HomeMy WebLinkAboutRap-A-Round Newsletter 12.17.1993The
PvAP-A-ROUND
Volume V, December 17, 1993
ANNIVERSARIES
The City and its organization are people and these
people have served the City well. We celebrate the
following employment anniversaries which occur during
the next two weeks:
Five Years
JAMES ROSE
Police Patrol
PATRICK HURLEY
Police Patrol
Three Years
DONNA ROGERS HOGG
Legal Department
Two Years
LAURA MURRAY
Management Services
INS AND OUTS
city
of
004bm
New Job...
Stephanie Crenshaw recently moved to Human
Resources to help Teresa. I'm sure we'll all get the
same quick and friendly service from her in her new
position.
Georgetown
Welcome...
Stephanie's leaving left the Management Services
Administrative Assistant position vacant. Elizabeth was
lucky and found Carie Speegle. Carie will be working
with Elizabeth and answering the City Hall main line.
If you have a chance, stop by and say hello!
PAYROLL
Due to the short work week for the holiday season,
timesheets must be in the payroll office BY 2:00 on
Monday, December 27. If you're on holiday the 27th,
please notify the payroll office by next Wednesday for a
noon Tuesday extension.
Paychecks will be available in the Payroll Office after
2:00 Thursday, December 30. Don't panic, the banks
are open on Friday, December 31.
SICK LEAVE POOL
Just a reminder....
December 31, 1993 is the last day to contribute hours to
the Sick Leave Pool for this year. The Pool of time
is valuable to your fellow employees. You may even
need it sometime. If you need a donation form, just ask
your division representative:
Ken Taylor- Community Owned Utilities
Ken Finn - Community Services & Parks & Recreation
Janis Russell - Development Services, Finance &
Administration & General Government
James Rose - Fire & Police Services
RAP -A -ROUND 12/ 17/93 Page 1
SICK LEAVE POOL (cont.)
Citrus Surprise Punch
And to those of you who already donated...
Thank YOU!
BU]LLETIN BOARD
A Toast To The Host!
'Tis the season for making merry. Remember you can
keep holiday spirits high without getting high on spirits.
Whether you are inviting a few friends over to help
decorate the tree or organizing a gala New Year's Eve
party, be the host with the most concern: Help ensure
that your guests will be back to celebrate with you next
year. Serve soda, sparkling and flavored bottled water,
or exotic coffees and teas. You can make a substitute
for champagne by mixing equal parts apple juice and
ginger ale, or try one of the non-alcoholic recipes below.
If you plan to serve alcohol, as well, keep the following
in mind:
16 oz. can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
16 oz. can frozen grapefruit juice concentrate, thawed
5 cups cold water
28 oz. ginger ale, chilled
1 orange, sliced
1 pint raspberry sherbet
Mix juices, water, and ginger ale in a pitcher. Place
orange and raspberry sherbet in punch bowl and our
juice mix over the top.
Spicy Christmas Punch
4 cups apple cider
4 cups cranberry juice
2 sticks cinnamon
4 cloves
1 orange - juiced and strained
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Orange slices
Combine all ingredients except orange slices in a
saucepan and heat slowly. Garnish with orange slices.
Serve hot.
Frosty Apple Drink
1 gallon milk
* Serve plenty of food. It slows the absorption of 1 12 oz. can of apple juice concentrate
alcohol. Snacks with high protein content, such as 11/2 quarts vanilla ice cream, softened
cheese and nuts, are a better alternative to salty foods cinnamon
that increase thirst. nutmeg
* De-emphasize the importance of alcohol in having
fun. Play games and dance.
* Stop serving alcohol an hour or more before the end
of the party. Bring out more food and coffee to give
people time to sober up.
* Arrange ahead of time for a few non -drinking
volunteers to drive others home. Collect car keys at
the beginning of the party and don't return them to
anyone who is drunk. Call a cab or offer your sofa.
Beat milk, apple concentrate, and ice cream together
until frothy. Top with cinnamon and nutmeg.
Teach your Children Well
With an advertising blitz of toys, toys, and more toys
that starts as early as October, it's easy for children to
miss the deeper meaning of Christmas and Hanukkah.
