February 21, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Last weekend, “Jeannie” brought some of her
vintage
rhinestone jewelry to my place so we could start on getting it
cataloged. These were pieces
that “Jeannie” has decided to part with (i.e., sell) by means of a
specialty store that sells high-end clothing and things on commission.
It seems they are getting ready for the wedding season, so clear
(“white”) gems might do well.
So we set up my
digital camera on a small
tripod
(such a good investment on my part) in the kitchen (where the
over-the-range light would shine directly down on it.)
“Jeannie” took pictures of each piece, or ensemble, both front
and back. When she was
finished, we took the camera upstairs to my laptop.
Once the pictures were transferred to the computer,
we used the software to enhance and crop the images and save them to a
portable USB drive (aka, a “flash drive”).
With the pictures on the “flash drive”, we transferred them to
“Jeannie’s” laptop.
Then we set up a new catalog and I showed “Jeannie”
how to record each piece and how to link the record to one or more
pictures. After about a
half-dozen, she decided that she knew enough and headed home.
On Sunday, we went to see
Atonement before it “disappears”.
Since it’s up for several
Academy Awards, including
Best Picture,
I predict that it won’t “disappear” just yet, unless it loses
spectacularly this coming Sunday.
This is one of those films where, when it ends, you
sit back and think, “Huh.
That’s not what I thought would happen.”
This is partly because all the advertising is about Cecilia
(Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy), star-crossed lovers who are
torn apart by a mistake and a war that could at least be justified.
But it’s about someone else as well.
And it’s about the Great War, before
World War II
changed it to World War I.
In particular, it’s about
In other news…
After about a month of spinning my wheels on the
“Winks” Project, we finally settled on my going through about 20 boxes
of paper records that were identified during a Clean Up Day as not being
needed by the owners anymore.
I’m currently cataloging them and figuring out which Retention
Category applies to each folder.
That’s supposed to be taking up half of my time.
The other half goes to two sub-feature teams that
I’m on for the infamous GIL3 project.
There the problem is the contractors who seem to think that
scheduling marathon meetings is a good way to prove their worth.
However, just this week it was agreed that one of
the contractors and I would be assigned to begin and manage an official
glossary for the whole project (not just the Information Management part
of it) in a “wiki”. You may
have heard of wikis. You may
even have used one of the most famous ones:
Wikipedia.com, the online
encyclopedia that everyone can use and
contribute to.
What you may not know, and I only discovered
earlier this week, is what “wiki” means:
It’s short for “what I know is…”
In other words, it’s what the author believes to be true, but you
may want to take it with a
grain of salt.
As for our glossary wiki, the contractor is busily
copying all the technical jargon she can find for the software in
particular and all of Company in general.
Starting tomorrow, I will be spending roughly half my time going
in and adding “plain English” to her technical stuff.
In other words, “simplify, simplify, simplify.”
Love, as always,
Pete
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