October 2, 2002
Dear Everyone:
Last week’s trip to
The conference, Managing Electronic Records, was quite a ground-breaker when they started it ten years ago. Then it was state of the art. Or, as “Marshall” puts it, “… on the bleeding edge of technology.” Today, it’s still good, but there’s a lot more preaching to the choir. Yes, all of us in records management realize that keeping track of all the electronic documents sitting out on people’s hard drives (actually, their machines’ hard drives) is an enormous problem.
So far, we seem to be in agreement that no one has yet to find the silver bullet that will solve the problem for everyone. Bits here, pieces there; but no perfect solution anywhere. Like “Richard” says, “It rhymes, so it must be true.” And, in the meantime, legions of lawyers looking for that “smoking” email that will make, or break, their case.
As for
And the food was your typical hotel food. ‘Nuff said.
However, I was informed before I left for the
conference that, if you’re going to visit
And a group of us went and, oh my, that prime rib simply melted in your mouth. Now, technically, prime rib is not a steak, but it was red meat and it was great.
We also saw the
Chicago Yacht
Club, where the conference hosts held a reception on the second
night. Other than that, the
hotel and the airport were as much of
Meanwhile, back at the office…
I still have to write a Trip Report about the conference, of course. And there’s a bunch of data that someone dumped onto some CD’s. Someone needs to reformat this data so that it can be imported into a repository. Guess who got volunteered?
On the one hand, the work is very tedious and time-consuming. On the other hand, it’s very mechanical, which means it doesn’t require a lot of attention. So I can stick a CD in the player and rock out while I reformat. Most importantly, I can charge my time to that project.
OK, enough of that. Movies.
About a Boy.
The only reason I saw this movie is that it was playing on the
flight out to
But the movie is really more about the boy, Marcus. Marcus has a problem in that he’s a nerd to begin with and his mother is severely depressed after her divorce. When Marcus realizes that he can’t watch over his mother 24/7, he decides to enlist Will’s help. This doesn’t work out too well, but Will begins to discover that, while he would make a terrible husband, having never really grown up himself, he just might make a good father.
Add another single mother with another son, mix well. Eventually, Marcus has the support group he needs. And Will has grown up just a bit.
The Four Feathers. This was “Jeannie’s” choice last Saturday. Yet another remake (there’ve been six so far) based on the book originally published in the early 1900’s. Set in 1884, young Harry is an officer and a gentleman, serving in Her Majesty’s army. His father is a general. All his friends are in his regiment. He has a lovely fiancée. All is well. He’ll serve in the army for a few years, thus making his father happy; get married and resign from the service and maybe find out what he really wants to be when he grows up.
Then somebody decides to send his regiment to
the
Those pesky “natives” make mincemeat out of the
British forces. Seems those
bright red jackets stand out against the desert, making for nice, big
targets. Harry learns that
his friends are in trouble, so he runs off to the
The
director is from
Finally, The Tuxedo. “Jeannie” doesn’t like Jackie Chan, although as far as I know, she’s never seen him. So I went alone. This is a delightfully daffy send-up of all the James Bond movies. Bond always had those clever gadgets that came to his rescue at critical moments. This time, the hero, “Devlin”, has a special tuxedo. When the hero is incapacitated, his driver, Jimmy (Chan), has to take over.
Chan’s best movies are the ones where he plays an innocent bystander who accidentally walks into the middle of some trouble and just happens to have razor-sharp reflexes. Here the suit gets all the credit, even if it’s Chan who’s bouncing off the walls.
Jennifer Love Hewitt plays the girl (there’s always a girl). She doesn’t want to be a “Bond girl”. She wants to be Bond. More importantly, she wants to be taken seriously. This ambition is doomed as long as she works in the sophomoric department that she’s in.
Hewitt and Chan actually work quite well together. As Chan gets older, his reflexes get a bit slower and his English and his acting skills get better. He’ll never be nominated for an Oscar. But anyone who likes the Bond movies will enjoy this one.
Love, as always,
Pete
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