I started writing this a few days ago- followers of this blog will probably understand the delay- but this time, it isn't me! We've had some weather come through our area that has just been plain unpleasant. First, a 12 hour power outage on my birthday, and then yesterday (Sep 10) a six hour outage.
Uncool. Very uncool. As I'm fond of saying, Commonwealth Edison- the electric company- is off of my Christmas card list! On the plus side of things, Jennifer and I have gotten quite adept at rapidly setting up- I think we had power to our sump pump in ten minutes or less. It turns out we're going to have to replace the battery and possible the charger as well for the backup pump. And this has what to do with data, you might ask?
Everything, actually. The power had gone out around noon, and everyone was ambling around the house like extras from Shaun of the Dead. At around 1400, I had a brilliant notion- my laptop was charged... I could work on my database for a bit. Buoyed by this happy thought, I slipped on my neon yellow-green Speedo foam sandals and proceeded down the stairs to the Secret Underground Lair, my way lit by a motion-sensing battery powered overhead light. As our winters can be quite cold, the way to the SUL is paved with interlocking foam exercise mats. And since this is a pathway, there is only a single row of mats until one reaches the exercise area directly outside the SUL. I discovered something was frightfully amiss when I put my first foot down and there was a lot more "give" to the mat than there should be. My second step triggered the light, and also showed little waves in the water that was on both sides of the floating mats. The sump pump battery had failed.
"Get some shoes on- there's water downstairs"
Jennifer only heard the last part as she was in another room. I grabbed the garage keys and started the generator. I plugged the supply cord in and brought the distribution box into the house. I went back outside, grabbed the 50ft (15.24M) extension cord and plugged it in to the distribution box. I turned around and... remember when I said Jennifer probably only heard the last part? There was a disembodied pair of socks and slippers in sight.
To summarize The Almost Flood of Sep 10, our basement was saved by Forty-Two, which is, as everyone knows, the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
As long as I'm on the topic of data (that's allegedly the theme of this blog, right??): a revelation, education and the birth of a database. The revelation: I'm pretty sure I'd mentioned this previously: I'd experienced a problem with at least one of my tables a few months back- I was suddenly unable to enter or modify data. It got so bad that I ended up starting a discussion on LinkedIn and eventually deleting the table and starting from scratch. As I was doing some research for the new database I'm building at work, I ran across a tidbit in Matthew MacDonald's most excellent Access 2007: The Missing Manual, and apparently I had inadvertently locked the table(s) in question.
We were working on a job and had to make a few corrections to it before spooling production, and one of my coworkers mentioned that we would not be experiencing this particular issue if we had a database like he had at a former job. So I started to build a few tables and it dawned on me that a form would be needed. As I rarely use forms, I decided that now would be a good time to expand my horizons. Forms are deceptively simple to make (in some ways) in Access 2007: open a table, goto the CREATE tab, and click on Form. Its great for really simple data entry forms. I made a simple one and the only modification I made was to the size of a few fields. Next, I did the same thing for the Music_Recordings table.
The band stopped playing. The storm clouds gathered. A wizard appeared and started shouting, "Papers, please!", in Klingon. It went from fun to work in an Augenblick.
That's all dramatic license, of course. For a "hobby" database, some of the tables are fairly wide- hence, the need for forms. For example, each record in the Music_Recordings table has seventy-six data fields. When I looked at what had been created, Access had a form with two columns of thirty-eight fields each (and labels). I tried all sorts of things, but could not get the fields where I wanted them. That's when I picked up Access 2007: The Missing Manual at the library. It was there that I discovered the most unlikely solution, pretty much irrational. To move an individual field in a form in Access, one must "REMOVE" it from the grid. That sounds pretty ominous and illogical to me, but that's how it works.
My form looks nice now. Not perfect, but getting there.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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