February 19, 2003
Dear Everyone:
This is one of those “every other” months where things get really busy in the third week. Tonight is the bi-monthly Homeowners Association Board meeting. Tomorrow night is the monthly ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators) meeting. So I’m sandwiching this week’s Letter in between the two of them.
As of last Friday, my Global Records Consulting group is officially entrenched in our new “Pleasant Hill” office space. Up until now we’ve been using surplus furniture, waiting for the newly ordered furniture to arrive and be installed. That happened last week, during which time we worked in various other locations like “Pleasanton” and “Livermore”.
Everything had to be boxed up by Monday afternoon. Then on Tuesday, the movers took out all the boxes and the surplus furniture. On Wednesday and Thursday, the new “cubicles” were installed. They’re not really cubicles, in that they only have two sides, so what you get is an L-shaped space with cubicle-style walls with an overhead cabinet on the long side. There’s also a couple of cabinets and the cutest little closet. I measured it: It’s four inches wide on the inside.
But the latest and greatest part of the “desk” is called a “sit/stand”. This is triangular in shape, to fit in the corner of the “L”. It’s designed to hold the monitor, along with the mouse and keyboard. The keyboard/mouse shelf is adjustable, but so is the rest of the module. The whole piece is electric and goes up and down at the touch of a button. You can raise it to a height where you can work standing up (if needed). Or you can lower it until both the monitor and keyboard/mouse are at the optimum height just for you and your (feet flat on the floor, please) chair. Even if you’re barely 5’ 2” tall.
This is the very latest in ergonomic equipment, companies having discovered that it’s cheaper to prevent injuries up front than to pay workers’ comp further down the line. It’s all a far cry from the days when an employee needed a note from the doctor just to get a supervisor’s attention.
All this attention to being ergonomically correct at work pays off at home, too. Once I discovered how much better it is to use a headset, instead of cradling the telephone against your shoulder, at home as well as at work, I haven’t had a pinched nerve in my neck in years. Try it, you’ll like it.
And as for chairs! I’m still trying to get “Jeannie” to scrap the (terrible!) chair she has in her office in favor of something better. And we may be in luck. Seems last week she was at a lawyer’s office (where else?) and found out about a discount place on the peninsula “where the dot com furniture went to die”. All those computer companies that collapsed when the economy went south had to get rid of their furniture some place. So we may go down there one weekend and look into getting her some decent equipment for her office.
But not this weekend.
This coming weekend, we’re either going to a fashion show, or
“Marshall” is coming up from
We’re still holding his Christmas presents for him. But I have to confess: I waited a whole month and, when he still didn’t show up, I ate his chocolate Santa. It wasn’t going to stay fresh much longer.
In other news…
Realizing that Monday was a holiday, and that meant that I could go to a movie; and realizing that I’d never get “Jeannie” to a Jackie Chan movie, I went without her.
Shanghai Knights stars Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, reprising roles they did together in an earlier movie a few years ago. Because Chan is best known for his action pictures, in which he still does all his own stunts, people like “Jeannie” think his movies are just mindless “head-kickers”. What they don’t realize is that, as Chan gets older and more “mature”, his sense of humor is kicking in.
The setting is
There’s also an inspired action sequence in a villain’s secret treasure trove, complete with priceless porcelain urns. Instead of striving to break each other’s heads, everyone is scrambling to protect the pottery. It makes for a nice change.
I may also have been the only person in the theater to realize who “Inspector Artie Doyle” would turn out to be. And they did a nice job of accounting for the sudden end to Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror. But even I never guessed who the smart-mouthed street urchin would turn out to be.
All in all, good clean fun. Try it, you’ll like it.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |