[AccessD] Good Feelings To All

Arthur Fuller fuller.artful at gmail.com
Tue Jun 18 10:21:52 CDT 2013


Tony,

I can speak only for myself, but since I declared my retirement, I have
found life a whole lot more fun than pretty much the four decades since I
graduated from university. I have a lot less money now than in those
decades, but I am lots happier than since my days in university, which were
perhaps the most fun years of my life. My current stage in life is a close
second. I'm learning Mandarin, reading 2-3 books a week, working on my next
HBO-style saga about the history of Chinese crime in Canada, and
rediscovering Mozart, to whom I have previously given short shrift in
favour of Beethoven. In my retirement years, I have never felt more
energetic and less pressured by deadlines. I love it.

I suppose that some people feel useless upon retirement, but I am not one
of those. I've shrunk the needs to spend and negated the desire to keep up
with the Joneses. I've discarded the huge majority of my material
possessions, either by sale or donation to the library or Value Village,
and the net result is that I feel more free than I have felt in the past 3
decades at minimum.

Recently an old client called me to request a few enhancements to the app I
wrote for him. The code began in about 2005 and I've done a few weeks work
on it every year since. It's a complex app and he is a terrific friend, so
there's no way in the world that I would abandon my end of the canoe.

There are two other things happening in terms of gigs:

I'm mentoring a guy in San Francisco who I think holds the world record for
largest Access app ever written. Using MZTools, I determined that the total
line count of VBA code was 700K. There are ~360 tables, and a MySQL back
end. (He approached me because he bought our book on MySQL (
www.artfulsoftware.com).

I created a Volunteer-management app with an Access FE and a SQL Server BE,
for an NPO that handles housing for the aged and infirm. I volunteered to
do this because I recognize the value of their work. The hourly rate on
this gig is $0. Prior to my retirement, I would never have had the time to
do such a project, despite my empathy for their work. Now that I have
retired from the coding business, I have lots of hours to throw against
such a benevolent project. In about two months, following local testing,
we'll roll this baby out to ~300 offices in ~20 cities. It's part of my
"Giving Back" strategy in my semi-retirement.

I still do (very) occasional maintenance on Access projects, but have
shifted my focus to Alpha Five. I'm on the beta team for Alpha Anywhere,
soon to be released. In a word, it is awesome. "Anywhere" means just that:
write a web app once and it will run in any browser, plus tablet and smart
phone. Or, alternatively, write a traditional desktop app. I am still
mid-project on my first Alpha Anywhere app. It took me a while to decide
upon what to write in it, but finally it occurred to me that I have the
perfect app to try out on this new platform (perfect meaning the existing
Access app I've written for a client who could most profit by the
transition to smart phone and tablet). In terms of complexity, I'd call it
middle-level. It's an app for safety inspection engineers. In case you
don't know what they are, they visit factories and take measurements at
every workstation (drill, press, robot) and pass or fail their current
setup, supplying recommendations for how to fix any detected problems. The
client who commissioned this app currently lugs a laptop around from
station to station. Recently I gave him a glimpse of the new version,
written in the beta of Alpha Anywhere. I showed him how it runs on my Nexus
7 and he was blown away.

In full disclosure, as a member of the beta team at Alpha, I am not paid
for my time and since it's privately held, own no shares and the above
should be considered my objective opinion, not a propaganda piece. The
simple fact is that should any potential Access gigs come my way in the
future, I will discourage Access as the vehicle and suggest Alpha instead,
for two reasons: it is wayyyy more powerful than Access, and it beautifully
supports desktop, web, smart phone and tablet.

I'm doing the port of the aforementioned safety-engineering app on my
nickel. The client didn't request it; it just struck me as the perfect
example of what to gain by having an app written once that can run on all
these platforms. It's also an excellent excuse to keep programming, but
with the virtue that there is neither a deadline nor a project manager
nagging me.

I repeat that I have nothing to gain personally from my endorsement of
Alpha 5 and the forthcoming Alpha Anywhere. But this is my endorsement:
don't wait for Microsoft to release some sort of Access equivalent, Visit
the AlphaSoftware.com web site and download a trial and see for yourself
how superior it is. Nuff said.



On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 10:39 AM, Tony Septav <TSeptav at uniserve.com> wrote:

> Hey Guys
>
> I think we have become dinosaurs, our time has come and gone. Yes they may
> be some of you that are still being profitable with ACCESS projects but
> let's be honest...............   Sorry not trying to be the "Grim Reaper".
> Getting that old wiener  wagon and hanging out at the beach and watching
> wave babies is looking better all the time. The only problem is I am to old
> to remember what to do with a wave baby.
>
>
>
> Tony Septav
>
> Nanaimo, BC
>
> Canada
>
> --
> AccessD mailing list
> AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>



-- 
Arthur
Cell: 647.710.1314

Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
  -- Niels Bohr


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