed by” box. If not it would highlight that field and display an error message without reloading the page. If the field contained characters, the script called a sequence of CL and BASIC programs to mark the order as confirmed and send an email to the coordinator at the advertiser.

The buttons available varied by page. However the Buttons section always contained a Home button (the one that looks like a house) and a Help button (question mark). The former returned the user to the site’s home page. The latter produced a page that explained all of the fields and buttons on the original page.

The interactive programs for advertisers: I also found the pdf file for the twenty-eight page A^xN: Handbook for AdDept Users: It explained how to use both the AdDept programs to send new orders, changes, and cancellations and the A^xN web pages to make sure that all newspaper reps have confirmed the orders. I posted the handbook here.

Advertisers who made changes to the schedule after an order was sent were expected to make the changes in AdDept and to send revision orders.

Daily tasks: Every morning a program searched for unconfirmed orders. Lists were prepared for both newspapers and advertisers. Each newspaper rep and advertising coordinator was emailed a list of the orders that pertained to them. A master list was also printed at TSI. An employee made a “courtesy” telephone call to warn reps each newspaper with unconfirmed orders that they were within a few days of publication.

Billing: In theory both the advertisers and the newspapers were billed for the use of the A^xN service. In almost all cases the advertisers had been using the AS/400 to fax orders to the papers. They had been paying TSI a monthly fee to maintain this software. When they started using A^xN we charged the same amount for support and dropped the faxing charge. So, there was a net-zero effect for the advertisers.

TSI’s computer programs required changes to accommodate the newspapers as clients. The main change was to convert the three-digit⁵ client number field from numeric to character. The existing clients maintained their numbers, but the newspaper clients were assigned alphabetical designations sorted by state.

A separate billing program was written to create invoices for the newspapers. Most were billed quarterly; a few preferred to be billed monthly.

A^xN was extremely reliable and was very popular with both newspapers and advertisers. Support calls were rare. I vaguely recollect one instance in which a newspaper failed to run an ad or ran it incorrectly. I was able to document exactly what the system had done with timestamps, and neither side thought that A^xN had contributed to the problem.

I definitely wrote all of the Net.Data scripts. Someone else at TSI may have written a few of the BASIC and CL programs used for A^xN, but I did the bulk of that coding as well.

1. A “library” in the AS/400’s “native environment” was roughly equivalent to a “folder” or “directory” on a PC. However, libraries on the AS/400 could not be nested. That is, there was no such thing as a sub-library. More details about the AS/400’s design principles can be read here. The AS/400 also supported being used as a server for some other operating systems, but TSI did not use that feature.

2. The header record for the order contained a field that identified the format used for the files. Since no one except AdDept users was ever convinced to use A^xN, no code for processing orders in a different format was ever written.

3. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP servers were able to serve pages to a browser using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and a few other formats.

4. I really liked the use of frames, but for some reason it was disparaged by supposedly sophisticated developers, and eventually frames were no longer supported by browsers. Instead a complicated use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) was necessary to produce a similar effect. A^xN was still using frames when TSI closed in 2014. I have never been able to duplicate the effect of the empty frame with CSS.

5. The worst design mistake that I ever made was using a three-digit number for clients. None of our agency clients ever needed a larger field, and the client file on TSI’s system still had many unused client numbers when we began marketing A^xN. I decided that it would require less effort to change the type of the client number field from numbers to characters than to expand the size of the field.

1995 December: Hawaii Trip Part 1

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Mike

Doug, Mike and Sue in Oahu. Continue reading →

In the second half of 1995 Doug Pease, TSI’s Director of Marketing, had been in fairly constant communication with Karen Anderson, the Advertising Director at Liberty House, a chain of department stores in Hawaii. One day he came into the equipment room, which also served as my office, and told me that Karen asked for someone from TSI to fly to Honolulu to show the AdDept system (described here) to them. We arranged to meet with them on two days in the first week of December.

I was very excited about this opportunity, not so much for the potential business as for the chance to go to Hawaii. Sue and I had been through a very rough period (as described here), but the one thing that we really both liked to do was to travel to new places. Moreover, the weather would be starting to get nasty in New England, and it was almost never nasty in Hawaii.¹ I decided to extend our stay in Hawaii to allow enough time to sample all the islands.

I went to Barnes & Noble on the way home the evening that I learned about the trip and purchased two books: The Maverick Guide to Hawaii and Kauai Trails, written by Kathy Morey. I had determined from previous trips that the more that I planned a trip the more that I enjoyed it. Sue and I did a really good job of planning this one.

Doug was not very happy that Sue was coming along. He worried that her presence would be a distraction to the main purpose, which was to land another AdDept client. I listened to his concerns, but I was not about to tell Sue that she had to stay home.

I tried to persuade Doug to take some time at the end and make a vacation out of it as we were doing, but he said that he needed to get back to his family. So, Doug scheduled a separate flight back to Connecticut by himself.

On the morning of our scheduled departure, neither Sue nor her car were around. I called her at her business in Springfield, MA, that she called Dance Space. She said that she had been working on the wiring all night. I told her that it was almost time to leave. She had no idea what time it was.

I later came to understand that Sue’s approach to long-distance travel was to leave exhausted, sleep fitfully on the airplane, and totally crash upon landing. Needless to say, this was not my approach. I did not want to waste one second of daylight in Hawaii.