Teach your children that the holiday season is a time for
giving, not getting.
RAP -A -ROUND 12/ 17/93 Page 2
Let them help with gift decisions, shopping, and
wrapping. Don't just buy a present for Grandma
and only have them sign the card. Tell younger
children what you've decided on and let them help
wrap the present. Ask older children to help come
up with ideas.
* Instill a spirit of giving to those who have less. Ask
each child to choose a toy of his or her own to give
away. Involve them in wrapping the toys and
delivering them to a church or other agency that is
collecting them.
* Discuss your own feelings and values with respect to
gifts. You can tell older children if you are setting a
limit on how much you're spending this year.
Explain to younger children that Santa does not bring
everything on the wish list.
Gifts from the Heart
Make this holiday season more than an exchange of
"things. "
* Many older people are appreciative when you simple
spend time with them -- doing something they like
with or for them, such as taking them shopping or
just for a drive in the country.
* For a couple frazzled by the demands of young
children, offer to babysit for an evening or even an
entire weekend. Or promise them a few Friday
nights during the coming year.
* Use your expertise in a hobby or craft to give
lessons.
* Older folks might prefer a month's supply of heating
fuel, a monthly premium for health care, or payment
of a utility bill to more tangible presents.
* If you sew, you can offer to make an outfit or simple
to do mending or alterations for someone who isn't
skilled with a needle.
* Take a friend to lunch once a month for the next
year! You'll both benefit.
* Provide a needed service, such as preparing meals,
doing a complicated household chose, lawn work, or
car tune-up.
"The only gift is a portion of thyself."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
DEPARTMENT UPDATES
Community Owned Utilities
Team Work Rewarded
" Crew of the Week" in the Water/Wastewater
Departments of Community Owned Utilities is:
Week of 11-29-93
Rodney Hrachovy and Lonnie Reed
Week of 12-6-93
George Luera and Henry Carrizales
Each week a "Crew of the Week" is selected from the
two -man crew members in the department. To qualify
as "Winners", the crew must have demonstrated proper,
neat dress; friendly attitude toward fellow employees as
well as customers in the field; practiced "Safety First"
during job performance; properly cleaned vehicles to
represent the City; and completed a high number of
work orders. We commend these crew members for
their efforts in promoting pride and accomplishment in
their jobs.
Development Services
City Leaders Visit Sun City Sites
As is common knowledge, the Del Webb Corporation is
interested in locating one of their Sun City Communities
in Georgetown. A Sun City project is targeted for the
active senior adult population, with the requirements that
at least one member of a household in the Sun City be
55 years of age or older. Initial proposals are for
approximately 4,500 dwelling units located on between
3,000 and 5,000 acres with a projected population at the
end of the 15-year build out of around 9,000 residents.
Any project of this magnitude has the potential to impact
the existing Georgetown community. To help ensure
that a Sun City development in Georgetown has the
maximum beneficial effect on our community and
residents, our community leaders have taken an active
role in working with Del Webb representatives in
designing their community.
As part of this community involvement in developing a
Sun City in Georgetown, representatives from the
Georgetown Independent School District, the
Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, the Georgetown
Industrial Foundation, Georgetown Hospital,
Southwestern University, Williamson County and the
RAP -A -ROUND 12/17/93 Page 3
City of Georgetown have visited Del Webb projects in
Palm Springs, Tucson and Phoenix. The Georgetown
citizens not only visited with Del Webb representatives,
but more importantly met with their counterparts in and
around the Del Webb project. Meetings were held with
City officials, school board members, county staff,
hospital administrators and Chamber of Commerce
representatives from the host communities in which Del
Webb has a Sun City. All of those who participated,
returned impressed with the quality of development
achieved by Del Webb.
Over the course of the next few months, the City will be
working with Del Webb to identify and address all of the
issues of interest to both Del Webb and our community.
Information Services
I d
a
DOS commands are broken into three groups of files
based on the environment where they can be used. In
addition, each command is stored externally or internally
(more on that later). Finally, each command either
works or does not work on a network. So each
command has one attribute from each column. (See
table below)
Environment
Storage
location
Network
Capable
MS-DOS
Internal
Yes
Batch files
External
No
CONFIG.SYS
Why is this important? You need to know this
information to correctly use each DOS command. Let's
look first at the attribute.
