December 6, 2000
Dear Everyone:
Just checked with CNN and it’s still official:
We still don’t know who the next
President will be. Not
that there’s any rush.
But we are a nation of people who yell at the
microwave oven to “go faster”.
A nation of people who regularly run red lights because they
can’t stand to wait 60 seconds.
People who squeeze past you on the right because they can fit
their SUV
into the bicycle lane, thereby creating their own personal “dedicated
right turn lane”. After all,
they shouldn’t have to wait for their turn at the intersection, should
they?
We expect instant results.
I once read an article that stated that the furniture chain, “Levitz”,
made money by granting instant gratification.
“See the sofa, get the sofa.”
No waiting six to eight weeks for the sofa.
Worry about how to pay for the sofa later.
Another article said that “…the average computer user gets
impatient after six seconds.”
And that was ten years ago, when computers were much slower than
today.
And yet, all these speed demons have to sit on
their hands and wait while a couple of judges in
Florida burn the
midnight oil, leafing through case law, hunting for a precedent, any
precedent, that will lead to the next President.
On the other hand, half the country didn’t even
slow down enough to bother to vote, so what do they care?
And the true speed demons have already “clicked on stop and gone
to another site”. They’ll
check back later at “whospresident.com” to find out what happened.
In other news…
“Jeannie” finally broke down and bought a new
computer. The hand-me-down
that I gave her gave up the ghost about the same time the
President-Go-Round got started.
She got a laptop that she can also use for her reporting, once
she gets the (frightfully expensive) special reporting software.
I expect to meet the new computer this weekend.
Also this weekend, if rumors be true, brother
“Richard” will breeze through the
Bay Area
as part of some business trip.
So naturally, the painter guy, who was supposed to paint
“Jeannie’s” townhouse last month, announced that he will be “available”
to paint this weekend.
Everything happens at once.
Same true for work.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on certain projects
that would get stalled because of something.
I could work on the billing system, except I hit a snag and had
to wait for someone to get back to me with some
Visual Basic
code. I could work on the
new upgrade to our software, except that they hadn’t shipped it just
yet. On the plus side, I did
get the
Information Protection Compliance Review completed, so that’s out of
my hair for a while.
Then, just this week, all the parts that I’d been
waiting for arrived at the same time.
Suddenly, I have LOTS of things to do and only nine working-days
left to this year (the curse of getting five weeks paid vacation).
Still, most of it can wait until next year.
No movies last weekend because “Jeannie” and I
spent most of Saturday trying to connect her friend’s new
DVD player to the TV
correctly (along with the
VCR
and separate audio system).
Then we couldn’t test the system because she didn’t have any DVD’s to
play yet. It’s always
something.
Love, as always,
Pete
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