A friend who works at the rite aide store in central washington state said they're computers have been down since 10:00 a.m. this morning. they are having to look up prices by hand and do all the purchases "the old- fashioned way". not just a local problem, also at the yakima stores and the tri- cities stores. it is now 4;50 as i type this, pacific time, and they are still down. thought this might be interesting!-- dory

-- dory (crtwheel@eburg.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

Another cut. "Death by a thousand cuts". We should be so lucky!

-- Think It (Through@Pollies.Duh), January 02, 2000.

FWIW-wife manages a Rite Aid here in Ohio and worked all day. If there is a computer problem, it must be local to that state. There were no problems at her store. (She has had to do the manual thing in the past though.)

-- Steve (sron123@aol.com), January 02, 2000.

I guess we're dying of the hypochondria of 1,000 virtual cuts.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 02, 2000.

Hmmm. I live half a mile from one of these stores. I'll have to go in there tomorrow and see what's happening.

On another subject, my Trane XV 1500 computer controlled variable speed heat pump is humming away just fine. Here's a New Year's toast to computer controlled heat pumps everywhere, and the embedded logic circuitry that resides within them!

-- ExBigSkyGuy (NotThere@NoMore.com), January 02, 2000.

This is not only in WA. The Rite Aid in Grass Valley, CA was having a similar problem. All sale items were being rung up at the non-sale prices and the checker was having to look up the sales prices for items. The checker called the manager over to verify that this was a problem and they spoke of a third woman who had been called in to deal with the problem. It was slow going checking out with long lines at all the registers. End of the world? No, just another paper cut.

-- DB Cooper (dbcooper@somewhere.else), January 02, 2000.