The three of us flew together from Bradley to Honolulu. It was a very long trip, but we gained five hours, and so, despite the time lost in the layover in Los Angeles, it was still daylight when we landed. I fell in love with Hawaii the instant that we landed. There were palm trees on the airport grounds, the terminal was, for the most part, defiantly open to the elements, and the weather was perfect—sunny, dry, and around 80°.

The Honolulu airport was noteworthy for many things. One that I remember clearly was the ubiquitous stands that contained booklets and leaflets describing things to do in Oahu. I later discovered that similar stands at the airports on the “neighbor islands”. We soon learned not to put too much stock in the recommendations in the booklets, which seemed mostly limited to the heaviest advertisers.

We rented a car and drive to our hotel. The “Interstates” in Hawaii start with the letter H rather than I. It is a safe bet that the two systems will not connect any time soon. I don’t remember the name of the hotel, but I am pretty certain that it had free parking and was near the canal ,only a few blocks north of Waikiki. It was not luxurious, but it seemed nice enough to us. I remember that our room had a balcony, which in Hawaii is called a lanai (lah NIE).

The business visit: I think that we did the demo at IBM’s office before we talked with the people at Liberty House. I much preferred to arrange the visit in the other order. Perhaps we could only get time at IBM on the first day. Karen was extremely positive about the system after my presentation. She also told us that we did not need to wear suits at the Liberty House office. She said that most people there wore “aloha-wear”. We wore suits.

We learned the next day at the Liberty House headquarters in downtown Honolulu that the chain had two types of stores: large department stores that were equivalent to the regional department stores on the mainland, and much smaller boutique stores that catered to tourists. The newest department stores was actually on Guam.

At the end of our meetings we told Karen that it had been snowing when we left Connecticut. She said that she would really like to see it. I told her that she could have it. She insisted, “But it’s so beautiful.”

I replied, “Well, it’s white, if that is what you like, but that’s only for the first day or two, and it sometimes stays around for weeks or even months turning dirtier and uglier by any standard.”

A ;arge Liberty House store was in the Ala Moana shopping center on the southern side of Honolulu. This shopping center was essentially just like a mall on the mainland except that this one has no roof over the interior courtyard. People in Hawaii are not afraid of “Liquid Sunshine” even when shopping. Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom have stores there, and there are innumerable boutique stores.

While Doug and I were in meetings, Sue explored Honolulu. At the time she was really into ballroom dancing. She walked to a place near the hotel that had a famous dance floor. I can’t say that I was sorry to miss that visit.

The pitch to Liberty House went as well as could be expected. When we got back to New England, we sent them a proposal, and Karen put in a request for funding. I had every hope for a second trip to paradise to install, train, and investigate a few things that Sue and I had missed. Unfortunately, Liberty House’s corporate management imposed a freeze on capital spending. In fact, Liberty House declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998, and when it emerged from bankruptcy in 2001, it was acquired by Federated Department Stores and merged into Macy’s West, an enthusiastic AdDept client.

So, the return trip to Hawaii was delayed for twenty-three years. That adventure is described here.

Fun on Oahu: We knew that we needed to get our Luau Cards punched. No one is allowed to leave Hawaii without attending one. I think that we asked Karen and her staff which of the luaus we should was the best. They all recommended Germaine’s, and insisted that it was worth the drive.

Sue, Doug, and I attended, and we all had a good time. The entertainment was pretty good. The food was plentiful if not spectacular, and, best of all, we learned that we had not missed anything by never eating poi. I am sure that Sue took many photos, but I could not find them. Germaine’s website contains an abundance of photos. They can be viewed here.

ABC stores could be found on almost every block of the touristy parts of Honolulu. I spent some time buying postcards to make acquaintances back in New England envious. It occurred to me that people in Hawaii probably never receive postcards. So, I bought one and sent it to Karen.

Notes on the images displayed here: I am virtually certain that somewhere within the house at 41 North St. in Enfield, CT, are hundreds of stunning photographs of this trip. I have only located two of them, and those two have been on display in a collage on the wall of my office for at least ten years. They have faded badly, to the point that their only real use now is to prove that I am not making all of this up.

So, I have been forced to use images copied from the Internet. If anyone objects to the use of any of the images, I will remove the objectionable ones.

Sue, Doug and I drove to the memorial in Pearl Harbor. It was OK, but I did not feel like tearing up or anything. I enjoyed the drive past Aloha stadium better.

Doug and I climbed to the top of Diamond Head one morning. At the time I was in pretty good shape from running, and Doug did a lot of riding on his mountain bike. So, neither of us held up the other. The view from the top was easily worth the effort.

After Doug flew back to New England, Sue and I stayed on the heavily populated island of Oahu. That adventure is described here.

1. Hurricane Iniki had struck the islands (especially Kauai) very hard in 1992. Otherwise you could count on periods of rain every day in the rain forests in the center of every island and clear and warm weather everywhere else.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: AdDept

1998-2005 TSI: AdDept Client: Proffitt’s

1991-2007 TSI: AdDept: Federated Department Stores/Macy’s Inc.

1988-2008 TSI: AdDept: Amtrak Adventures

2000 TSI: AxN: System Design

1995 December: Hawaii Trip Part 1