May 17, 1991
Dear Everyone:
The World's Biggest Block Party, also known as the
Bay to Breakers
Race, will take place this Sunday; and, once again, I plan on sleeping
through the entire thing. That's
what Sundays are for.
Last Friday, I found out that I was going to be
involved in a teleconference. It
seems that “Rowena” was getting a lot of questions from the various
record centers and she thought it would be a good idea if everybody got
together to talk about it at the same time.
This, however, can get expensive
when you start adding up air fare and hotel rooms for 12 or more people.
So “Rowena” made arrangements for all of them to
get together on the telephone. There
are conference rooms that are especially set up for this.
In all, we had three people in
the “Hobby” Records Center on one phone; three in the “Austin” Records
Center; and three in “Lafayette”. The
number three wasn't a requirement. It
just happened that way. These
three groups each called a special number here in California at 1:00
their time, 11:00 our time, and the telecommunications people linked us
all up through a super-duper speaker in the conference room in Company
Park.
In addition, we had three people from the
“Livermore” Records Center, four from Records Management and one, lone
programmer from CITC (poor guy must have felt terribly outnumbered) in
the conference room. That makes
17 people altogether, spread out over three time zones.
My part in all this began when “Rowena” asked the
Records Center people to send her a list of questions to be addressed.
It turned out that they all had
questions about Destruction, my little empire.
So “Rowena” asked “Alma” if I
could attend and “Alma” said yes and I spent a day and a half pulling
statistics together and we had the conference yesterday.
Needless to say, it was a rousing success and our
manager, who decided to attend, was quite impressed with “Rowena's”
little coup. “Rowena” is now
busily figuring out how much it would have cost to have a “face-to-face”
conference so she can show how much money she saved the Company on her
next status report.
In order to get the people “together”, we scheduled
the meeting from 11:00-1:00 Pacific time, which just happens to be right
in the middle of that most sacred part of the day:
Lunchtime.
So “Rowena” had ordered lunch
brought into the conference room. Naturally,
my part lasted the longest, destroying boxes being near and dear to the
hearts of Records Center people. By
destroying boxes, you don't have to buy more shelving, which can run to
big bucks.
All the while I was answering questions, I had one
eye on the corner table where lunch was set up.
One by one, the other people in
the conference room would get up (quietly,
as any noise in the room interferes with reception) and filled their
plates and come back to the table with club sandwiches, fruit salad,
chips, brownies and soft drinks. And
I'm still answering questions, trying to concentrate and wondering if
there would be anything left by the time I finished.
I spent 10 minutes over my
allotted time on the agenda (not my fault, I was ready to stop any
time), but we made the time up on other subjects.
And there were two sandwiches left when I got to
the lunch table. Thank goodness
“Rowena” decided to order a couple extra.
After the teleconference was completed, “Rowena”
and I drove to the “Livermore” Records Center where we had
another teleconference with
the “Casper” Records Center,
who wasn't involved in the first one. Don't
ask me to explain, but CRMIS regards “Casper” as a “facility” of
“Livermore”, just as it does Sacramento and Kansas.
That's right: Kansas is a
“subdirectory” of “Livermore” CA.
By the time we got through with that it was only an
hour before quitting time. “Rowena”
and I decided that, since we'd worked through our usual lunch break, we
were entitled to leave early and went to the local movie house to see
Switch.
This is a
Blake Edwards
film about a guy who gets killed and comes back as a woman.
If it sounds familiar, you may be
thinking of
Goodbye, Charlie
with Debbie
Reynolds and Tony
Curtis.
The basic premise is that a guy, who's a piece of
walking crud dressed up as a scuzball, suddenly finds out “he's” a woman
and doesn't like having the shoe on the other foot.
Ellen
Barkin does a lot with body language and having trouble walking in
high heels, but frankly,
Jack Lemmon and
Tony Curtis did better in
Some Like It Hot.
The ads are a lot funnier than
the movie. If you're a real
Barkin fan, just don't pay full price for it.
Next week I'm going to be attending the annual PCCC
in Company Park. That's the
Personal Computer Coordinators Conference.
“Ashley’s” the “official” PC
coordinator for our group, but he can't make it so they're sending me.
This means a whole week of
sleeping late, eating breakfast
and lunch (sometimes the lunches are even free), dressing casual and
networking with other “techies”. Of
course, all those meals will be hell on my diet but, hey!
We all have to make sacrifices,
don't we?
It also means that, with all those PC’s around, I
probably still won't be able to use one to write a letter; so you
probably won't be hearing from me until the week after next. So everyone
have a great Memorial Day weekend.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. I'm trying a new size lettering.
How do you like it?
P.
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