Alfdorf, Germany

Up about 7 a.m. and listened to the news. Just after 7:30 Repa called and said that Nina had tried to reach me. I called her back and learned that Sister Tamms had committed suicide last night or early this morning. Brother Tamms had called Br. Trautmann. I had breakfast and called Br. Trautmann at work. It’s not yet known which funeral home will handle the funeral, or when the body will be delivered out of the hospital. The criminal police must first clear up fo certain that it was suicide.

I worked at the hotel on the core dump program and went into Repa. Worked with the service engineers. The disk drive and comm adapters were finally working pretty much as they should. I started moving files to the big disk. I worked with Hans Hettich until about 8 p.m.

We went to Hans’s for dinner and had some kind of meat loaf. It was very good. Hans’s wife cooks quite well. We sat around and talked until after 10 pm.

I drove back to the Haghof Hotel in very thick fog. In bed shortly before 11 p.m.

Transcribed from my journal.

Alfdorf, Germany

Up at 9:00. Had breakfast and paid the hotel bill — 42 marks including breakfast. I took a taxi to the train station and put my luggage in a locker. I shopped around until the train left at 12:18 pm. I took the train to Göppingen where Hans picked me up. The train cost 37 marks. I was back at Repa at about 3:30.

The disk drive was running. I generated DOS on the drive. The service engineer tried testing the com boxes between the two computers. No go. They left about 6 p.m.

I worked on core dump programs until 7:30 and went to the Haghof Hotel.

I had shrimp for dinner and went about 9 to bed and called Nina. The missionaries haven’t found an apartment and must move out on Saturday. That will probably mean they’ll have to move in with us. I read a while in a Perry Mason book in German and went to sleep.

Transcribed from my journal.

Krefeld and Alfdorf, Germany

Up at 5:0. I got ready to go to the airport. In getting everything ready to go I was late leaving the house and still forgot to bring the cassettes with the church files on it. I arrived at the airport at 10 minutes to 7 to fined the airplane delayed 45 minutes, probably due to ice on the runway in Stuttgart. The girl at the ticket counter gave me the wrong gate number but I’d flow the route often enough not to believe her. Good flight. Arrived in Repa about 10:30.

The big disk was delivered but no one yet there to install it. They didn’t arrive until noon. At 6 p.m. the drive still wasn’t running so they said they’d be back tomorrow.

Bill Stevens and I decided to go to Munich to a Carnival (Fasching) Ball. After rounding up a shirt to wear (it had to be a “costume”) we left about7 p.m. and arrived in Munich about 9 p.m. We had dinner at McDonalds and checked into the Hotel Consul. It’s a very nice hotel. We went to the Regina Palast to the ball which cost 7 marks to get in. They had a very good band but not very many people. Bill found a girl (or vice versa) and about 2:30 a.m. we went to her place for “coffee, wine, or apple juice”. Bill has found something. She apparently has a lot of money. She has a condominium in Munich and a house in Frankfurt. The condominium is completely redone in wood from an old Bier Stüben from northern Italy and filled with very old pieces of furniture, some cost 10,000 marks and more.

I was back at the hotel at 4:30 a.m. Bill informed me that I had to make my own way back to Repa tomorrow!

Transcribed from my journal.

Krefeld, Germany

Up about 7:30. Nina drove me to the tram. I was reading a Perry Mason book and missed my tram stop and had to wait to take one back to Ehrenreich. I filled out the expense reports and balanced the checking account. I called Bill Stevens and made hotel reservations for this week and next at Repa. The big disk is not yet connected because they don’t have the transformer they need.

I sent a telex to Andy trying to get out of the trip to Pleuger on February 3rd. Hope it works out so I can tell Gordon I’m not going.

It’s been a better month this month, so far. Income will exceed outgoing by about 700 marks. I sure could use the 2,000 marks from the insurance! I deposited $950 in the back account and made out the rent check.

I talked with Dick Schneider about the payroll for BLW and Repa on the Enhrenreich computer. He’s really pushing to get it rolling.

I took the tram home about 5:00 p.m. I went to the TV place and made arrangements for them to come tomorrow to fix the high gain control on the TV so it doesn’t drive me out of my mind. They will come Thursday to install an antenna so we can get the two stations from Holland. Nina picked me up at the TV place.

Peter was at the house. We had dinner and put the kids to bed. We watched Beckett on German TV. A very good movie! Speaking of the Archbishop who had died, Henry said to Beckett, “I hope God has more use for him there than I did for him here!”

In bed about midnight. It rained all day.

Transcribed from my journal.

Krefeld, Germany

Up about 7:30. Dressed in work clothes and went to the Gemeindehaus (church building). I got there about 8:15 and no one was there. I didn’t have my key with me, so I went back to the house and got it. When I got back to the church the 4 missionaries and Br. Rudloff were there. Three missionaries cleaned out the cellar. We wallpapered around the corner and over one window in the MIA room. I learned how it is done. It’s not really so hard to do! We quit about noon.

I went home, had lunch, and took a short nap. Nina had a meeting in Essen at 5:00 p.m. and I was to meet with one of the High Counselors at 5:00, so Rika came to babysit. We drove to Essen. Br. and Sis. Trautmann were there for the Primary meeting. Sister Hansen came by train. She said she was waiting for me to come by and pick her up. I must speak to her about this. She also apparently waited for me to come over to give her a blessing. How am I to know this?

