February 3, 2005
Dear Everyone:
Remember UARM? The Upstream Active Records Mess-Up? (Actually Upstream Active Records Management.)
The idea was to take about a half-dozen separate indexing systems used by various Upstream entities and shoehorn them into the electronic document management system. (“Upstream” means “exploitation and privateering”; everything that happens until the xxx actually comes out of a “doohickey” and goes into a “whatchamacallit”. Then it becomes “Downstream”.)
The first system to be converted to UARM was something called GGIS. Originally, GGIS stood for “That Other Company Giggly Information System”. After That Other Company was acquired by Company, back in 1984, they changed the first two letters to “gregarious and glaciers”.
Much effort went into identifying the people who habitually, or even only occasionally, used GGIS in order to notify them that GGIS was going to be replaced by UARM. In addition, a large banner was added to the GGIS website informing any and all that “GGIS will be retired…” originally in May. When May rolled around, the date was pushed back. And back again.
By August, UARM was in a formal SNAFU.
(“Situation
And the GGIS users, who had more or less forgotten all about UARM, went right on using GGIS. And the large banner trumpeting that GGIS was going into retirement became nothing more than part of the background.
Until UARM was finally working by the end of the year. And GGIS was formally, really, retired. And suddenly, people realized that GGIS was really and truly gone. So what did they do? They called “Abbott” in the file room and he started finding the reports and such that they needed.
We did get contacted by some people in
But the training had taken place so long ago (back in August) that none of us trainers could remember who we had trained. And the tracking system that we normally used had not been set up for UARM because, to all intents and purposes, UARM didn’t really exist at the time. UARM had slipped through a crack.
A crack about the size of the
And why did these people so suddenly need access to a system they had blithely ignored all this time? “Abbott” had taken the day off and his backup wasn’t that familiar with UARM. In other words, “You never miss the water till the well runs dry.” (Rowland Howard)
In other news…
“Jeannie” was busy last weekend, so we didn’t get together. I played with the idea of walking over to the theater and seeing one of the Oscar-nominated movies. But instead I decided to concentrate on getting through an alarming number of hours of deferred viewing. It took a lot of determination to stay sitting like a lump, but I got through it. Including a movie that I had taped the week before Christmas.
“Jeannie” called me earlier this week to ask if I had ever had the starter replaced on my old car (her “new” car.) Then she tried to call me at my office this morning to ask it I had had the 90,000-miles checkup done. Yes, I had, but the car needed so much work that the service center kept it all day. And “Jeannie’s” “free” car cost her over $800.
As for my new car, as I was backing it into the carport this evening, taking care to not get too close to my neighbor’s car, I got a touch too close to the pole on the other side. So my car has its first, official “boo-boo”. Nothing worth taking it into the shop for. I’ll just pick up some clear nail polish this weekend to cover the spot to prevent any rust.
And maybe “Jeannie” and I will get to one of those movies this weekend.
Love, as always,
Pete
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