September 22, 1995
Dear Everyone:
Once again, I have
survived the annual Spectrum Users Conference in “Cincinnati”.
Once again, I saw virtually nothing of “Cincinnati”.
The airport, the hotel, the shopping mall next to the hotel, and
a little bit of “Cincinnati” on our way to the traditional “semi-formal
banquet to be held in an undisclosed location”.
Each year, “Brady”,
the company that makes and supports Spectrum, holds a banquet on the
last evening of the conference.
Each year, they give out an invitation that includes a “clue” as
to what the “undisclosed location” might be and everyone tries to guess
what it will be ahead of time.
One year, the clue was something about dinosaurs and, sure
enough, the dinner was held at the Natural Museum.
Everybody guessed that one.
Since then, they’ve tried to make the clues a little more
cryptic.
This year, the clue
was “dinner with Lady Luck”.
That sparked a lot of speculation about gambling boats on the river or
lake, dinner at the race track, etc.
However, it turned out that “Lady Luck” was a red herring.
Dinner took place at “Cincinnati’s” Botanical Garden, about a
half-hour’s bus ride from the hotel.
So the clue had nothing to do with the location.
Instead, it referred to the gaming tables the “Brady” had hired
as the after-dinner entertainment.
They had roulette,
craps, “21”, and a wheel-of-fortune, complete with table operators and
lots of chips. The company
comptroller, described by the president as “a man not afraid to be
unpopular”, since he’s the one who says no to your pet project because
it costs too much, handed out envelopes with $2000 in play money.
If you lost all your money before the evening was over, you could
go back to him and, if you could present a “reasonable justification”,
he would dole out more money.
Remembering the
roulette set that “Byron” got one Christmas when we were kids, I headed
that way. The first bus back
to the hotel would leave at 10:45, with a second running at 11:45.
I figured, “Lose $2000 in just over 30 minutes?
No problem!” It
worked out to just $66.66 per minute.
The table operator assigned colored chips to each player so he
could keep them straight. I
got purple. Each chip was
worth “$100”, so I bought ten with my first $1000 bill.
Kept the second in reserve, just in case.
I quickly discovered
that “Byron’s” set must have been the economy model.
This set had a lot more than 36 numbers, 0 & 00 and red-or-black,
odd-or-even. You could also
bet on strips of numbers at 2-to-1 odds.
For instance, if you bet on the left strip, and the number that
came up was on the left side of the board, you won two chips for every
one that you bet.
I figured, “I’ve got
to get rid of these chips fast,” so I bet four at a time.
Unfortunately, I kept winning.
I put four chips out and eight come back; now I’ve got 12.
Clearly, my plan was not working.
I checked my watch.
10:35 and I’m stuck with $3200.
In fact, it seemed that whenever I bet just one chip on something
(odd, for instance), I lost it.
But if I bet eight chips, I won.
Heaven help me if I put the whole pile on one number at 36-to-1.
I’d break the bank and
never get home.
At 10:46, I “cashed”
my pretty purple chips in for “house” chips that you could take from one
table to another. I went to
the card table where “Wilbur” was teaching “Dean” the finer points of
playing “21”. I handed
“Wilbur” the second $1000 bill and dumped all the chips on “Dean” and
headed for the bus. After
all, winning isn’t everything and I had to be up, dressed, packed and
checked out by 7:30 the next morning.
I should be that
lucky in a real casino.
Got back from the
Spectrum Conference on Saturday, did laundry on Sunday and started the
Records Management Conference in San Francisco on Monday.
At the end of the first day, RACS hosted a “pre-dinner
get-together” on the 35th floor of 575 “Mirable”, which has a
very nice view of the Bay.
Then “Murray” took a whole bunch of us to a restaurant in
North
Beach. He suggested
that, since it was such a nice evening, and since it would be difficult
to fit 22 people into a cab, that we walk to the restaurant.
He pointed out that they would get to see a part of San Francisco
that they probably would never see otherwise.
Everyone agreed, including people who never heard the suggestion,
but just followed the crowd.
So off we set, from
“Mirabel” to “Beelzebub” to Montgomery to Columbus to Stockton, a mere
13 large city blocks. I
stayed near the back of the herd to watch for stragglers and to keep
company with a delegate from Bakersfield, a woman that I had worked with
many years ago in Company USA.
Since she outweighed me by a good 50 pounds, I was a little
concerned about her getting to the restaurant OK.
Granted, it was only about a mile and only gradually uphill, but
she had some trouble with it.
I told her if she just pushed on and made it to dinner, I’d
arrange for a button she could wear that would read:
“I SURVIVED THE 1995 RECORDS MANAGEMENT DEATH MARCH”.
And we did.
Survived the conference, too.
Love, as always,
Pete
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