Huckleberry Val

IYKYK.

Many of you already know my habit of repurposing literary greats (and movie titles) for my distinctively un-literary posts (such as Slumming It?):

Before I get to Huckleberry, not to mention his role as Ice Man in Top Gun (1986, box office revenues of over $357 million on a budget of $15 million, see also my post Top Fun) in a post on Val Kilmer is like not covering Little’s Law in an Operations Management class. So, done.

Talking about queueing models, here is a real-world queueing setting from last week when I went to the DMV (in Bridgeville) to get my Real ID in line with this recent WSJ article:

A Looming REAL ID Deadline Is Creating a Real Headache for Fliers

    Step 0: Park car.

    Step 1: Enter DMV: Join Queue 1 (less than 2 minutes) to get a ticket, that depends on why you are there. [Processing time: average 10 seconds.] This step has a single-server, following a first come first serve (FCFS) rule, and is going to create a multi-class queuing system.  If you are looking to get Real ID, you get a ticket with a number next to letter I. (Mine was I326.) The printout also tells you the number of customers ahead of you, in your class, at the time you get the ticket. Mine said 172.

    Step 2 (for class I, wanting Real ID): Stand in Queue 2 (also FCFS), that leads to a 2-server table, where each server (in parallel) checks that you indeed have brought all the documents needed for getting Real ID. Some folks are asked to go back home to get the required documents (1%); the others (after a 3 minute, on average, processing), are given a form to fill.

   Step 3: Sit around (and fill the form) in Queue 3 until you are called to one of 20 servers, who serve all classes, on a first come (at Queue 1) first serve  basis. When called, the processing time (on average) takes 4 minutes, at the end of which you get your Real ID (if you want to keep your picture from your Regular ID). [If you have to take a new picture (as you were not an adult when you got a Regular ID) or you want to take a new picture, then the. processing time is (on average) is 2 minutes, but you have to wait in Queue 4 (for Step 4, new photo and then print Real ID), which seems less than 5 minutes in all. I simply used the old photo.]

I estimated, looking at the first few I tickets being processed, that that that the I-class was being processed at the rate of about 45/hour (“Throughput”). My estimate of Waiting Time was (Number of Customers Ahead of Me)/(Throughput) = 172/45 = 3 hours and 50 minutes. [The actual was 3 hours, 57 minutes.]

I had, expecting a long wait, brought a book to read, Why We Die, by:

Venky Ramakrishnan (born 1952) is a British-American structural biologist. He shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Thomas A. Steitz and Ada Yonath for research on the structure and function of ribosomes. Ramakrishnan was elected a Member of a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2003, and a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2004. He received India’s second highest civilian honor, the Padma Vibhushan, in 2010. Ramakrishnan was knighted in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to molecular biology, but does not generally use the title “Sir”. He is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, Somerville College, Oxford, and The Queen’s College, Oxford. He served as president of the Royal Society from 2015-2020. In 2020, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and was made a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) in 2022.

Back to Val Kilmer. As the NYTimes reported:

Val Kilmer, Film Star Who Played Batman and Jim Morrison, Dies at 65

My favorite character of his is – with the iconic line, I’m your Huckleberry,  also the title of his memoir – Doc Holliday from:

Tombstone is a 1993 American Western film starring Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer, and narration by Robert Mitchum.  It had box office revenues of over $73 million (on a budget of $25 million).

Indeed, last night I re-watched portions of it (streaming on Amazon Prime) to savor his performance, including when he is first introduced in the film:

The other character that he played that I also like is in:

The Saint is a 1997 American action thriller film starring Val Kilmer in the title role, with Elisabeth Shue and Rade Šerbedžija. It had box office revenues of over $169 million (on a budget of $90 million).

As you know from my posts (see, for example, Weston Brahmin), my mantra – that I also wrote about in my An Essay on Operations Management (2017), one of seven invited essays (up from Six Invited Pieces) that I have published – is Leisure, Luxury and Pursuit of Newness, that I also shared with the folks at Darden – a 36 minute Wheels-up (from PIT) to Wheels-down (at CHO) on a Hawker 400 – during my talk QuOROM: Quantum, Operations Research, Operations Management. Thanks for a fun visit: Manel Baucells, Sasa Zorc, Panos Markou, Rupert Freeman, Vidya Mani, Max Biggs, Chris Parker and Doug Thomas.

What plan for this evening? Finish Season 3 of The White Lotus.