January 14, 1999
Dear Everyone:
Still working on finding a replacement for
Versatile.
Each vendor provided me with a list of from three to thirty of
their customers who would be willing to talk about the product and how
well they like it.
Yesterday, I called many people and actually talked
to about four living persons (the rest were voice mail or other message
options). I had a set of 15
stock questions to ask each person about the software product they were
using. Each conversation ran
about a half-hour, but boiled down to:
Question:
“How do you like (fill in the blank)?”
Answer:
“We love it!”
It’s not like the vendors were going to give me the
names of people they were having problems with.
In fact, no one has called me to ask how well we like
Versatile in over a year.
So it’s back to comparing criteria and viewing the video tapes (again!) and doing spreadsheets based on arbitrary sets of nonexistent data to determine what the overall cost of each product would be if we had X number of end users and Y number of all-day heavy users. All of which is turning my brain into peanut brittle. I got a funny look from one of the supervisors when I told him one reason we have ants in the kitchen is because people keep dropping half-full software cans into the recycling bin.
After a few minutes, we decided that what I’d really meant to say was “soft drink cans”.
On the plus side, I’m getting home about an hour
earlier these days because I went back to the standard 8-hour/day, 5-day
work week schedule. I
decided that, while it was nice having every other Monday off, the
longer workdays were taking their toll.
There’s too much to do in the evenings that can’t be put off
until a week from next Monday.
This was creating stress as I tried to get too much done before
bedtime.
Add to that the fact that, by the Friday afternoon
of the second week, I was pretty much a
zombie, and a standard
work week started to look more and more inviting.
You can only change your schedule at the beginning of the year,
so I’ve been waiting for January to put the change into effect.
So now I’m “stuck” with this schedule until next year.
We’ll see how it goes.
Movies…
I forgot to include
Patch
Adams in last week’s list.
This probably gives a pretty good idea of just how memorable it
is. Actually, it was quite
enjoyable.
Robin Williams
brings his own special touch to a story about the proponent of the
“touchy-feelly school of medicine”.
He wants to help people and decides the way to do it is by
becoming a doctor. In doing
so, he manages to confront just about every authority figure in the
school and the hospital. But
he also makes the patients laugh and feel better.
That’s the message:
Laughter is the best medicine.
I was surprised at the number of high-caliber actors in the cast,
some in what amounted to almost bit parts.
Nevertheless, this one can wait until it comes out on video.
Shakespeare in Love.
“Jeannie” and I have been so waiting for this one to come into general
release. It’s marvelous.
Really gives you a feel for what it must have been like living in
Elizabethan
England (i.e., less than clean).
However, it’s very much a movie for the ‘90’s.
Example: “Follow that
cab!” (or, in this case, a
boat).
This resembles a biography of
Shakespeare
in much the same way as
Danny Kaye’s
musical
“resembled” the life of
Hans
Christian Andersen. It’s
more a “what if…” about how
Romeo and Juliet
might have come to be written.
Joseph
Fiennes (Elizabeth)
plays Shakespeare as poet, playwright and occasional track star (running
either after or away from someone).
Historical figures, such as
Christopher
(“Kit”) Marlowe and
Queen
Elizabeth, are mixed with fictional characters like the
Lady Viola and
a sort of Renaissance
loan shark. If all you know
is that Shakespeare wrote a play called
Romeo and Juliet, you know enough to enjoy the movie.
If, like “Jeannie” and myself, you know more, you’ll just laugh
in more places.
It’s beautifully put together.
Go and enjoy yourself.
Love, as always,
Pete
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