March 6, 2003
Dear Everyone:
My dishwasher, after six weeks, is finally working again. Yeah! Even better, I’m able to put the drying rack away, thus freeing up over 50% of my countertop. More Yeah!
Unfortunately, we still can’t say the same for “Jeannie’s” new computer. Bought almost expressly for accessing the Internet in general, and eBay in particular, the pesky machine keeps freezing up on her. We originally thought the problem might have to do with memory, since Web pages, with their bright and colorful graphics, are notorious memory hogs. And, in fact, when she took it back to the store, they performed a diagnostic that showed something wrong with the memory, which they replaced.
“Jeannie” happily took the machine home, only to have it start freezing up again. Back to the store. A technician is apparently planning on re-installing all the original software. At any rate, we have an appointment for Saturday morning to meet with the technician. I say “we” because “Jeannie” doesn’t know drivers from doorknobs and I can (hopefully) communicate directly with the technician, in his native tongue (techno babble, a highly complex language).
Meanwhile, at work…
I’m still happily spending what time I can going through "Wink's" many inherited boxes to try and “bequeath” as many of them as possible to other "winks" groups. This is something I can work on anywhere that I can use my laptop, so it fits into the nooks and crannies surrounding other projects.
On Wednesday, I assisted in providing training for the new electronic document management system being rolled out. In the future, I expect to be one of the Bay Area “experts” giving training as needed. And today, I began getting the telephone operators set up with their own little keyword database that they can use to look up numbers when they get strange questions over the phone. (This morning, one of the operators took a call from someone who wanted to send the CEO a case of wine and would like his personal phone number. Not bloody likely.)
All in all, lots of interesting things going on.
And now lets talk about ARMA. That’s the Association of Records Managers and Administrators. I’m Treasurer of our local chapter. This week, we received word that our most enthusiastic board member was quitting her job (effective next Friday) and leaving the Bay Area. Good for her, bad for us. We can probably limp along without her for the rest of the fiscal year; she’s handling the March program (next week, before she leaves), and May and June are pretty much taken care of.
That leaves April, which just happens to be National Records and Information Management Month (NRIMM). Back in September, when we had our one and only board meeting to plan the year, we said, “…and we’ll do something special for April.” Now April looms and we’re short a board member.
It’s never too soon to panic.
I’ve sent some possibilities off to the rest of the
board, based in part on some stuff I downloaded from ARMA
International’s web site.
Someone suggested a tour of the local (
“How to Murder a Records Manager.”
It certainly would be different.
Stay tuned for details.
Love, as always,
Pete
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