October 1, 2009
Dear Everyone:
One of my projects at work has to do with an
Operating Company that does business worldwide.
Once each month we have a 90-minute meeting by phone and computer
that involves a lot of different places around the globe.
The meeting begins at 6:00 AM here in
(Note to self:
Reset all those alarms to go off at the regular time tomorrow
morning!)
When it’s 6:00 AM in California, it’s around lunch
time in , late in the afternoon in
France and I don’t even want to
think about what time it is in
Singapore where it’s already Friday.
The project is humming along nicely.
This afternoon we got word that the two most important
applications to be decommissioned had been approved.
I promptly sent an “Instant R&A” to the guy who manages the
approval process, which means he gets a $50 gift card at the
establishment of his choice.
(The R&A means “Recognition and Award”, meaning I “recognized” his
efforts and gave him an “award”.
It’s one of the company’s incentive plans.)
There are dozens of smaller applications that
either fed information into the big applications or used information
from the big applications, so the project will continue well into next
year; but the really big,
someone-will-lose-their-job-if-this-isn’t-shut-down-by-year-end pressure
is off.
However, I found out last week that a lot of people
in various parts of the world had planned to “make a personal copy” of
the data that’s being archived, just so they’ll have it to refer to.
This is dangerous.
There can only be one “official” copy of the data, which will be
eligible for a destruction review in ten years.
Any other copies are subject to discovery if a lawsuit happens in
the meantime.
So I drafted a memo explaining why they don’t want
to do that, even if they want to do it:
You don’t want to be hauled into court to testify as to why you
had your own copy of the data.
And did you alter the data in any way?
Because that could look very bad for the company.
We’ll see what comes of it.
In other news…
“Jeannie”
had a “real time”
deposition to do last Tuesday.
So we spent some time on Saturday getting set up for it.
This involved, among other things, buying a new laptop computer
that she could use if the attorney’s computer couldn’t connect with
hers. I found out this
evening that everything worked perfectly.
(Big sigh of relief!)
Having spent most of Saturday at “Jeannie’s”, I
spent Sunday doing the usual weekend things:
Grocery shopping, laundry,
cleaning. I actually managed
to put away some of the things that have been sitting around since
mid-May when “Jeannie” and “Frankie” delivered them from the
townhouse.
And I cleaned the bathroom for the first time in
you-don’t-want-to-know.
I’m even looking forward to putting some more
things away this coming weekend.
Love, as always,
Pete
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