December 7, 1995
Dear Everyone:
Only one more week
to go before I’m on Vacation for the rest of the year.
Time flies.
Last week, I took
the
Versatile
User Guide, all 230 pages of it, to the Copy Center to get 200 copies
made. Hopefully, I’ll start
sending the new Guides out to users today.
The plan is to have them all out by next week.
Mother and Dad will
be spending Christmas at my place this year.
And “Marshall” is invited to come up from
Fresno to
join us, of course. So that
makes the California Contingent:
“Marshall”, “Jeannie”, Mom, Dad and me.
Anyone who wants to send packages, I suggest you send them to my
office, where there is always someone there to receive either mail or
UPS, or
whatever. The address is:
XXXX Sierra Court
“Livermore”, CA
94568
Safety Stretching...
This is something
that was introduced at work last year in an effort to reduce On-The-Job
Injuries due to strained muscles and “repetitive
stress injuries” (RSI), from things like typing all day.
At “Livermore”, where some people are lifting boxes all the time,
this can be important.
“Robby” is our Safety Champion.
He leads Safety
Stretching each day at 7:30.
He also sets up lunch time programs like what to do to prepare for the
next earthquake. He has a
genius for scheduling these sessions on days that I’m going to be in my
other office in San
Francisco.
Back to Safety
Stretching. Basically this
means following “Robby” while he does shrugs, leg lifts, arms lifts,
etc., etc., etc. Pretty
boring after the first few times.
To make it more interesting, “Robby” employs the big-screen TV
and VCR that we have at
“Livermore”. (It was cheaper
to buy them than to rent them every time we had to show an educational
film.) He tapes things off
the Discovery
Channel,
National Geographic, and so on; edits them a bit, and shows one each
day during stretching.
It could be stand-up
comedy from HBO or a
retrospective of the
49ers.
Anything to keep people interested, or just not falling asleep.
Recently, it was the 49ers, who are celebrating some
kind of anniversary. They
showed TV coverage from nearly 30 years ago.
Nevertheless, the guys in the room quickly identified players who
retired before I started working.
This prompted a note from the one other woman in the room that
day: “Why is it men can
remember every muddy football player that ever was, but can’t remember
their password or where they left the car keys?”
Must be a “guy thing”.
Personally, I have
two things against Stretching.
Number Two: I don’t
think you should be forced to exercise while wearing work clothes.
Suits aren’t designed for it and you can’t take a shower
afterward. The company gets
out of the “forced” part by making Stretching purely voluntary.
However, volunteering is mandatory.
Number One:
7:30 is too early in the morning to be doing
anything.
Movies...
Saw
Nick of
Time because “Jeannie” doesn’t like
Michael Douglas,
who plays the president in
The
American President.
Current plan is to go and see that when Mother is visiting.
In retrospect, “Jeannie” said maybe it was a mistake not to go to
the Douglas movie.
Nick of Time is about an ordinary guy who suddenly finds himself
caught up in an assassination plot, much against his will.
The gimmick is that the movie takes up just as much time as this
guy has to kill the target and rescue his little daughter.
It’s not terribly good.
What’s interesting
about it, and The American
President, is that these two films are being accused of representing
a “backlash” against the
Republican Party. The
guy in Nick of Time is
supposed to get rid of a “conservative” governor who has turned too
liberal for some people’s taste.
This, according to some critics, is Hollywood’s answer to all the
Republicans who got voted into office last year.
If you’re having
trouble following the logic of this, it’s because there isn’t any logic
involved. Do these people
really think that the guys in the front office said to themselves, “Hey!
A lot of Republicans got into office.
Guess we’d better make a ‘backlash’ film and, while we’re at it,
let’s hope it makes a few bucks, right?”
Not! What happened is
more like, someone pitched the idea, “Let’s do a remake of
Hitchcock’s
The Man
Who Knew Too Much, about an ordinary guy getting caught up in
some political intrigue.
And, since James
Stewart is a little too old to play the part this time, let’s use
Johnny Depp.
He has a good Q rating with females aged 14 - 29.”
These people were looking to make
money.
Too bad they didn’t
make a better movie. Wait
for the video.
Love, as always,
Pete
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