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12:23 p.m. - 2004-03-06
Issues
Well dear diary, yesterday was data analysis and entry time. The desks were piled high with maps, reference books, and paper - lots of it. On screen several spreadsheets so I could work between them correlating the data in the new format that Ottawa wants. Not a problem except that the spreadsheet template they sent had a lot of the editing features turned off, so I had to create a second copy, migrate the information that they had already loaded on to it and merge with the other information that was necessary in order to edit it globally before I transferred it. Bebother and confusticate it all.

As usual a lot of e-mail traffic and phone calls as well. EC wants us to store 84 cu ft of material in our homes. I don't know exactly how much space that is but 4 of my rooms are already full of their material. I guess I could just throw a mattress on top of it and tell them I'll sleep on it.

I'm still looking for office space and I spoke with my contact at the company I work for in my other life about their building. He hedged a bit and noted they have other space that might be substituted. It doesn't sound as though it's in my riding so I wouldn't be allowed to use it, but maybe one of the other Returning Officers can. We're supposed to discuss the options the company is considering on Tuesday. With that in mind I searched the Building Owners and Managers Association on the web. BOMA I had to go through three layers of the site until I found the Calgary page. They had a PDF file of all the buildings in Calgary so I thought I'd print out the relevant sections and start phoning each eligible owner. My personal printer is toast. So I went to the computer that EC supplies for this work. It uses a dialup modem, so I usually do all my research on my computer because it's faster. The internet connection on the EC computer is extra secure so we can't open a lot of sites even though there is no conflict with use guidelines supplied to us, and the extra security also makes the process painfully slow. Curious though, when I keyed in the webaddress I used on my computer exactly the way I had on my PC I ended up directly on the Calgary page instead of having to go through three layers. When I tried to open the PDF file there the beast just choked. After fiddling with for a while I decided to e-mail the PDF file from my PC to the computer that Elections Canada supplies for this work. Tried to download from the e-mail - that didn't work either. Called the EC support people today and we were able to get the beast working more efficiently.

Got a call from my assistant last night too. He had been sent a credit card by EC. We had been told at training that he could have one and what the credit limit would be. He called to activate it which wasn't a problem, but then went to the next step which meant calling the finance people in EC to confirm. He got blasted by the woman on the other end for what he had done. Now I know what I heard at training and it jives with what everyone else heard AND the instructions that came with the card. I explained that is typical of what will happen during the election. Some of it is just very bad communication between departments in Ottawa - I often wonder if they ever consult with each other on joint activities. The other issue is that Ottawa often changes their instructions - sometimes several times in a period of a couple of days and then yells at us because we weren't aware they changed their minds. Taste of things to come for him and I guess that's good - he won't be blindsided by it when were under pressure. I liked his response to it too. He wrote a letter to the female in question outlining the history of his decisions and the reasons for them and protested the treatment he received at her hands. As he noted he shouldn't be castigated for following the instructions that had been provided for him and that if that created a crisis at the other end of the scale then that was their responsibility to deal with not his. That is what I need in an assistant. He wasn't certain what my response was going to be but I reinforced the fact that he is free to communicate with whoever he must in Ottawa without asking my approval first but keeping me in the loop of communication is important too. I don't think anyone should accept verbal or other abuse as part of their employment.

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