okra: Robotic Arms + Chili = My Day at Work

This morning started with a trip to the book warehouse. As it turns out, Jenn and Tim got to go, too. Jenn especially wanted to go; I was considering asking our boss if she could go, when he suggested it himself. It was so much fun going together. We piled into my car and headed to the book warehouse. We ended up going in the wrong door and accidentally walked right into the warehouse part. We just kind of stood there in awe for a second. Then we had to call the book rep to come find us. It was a little embarrassing that we were lost in their packing center. But, at least the rep didn't seem irritated; he is very very nice. I'm still not sure why we chose that door... but all three of us seemed to think it was the right one.

The warehouse was even more fantastical than I had imagined. There were all of these conveyer belts forming a complex book bin super highway. Metals bins of books travel on the belts until they get to these three story tall mega-shleves. A huge tower with a robotic loader arm lifts each metal bin and places it on the shelves. I think that they said that there are 7 million books just in this part of the warehouse. The robotic loaders are computer controlled. The books are placed on the shelves in random order; instead of having an alphabetical or similar system, each has a barcode that is scanned stored in the computer's memory and is associated with the bin location. Only the computer knows where a specific book is located. This system is 99% accurate. It was really amazing, and completely mesmerizing, to watch the big robotic rig stuffing bins on and retrieving bins off of the shelves. Besides the huge computerized "library" there was another huge three story book storage area. This one looked like a huge library built inside a metal frame. The walls were made of wire mesh. It was filled with books and people carting books. These books have to be hand picked from the shelves. In the packing area there were huge machines with giant rolls of bubble wrap. It was really amazing.

When we got back to work, we had even more fun. Today was Chili Day at work. The little kitchen was like a crock pot museum. Cindy made little tags for each kind of chili; they looked like little display plaques. There was white chili, chili con carne, venison chili, and my personal favorite, vegetarian chili. There was also a very delicious vegetable soup. I contributed home-made sticky buns. I got up at 5:30 to bake them, so they were even still warm. There were all kinds of things to go with the chili, like crackers, cheese, onions, and sour cream. It was a delicious day at work. A large part of the afternoon was happily unproductive. Though strangely enough, all of the little problems I had with the book list resolved themselves today, so for being a festive day, I still ended up getting quite a bit done.