Posts
First things first. Congratulations to Jo on getting to 40 days stopped. That's about when you begin to start thinking that, much as you might miss the cigs, it's a bit of a waste to blow it. Let's face it there was a point where 40 minutes without would have been good for me. Giving up smoking is a truly strange pursuit and one that I think only a smoker can understand. Very well done.
Well folks the clocks have changed and I can now see the potholes in the road on my drive to work because it's daylight. It seems quite sudden too. Around valentines it was beginning to look like our poor wee dog might at least glimpse the twilight on her walk if we rushed home. Now it's broad daylight for a couple of hours after. Daffodils and everything. After the winter we had it's really good to see. For me it's over a year since I smoked and, despite the odd cigar when the wife was away, I'm now more of a non smoker than a smoker. I still don't do the non-smoker thing though. Quite the opposite. If you want to smoke smoke. The smell has absolutely no impact on me, strangely neither bad or good. For a long time after I stopped I seemed acutely tuned to the scent of smoke but now I can take it or leave it.
As to saving money: well quidco and EDF energy both made good on their promises in the last month. £80 cash back for signing up through quidco and £100 of the first bill with EDF. Nearly £200 earned for doing essentially nothing. That can't be bad. We continue to car share to and from work which is saving us a good bit per month as well. I haven't however got any new fantastic savings to pass on. The good news is that that means the car has behaved and not cost anything for a few months.
I haven't had much chance to blog because I've been driving myself nuts creating a database for my work. We have been recording our time on a spreadsheet for about three years and now it's decided to kick the bucket. As a true geek I've often wished I understood how to use MS Access so I decided that I finally had to try and up skill myself. Back in 1998-99 I fell in love with a software called Lotus Approach. At a time when people could still be shocked out of their minds by the fact that Word had more than one Font or that PowerPoint might actually replace acetates and the overhead projector I eagerly worked away on a stock and order system for the shop I managed. It was actually pretty effective and lasted for about three or four years before that particular company got swallowed up by another.
So if I was making software around the millennium how come I'm not a dot com millionaire? I'm all about creating it and figuring it out and knowing why something works and even what it could be capable of. Once it's working and everybody is happy with it I lose interest. It's also unusual for me to even care about perfection. Does it work? Does it do what you needed? Is it better than what you had? Yes, well that's good, get on with it. But what about... Get on with it. So it has glitches that shouldn't happen and you're learning workarounds before you've even learnt the correct way. Get over it. Basically when I create something it's usually very good but it really needs someone else to make it saleable. This time however I'm trying to push myself a bit further. After Lotus I didn't like the look of Access. I preferred every other Microsoft product but not Access. Now that I've properly applied myself to it I have to say... I was right to not like the look of it. What happened Bill? With everything else it seemed to about helping imbeciles like me to get good with the computer but with this? The truth is that if you don't write code your off to a very bad start. Everything can be done using wizards etc but really it only pulls together with code. Why? With Lotus approach you basically designed some pretty forms and it did the techy stuff in the background. With access it's the other way around. If you want a pretty form you'll have to work pretty hard and jump through lots of hoops to get there. It's the first software I've ever encountered where you can do the same thing twice and get a different result both times.
However after three weeks of almost literally banging my head against the wall I seem to have something that is actually pretty good. I have worries though. The whole reason that I got allowed the time to do this is because our spreadsheet is effectively crashing every users PC. I'm trying to put it to the back of my mind but the database isn't exactly nippy. It doesn't crash the PC and we're talking about seconds rather than minutes but it's brand new at the moment with just one quarters data in it. Is it going to slow to crawl in it's first year? Hope not. Also it has a small issue that if two of us are working on separate records and then one hits save...the other finds that their record jumps to the saved one. For a variety of reasons that won't be a big issue with this particular database but it's driving me nuts that I don't know why it happens. In true me fashion though I'm presenting it to my bosses tomorrow and expect to subject the masses to it within the next week. It's not quite saleable yet but it's something that any training department would benefit from even in it's present state. That makes me want to learn more about Access because, even if it was never saleable, when you go for an interview and you can describe how you created something like that it always sounds good.
Sorry to land you with such a geeky post when I haven't posted for a while but, as those who remember me getting the iPhone will know, I can get a bit obsessed with this sort of thing for a while. It's my addictive personality.
Wish me luck with the database and good luck with whatever you're up to. If you find a way to save or make lots of money please let me know.
Till next month
T
