January 13, 2000
Dear Everyone:
“Jeannie” is, once again, without
email.
This time, AOL
won’t open. Instead the
system displays one of those annoying “Illegal operation” messages which
were intended to replace those annoying “General Fault Protection”
messages that we used to get before
Windows 95.
In other words, her AOL file has become corrupted.
Luckily, AOL
CD’s are
everywhere. I had a coworker
who probably had dozens of them (since I gave him all the ones that I
got in the mail), along with lots of other “free” software applications.
He used them to decorate the walls of his cubicle.
When he left, he turned them all over to another coworker who
doesn’t have that much space on his walls, as they are devoted to
World War II
fighter planes.
So there’s a stack about a foot high sitting on his desk.
It’s simply a matter of going through the stack until the right
version reveals itself.
(This is also how I got
Juno
installed on “Jeannie’s” PC.
But even “Jeannie” admits that, around here, Juno is slower than
molasses in January.)
Hopefully, I will have time this weekend to take
the CD up to “Jeannie’s” place and reinstall AOL.
I say “hopefully” because I am spending most of my weekends in
the office. We are in full
Destruction Mode as part of a larger project that involves a company in
Boston. Last year, we sent
them a bunch of data. They
clean up the data and send it back (this is the short version; there’s a
lot more detail that you don’t want to know about).
Lately, there’s been a lot of push from management
to finish this project, or at least, this phase of the project.
So pressure is being placed on the vendor to get the data files
back to me as quickly as possible.
Then I need to import the data into our system.
Problem is: If you try to
import while other people are in the system, you tend to get “unknown”
errors. So I wait until the
weekend when everyone else is shut out.
I import the data, which can take anywhere from a
few minutes to several hours.
Then I make a special backup copy (just in case) before setting
the system to index the changes I’ve made.
This pretty much takes care of Saturday.
On Sunday, I go back to the office (I’m on a
first-name basis with most of the security personnel who work weekend
shifts) to make sure the indexing completed.
If everything looks OK, I start a report running to a file.
That’s it for Sunday.
I have the rest of the day to meet with “Jeannie”, do laundry, shopping,
cleaning, pay bills, take out the garbage, etc.
This sort of explains why we haven’t been to the
movies together in quite a while.
Nevertheless…movies…(saved over from last week)
The Green
Mile is a heartwarming story about a bunch of guards and inmates
on Death Row in a
Louisiana state
prison. It is based on a
novel by Steven King,
who appears to have an unhealthy fascination with life (and death) in
small southern prisons (Shawshank
Redemption).
This film is also set in the 1940’s, with
Tom Hanks as the
lead guard. Various
prisoners come and go, some despicable and some just plain unlucky.
Hanks tries to treat them all with fairness and dignity; but he’s
hampered by a sadistic young guard who delights in tormenting the
prisoners. Hanks would like
to get rid of the guard, but he has two problems:
The guy has political connections.
And the only other job he’s interested in transferring to is as a
guard at a mental institute.
Seems he has a suspicion that picking on mental patients might be even
more fun than Death Row.
A newly arrived prisoner is a gentle giant of a man
whose only question upon arrival is to ask if they leave the light on at
night, because he gets scared in the dark.
It’s obvious from the beginning that he didn’t kill anyone and
obvious a little further down the road that he has something special to
boot, possibly the power to bring back life, or restore the sick to
health. Hanks and his men
decide to put this power to good use.
But it will cost them in the end.
The Talented
Mr. Ripley is the sort of movie that
Alfred Hitchcock
would have made. In fact, I
believe his Strangers on
a Train was based on another
novel by the same
author.
Set mostly in Italy
in the 1950’s, it tells the story of
Tom Ripley, a
chameleon, who
changes almost effortlessly to suit his surroundings.
One day, he’s an opera singer’s accompanist, the next, a wash
room attendant.
Tom is also very impulsive and doesn’t look too far
into the future. When a
wealthy shipping magnate, mistaking Tom for one of his son’s classmates,
asks Tom to travel to Italy (all expenses paid, of course) to convince
the son, Dickie, to return
home to America, Tom leaps at the opportunity.
And is soon passing himself off as Dickie.
When Tom actually meets Dickie, the two quickly
become friends and Tom slips easily into Dickie’s world of rich, young
expatriate Americans and Britons.
However, some of these people know Tom as “Tom” and some know him
as “Dickie” and they all know each other.
Things start to get complicated.
Unfortunately, Dickie soon tires of his new toy and
picks a particularly inappropriate place to tell Tom off.
Tom gets impulsive again and things get even more complicated.
Every time Tom thinks he’s pulled it off, there’s another twist
and the web becomes tighter.
The cast is superb, the scenery is delightful
(especially if you’ve recently been to Italy and can whisper, “I’ve been
there!” frequently), and the story is wonderfully convoluted.
Definitely worth the matinee price.
Love, as always,
Pete
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