Environment
Environment is the place or location that a specific DOS
command can be used. MS-DOS describes the command
line. Many commands are designed to be used at the
C:\ > . These commands are typed in with any
information that the command requires you to furnish.
An example of this type command is the copy command.
You would use this as follows.
C:\> copy filel fi1e2
1 rile copied
A batch file is a set of MS-DOS commands that can be
automated. Batch file commands are those that control
the operation or running of the batch file. These
commands are often used to allow questions to be
answered or choices to be made, depending on the
operation. An example would be the following batch
file that copies a file from A: to any other disk drive.
The commands that copy the file are from the MS-DOS
environment and every command except the copy
command is a batch command. This shows the power
and convenience that batch commands can bring to your
life. (In a future issue, we will talk about batch files at
length.)
rem = = = = = = =sample batch file to copy from a:
to any drive=========
rem test for copy to a: and if so go to the error
section
if "%1" "A:" goto error
rem copy the file
copy a:\filel %I
goto end
rem print an error message
:error
echo YOU CANNOT COPY FROM A: TO A:
rem end batch file
:end
cls
The final environment is CONFIG.SYS. This is a
special file that is run automatically at start up by DOS.
The commands that are used here are specific to this file
and can be run in no other place. An example is the
device command that loads specific hardware interface
descriptions.
DEVICE= C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
Storage
Storage describes where DOS stores the command.
Some commands, called internal, are stored in the DOS
kernel (command.com) and, if your computer has booted
successfully, are available to you no matter what is on
any of your disk drives. The dir command, that list the
RAP -A -ROUND 12/17/93 Page 4
contents of a directory is an example of an internal
command.
External commands are stored in the DOS directory.
You must tell DOS the path (location) to the command.
You can set the path of the DOS directory at startup.
The following example shows a command where you
must provide the path.
C:\> c.•Idoslcomp fi1e1 fi1e2
Network
Network is the simplest of the DOS commands. All this
tells us is whether the command will work on networked
drives. We will cover this more when we have a
network.
In summary, DOS commands are broken into groups
based on where they can be used, where they are stored
and on what type of drives they can be used. This is
important because it provides you with a way to narrow
the choices that you can select from. Next time we will
start looking at how DOS stores files.
Good computing!
Risk Management & Safety
Shed a Little Light
The holiday season can be the most hazardous time of
the year. From injuries caused by new toys to home
fires resulting from faulty Christmas lights, accidents are
just waiting to happen. Don't let your holiday become
a disaster. Be aware, stay alert, and take sensible
precautions.
Each year, Christmas tree lights are the cause of
devastating home fires. You can keep your holidays
from going up in smoke by taking these simple
precautions:
* Make sure all lights carry the Underwriters'
Laboratories (UL) label.
* Examine and discard cords that are frayed, worn, or
otherwise damaged. Also check for broken plugs and
loose sockets.
* Check the label to determine if lights are for inside or
outside use.
* When using outdoor lights, cover plugs and connector
joints with plastic wraps to protect them from water
or snow; avoid running light cords across sidewalks
and driveways; and point light bulbs down, so that
moisture doesn't run into the socket.
* Don't overload extension cords. You should run no
more than three sets of lights from any extension
cord.
* Never leave lights on while you are out or overnight
while you sleep.
* Make sure that your Christmas tree is fresh, because
hot lights can ignite a dry tree. Shake the tree before
buying -- needles should not fall to the ground. Place
the tree away from heat sources (such as vents,
radiators, fireplaces, electrical appliances, and hot
lights) and add water in the base container frequently.
REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Joanna Brandon, Jeff Clausius,
Stephanie Crenshaw, Kathy Ragsdale and Janie Russell.
Please submit ads or articles you would like in the newsletter to Joanna
Brandon BY 5:00 the Tuesday before payroll.
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RAP -A -ROUND 12/17/93 Page 5
Peace on Earth
and
Good W1*11 To all