September 9, 1999
Dear Everyone:
Today is the first (I think) of the tricky dates as
far as computers are concerned.
Everyone has heard about the
Y2K
problem. But not everyone is
aware of the “All 9’s” problem.
You see, in older computer systems, programmers had a trick to
indicate that the computer had reached the end of a record.
They would enter a date of 9/9/99.
Since the date of 9/9/99 didn’t exist (yet), it was an easy way
to get around a programming problem.
Until 9/9/99 became today.
Any number of old programs could grind to a halt once this date
is entered. We’ll see what
develops.
Speaking of programming, I’ve been having a
wonderful time totally revamping “Jeannie’s” database.
The title bar now reads, “The
Court Reporter’s
Friend”, which looked pretty good to me…and even better when I corrected
a slight spelling error. I
designed all new forms, with cute graphics, like the one of a man trying
to juggle a pen, a pile of papers and a telephone.
I thought it really illustrated the quandary of data entry.
And I designed a couple of dozen
queries
which, at the click of a button, would:
Compute how much a job would cost depending on which of ten
variables were set to Yes or No; and how much “Jeannie” could expect to
take home on each job; plus (once we got the data into the table) how
much she really took home on each job.
By the time I had the database ready, it had grown
to over 1-½ megabytes. This
is too much for a
floppy disk to handle. I
had to zip
it up (compress the file using a special application) to get it onto a
disk. This was because of
all the graphic images, of course.
Graphics are notorious memory hogs.
At “Jeannie’s” place, I proudly unzipped the new
database. But I had
forgotten that my (newer) PC monitor was set to a higher resolution than
“Jeannie’s” (older) monitor.
So the forms didn’t behave as well on her machine.
Ultimately, I had to remove almost all of the graphics, and
resize most of the windows.
I also didn’t realize that the report that she
gets, showing how much she’ll be paid for each job, is divided into
Original-and-One and additional copies.
So it’s back to the drawing board.
But it’s OK, because we’re both enjoying ourselves; and I only
have to change one field, add another field, and rewrite about a dozen
queries.
While still on the programming front, we finally
got the replacement software for our
Records
Management program. I
have it loaded on my machine, plus a few others.
I’m like an excited puppy going, “Ooh!
What’s that? What’s
that? What’s that?”
Stumbling into areas and trying to make sense of it all.
“What happens if I click here?
Oops. Never mind.”
I’ve already bumbled my way through importing
Departments and People and now know that, in the future, we’ll want to
do it the other way around (People before Departments).
All of this won’t hurt anything.
“DBA Dan” assures me that he can wipe the database clean before
we do the real Conversion.
Exactly when that will be, I don’t know yet.
Later than now, that’s for sure.
Movies…
The only movie we could agree on last weekend was
The
Astronaut’s Wife.
Afterward, we agreed that it was sort of like
Rosemary’s
Baby crossed with a really old episode of
The Twilight
Zone. It’s also
v-e-r-y s-l-o-w. The
writer/director
(who should be shot) does a lot of cute and fancy camera work, to try
and distract you from the fact that, basically, nothing’s happening.
Eminently skip-able.
Love, as always,
Pete
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