I had a short meeting with Br. Holland-Letz, High Counselor, and President Hase and I met briefly about a Teacher Trainer (or lack of it) in Krefeld. I would love to have one … just like I’d like to have a Mission President in the Branch, and a Press Agent, and a bunch of other people. What is most important? President Hase just listened … didn’t really take part. Br. Holland-Letz was also expecting a couple of other Branch Presidents. The President from Soest came a bit later. He has many more problems than I do!

After this I went in with the Teacher Training class and listened to them argue. It didn’t seem to be much of a program planned. We drove Sister Hansen and Rachel home. Rachel had a good time working with the missionaries on Friday.

The missionaries came over about 8 p.m. for cake and ice cream. It was Elder Hart’s birthday. He was quite surprised. We discussed when we get our remembrance back from the Pre-existence and came to no firm conclusion.

I was in bed about 10:30 pm. Br. Trautmann called — his wife won’t be to Sunday School.

Transcribed from my journal.

Munich and Krefeld, Germany

Up about 6:30. Showered and listened to the news. I had breakfast with Gordon, paid the hotel bill, and went to the plant. The hotel will close at the end of March. They have also started charging 6.50 for breakfast, per day, apparently whether or not the guest goes into the breakfast room.

I spent the morning loading the Parts Master files and correcting the programs for BLW. About 12:30 I was eady to print the Parts Master, but couldn’t get the paper far enough to the left in the printer. I finally located an “Imbuss Schüssel” (allen wrench) and took the spacer out of the printer so the paper carriage more to the left coming can (a real German sentance!) I got several copies of the Parts Master printed out for the Steering Committee meeting.

We had some kind of beef strogenof for lunch — not too bad.

The Steering Committee was delayed 15 minutes, again. BLW’s biggest problem is that they keep delaying … never get something going on time. The Steering Committee didn’t solve a thing. Only good question was why the A.C. Service Bureau wasn’t taken over yet.

Gordon and I had to leave directly after the Steering Committee meeting to go to the airport. Good traffic; arrived and turned the car in more than an hour before Gordon’s flight left for London. I had a Coke with him and discussed the possibility of moving to Munich. I think it would be a good idea. Then I wouldn’t have to travel so much.

I flew back to Düsseldorf. Nina picked me up at the airport. Peter Chasterneuf was with her. Dawnmarie had lost a tooth during the week. Nina took Peter home later and picked up his dirty wash. We went to bed about 11:30 p.m.

Transcribed from my journal.

Munich, Germany

Up at 7 a.m. — very tired. I ate breakfast at the hotel and we went to the plant. I talked briefly with Bill Hoerner and went back to school with Hr. Busch. We finished up the subroutines and macros. Busch wrote a small probram but couldn’t get on the machine until 2:30.

I ate lunch in the Executive Dining Room and received compliments on my German ability. Steinwender (Personal Mgr), Schorrschop (Industrial Engineer), Keller (new man in Product Design), Gordon Plummer, and I had lunch. Another excellent meal.

After lunch I got on the machine and Busch got his proram running. I made modifications to the Parts Master Edit and Maintenance, generated the Dataform input program, and keyed in 23 transactions to use for test purposes.

Gordon got ahold of my telex to George about going to Hamburg. He was a bit upset that I hadn’t cleared it with him first. The trip is not set yet, so there was no reason to talk with Gordon unless it’s going to come off, which I expect it will.

I tried to find the reason for the bad translation from ASCII to EBCIDIC which was not running correctly when putting out the tapes for IBM. I found only one table in the program: EBCIDIC to ASCII. I don’t know how he is going about going the other direction. I have to call London tomorrow to see if they know the answer. Meanwhile, I might try writing the tape in ASCII and have IBM translate it.

I left the plant after 8 p.m. and went to the Ranch House for super and had spare ribs. Excellent. Followed that with a Peach Melba. I was back to the hotel about 11 p.m. and took a short walk with Gordon to find a newspaper. We finally found one at the Intercontinental Hotel.

Transcribed from my journal.

Munich, Germany

The alarm clock didn’t work. I woke up at 8 and found I’d overslept by an hour I was supposed to meet Gordon in the breakfast room at 7:30. I dressed quickly, went down, and ate a quick breakfast. We were into the plant about 9:15.

We talked briefly with Bill Hoerner and cleared up some misconceptions about setup time. It should be in the overhead rate for the department and not in direct labor. All setup is charged through overhead cost distribution directly into the setup sub-account and relieved by a factor times direct labor earned hours. The difference is variance.

I worked with Hr. Busch through 2:30 and went to lunch in the Executive dining Room. I’d caused Busch to miss his lunch, but he wasn’t allowed to sit with the “executives” to eat. I sure don’t like such practices where some are more equal than others.

I worked with Busch through to 5 p.m. and finished going over all the instructions and started on the assembler directives. Tomorrow we’ll talk about conditional assembly and system subrotines. He can then write an easy program.

I bought Nina a thing for her shadow box — a set of scales and weights for 15 marks. We had dinner at Pfschor’s … lamb cutlet. It was very good. I was back to the hotel and in bed about midnight.

I couldn’t sleep. Got up at 1:30 and took a bath and brought the journal up to date. My stomach was also upset, perhaps from the aspirin I took at 1:00 a.m. Went back to bed at 2:30 for another try.

Transcribed from my journal.