October 30, 2003
Dear Everyone:
This week I received two more Nigerian Email Scams at work. Looks like someone got their hands on a list of company email addresses and sold it to others. I don’t know if I’ve ever received a Nigerian Email Scam at home because I automatically delete missives from addresses I don’t recognize. And putting a Subject of “URGENT! ATTENTION!” doesn’t really get mine.
In other news…
Autumn arrived yesterday. It took it’s own sweet time this year. On Tuesday, when I got home in the evening, my air conditioner was going full force and the thermometer on my patio registered in the upper 80’s. After sunset. Yesterday, even though the forecast called for mid-to-upper 70’s, it was in the 60’s when I got home. Hallelujah! There’s even a chance of showers tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath.
Tomorrow being Halloween, the plan was for me to leave work in “Pleasant Hill” and go straight to “Jeannie”’s place. There we would relax, watch TV and dispense candy to little hobgoblins of all varieties. As of this afternoon, I won’t be in “Pleasant Hill” tomorrow, at least not in the morning. But if I can get up there by mid-afternoon, the plan can go ahead.
The reason I won’t be in “Pleasant Hill” tomorrow is that all hell broke loose on the document management front last Tuesday. That’s when the Project Manager for a group that is coming on line announced that he expected 95 of his people to start using the Computer Based Training (CBT) version of the training next Monday. This was the first that we, my backup training coordinator and I, had heard of this.
Needless to say, the CBT is not finalized, although it has been approved. Technically, it’s still in the testing stage, but it has to be ready by Monday. And the person in charge of the whole thing is on vacation this week. So we’ve been scrambling to try and get ready. And that scrambling is better done here in “Pleasanton”, rather than in “Pleasant Hill”. (It’s easier to catch a project manager in the hallway if you’re both in the same city at the same time. I believe Sir Isaac Newton had something to say about that.)
While the CBT is not quite Ready-for-Prime-Time, we can make some adaptations to account for things like: No “How to Use This CBT” introduction; no automatic test for the trainees to take at the end; no survey to measure how well the CBT does it’s job. And, by the way, we need to set up a training site that is completely separate from the one we use during traditional classroom training. So a cabinet, folders, sample documents, adapted training labs and 100 User ID’s have to be set up and completed tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
On another subject, today I got my very first, all my own, document management Project. Up until now, others have managed the Projects, only notifying me when their customers require training; and usually at a moment’s notice (see above). But this time, I’m in charge of the whole Project. I met with the Project Manager who will represent the group and we discussed what their folder structure might look like. She has a lot of information to gather and then we’ll meet again.
Because this group is starting “from the beginning”, meaning their present setup is so hopelessly snarled that recreating it in the document management system would be an exercise in futility, we’ll even get to set up work processes. This is going to be fun.
Love, as always,
Pete
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