January 28, 1994
Dear Everyone:
Natural Disaster Week culminated here in California last Sunday when the
49ers
failed to beat whoever-the-hell-they were playing against and
consequently will not be going to the
Super Bowl.
As I understand it, the 49ers
"were so flattened, they didn’t even need to fly home.
They were faxed."
There is no joy in Mudville.
Instead the StuporBowl will be
between (let me check my notes, here) the
Boring Bills
and the Clumsy
Cowboys. Can't wait.
In other news…
Yes, I did sit all the way through
President Clinton’s
State of the Union address. He
said that the country is doing better than it was, but needs to do
better still, and is faced with many important challenges, or words to
that affect. I lost count of the
number of times Congress interrupted him to applaud.
Of course, the reason to applaud
it is, not to indicate approval, but to get your face on TV, since
camera persons always focus on whoever's applauding.
These guys
are politicians, after all.
Not to be outdone, Company's CEO, “Freddy”, held his own "state of the
union" address, only he called it a "Town hall Meeting".
This took place in San Francisco,
with video and sound linkups to over 100 locations around the world.
They're really getting quite good
at this. “Freddy” (“Freddy
Johnson” to his friends) said that Company is doing better than it was,
but needs to do better still, and is faced with many important
challenges, or words to that affect. Then,
unlike Bill, he opened the meeting up for Questions and Answers, both of
which were predictable.
One person pointed out that, after Company announced that it was going
to give all of its employees a bonus (and a watch), the price of the
stock went up by $3.25. On the
basis of this, didn't “Freddy” think it would be a good idea to give us
all a bonus about every couple of weeks?
“Freddy” didn't think so, but he enjoyed the question.
After all this excitement, “Sally” and I went back to the office to work
on designing a report in
Paradox for
Windows©. The way that
Paradox works is that you set up a lot of small tables, each containing
specific information. Then you
linked tables that have overlapping information together.
For instance, one table tells you
what the Owner Code and Owner Name are. Another
table has the Owner Code and the corresponding Records Coordinator.
Link the two together, and you
have a combined table that tells you what the Owner Code is, the name of
it, and the Records Coordinator assigned to it.
Add another table with the RACS
Analyst information. Now create a
report that gives you all this information in a meaningful format.
Here's where we ran into a touch of trouble.
Neither one of us really knew how
to design a report. Since I had
stumbled through one previous report, “Sally” wanted my help.
Talk about the blind leading the
blind!
Nevertheless, User Guide in hand, we plunge bravely into the fray, using
the experimental method, as in: "What
happens if we try this?"
Oops. Gee, I wonder why it did
that?
Well, let's cancel this one and try again from another angle.
After a while, we had one report written and had developed a feel for
how it was supposed to be done. We
polished off another report fairly quickly (it gets easier the second
time around), whereupon I promptly, if inadvertently, saved it over the
first one.
Oops.
"Oh well,
Star Trek is a repeat
tonight anyway."
I suggested to “Sally” that it might not be a bad idea for us to take a
class in report designing. She
counter-suggested that I take
the class and then, when she had questions, she could ask me.
I guess that's what you call delegating.
Love, as always,
Pete
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