May 11, 1989
Dear Everyone:
The drought is officially over here in San Francisco… but not in the East Bay where I live. San Francisco officials say their reservoir is full enough, but East Bay MUD says theirs isn’t. So I will continue to not water the lawn I don’t have and to buy bottled drinking water because, even in the best of times, East Bay MUD’s water tastes like its name.
I spent all day last Friday, until after 5:00 in fact, going through ETD’s files down in “Grey Farm”. I estimate that about 25% of what they have on file should have been discarded before I was born. How long do you need the phone number of the person to call in case of an emergency in December, 1944? Another 60-70% is just plain dead wood. When “Murray” comes back from vacation next week, we’ll probably get started on a Retention Schedule so that it can be cleaned out.
It’s interesting the things you stumble on in this job. While looking at how they file contracts (in a word, convoluted), I pulled one at random. It turned out to be a contract with a company to build a volley ball court at Company Park for people who want to play during their lunch break. Croquet is also popular during fair weather.
I’ve spent most of this week working on Destruction Reports That Haven’t Been Returned. I started with a simple list of which organizations were still outstanding (our cows are outstanding in their field); but it soon became apparent that I needed to have as much info at my fingertips as I could get. So I kept building computer files, each one drawing on the last and adding more until I came to file #7 which was 584 lines long and 140 characters wide.
When “Sager” showed up for our meeting, I handed him a set of reports ½ inch thick. It only took us 2½ hours to go through them and decide that we (meaning I) would write a letter to the bosses of the people who haven’t finished their destruction reviews to tell them to tell their people to get off the dime and get those reports out!
(Little do they know that as soon as they finish these, we’re going to run the same reports on the “Hobby” Records Center.)
(I hate it when “Rowena” and “Melanie” decide to stay in the office at lunch time. How can I concentrate with them discussing Jackie O, Jill Ireland and cancer in general?)
Anyway, “Sager” was impressed with the report and now I have to draft a letter for “Alma” to change and take to “Sager”, who’ll change it and take it to his boss, “Robin Cameron”, who’ll change it some more and eventually send it on to these people.
Personally, I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one.
In other news…
We had our weekly meeting about rewriting Schedule without “Holtz” who, for some reason, is in Salt Lake City today. We were zipping along pretty nicely until we got to page 6 and then “Holtz’s” ghost entered the proceedings. Even in his absence he can screw things up. Now he wants the system to create “links” every time a series is moved from one Schedule to another.
We already have “links” in a database called Owner History so we know what a bureaucratic nightmare it is. I’m not even going to try to explain it. Suffice to say that the look on “Melanie’s” face was quite similar to the one you would have on yours if the court had just decided that you, personally, would pay for all of the damages from the Bhopal, India disaster. Or you would make good the national debt. Something along those lines.
Moving right along…
I got caught up on 21½ hours of deferred viewing on the VCR last weekend. Mostly 1 hour shows that I didn’t have time, or the energy, to watch when they were on. It would have been 22 hours, but I screwed up the programming on a late-night Columbo and lost the last half-hour. Now I’ll never know how he nailed Janet Leigh.
Love, as always,
Pete
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