Chapter 6: Organization is Good. Getting it is Hard.

That was about it for Mom’s interrogation. She knew something had happened, but I was 16 and Nell was ‘of age’, and she just didn’t need to know. As long as neither one got pregnant before Cindy and I were married -when we were 18- there was no harm, no foul.

I did call Mrs. Bellini and ask if Mr. Jeffreys had called to set up a training class this weekend. Yes, he had. It was scheduled for 1PM on Sunday, and the expected participants were my crew and ‘any New Class Hunter’ who wanted to attend. I told her I’d try to get the word out about it.

Hmmm. The ALPRA website had a Communications office under the PR department. I called them. Another nice older lady answered. I explained who I was and what I was trying to do, and mentioned that Jim Milton had told me that he’d get me access to ALPRA’s database of Weapons so I could send emails to relevant people without blasting everyone.

She told me that that was possible, but she didn’t know if it was allowed, and asked if I could hold for a few minutes. I figured that she was calling either Jim or the Admin office to ask about me. It was more than a few minutes, but I was fine just lying back on the couch and dozing to their hold music.

When she came back, she apologized for the hold, saying that she had started the day with the full expectation of not learning anything new today. She laughed and told me that it was less than an hour away from quitting time, and she’d been fine until I called and ruined it. She had learned that not only did ALPRA have one of the “New Class” of Hunters as an employee, but it was my job to do what I was asking for so she needed to be as helpful as she could be. In this case, all she could do was transfer me to someone who could help me.

The lady I got next wasn’t with ALPRA, she was with the state IS department and she maintained the ALPRA databases for them. She said there were three different ways to do what I wanted. I could troll through the database -or she could do it for me- and collect all the email addresses, then send them all emails from myself. Or, I could flag them all in the database and have ALPRA send an official email saying whatever it was I wanted to say to all the flagged records.

The right way, though, was to construct a mailing list, then send my email to their server with some codes that said “Send this email from ALPRA to everyone on this list”. That was the best way, as people could be added or removed from the email list fairly easily.

Okay, I knew a little about databases. “Do you have an email list or a selection rule for ‘All New Class’ people, all the people who got weapons on August first?”

“Not at the moment, but that’s easy enough to set up. Actually, making it a rule is easier than maintaining an email list. I can do that. What else?”

Well, I needed someone to show me how to send an email to the server that it would resend to everyone on that rule. She said she’d make the rule and then send instructions on how to use it before she left for the day.

I told her that was awesome. Next, we were setting up training for the ‘New Class’ Weapons, so of course I wanted to send them all an email telling them about it. I had no idea how many would show up, though, so if turnout was low I wanted to expand it to others. Actually, we should just do both and split the class into two sections if we had too many people. Did their database have a way to flag people by their class? We were teaching how to fight with a staff, and we wanted to invite all Alabama Hunters who had a staff as their weapon. Basically, that was the Mages and the Healers.

Last, I had just realized that we should have a third section for people who didn’t actually have a staff, but they could use a staff if they wanted. Everyone with a spear, or a pike, or even the ‘brawlers’ who didn’t get a weapon and the archers who did get a weapon, but needed something for close-in.

Did their database support that? She said ‘not directly’. However, if I could spend some time working with her, we could add fields and populate them until the database could do what we wanted. Could I go to Montgomery some time and spend a few days working out what we needed? Then, she could make it happen.

I had to laugh. “Ma’am, I’m going down to Montgomery in a couple of days to get my picture taken and get my state employment ID. I can’t stay there, though. I’m still in school and they want me back the next day.”

“Oh, right, you’re 15.”

“Well, I’m 16 now, but yes I’m still in high school and they want me back in class.”

“Maybe we can work on it remotely. I’ll talk to the management and get you access. It’ll be read-only, though.”

“That’s fine. As long as I can see the data structure and the actual data, we can work out how to add what we need.”

“That’ll work. Oh, and Mr. McGowan? I’ve been working as a DBA for almost 25 years. I know database management. I don’t, however, necessarily know what the data actually means. If you’re a Hunter, you understand this. And, you clearly understand database management concepts. If you want a job here when you graduate from high school maintaining the ALPRA databases, you’ve got it. You’ve already passed your hiring interview. You just need to be 18 and a high school graduate.”

“Any idea what it would pay?”

“Right now, you’d start at $65K. You won’t stay there long, though. If you came to work tomorrow, you’d have three people with college degrees working for you. They can perform any maintenance function I tell them to do, but they have to be watched because they don’t understand what they’re doing. They just do what they were taught. Just as soon as you prove you’re not an idiot you’ll move up. I’ve got positions I can’t fill because all the applicants are idiots.”