May 19, 1995
Dear Everyone:
What “Jeannie” got for Muffy and Hoppy turned out to be a pair of small
wooden chairs. Now Muffy and
Hoppy can sit on the coffee table and watch TV with “Jeannie”.
Soon, no doubt, they'll be
squabbling over who controls the remote.
“Jeannie” says to stop implying that she's too cheap to buy her own
phone. She'll do it as soon as
she gets around to it. If I had
to wait until I got "A Round To-It", I'd never get anything done.
In honor of Mother's
Day, “Jeannie's” two cats got into competition to see which could
come up with the best present. One
brought in a dead bird, lovingly placed on the pillow, where she'd see
it first thing when she woke up. Fortunately
for “Jeannie”, she'd taken her contact lenses out and didn't quite
realize what the dark blob was until she'd put her glasses on, by which
time she was reasonably awake. The
second gift was a dead mouse on the patio, which she discovered when she
threw present number one out the window, closely followed by the cat.
Like Garfield says,
"When a cat brings you a dead, smelly thing, it's a gesture of
affection, you twit."
Meanwhile, at the office…
One of our strategies for this year is to get all of the employees in
Information Management Services (IMS) up to a basic Technical Skills
level by the end of the year. (IMS
consists of FAST, RACS, “Livermore” and at the Library, three of which I
support, systems-wise. The
Library will come in later, when
Versatile
takes up less of my time.)
All of the IMS Supervisors got together and came up with a list of
skills such as knowing how to use standard software like
Windows,
Word and
Excel.
And how to use more specialized
software like Spectrum and
Versatile,
if that's part of your job. How
to log on and off the various Servers. How
to change your password(s). How
to use e-mail.
Believe me, if everyone learned how to do the above, I'd be answering
the same questions a lot less often. These
are just the basics, what “Wilbur” calls "the Bonehead Stuff."
From there, the Supervisors started getting other ideas, like:
·
Everyone should know how
to add paper to a copier.
·
Everyone should know how
to clear paper jams in both copiers and printers.
·
Everyone should know how
to type (40 words per
minute was "dummied down" to 25 wpm).
·
Everyone should know how
to make coffee.
“Murray” tried to sneak that last one in, but I understand the other
Supervisors kicked it off the list. I
contended that, if you had to know how to make coffee, you should know
how to make tea, too.
In “Livermore”, we divvied up the list and assigned a Skills Set to each
person. It's their job to learn
their own "discipline" by July 1st, then start testing the
other personnel. Anyone who can't
pass the test has until December to learn whatever they need to know,
then try again.
“Ford” and I are sharing the basic Workstation Skills, which include
knowing how to turn your PC on and off (don't laugh) and how to do
simple diagnostics if something isn't quite right.
Like, "Are you sure it's plugged
in?". Among other things, this
means I need to draw some diagrams of how a PC goes together and how the
Local Area Network works. We also
got the typing part, so I have a "Typing Tutor" software to check out
and use to set up a "standard" test.
As the Business Systems Analyst, I already know at least 90% of all this
(she smugly said to herself). Naturally,
I'll still go through the motions of taking each of the test, so as not
to take unfair advantage of my co-workers.
Of course, if they hadn't thrown out How to Make Coffee, I might be
looking for a new job come next January.
The last time I tried making coffee, I nearly killed someone.
Are you
sure it isn't three scoops of
coffee grounds for every one cup of water?
Movie review…
(Deep breath)
The
Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain.
Pleasant family fare, about the
people in a Welsh
village who, upon being told by a pair of
Englishman that their
"mountain" is merely a "hill", decide to take matters into their own
hands. Much of the "plot" centers
around keeping the two English cartographers (sent by the War Department
to map the local area during World War I) in the village, and in the
dark, while everyone works on adding to the height of the mountain.
Hugh Grant plays
the younger Englishman, while the older Englishman quaffs gin and
worries about the possibility of a "native uprising" ala Eastern India.
Grant is not quite as charming as
in
Four
Weddings and a Funeral, but still plays the quintessential
Englishman, full of "rather", "quite right", "as you say" and all the
other ways that the English have for saying nothing.
All very harmless.
Not even any sex, unless you
count a certain character who's always referred to as "Morgan, the
Goat".
Love, as always,
Pete
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