12:51 PM - 12.03.05
Windmills
The story in the newspapers that had the most impact on me this week was the one about all the people who turned out to honour the Mounties murdered in the line of duty Peace_Keepers.
My youngest seems to have agreed to join me at the hip hop lessons after I offered the additional benefit of a movie or dinner to go with it. Of course we'll go see the new Star Wars release when it comes out in May and I'm guessing that he may want to see Hostage as well. I think this week, though, we'll be going to see the new release of Stomp at the Science Center. Maybe we'll do a little star gazing too, since the center is equipped with a fairly decent telescope and has someone who knows how to aim it on site. Other choices for me will be Hotel Rwanda, Merchant of Venice, and the musical Bride_and_Prejudice - a Bollywood take off on Jane Austen's novel. On the other hand, my son might have an allergy to some of those choices, but if we trade off who chooses then at least we'll each enjoy ourselves at least half of the time. Number five son bought the DVD "Ray" so we'll watch that at home, complete with hot chocolate and popcorn, on one of those snow days we're still due here in the foothills of the Rockies.
The other bit of discussion that's been in the news a lot lately is about the upcoming wedding of Prince Charles and the Lady Camilla Parker Bowles. There are times when I really resent the meanness of people and the fact that it is amplified by the media, instead of being shown for what it is. How can anyone dare to file objections to their union without reference to the circumstances they have had to cope with all these years. These two human beings have loved each other since they were in their teens. Because they decided to play by the rules for royalty and couldn't secure the Queen's consent to wed, they tried going their separate ways to live their lives apart. Years of waiting and the gradual acceptance of them as a couple, has made it possible for them to be together. A real love story, but made into a peek show by the tabloids. If they were a soap opera hero and heroine, they would probably be feted wherever they went, but in real life they aren't even allowed to sit together in the same pew at church. Maybe some of the voyeuers should try doing something useful with their spare time. You know, like spending time with their children or helping their less fortunate neighbours instead. The only thing I find a bit strange, being of an astrological bent, is that the wedding day is planned for the day of an eclipse. I guess it could be interpreted as bringing a new energy into the monarchy and, therefore, into the entire British nation rather than the negative interpretation that it usually is given. We'll see. Adventurous anyway.
Spent the day working on election planning. Since I couldn't get in to the government database so I could complete my assignment - with only five days left to go - I decided I would work on getting the geography/demographics work under control. It isn't even a consideration for most Returning Officers, but it drives all my planning because of the growth my area is still undergoing. When I checked the city maps website, I found there were about 30 new streets added in. Biggest problem? No names given to them yet, so we can't add them to our database. Electors names only show up on our geographic voter's lists when their street name is available - that's the link used in the programming tables. That new growth also means I needed to try and find more buildings to use as polling stations, in addition to the two new schools just built this year. The school boards can't always afford to add in the gymnasiums the first few years, but I'm hoping that this time round the funds were available for that. I did locate one new community facility that is supposed to open sometime in the next couple of months. I hope I have the luxury of that time, so I can include it since it is one of my most difficult areas. Still no office though. Maybe Cirque du Soleil will lend me one of their tents - "bread and circuses" or beer and hockey/football/baseball/soccer - isn't that what Juvenal was getting at with respect to politics.
Daybooks have been an issue in the last few contracts I've worked and that troubling aspect came up again on Friday. I needed time to think through what was decided. You see "daybook" is a term that is usually applied to the daily activity logs that are kept by the senior officers or their staff in a company. They track every decision, communication, and/or meeting that person might be involved with at any given moment. Often there are handwritten notes and other odd bits and pieces. Those bits show why the decisions taken were made and how the direction in which the company was steered was determined. For example, at one assignment one daybook that I found stuffed away in a corner was that of the senior legal counsel of the company some years back. He had done some really proactive due diligence work with respect to some fairly touchy problems the company was facing. When I brought it to the attention of the appropriate person, I was told to just throw it out - it has no value and is just taking up valuable. Right. That one volume, full of acts of due diligence, might just be the most valuable item in the collection when the time to pay the piper is called - something that will happen sooner than later given the issues cited. The criteria that the person deciding used was that it wasn't produced on a computer and some of the material was made by amateurs - the handwritten work of the lawyer. Um right. Some of the most vital documents any company has are the ones in their senior officers' personal records, no matter what shape they take - some of the most sensitive too. Just like every other employee of the company, those records belong to and are part of the company's property - not the individual who created them. The lawyer in the one case obviously recognized that and ensured the company kept the protection he had created for them.
On Friday I got a memo saying that certain daybooks and personal records of some, but not all, of the senior people from the company's past were not to be included in the assessment of the documents I've been assigned to deal with. I don't have a lot of problems with that, as long as someone who has a better understanding of how the corporate history was molded by the due diligence of the people in question does go through them and accords them the status that will make their information available to the company when it needs access. If that isn't done, a "black hole" has been created in the gut of the company that has the potential to cause it to implode at a critical juncture. Don't understand the decision, but maybe there is another part of the project being undertaken that I am not privy to either - fair game. Due diligence on my part means I'll express my concern about the maintenance of all vital records, regardless of the source, to my supervisor on Monday, but I think going beyond that might be tilting at windmills a la Don Quixote. Quite honestly I don't have enough energy for that right now.
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