Whew. It's been a while since I've wrote anything, and with good reason. I've been busy.
Since the last time I wrote, the Vintage Computer Festival has come and gone, I've been working on a big project involving some cool robots, I've finally gotten a new laptop, (even though I have yet to get my software and data loaded on it,) and I have tried to come to terms with my Dad moving into a nursing home.
I'll ramble on about most of these later (some over and over again, I'm sure); for this entry, I'll concentrate on the robot project.
The story is, Long's Drugs bought a number of Rite-Aid stores, many of which had a ScriptPro SP200 pharmacy automation robot already installed. Of course, the Long's software had no provision for dealing with such a beast. That's where I came in.
My job, should I choose to accept it, was to write the interface between the existing pharmacy software and the ScriptPro machine. Not too bad a task, but certainly not something that could be rolled out in a matter of days.
Unfortunately, the stores were going to becomes Long's Drugs overnight in just a few short weeks. That's all the time we had to design the interface, write the code, test it, beta it, move it into producetion, and go live with it.
Well, thanks to a good team at Longs, the very helpful folks at ScriptPro, and a lot of patience on the part of Rachel and Dad, it was done in time for the first store to open in Brentwood.
On the big day, I met Joe (Manager of Pharmacy Applications, my supervisor, and an all around good guy) at the Walnut Creek BART station at 7am. We hopped on highway 680 north to highway 4 and made our way to the old fruit orchards and new commuter villages of Brentwood.
We got there to find a delightful dance of mass confusion, construction, and conversion, as the store began its transformation into a Long's Drugs. Meanwhile, the pharmacy remained open for business -- as well as it could.
Naturally, there were challenges, as the new computer was still being installed and set up, and half of the people were familiar with the ScriptPro robot, but not Long's pharmacy software, and the rest of them had it the other way 'round.
Nonetheless, by opening time at 9am, prescriptions were being filled, customers were being waited on, and good spirits were not extinct. Much of the rest of the morning is but a blur of impressions and images, but all in all it was extremely exciting. I have to say, things went extremely smoothly, considering everything that was happening.
Since then, we've managed to get the rest of the nearly 40 formerly Rite-Aid stores open for business as Long's Drugs, with no lives lost in the process. Fifteen of those stores had ScriptPro robots, and aside from a few minor hiccups, they worked fairly flawlessly after the first few.
There was a few days, there, however, where I was wearing two telephone headsets at the same time -- my regular business line on the right for incoming calls, and my cellular phone on the left for outgoing. That was interesting, to say the least!
After that first store, I did go to the next two openings -- Rockridge in Oakland, and San Jose on Prospect. At Rockridge, I took BART and walked the 1/3 of a mile or so to the store. On the way, I stopped at one of the coffee shops that line the way for my usual Mocha. I spotted an Apple Fritter and decided to splurge on that as well.
The apple fritter was adequate, but the mocha was rather disappointing. So of course, right next to the pharmacy was a Starbucks. Mind you, Starbucks isn't the greatest coffee in the world, but they are consistently decent. And when you're stuck in a sea of unknowns, sometimes it's nice to be able to just go for something you know will be acceptable.
Then I get into the store, and they have a couple of boxes of donuts sitting out. No apple fritters, but still, I could have settled and saved myself a few dollars. If you can't guess by now, not long after I got there, one of the Longs muckity-mucks who was there offered to buy everyone whatever they wanted from Starbucks. That's the kind of luck I have.
On that Friday, I went down to the San Jose store that was opening up to make sure it went smoothly. The PPS-to-ScriptPro part did, naturally, so I didn't have much to do except hang around in case of trouble. Well, trouble struck, but not in the computer. Someone noticed that the phone wasn't ringing.
If you've ever worked in a pharmacy, especially a big one, you know that if the store is open, the phone is ringing. People were calling, we just weren't hearing them. So I spent part of the morning trying to stay out of people's way and watching the little LCD screen on one of the phones to catch the incoming calls.
When I saw the blinking triangle, I would leap to the phone (because, of course, the one at the end of the counter, out of the way, wasn't working) and answer "Good Morning, Long's pharmacy, formerly Rite-Aid!" I would then write down the information about the prescription they wanted refilled (or reassure them that the pharmacy was open and that we could refill their scripts.)
I had the pleasure of taking a call from a women who was ordering a number of refills, and who told me that as of that day, she had been cancer-free for three years. A very encouraging bit of news, considering the number of people I have known who have either died of cancer (at least 3) or who are currently fighting cancer (at least 4).
In any case, it has definitely been a fun project. I have learned a lot as well, always a significant benefit to any job. Now, however, it's back to what I was working on before, and catching up on some sleep.