April 18, 1997
Dear Everyone:
This week’s Letter is a tad late because I usually
write the Letter on Wednesday evening; but this Wednesday, I didn’t get
out of the office until 8:00 pm, leaving me too tired and too late to do
much more than fall into bed.
So why was I at work until 8:00 pm?
ARMA, of course.
ARMA is the Association of Records Managers and
Administrators. The San
Francisco chapter is called the Golden
Gate Chapter. However,
“San Francisco” really means everything between
Sacramento
and Santa
Clara. That’s a lot of
territory, especially when you’re trying to get people to come to
monthly meetings.
When I started as Vice President of Pufflicity, I
got a list of members, counted how many were listed as being in each
city and fed the numbers to an
Excel
spreadsheet.
Ran a quick chart and, presto!
Roughly half the members were in
San Francisco
and the
Peninsula and half were in
Oakland
and the rest of the
East Bay,
with a smidgen in outlying areas like
Napa
and
Sonoma.
So the Board of Directors decided to take a swipe
at starting an East Bay Chapter.
I volunteered the “Livermore” facility because it has a nice big
conference room and you need at least 20 current ARMA members to start a
new chapter. (Also, we have
6 ARMA members at Company in “Livermore”.
Only 14 to go.)
We sent out an announcement to all chapter members
plus all members of the Silicon Valley
Chapter, since many of their people actually live closer to the East
Bay than they do to Santa Clara.
We even got a nice big veggie tray for people to munch on and
brought soft drinks from the refrigerator.
Maybe we should have gone with
Baskin-Robbins Ice
Cream instead of the veggies because a grand total of 14 people
showed up by 6:30 Wednesday night for the meeting.
Even three of the Company people
stayed away for various reasons, and they knew there’d be free food.
The rules say 20 people.
However, we
Records Managers
are nothing if not inventive.
In fact, we can be downright crafty.
The rule actually says 20 members have to
sign the Charter and appoint
a Steering Committee. It
doesn’t say all 20 signatures have to be written during the initial
meeting.
We started with the 14 attendees.
I knew I could strong arm at least 3-5 more Company members in
“Livermore” and “Pleasant Hill” into signing.
And there were 3 additional signatures available in Company Park.
Also, the people from
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were sure they could pick up
some more.
So we went ahead and brow beat four people into
being the Steering Committee.
This consists of a Chairman, Vice-chairman, Secretary and
Treasurer. Someone actually
volunteered to be Secretary.
I had already been drafted for vice-chairman, having vehemently
declined the honor of chairman (chairperson).
All that was left was to find a name for the new
chapter. YYou’d think “East
Bay Chapter” would be obvious, but ARMA International, situated in
Prairie
Village, Kansas, doesn’t allow “vague, regional-sounding names”.
And they have a point in that, while we know what “East Bay”
means, someone in Chicago would probably be a little unclear as to which
bay we might be referring to.
I resisted the temptation to suggest we call it the
“Company Chapter” and we settled on “Mt
Diablo”, since that’s the largest landmark in the area.
Of course it means “Devil’s Mountain” in Spanish, but we figured
nobody in Prairie Village, Kansas would pick up on that.
OK, you’ve hung on this long.span style="mso-spacerun:yes">
Movie review.
Grosse Pointe
Blank, starring
John Cusack and everyone in his family.
Half the people in the credits seem to have the last name of
Cusack. We even suspect the
adorable baby (who had no real reason to be in the movie) of being a
Cusack. Those people who
didn’t have the same last name as the star/writer/producer had the same
last name as the director.
Trouble is, the family that works together sometimes loses its
objectivity.
Martin Blank is a professional killer who hasn’t
been having a good time lately.
He’s in therapy.
Problem is, since he convinced his therapist that he really does kill
people for a living, the therapist is terrified of him.
This interferes with their working relationship.
Blank is also being pressured to join a union (a
union?), which he doesn’t want to do.
He decides to go to a high school class reunion in
Grosse Pointe
at the same time that someone else is trying to kill him.
This also presents problems.
He meets an old flame.
He has enough angst for three movies.
As a comedy, it does have its moments, but the
picture is uneven. It’s
confusing, possibly because key scenes were left on the cutting room
floor. My vote:
Wait for the video.
That way, you can go back to the beginning afterward and try to figure
out what was going on.
For now, better you should go back to The Saint and count how many times
Val Kilmer takes off his shirt.
Love, as always,
Pete
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