July 22, 1994
Dear Everyone:
Spent most of this week working on our new software,
Versatile.
The Project Core Team met on
Monday to compare notes on the testing so far.
The results were unanimous:
Out of 5 people, not one had
managed to get any testing done since the last meeting.
This is partly due to the time of
year, summer, lots of people taking vacation.
Which means that, even if a Team
Member isn't on vacation themselves, they're probably filling in for
someone who is.
And we've had a few of the usual, unavoidable emergencies that mean drop
everything and fix Fill-In-the-Blank. Nevertheless,
“Mimi” and I have managed to import quite a lot of data from CRMIS into
Versatile.
After a few false starts
(requiring both “Mimi” and me to send our Frustration Meters out to be
recalibrated), we got the procedure down to a set routine.
“Mimi” creates a file of about 50,000 records, which she passes to me on
the main frame computer. I
receive it, play with it a bit, then handed off to the Server.
(This is starting to sound like a
football game.)
Transferring a file of 50K (about 7 megabytes of data) from the main
frame to the Server takes about 45 minutes, if you're using a 486 PC.
A 386 would probably take twice
as long. Trying to do it from
“Livermore”, across the Bay, would take until my next birthday.
Once the Server has the file, I
can import it into Versatile. This takes about
2-½ hours and completely ties up the PC that you using for the duration.
Fortunately for me, someone in RACS was on vacation most of this week.
This meant that I could use their
PC to do the transfers and imports, while still using my own for other
work. Still more fortunately,
someone else in RACS is going on vacation for the next four weeks and I
intend to commandeer their PC as much is possible to further import
data.
More fascinating details as they become available.
Movie reviews…
The Shadow.
Alec
Baldwin plays the man who knows "what
evil lurks in the hearts of men". This
is because he's been there. But
now, he's rehabilitating himself by doing good deeds.
And he can "cloud men's minds",
rendering himself invisible, except for his shadow.
Of course, with the shadow
indicating his position, it doesn't take the bad guys more than 30
seconds to figure out how to perforate him with a variety of
projectiles. Ian
McKellan plays the absent-minded professor.
Tim
Curry goes completely over the top as the mad scientist.
Don't expect it to win
Best Picture,
but don't be surprised if it gets nominated for its 1930s new York sets.
True Lies.
Truly awful.
This movie manages to insult
Arabs in general,
women in particular, and just about everyone else in between.
Arnold
Schwarzenegger plays a government spy who pretends to his family
that he's just a computer salesman. Why
he needs to lie to his family is never made clear.
Neither is a lot of other stuff.
Anyway, having deceived his wife
for 15 years, he is stunned one day to discover that she might (might)
be thinking about deceiving him. So
he drops everything, world peace included, to check up on her.
From that point, things go from
bad to worse.
Of course, the real purpose of the movie is to maim, kill and blow up as
many designated bad guys as possible in as many different ways as
possible. For as long as
possible. Near the end, even the
die-hard action fans in the theater were saying, "enough,
already!" (Of course, none of
this stopped “Jeannie” and me from going to see it, so suit yourself.)
The only saving grace is
Tom Arnold
as the faithful sidekick, trying to be the voice of reason in the midst
of mayhem.
From my recent collection of video rentals.
1492
Conquest of Paradise.
Gerard Depardieu plays
Christopher
Columbus with a French accent. Great
attention was paid to detail, which makes it both fascinating and boring
at the same time. It's lavish and
ponderous and much too long (2 tapes).
Addams Family
Values.
This sequel is actually better
than the first movie. A "black
widow" gold digger goes after
Uncle Fester
with the intention of marrying him (for his money, of course) and then
killing him off during their honeymoon, something we are given to
understand she has done numerous times before.
Naturally, things did not go according to plan.
On their wedding night, she
tosses a hair dryer into Fester’s bath, electrocuting him.
Unfortunately for her, Fester
thinks this is foreplay. Of
course, the real star is little
Wednesday,
horrified at finding herself at a nauseatingly wholesome summer camp.
Love, as always,
Pete
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