September 2, 1999
Dear Everyone:
“Jeannie” and I have been having such fun with her
new database.
Almost every day, she goes into it and adds the day’s expenses
and other information. In
the meantime, I added another table to track non-daily costs, such as
when she (finally!) gets her machine fixed and when she orders that
special paper that her steno writer uses and other supplies.
Her tax man is going to be so pleased next year.
I also took a look at some code that I had in our
billing database (used for billing customers at work for box storage),
which was actually code that I had pirated from another database used by
the library staff. This
allowed me to create
queries
that would figure out which jobs “Jeannie” had taken, but which had not
yet been billed to the law firm.
Some calculations then came up with how much we could expect the
office to charge the lawyer, times the percentage “Jeannie” is supposed
to get. This will give her
an idea of how much money she can expect to have coming in during the
next billing cycle.
Further down the road, she’s going to want
something that will show her the difference between what we expect the
office to bill and what she actually gets.
She suspects that certain firms get some kind of a discount and
we’ll want to figure out which ones they are since her expected income
will be less in those cases.
Also, “Jeannie” is doing the classic “user versus
programmer” scenario. I put
in a query that will calculate how much she’ll get for an expedited job
(one the lawyer is willing to pay extra to get processed and sent to
him/her more quickly). Last
weekend, she just happened to mention that copies are only charged the
expedite-rate if they’re ordered at the same time as the original.
Copies made later are charged the regular rate.
This is what happens when the “programmer” doesn’t
know enough about the client’s business.
This is actually why I have the job that I do now.
When Information Management Services was formed, they didn’t want
a “Rent-a-Tech”, a generic technical support person who would only show
up when a problem was reported.
They wanted someone who fully understood the work that they did.
That turned out to be me (and “Wilbur”, to a certain extent).
So they wrote a job description and “created” the job that I was
pretty much already doing.
As for “Jeannie’s” database, now I need to add
another field called “Expedite Copies”.
If Expedite Copies is “Yes”, calculate using this rate.
If Expedite Copies is “No”, use the usual rate for copies.
That’s two more queries to add to the ten that we already have
running behind a button on a form.
“Jeannie” just clicks on the button and all the work goes on in
the background without her having to know the logic.
The database is still definitely in what we call
the
Beta phase. Still being
developed and “de-bugged”.
“De-bugging” is what happens when “Jeannie” says, “But I don’t
want that report, I want this report (which doesn’t exist yet), or when
something doesn’t work out the way we expected it to.
A few more weeks (or months) of Beta-testing, and
we may have something Ready for Prime Time.
When that happens, there may be a way that I can create copies of
the basic database for other court reporters.
We may have a cottage industry going on here.
Movies…
All that fun with the database didn’t stop us from
going to a movie, even if this is the “dog days of August”, when
Hollywood dumps the dogs on the market.
We went to see the new remake of
The Thomas
Crown Affair. This
one stars Pierce
Brosnan and Renee
Russo instead of
Steve McQueen
and Faye Dunaway,
although Dunaway gets to play Thomas Crown’s psychiatrist, a nice touch.
In the
original,
the most McQueen and Dunaway did was kiss passionately while the camera
spun around them. In this
version, Brosnan and Russo, in full nudity, make out everywhere but on
top of the refrigerator (and they may have done that, too, and left it
on the cutting-room floor, for all we know).
In the original, McQueen, a man with more money
than King Midas,
masterminds a bank robbery, just to prove he can do it.
In the new one, Brosnan, a man with more money than King Midas,
masterminds a museum robbery, just to prove he can do it.
In both movies, the woman is out to prove the rich guy is really
a crook. (It just goes to
show, as
Stanton Delaplane’s grandmother was fond of saying, “The rich are
never truly happy.”)
“Jeannie” decided she liked the original better.
I liked the new one better, simply because the villain-hero had a
better approach to the whole thing.
It was more of a lark than a deliberate intention to deprive a
lot of people.
Either way, we went back to “Jeannie’s” place and
tried the new clippers out on Big White Kitty.
The clippers worked great, although BWK may not agree.
He made enough noises to let us know he wasn’t enjoying the
experiment. But if it keeps
him from getting matted and getting burrs buried in his coat, it will be
worth it. We’ll try it again
in a few weeks.
(Don’t tell BWK.)
Love, as always,
Pete
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