Keyspace location

I have a question about how you know what Key to hash?
As I understand it there are Grids & Blocks and something else that you can use to get a thread index, do you convert this thread index then to something like "AAA" = 703 assuming just using Upper-case Alpha?
If so how do you do that? I am thinking it's something to do with Integer and Mod's on numbers and dividing it by 26 until you get between 0 and 1 but I am having difficulties with it so it might not be like that.
As I understand it there are Grids & Blocks and something else that you can use to get a thread index, do you convert this thread index then to something like "AAA" = 703 assuming just using Upper-case Alpha?
If so how do you do that? I am thinking it's something to do with Integer and Mod's on numbers and dividing it by 26 until you get between 0 and 1 but I am having difficulties with it so it might not be like that.