March 6, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Back in January, I received a summons for Jury Duty. At the time, I knew that there was a Terribly Important Project coming up in February, involving a Document Management System (DMS). I also knew that I would be involved in this Project. I further knew that this Terribly Important Project had a very special time-constraint and was scheduled to be completed no later than the end of February.
So I requested a postponement of the Jury Duty, specifically some time later in March.
Naturally, the Terribly Important Project, which was so time-critical, was immediately delayed. Something to do with contract negotiations with the vendor. Vendors love contracts as long as it’s their contract. That would be the License Agreement, written in legalese, in very small print, which you automatically agree to as soon as you open the package.
Vendors hate contracts when the Company’s IT legal beagles start rewriting them to protect the Company rather than the vendor. Hence, lots of back-and-forth haggling, dragging out the actual purchase process.
So the Terribly Important Project got dragged out and is only now starting to heat up. Lots of important stuff going on in the next few weeks.
Guess when my new Jury Duty Summons is for: Tomorrow. Naturally.
The Good News Is: It’s in Walnut Creek instead of Martinez. Walnut Creek is much closer to where I live.
The Bad News Is: It’s in Walnut Creek, which has even less available parking than Martinez.
The Really Good News Is: I don’t have to be there until 9:00 in the morning. This means I can get up and leave at the regular time, drive up to Walnut Creek, find one of the precious-few available parking spaces, and still have time for breakfast. There’s a restaurant right next to the courthouse (with “No courthouse parking” signs all over their tiny parking lot). In fact, I suspect the restaurant owes it’s survival to the very same courthouse and its lunchtime crowd of people who don’t dare give up their parking space once they’ve found it.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
In other news…
“Marshall” came up from Fresno last weekend. While he and “Jeannie” frolicked in San Francisco, I worked on “Jeannie’s” computer. The darned thing had developed a nasty habit of not turning on when you press the start button. Leaving it plugged in for several hours seemed to work for a while. But by the time I got it to my place, it was up to it’s old tricks.
Nothing seemed to work until I decided to try pulling the battery out and putting it back in. Pressed the start button and presto! It started right up like nothing had ever been wrong.
However, not trusting the little bug, we had planned on backing up all of “Jeannie’s” jobs to diskettes. This I accomplished in an hour, while the History Channel’s mini-series on Elizabeth I of England played in the background. I also copied the diskettes to the hard drive of my PC, so there would be two copies of each job. This turned out to be a good idea, because “Jeannie” reported that she couldn’t get it to start again on Monday. With the backups, she could borrow a friend’s computer, with the same program as hers, and still get some work done. She plans to take it to the computer doctor soon.
Before “Marshall” left for Fresno on Sunday, he treated “Jeannie” and me to a wonderful champagne brunch at a hotel in Lafayette. One of those all-you-can-eat of the much-higher-than-usual varieties. Excellent. And also the reason there’s no movie reviews this week.
Only 18 days left until the Academy Awards.
Love, as always,
Pete
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