February 5, 2016
Dear Everyone:
The Super Bowl
takes place this Sunday and
San Francisco
is the “Host City”. I put
quotes around it because, while San Francisco claims it is hosting
The Big Game, the
game itself will take place over 50 miles away, in
Santa
Clara, at
Levi’s Stadium.
Not that it matters, of course.
There are two kinds of people who will attend The Game:
Die hard
football
enthusiasts who will happily mortgage their children’s future for
tickets and camp out anywhere for the privilege of watching the historic
occasion in person; and corporate executives whose companies pay all the
expenses for them.
Either way, the
Greater
Bay Area lives in hope of acquiring some of the money that all these
people will bring with them, and supposedly leave behind.
And the weather is going to be fabulous.
So all the local TV news weather-people have been telling us all
week. Big surprise.
It’s February.
Two things happen in the Bay Area in February:
One, a sharp cold snap.
Look! Snow on top of
Mount Diablo /
Hamilton /
Tamalpais! Two, a
“sudden” warming trend.
Almost every February, there’s a mini-heat-wave, with the temperatures
soaring into the 70s, and everybody crying, “I can’t believe it’s this
hot in February!” Happens
nearly every year and every year it catches everyone by surprise.
This may even have been a deciding factor when
The
Powers That Be decided to allow San Francisco to “host” The Game.
After all, there are four weekends in February.
If you figure one with really cold weather, one with warm and two
in the middle, the law of averages points to fabulous weather being a
one-in-four chance, with a further 50% chance of little-to-no-rain and
weather that’s “just OK”, but no freezing temperatures on the field.
In other news…
Last year, when I was racking my brains for possible topics for
ARMA dinner meetings, I considered
trying to find a “PMP” to give us a talk.
A “PMP” is a “Project
Management Professional”.
I had noticed a number of the contract workers that we used in
recent years had these initials after their names.
Sure enough, there is a
Project Management Institute that confers a certificate to people
who qualify. And yes, they
do have a chapter in the Bay Area.
But then I realized: I know
a heck of a lot about managing projects myself.
Specifically Records and Information Management (RIM)
projects, although some others, of course.
I am, after all, a well-rounded person.
I could give a talk myself, given enough time to prepare.
It might even make a good “Plan B” to have, just in case The
Speaker suddenly takes ill, or gets caught in traffic, or whatever, and
can’t make it at the last minute.
So I’ve been kicking around a Project Management Presentation in my
“spare time”. Just the bare
bones so far, but it’s already up to 15 slides.
At an average of two minutes per slide, that’s a half-hour
covered already. And I’ve
barely started. Like I said,
I know a few things about projects.
In fact, not too many years ago doing RIM projects was just about all I
did. At times I had as many
as a dozen RIM projects, of varying degrees, on my plate at once.
I even created a special tool to
help me keep track of which project I was working on at any given time.
For instance, I might be working on Project A when the phone rings.
I answer and it’s the customer from Project J.
Suddenly I’m working on Project J instead of A.
So I made up a chart, dividing the day into quarter-hour
increments that allowed me to switch from one subject to another
whenever I needed to. That
way my time would be allocated to the appropriate charge code.
Of course, some people might think I was taking the whole thing too
seriously. I remember many,
many years ago, when my department was paying for some computer work.
One of the programmers told us that whenever they went on a
break, they always charged that time to our project.
Sooner or later, though, that kind of thing catches up to you.
Like the lawyer who suddenly died and found himself at his Final
Destination. We won’t
speculate in which direction the lawyer’s soul went, but when he got
there the lawyer asked, “How did I die?”
Minions consulted the Record.
It’s important to note here that it doesn’t matter if you wind up
in Heaven or in
Hell; they both keep excellent Records.
Minion: “You died of old
age.”
Lawyer: “I’m 42!
How could I possibly have died of old age?”
The minion consulted the Record again.
Minion: “According to your
‘Billable Hours’, you’re 160!”
Love, as always,
Pete
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