July 8, 2010
Dear Everyone:
“Jeannie” and I spent part of the
Fourth of July
weekend at her place watching a DVD of the original
Twilight movie.
The one with the brooding, isolated young
vampire who falls in
love with the new girl at school.
We agreed it certainly got the "high school as analogy for
Hell"
part right. We enjoyed it
very much, particularly since it takes place, and was filmed in, the
Pacific Northwest, mostly
Oregon and
Washington.
I plan to box it up, as soon as I have some "free time", and send
it to “Alice’s” two girls, who are much closer to the target audience
age group than we are.
Meanwhile, back at work...
My decommissioning project is winding down.
The latest thing from the Project Manager (usually referred to as
the "PM") was to ask me to review everything they have created so far
for "historical value". This
is, of course, sheer nonsense.
A Records Manager is expected to be able to recognize when old
documents may have "archival value".
However, a Records Manager is not expected to be an
archivist.
That takes a lot of special training.
And nothing from a relatively short-termed project
like this is going to have archival value.
She's just never worked with an Information Management Consultant
before and is looking to milk it for all it's worth, even if it isn't
worth anything.
But she's taking time away from one of my other
projects, which is producing the document management system
Computer
Based Training (CBT). Last
Friday, I thought I had completed the biggest hands-on lab simulation so
far. I honestly thought it
was ready to wrap up with a pretty bow.
Then I realized that the name of the training document, used
throughout the entire simulation was misspelled.
!!! And no one, not
even the detail-oriented nitpicker, had noticed.
But, no doubt, as soon as it becomes published, someone will.
A misspelled document name does not instill confidence in
potential students.
So I started recreating slides, using the correct
name. And quickly ran into
what's called an "undocumented feature" in the CBT software.
An "undocumented feature" is something the software does that
isn't mentioned in the documentation (such as there is, in some cases)
which doesn't count as a "bug".
A "bug" causes actual harm to the user in one way or another.
A "feature" is just something the program does, even if the
programmers didn't intend it to happen.
In this case, the program tells you if you're using
the same audio file (used for the voice overs) more than once.
It doesn't matter if you deleted the slide that originally used
it. You're using it again
and the program insists on letting you know.
Eventually, I wound up renaming the original file, then creating
a new file with the original name.
Then I copied the slides, a few at a time, until I got to the
part where I needed to create all new slides.
Because they were in a "different" file, the program didn't
notice that I was using the same voice-overs again.
It took the better part of a day, but the simulation is now
Ready-for-Prime-Time.
Also, last Friday, I was ready to record the voice-overs for the next simulation (Module 06 Lab, if anyone is keeping
score.) Problem was, by that
time it was late afternoon.
I wanted to finish, so I kept going, even though I was getting very
tired.
The drawback to recording when you are very tired
is that every third word seems to begin with the letter "F".
And I left part out of Slide 51, and had to redo it this
afternoon. Nevertheless,
despite all odds, both simulations were completed this afternoon.
Which means I can start on Module 07 (Searching)
tomorrow. The end is in
sight, just not sure how far away it is.
Love, as always,
Pete
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