Pocket Protection

It’s something I’m reminded of when I get calls – usually a couple every month – from people looking to computerize their fabrication shops. These aren’t people looking for advice on adding a CNC or going into continuous production; they’re at the point where I send information by fax or the U.S. Postal Service because there’s no computer available to accept email.
Being without a computer isn’t such a crazy notion. Working with stone is a craft several millennia old, and a dupont edge is dependent more on someone’s keen skill than a box with wires attached to a keyboard and a TV screen. Some shops aren’t going to take production to factory levels, so – outside of a machine to do billing and bookkeeping – what’s the big idea with a computer?
As a magazine editor, I take computers for granted, because they make my job much easier. A little pocket-sized gadget, though, gave me a new perspective.
It’s a Palm Zire 21 (Z21), which ranks right around the bottom of anyone’s list of advances in personal data assistants, or PDAs. Its main accomplishment in computer history was its retail price of less than $100, and I didn’t come close to paying that when I picked one up on eBay a few years ago.
I’d tried a few low-end PDAs before, and all had ended up in some desk drawer. Whatever I wanted to send from my computer to the PDA always ended up with a failure to communicate, and getting them to work properly became a constant trial-and-error process (and the effort usually ended up with an alarm that would ring later from inside a desk).
The Zire 21 was a bare-bones PDA. The main accessory was a flimsy plastic cover. It didn’t have fancy controls. It couldn’t connect to the Internet. It didn’t even have a color screen.
What it did have, in its dull monochromatic style, was the ability to actually work. In less than a minute, it could synchronize with the Microsoft Office software on my desktop computer and keep track of the 3,000+ names and addresses I’ve collected over the years. It also updated a variety of airline schedules that I kept on my main computer and – with the help of a special word-processing program – downloaded articles I would be editing from the current edition of Stone Business.
I even bought a small keyboard that folded up into 1/8th the thickness of a Stephen King novel. Instead of lugging around a laptop computer, I would tap away at this weird set of keys connected to a dinky screen during times when I’d usually just sit around waiting for the next airliner or meeting on the schedule.
I started finding efficiencies I’d never thought about before. I’d go to trade shows and type in a list of companies I wanted to see, sorted them by row, and then let the little PDA screen guide me through a trade hall and literally cut hours and miles of undirected walking. I could use the address book to look up contacts and update information on the spot.
I also used it as an electronic note-card system whenever I gave a presentation. Before one session, I talked with some attendees and realized my original talk wouldn’t fit their needs; I spent 10 minutes editing and reordering my outline on the fly.
The little device also became, well, a lifeboat. I stood at several airline counters and got myself out of cancellation jams by asking for different flights I’d find on those mini-schedules. And, when I had the misfortune of seeing my Microsoft Office address book crash a few times, I was able to use the Zire 21 to reconstruct the whole thing in less than a minute.
Sure, I also killed some hours playing Solitaire and Hearts every now and then. But the PDA also gave me a chance to fill plenty of previously wasted time with quick work – and basically served as my second memory.
That’s where it really struck me; it could simply remember things immediately. That’s a tough job for a human brain that’s trying to cope with hundreds of things simultaneously. It didn’t make me smarter; it helped me with the smarts I already had.
It’s the same thing with a fabrication shop. You can try to keep all the inventory in the yard and particular fabrication instructions and job measurements and schedules all in your head, or on some paper where you jot things down. You can also hope that the person carrying all this information doesn’t come down sick, or the papers don’t end up in the pockets of pants that go through the wash.
You don’t necessarily need a computer to start selling stone through the Internet or run a line of complicated and expensive machines. You do need it to make a copy of the things you know and the facts and figures that manage to escape you everyday. It unclogs bottlenecks in a hurry. And it can buy you time.
That Zire 21 purchased time and efficiency far beyond the $49 I shelled out for it; now, it’s time to publicly thank it, because it’s going into retirement. A few weeks ago, I moved up to another PDA with a nice color screen, wireless communication and plenty of other features, although the main job remains the same: saving my bacon by remembering something I can’t quite recall.
Oh yeah – it’s also an older model, bought on eBay, and not quite the next new thing. You still don’t need the newest gadget to do the job right.

Emerson Schwartzkopf can be reached at emerson@stonebusiness.net.