February 27, 1997
Dear Everyone:
“Cleaning the house while the kids are still
growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” --
Phyllis Diller
We are gradually clearing up all the technical
problems we’ve been having at work, but are far from normal.
In fact, we’ll never be “normal” again because when things were
“normal”, seven people who are now in “Livermore” were still in San
Francisco and another seven were in Company Park.
So instead of trying to get “back to normal”, I’m concentrating
on moving “forward to better than we are now.”
We call that “process improvement.”
And things will never be perfect, just as they
never were before. There
were always little things that needed taking care of (and always will
be). It’s kind of like
snowflakes. A few here and
there are no problem; they quickly melt away.
But when millions of them land in the same place at the same
time, it’s called an
avalanche. That’s pretty
much what happened to us.
Nothing big, just tons and tons of little problems.
Someone can’t get into email.
Or Lotus Notes
isn’t working quite right.
Taken by themselves, you can clear them up in a day or so.
But multiply a dozen little problems by 30 computers and you can
see why my head hurts at the end of the day.
You see, we told everyone
to not bother the technical support guys.
If you have a problem, bring it to my attention.
I’ll add it to the list (five pages long and growing steadily)
and prioritize for the support guys.
And boy, do they bring things to my attention!
Bottom line: There’s
30 of them and 1 of me.
Nevertheless, I’ve actually started going home almost on time again.
There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.
(Let’s hope it’s not an approaching train.)
Next big project:
Straighten out the printer situation.
In other news...
“Jeannie” being sick, we didn’t go to any movies
this weekend. Instead, I got
domestic and concocted a huge vat of spaghetti sauce.
I now have a six-month supply of sauce in freezer bags, some of
which I’ll take over to “Jeannie’s”.
I also rotated my files.
This is not unlike rotating the tires on your car.
Last year’s files (1996) get moved from the right desk drawer to
the left desk drawer.
(Actually, you just pull the drawers out and move them.)
The files from the year before (1995) go into a box.
The files from the year before
that (1994) go into a
different box. These records
are removed from the folders and the now empty folders go into the right
desk drawer and become this year’s files.
Records management made simple.
This takes me one step closer to doing my
t-a-x-e-s. (“Jeannie”
doesn’t allow me to say that word out loud.)
Love, as always,
Pete
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