March 10, 1998
Dear Everyone:
The Library got “GILed” last weekend.
All in all, it went much better than we had feared it would.
The first good thing was getting the news that we (“Wilbur” and
I) wouldn’t need to be there on Saturday.
We had been expecting to take all of Saturday and Sunday to
complete the conversion to all new PC equipment.
Instead, our “Site Coordinator” found out that the new machines
wouldn’t be ready to deliver to the Library until Sunday morning.
This gave me Saturday to do the laundry, cleaning
and grocery shopping. A
supermarket nearby had announced a few weeks ago that they were
celebrating a “Grand Re-Opening” after a major renovation.
Coincidentally, a rival supermarket, on the other side of the
freeway, sent coupons in the mail to everyone living in my area.
The coupons were good for $10 off your grocery bill, provided you
used it during a particular week.
The coupon expired last Saturday. It was “shop Saturday or forget
the $10.”
So I went shopping.
There wasn’t anything I particularly needed; but I figured I
could stock up on a few items that would come in handy latter on.
$146 later (with that coupon and a few others, I’d chopped it
down from $163), I now have enough toilet paper and microwave popcorn to
last several months, with rationing.
And I definitely won’t need to shop this coming weekend, which is
when “Livermore” gets GILed.
The Library had about 12 PC’s to deal with.
“Livermore” will have about 30, so we need to apply the lessons
learned in the Library in order to cut down on the time we will need to
convert all 30 machines, hopefully in one day.
(The GIL team swears they can do all the PC’s on Saturday, giving
us Sunday to recover.)
We actually plan to begin Friday afternoon, with
the Blue Team going through the office area like a plague of really big
locusts who only eat PC’s.
In fact, they only eat PC’s that have pre-printed labels on them that
read “Remove -- Yes”. No
label, no one touches the machine.
So “Wilbur” and I will start by labeling everything in sight with
“Yes” or “No”, depending on whether we want them to remove the pathetic
old 486’s that were
state of the art three short years ago, or leave the slightly better
Pentiums that we can
use as “legacy PC’s” behind.
(A legacy PC is one you keep because it has some software or other
capability that the GIL machines don’t have.)
After removing the old PC’s, the Blue Team will set
out monitors, keyboards and mice; but no actual PC’s.
Kind of like the fake stuff you see in the furniture stores.
On Saturday, the Red Team will come through, attaching the actual
PC’s to the monitors, etc., and finish setting up the machines.
“Wilbur” and I will follow behind the Red Team,
adding finishing touches that will make the PC work best for whichever
individual will be using it.
For example, someone who uses
Versatile will
also get a special shortcut to attach and run
Versatile.
We’ll also be putting out step-by-step instructions for people to
use when they come in Monday morning.
Not that we won’t be doing a ton of hand-holding that first day
or two.
In other news...
My hair drier died suddenly this past week.
Luckily, I have a “spare”.
But I don’t much like it and a replacement will be needed.
After two whole weeks of No “Jeannie”, and some significant
specials going on at
Macy’s, I think this Sunday will see some significant shopping going
on.
Love, as always,
Pete
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