February 28, 2001
Dear Everyone:
For about the past six weeks I have been working on a project for a customer in “Martinez”. She has an old system (I remember when they got that system) and wanted to transfer some data from the old system to our Records Management system. That way, her people wouldn’t have to look in two places for things all the time.
There was a slight hitch in that she wanted this data added to the Extended Notes field on certain boxes, but didn’t want to lose what was already in the Extended Notes, if anything. The vendor sent me a “patch” that allows me to “append” data during the import process. The only catch is that this “patch” exists only on my PC, since that’s where I was logged on at the time that I got the “patch”.
The other catch is that all of this “appending” can only be done when no one else is in the system, i.e., on weekends. On the first weekend that I tried “appending”, I ran into a problem because of the size of the data file (we’re talking about 20,000+ records). On contacting the vendor the next Monday, their advice was, “smaller data files”.
So, during the regular week, I would work on preparing the data, creating small, easily digested files, getting everything ready to go by Friday. Then, on Friday afternoon, I would disassemble my PC, wheel it down to the conference room and reassemble it there (you’ll see why in a moment).
The weekends could be variable. By that I mean, sometimes I would spend Saturday with “Jeannie” and her new computer and then Sunday at work. Other times, I would spend Saturday at work and join “Jeannie” on Sunday. Either way, I wasn’t getting much laundry done on the weekends. Ditto grocery shopping.
Work in the office went something like this:
Stop for McBreakfast on the way in.
Start computer and log in.
Enter the parameters for the first file and start the import process.
Eat McBreakfast while watching The West Wing on tape.
When first file completes, make a note and start the next file.
Continue watching The West Wing.
When the second file completes, make a note and start the next file.
Continue watching The West Wing. When The West Wing completes, start watching Law & Order.
Continue importing files and watching deferred viewing until it’s time to go out and get some McLunch. Return and repeat until I get tired enough to go home, or actually run out of deferred viewing.
Now you know why I work in the conference room. That’s where the big-screen monitor and VCR are located. I figure I’d be watching deferred viewing anyway and might as well do it there as in the living room. This way, I was getting something useful done at the same time. Of course, if I were in the living room, I could be doing laundry at the same time, which is also a useful thing to do.
Also, this is why we haven’t been to many movies since the start of the year.
The Good News is: I finished that particular customer’s files this week. The Bad News is: I just got handed a similar, albeit smaller, project. The other Bad News is: The February Sweeps just ended, so I’ll have less deferred viewing to take into the office with me.
But then there’s always the fallback position: Unread books.
Love, as always,
Pete
PS. On
the
Energy Front, I now have battalions of candles and a squad of oil
lamps scattered around the place.
I’ll be interested to see on my next bill if it all makes much of
a difference.
P
| Previous | Next |