October 28, 1994
Dear Everyone:
As we get closer to year’s end, these Letters are going to get short and
sweet. Things are getting
very busy.
In less than two short weeks, we began Training users in
Versatile.
Sure would be nice if we could be
prepared for it. We have people
flying in from as far away as the
Central Time Zone, expecting to find us knowing what we’re talking
about.
The User Guide is shaping up.
I'll be meeting with a guy from
CITC today. He helps people
design and write Guides. However,
he needs about 2 to 3 weeks "lead time" to take our draft and turn it
into a finished product. Since we
don't have that much time, and since some "Modules" are barely out of
the outline stage, we're keeping the Guide in "draft form" until after
the Training. Officially, this is
because we want to get feedback from the classes before finalizing it.
Unofficially, it's because the
Guides will still be warm from the copier when the attendees get them.
And we have managed to come
up with something in the way of a "logo" of sorts to use for the Guide
and flyers. “Mimi”, “Miranda” and
I typed a capital ‘V’ in
Microsoft Word
and proceeded to try every available font until we found one we all
liked. Then we blew it up to
page-size.
We've also come up with a mascot: The
VIC (short for Versatile
In Company).
VIC works all over the Company,
in the warehouse one day, downtown in RACS the next.
He is a very "versatile".
We use him for examples of how to
do this and that. So far, we
don't have a picture of VIC to use in the Guide.
None of us on the Team seemed to
be very artistic. I'm hoping
“Jeannie” can draw something for me this weekend.
Otherwise, VIC is going to look
an awful lot like “Mimi's” dog.
Movies…
Saw
Robert
Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters last Saturday.
You will notice the author’s name in front of the title, ala
Stephen King.
This is the first of
Heinlein’s
dozens of
science fiction novels to be made into a movie.
The reason for the delay was Heinlein himself, who seems to have
kept a firm grip on the film rights of all of his books.
He passed away a couple of years ago; and his heirs didn’t waste
much time getting their names down on the dotted line.
(It takes about two years to get a film to the screen.)
This won't be a blockbuster. “Jeannie”
and I both figure it follows the book fairly closely.
It's probably been ten years
since the last time I read it. Aliens
land on Earth and immediately begin taking over humans, infiltrating
their central nervous systems. How
do you know who's "infected" and who isn't?
How to destroy the parasite
without killing the host? Sound
familiar?
The special effects aren't that much above what they were when
Star Trek "borrowed" the idea about 20 years ago.
The hero’s cute, though.
And
Donald
Sutherland holds his own easily enough.
Love, as always,
Pete
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