December 9, 1993
Dear Everyone:
We had visitors this week, three people from “Austin”, Texas, where
Company has a small (less than 10,000 boxes) Records Center.
They were here to learn more
about CRMIS, the soon-to-be-obsolete system that we use to run the
Records Centers, as well as the Retention Schedules that tell people
when to send their records to storage.
While CRMIS looks to be on its way out, it may be the middle of next
year before that happens; and, in the meantime, the “Austin” Lead,
“Alberta”, was determined to start doing some of the functions for
herself that we in RACS have been doing for her up until now.
This makes sense because it's
really “Alberta” who first figures out what needs to be done and then
asks “Kevin” to do it.
Example: Because of a restructure
(some part of Company is always
restructuring), a Records Series needs to be moved from one organization
to another. “Alberta”
determines what should be moved where and writes it all up in an
electronic "Note" which she sends to “Kevin”.
Then she waits for “Kevin” to
make the change. Since the change
itself is purely mechanical, why can't “Alberta” do it herself?
Well, for one thing, you can do a lot of damage to Retention Schedules
if you're not careful. Just a few
weeks ago, somebody in “Hobby” changed the Owner Codes on over 600 of
“Alberta’s” boxes in “Austin” by accident with a Series change.
Oops.
Seems both “Hobby” and “Austin”
groups sometimes use the same Schedules.
After all, they're in the same state, aren't they?
But Texas is a big state. The
“Austin” people took care to explain to us that “Austin” is in
West Texas, not to be confused with
East Texas or South Texas.
If you want to know what the
weather will be like in “Austin” tomorrow, they said, check yesterday's
report for Abilene and add two days.
I was a little concerned about just giving “Alberta” access to CRMIS
that would allow her to move Series around without making sure that she
understood what she was doing. So
we suggested that she come out to California for a little training.
Well, "trip to California" was
all “Alberta” needed to hear. Now
she really wanted to learn
more about CRMIS. “Alberta”
loves California, loves
San Francisco, and loves all
of us in RACS and “Livermore”, even the ones she's never met until this
week.
And, as long as “Alberta” was coming, her supervisor and their system
support person decided to come along. Then,
as long as we were going to be explaining a lot about the Schedules Side
of CRMIS, two people from the “Livermore” Records Center wanted to sit
in, too. As you can see, what
started out as a little visit for some training that might take half a
day soon began snowballing into a three-day trip.
We added an overview of our Records Management Program.
And what RACS does for its
customers. And how you develop a
Records Retention Schedule. And
what happens when you enter the Schedule into CRMIS.
And a tour of the “Livermore”
Records Center, with an emphasis on bar-coding, something “Austin” is
considering using for their boxes.
And we took them to lunch. And
lunch again. And dinner.
I haven't eaten this well since a
previous lifetime. (Smoked salmon
over Russian crepes with golden caviar--you don't find major yum-yums
like that at the company cafeteria.) Good
thing they left yesterday or my clothes wouldn't fit much longer.
In other news…
0K, movies. I haven't been
holding out on you; I've just been too busy to see very many lately.
Demolition Man:
if you missed this one, consider
yourself lucky. Don't even rent
it at the video store. I'll save
you the $3 by telling you the only really good joke in the whole film,
which was, by the way, supposed to be a "violent comedy".
They got the first part right.
Sylvester
Stallone gets frozen in our time and defrosted in the future.
Now here's the joke, which was a
back-handed complement to Stallone's rival for the violent movie
audience: The girl (of course,
there's a girl) tells Stallone that she did some research at the "Schwarzenegger
Presidential Library".
The Three
Musketeers:
Unfortunately, a lot of people
saw "Walt Disney Presents…" and thought, "Oh, goody.
A kiddie film."
It's not.
It's not an "adult" movie,
either; it's just not geared to little kids and a lot of them got
restless and kept asking (loudly) what was going on.
As for the movie itself: They
kept the title and the names and not much else.
I read
The Three Musketeers when
I was in high school. I even did a book report on it.
And I can tell you for certain
that there never was a scene in which
Cardinal
Richelieu coiled his way into the
Queen’s
boudoir while she was taking a bath. In
fact, I can't remember a scene in which
anyone ever took a bath.
My advice: Skip this one and,
instead, go to the video store and rent the
1973 version,
directed by
Richard Lester (this is the
Michael York,
Richard
Chamberlain,
Charlton Heston, etc. one). Lester
stayed so true to the book that, by the end, he had more than four hours
of film on his hands. Rather than
cut it up, he did exactly what the author had originally done:
Sliced it down the middle, much
to the chagrin of the actors who suddenly discovered that they had made
two movies for the price of one. The
"sequel" is called
The Four
Musketeers.
Then ask yourself this: They're
called "musketeers"
because, as the Kings special guard, they were armed with the new, and
very expensive, weapons, to wit: Muskets
(which could take out a charging Cardinal at 40 paces).
So, how come they're always
duking it out with swords?
Mrs. Doubtfire:
This is not the classic that
Tootsie
was, but is nonetheless a pleasant film.
Robin
Williams plays and out-of-work actor (why are they always
out-of-work actors?) who gets himself up as a housekeeper in order to
stay closer to his kids. In spite
of the "drag" aspect, it's the perfect Holiday Movie because it's
absolutely safe to take both Granny and the visiting rug rats to see it.
Neither will be overly shocked or
overly bored.
Love, as always,
Pete
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