April 17, 2003
Dear Everyone:
Today I finished what I hope will be the last of some “virtual” training sessions. You may recall from last week, that a number of people at work were told to sign up for training to use the new document management system. Some of these people were also told to show up for day-long “kick off” meetings to find ways to reduce the company’s costs by $23 million. Some got the same day for both. Bummer.
For the people who couldn’t possibly come to training in person, we set up some “virtual” training sessions. This uses a computer product called “NetMeeting”. Needless to say, this is a Microsoft product. The idea is two or more people can, from their respective computers, connect to others using NetMeeting, and everyone can see what one person has on their computer. In addition, we set up a telephone “bridge” that allows everyone to call into a central number for a conference call.
So I’m in my office, showing the training presentations; and the trainees are in their own offices, watching the same thing on their computers. It really does save a lot in travel time. The downside is that you can’t see the trainees and, there’s no really good way for the trainees to do the hands-on labs that are normally part of the training session.
So you don’t know if the person you’re “training” is even watching the screen. And you can’t see the quizzical, sometimes panic-stricken, looks on their faces that often clue you in that not everyone in the class is getting it. As a result, this “virtual training” has met with mixed results. Rumors are beginning to float in that some of the people who have been “trained” haven’t got a clue what to do.
And it turns out that some of these people have only the very most rudimentary of computer skills. They barely know how to do anything besides email. Some of them can’t even do that. We have a name for people like this. We call them “managers”.
A lot of them don’t do their own email. They have an assistant to handle that for them. Ditto things like Word and Excel. But, because a lot of these cost-cutting decisions are going to take place at a very high level, and must be kept confidential, these folks have to take care of the more mundane work themselves. Talk about Culture Shock.
In other news…
My new shutters arrived last Friday and took only a little over two hours to install. (I spent most of that time working on the “Winks” department’s boxes on my laptop.) The installer removed the dusty old horizontal blinds in seconds (and carted them away for me). Then he brought in the custom-made frames for each window; made sure they fit correctly; then hung the shutters. I love them already. They’re much better at keeping the light out, whether it’s sunlight during the day, or path-lighting at night, which used to paint lighted stripes on my bedroom ceiling every night. Big yeah for the shutters.
“Jeannie” had planned to come down and see the shutters last Sunday, as well as help me pick out a new dishwasher. But she discovered a nearly flat tire on her car and wound up spending the whole afternoon waiting for new tires to be “installed” on her car. So I went out and found my new dishwasher by myself. Now I’m just waiting for the installer to call me on Monday and schedule a day when he can come to my place and I can also arrange to be there. Translation: Still washing dishes by hand.
And, since “Jeannie” was having such a bad day, I decided to find her a new, “portable” printer that she could take out on certain jobs. (This was another thing we were going to do together on Sunday.) I found the smallest, lightest, cheapest printer on the market, along with the connector cable and inkjet cartridge.
But when I tried to install the printer on her laptop computer, we hit a snag. With “Jeannie’s” computers there always seems to be a snag. The CD that came with the printer, the one with the printer software, refused to run on “Jeannie’s” laptop. I tested it on her other computer, and it worked fine, so the problem is with the laptop. By this time, it was getting to be late Sunday afternoon, so we shelved the problem for the time being.
We’ll pick it up again this Saturday. I’m hoping I can log onto the manufacturer’s web site and download the necessary software from there. It should work, so everyone keep their fingers crossed.
And have a great Easter.
Love, as always,
Pete
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