November 3, 2004
Dear Everyone:
(This week’s Letter is early because tomorrow is ARMA night.)
Oh, my sweet Lord!
Four more years of the
Gang That Can’t Shoot Straight.
Four more years of the
Shrub in the
White House who
believes the way to achieve victory is to simply declare himself the
victor. I realize that most
Republicans live in a dream world, but this is ridiculous.
Hang your heads in shame,
(Rant over.)
A few weeks ago, I got a card in the mail announcing that the main Post Office here in San Ramon, which also happens to be the one closest to me, has a new toy: The Automated Postal Center. I decided to give it a try.
This is better than sliced bread and sunshine.
It’s even easier than the Self Serve cash register at the big
Then you type in the Zip code.
The system tells you how much it will cost to send, depending on
how much of a hurry you’re in for it to arrive.
You touch the one you want, then slide your debit or credit card
into the slot. (Unlike the
big
Note: This label is about as big as my hand, so be sure the mailing address is far enough over to the left that the label doesn’t cover it up. Peel the backing off the label, place it on the upper right corner of the envelope or package and drop it in the “Out of Town” slot. You’re done! (Don’t forget to pick up your receipt.)
No more spending your lunch break standing in line to mail packages. No more rushing to get to the Post Office before it closes. Need to mail something at night or on a Sunday? Piece of cake.
Try it. You’ll like it.
In other news…
The document management system has been humming along fairly smoothly lately (knock on wood). Apart from teaching a Beginners class yesterday and giving an overview this Friday, things have been somewhat sane. No doubt, new projects loom just beyond the horizon, but it’s quiet now.
Meanwhile, my facility drawings audit has reared its head and I’m working on figuring out how many drawings someone would likely have to go through to find the less-than-one-thousand drawings that are truly deemed “critical”. But that won’t take too much time.
So, just when it looked like I might have to tell my boss that I have time on my hands (which is guaranteed to cause Super-Rush-Projects to pop out of the woodwork), a “new” project came up. It’s not really new, since people have been working on it for some time. But in the immediate future, there wasn’t anyone available to work on it.
It involves surplus properties that used to belong to That Other Company before the Merger. Someone is needed to go through numerous folders, organizing the contents and applying retention to the various documents. When a co-worker told our boss that he wouldn’t be able to work on this property inventory project as much as the customer wanted, I pointed out that I had “some” time available and was quite familiar with property files since I was once the lead in the Land and Lease files.
So now it’s a nice, little “rainy day” project for me to work on whenever I have “free” time. The other projects come first, but working with files and folders and a two-hole punch is a refreshing reminder of the “old days”. And it takes place in the “Pleasanton” office, which is an easier commute for me.
That’s what we call a “win-win” situation. Unlike yesterday’s election. Although the stem cell research initiative won, so that’s good.
Love, as always,
Pete
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