Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

November 1, 2007

Dear Everyone:

We’re having a File Plan “virtual” workshop this week.  By “virtual” we mean that the “Hobby” people are in “Hobby” and the California people are in California.  As a California person, I like this way much better, as it does not require me to spend hours in airports and on airplanes and in very nice hotel rooms.

One of our California contractors did have to drive about four hours and stay in a hotel because she lives somewhere out near Sacramento (but she has a huge house and a spectacular view, she showed us pictures on her laptop.)  And those of us in California wound up working in small conference rooms in another business park, but it’s only about five minutes from our regular work location, so no problems there.

The “virtual” part of it meant that we all called into a conference “bridge” and connected by computer to the “Hobby” people at 8:30 am California time, which was 10:30 am “Hobby” time.  We’d go over the agenda, have a safety moment and report out on what we’ve all been doing since the previous meeting.  Then the California people would start working and the “Hobby” people would go to lunch (having already worked 2-3 hours.)

The Team Leaders decided to break us up into “clumps”, one in California and two in “Hobby”.  I was in “Clump 3”.  Each “clump” was assigned a number of the Functional Areas (top level) of the File Plan to go over in a group review.

Sometimes we would agree to combine two or more Primary Activities or Secondary Activities.  Sometimes we would cancel Information Examples that were too vague.  And sometimes we would decide that a particular Information Type was really too general for that Functional Area and recommend that it be moved to yet another new Functional Area designated “Universal”.

Universal seems to mean things that everyone does like “policies and procedures”, “guidelines” and other vague-nesses.

The best part about this activity was the fact that “Hobby” is two hours ahead of California.  That meant that “Hobby” finished for the day around 4:30 pm their time.  That was 2:30 California time.  While we didn’t actually quit work at 2:30, we didn’t work until after 4:00.  This gave me bonus time to spend studying for the CRM Exam which takes place in one week.

It also meant that I could be home well ahead of the Trick-or-Treaters last night.  I was able to take a bath and be ready before 5:00, that being the time that the first youngsters begin to show up.  I don’t usually get many kids, but I always have my lighted Jack-O-Lantern out on the front porch and a bowl of candy by the door.

This year, not one person showed up.  At work today, others reported a sharp decline in the number of visitors.  We came to a couple of conclusions.  One is that a lot of parents are taking their kids to the local shopping mall instead of roaming the neighborhood.

The second is that the government messed up Halloween when they changed Daylight Saving Time to end the Sunday after Halloween instead of the Sunday before.  Now it doesn’t get dark until nearly 7:00 and that may be too late for some little hobgoblins.  So now I have even more candy to take into the office.

Tomorrow we have (hopefully) one last Functional Area to go over and we’ll be finished.  There’s talk about extending the workshop into next week for some additional work, but that can wait until after the weekend.  This will be my last weekend to do any more studying for the CRM Exam.  By this time, next week, it will all be over.

Everyone remember to change your clocks this weekend.

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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