July 30, 1998
Dear Everyone:
The Weekly Letter isn’t the only thing I write
every week. There’s also the
Versatile
Weekly Update, although it generally isn’t as entertaining as I hope the
Letters are.
Versatile is at work and thus,
needs to be more serious and business-like.
Back in October of 1994, when we were getting ready
to convert to Versatile, my
boss thought it would be a good idea if I sent out regular updates to
let people know what was going on.
Originally, this was the Records Centers and a few other key
people. I created a
distribution list and sent a Note out each week, telling folks how
things were going and how close we were to the actual conversion.
After the conversion, as more and more people got
into using Versatile, the
Weekly Update became a way of making sure that people knew the rules
(“please, please,
please fill in all required fields”) and letting them know when
new report formats were available.
It was also a way to answer questions.
I’d get a phone call, or an email, from someone wanting to know
how to do “X” in Versatile.
I’d repeat the question and answer in the next Weekly Update
since there was a good possibility that if one person had forgotten to
look in the User Guide, others had, too.
In fact, more than one person has told me that they print each
week’s Note and keep them in a binder for easy reference.
Over time, as things settled down, and
Versatile was more or less in a general maintenance kind of mode,
there were fewer and fewer things to say in the Weekly Update.
Don’t tell anyone, but sometimes I would create a new report
format just so I’d have something to say that week.
And then something disastrous would happen, like
the “Crash of ‘98” last January when the
Versatile server went down,
taking the system with it.
Then the Updates were much more frequent than “weekly”.
Sometimes they were “hourly”.
Now, things are much quieter again and the process
goes something like this:
1.
Rack brains for something new to say
about Versatile
2.
Compose Note
3.
Save Note as a separate file for the Web
Site
4.
Send out Note
5.
Reformat saved file for the
Intranet and copy it
to the Intranet server
That’s right, we have nearly four years’ worth of
Weekly Updates available on our Web Site for anyone who’s crazy enough
to want to go back and review the Evolution of
Versatile at Company.
Now there is a new project going on at work.
Luckily, I haven’t had too much to do with it, up until now.
Later, I’ll have a lot more to do with it, since it involves the
data in Versatile. The project
is currently in the beginning stage and part of “Murray’s” business trip
to Texas and Louisiana last month involved getting buy-in from some key
players to go ahead with it.
He got the buy-in, but with strings, of course.
One of those strings was that the people wanted “regular updates
on the project status, like those
Versatile Updates that 'A' sends out each week.”
Fortunately for me, I’m not going to be the person sending the
updates on the new project.
And fortunately for the person who is, she only has to do it monthly,
rather than weekly. But it
seems I’ve become a “best
practice” without even knowing about it.
Movies...
“Jeannie” wasn’t up to seeing
Saving
Private Ryan yet, so we went to see
Small
Soldiers instead.
Interestingly, they are both produced by the same company.
In Small Soldiers, a
little toy company gets gobbled up by a big conglomerate and, before you
know it, someone has mixed military computer chips with kids toys.
Mayhem ensues.
You see, the little, toy soldiers have
artificial intelligence.
And they don’t know that they are toys.
As far as they’re concerned, they’re soldiers and they have a war
to fight. The toy company
thoughtfully provided the opposition in the form of “alien invaders” who
also don’t know that they are just supposed to be “action figures”
(emphasis on the word “action”).
Guess what they want to do.
The soldiers are led by
Tommy Lee Jones,
while the original
Dirty
Dozen provide most of the additional voices.
All the action takes place in part of Small Town, America.
The next door neighbor is played by the late
Phil Hartman.
This being the last movie he made before Something Terrible
Happened at home, the producers evidently grabbed the film right before
it was supposed to go out for distribution and added a touching tribute
after the closing credits.
It’s a pleasant piece of summertime fluff, good for
sitting in the air-conditioned dark for a few hours on a hot afternoon.
If you do go, stay through the closing credits.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |