December 19, 1991
Dear Everyone:
Happy birthday, “Jeannie”!
“Jeannie” and I did get into the City last
Saturday, for her birthday. Rode
the “round” escalator at Nordstrom's. Visited
Gumps, where they have the puppies-and-kittens-available-four-adoption
in the windows again this year. Actually
some of these “puppies” and "kittens" are little along in the tooth.
And this year, Gumps tried to
“organize” the crowds with ropes and switch-backs, rather like the line
at an “E” ride at Disneyland.
So we sailed on past the lines and went straight
into Gumps, just like paying customers, to look for more of “Jeannie's”
angels. Then we went down and
wandered around Pier 39 until dinnertime, had dinner at Sinbad's and
took the great silver worm (BART) home. Another
wild weekend in the Wood family.
At work, I have a huge stack of changes to make in
CRMIS by yesterday. Naturally,
I'm a little late. When the
Records Management Study Team asked me why the Records Management
Manual, which was supposed to be published in 1987, hadn't been finished
yet, I answered: “Simple.
Deadlines are meaningless in this
department." (All three of the
interviewers wrote it down.)
In this particular case, it wasn't my fault.
We allowed too much time for the
Users to get back to us and that didn't leave enough time for me to do
the things I have to do to make the change.
It goes like this: 1)
Add the new Owner Code.
Wait for CRMIS to update
overnight. 2)
Transfer the Series to the new
Owner Code. Wait for CRMIS update
overnight. 3)
Run a report (overnight, of
course) to see if any boxes didn't get moved when the Series were
transferred. 4)
Send a PROFS note to the affected
Records Centers to move any remaining boxes to the new Owner Code. 4a)
The Records Center runs a Report
907 (overnight) to produce a list of boxes to be moved. 4b)
The Records Center updates CRMIS
and the boxes are moved. 5)
Run a report (overnight) to see
if the Records Center missed any boxes (it does happen).
6)
If there are no more boxes left in the old Owner Code, close it.
Mission accomplished.
Multiply this by about 80 Owner Codes that need
changing, and that's a lot of overnight updating.
And those are the easy ones.
Where it gets really hard is when
the User did respond and they
want this box moved there and that box moved here and so on and so on
and on…
Of course, all of this needed to be done by last
night because the last Billing Run of 1991 will happen tonight and we
didn't want any boxes not getting billed because they belong to invalid
Owner Codes. As it is, tomorrow,
I'll go into Billing and manually change the Codes from this run so
they'll get picked up the first of next year.
What this all boils down to is:
I've got a mountain of work on my
desk. I'm dealing with it by
breaking the mountain down into molehills, making neat
little stacks out of the one
big stack. An organized office is
a happy office.
Remember: Organization
gives you the illusion that you're in control.
Tomorrow is my last day in the office until next
year. Everyone have a Happy
Christmas and a Merry New year.
Love, as always,
Pete
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