March 27, 1997
Dear Everyone:
Things have finally begun to settle down at work.
We’re getting one or two problems cropping up per day, which is
still a little higher than normal, but far less than the one to two
dozen we were getting before.
I can actually work at my desk for an hour or two without being
interrupted by things like:
“I tried to retrieve something and I got some message...”
The only way to diagnose a problem like that is to pop up
immediately and say, “Show me.”
Up until now I’ve had to say something more like, “Take a
number.”
I even took the time to go to a half-day class this
week on how to use
search engines on the
World Wide Web.
I’ve done a little amateur searching from time to time, but this
class provided a lot more information on which engines to use and why.
For those of you who are WWW illiterate, a search engine is a
program that collects data about all the thousands of Web pages out
there and indexes the information.
Sort of like a card catalog at the library, but a lot more
flexible.
I tried running a search on “OSF” (short for
Oregon Shakespeare Festival) and almost immediately found a glowing
description of the Allen Pavilion construction by the company that
designed and built it. Since
it included a pointer to the Festival, it took only one extra click to
get to the Festival’s official Web Page.
(http://www.mind.net/osf/)
Now you may be wondering who sets up these engines
and why, and who pays for them?
The answer is entrepreneurs set them up to lure in advertisers
and the advertisements pay for the hardware and software necessary to
run them. Since the
“ratings” are based on the number of times the engines are used, they’re
constantly improving them to get better ratings.
Don’t you just love the free enterprise system?
And who’s using these engines?
Well, Mother and Dad just bought themselves a computer.
They’ll be surfing the Net in no time.
Back in 1990, when
Alvin Toffler
published
Powershift, he predicted that the people who had computers
would, however inadvertently, force the people who didn’t have computers
to get them. Last weekend, I
signed a petition that included a space for my email address along with
the more usual information.
And now that the Great
America Online Snafu
(GAOLS) is clearing up, I’ll be checking my email more frequently than
once a week.
In other news...
Treated myself to an itty-bitty, baby boom box for
my cubicle. It’s not much
larger than “Jeannie’s” Big White Kitty and plays CD’s (quietly, of
course, since we’re all together in what has already been dubbed
“Cubicleville”.) A radio is
out of the question since I’m at the very center of the overall
warehouse. I’ve already
compiled an impressive stack of CD’s, mostly classics and instrumentals
since vocalists can be distracting when you’re working.
I do have one by Clannad
(Christmas present from “Jeannie”) which, technically is a vocal group;
but since 90% of what they perform is in
Gaelic, the
words don’t really register.
Couldn’t find a movie we wanted to see last
weekend, so I went out and rented
Nell,
which I missed when it first came out.
Liam Neeson
plays a country doctor who discovers a woman (Jody
Foster) whose mother raised her completely alone in the woods.
She even appears to have her own language which the doctor must
figure out in order to help her.
He gradually earns her trust and introduces her to popcorn.
Strong performances all around.
Stayed up late last Monday watching the
Academy Awards
with “Jeannie”. We kept
score and made up lists such as “Who
we thought should win,” and
“What in heaven’s name convinced her that wearing
that was a good idea?”
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |