[AccessD] You Guys make Me Sick

Hey Arthur
Mandarin, impressive.
Won't worry about "can barely carry a polite dinner-party conversation". I
run into the same problem trying to do that in  English and it is my mother
tongue. 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2012 10:08 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] You Guys make Me Sick

I guess this entire group senses that we're at a Senior Moment. I've checked
out several new languages to learn, and finally after much to forget
computer languages and instead learn Mandarin.

Currently, I have the basics down, including the tones, but I have a long
way to go before I could write something in Mandarin. From the alphabetic
perspective, learning the writing scheme is a huge leap. I read a wonderful
book called "The Man Who Loved China", about a man called Richard Needham,
who learned to read, speak and write Mandarin in *one* year. Subsequently he
became the world's foremost scholar on the history of China and Chinese
science and culture.

I am in awe of his first achievement, let alone the rest. I am in Year Three
of trying and still can barely carry a polite dinner-party conversation.
Writing about science or history in Mandarin -- well let's just say I don't
have that many years left.

Had I embarked upon this project when 20yo, I might have obtained different
results. At age 64. the learning is a lot slower, whether it's Mandarin or
.NET.

Given my age, I concluded that I am unlikely to be hired as a .NET or PHP
programmer; the only deep skill I have left is SQL Server and MySQL (and of
course Access), for which, fortunately, there remain opportunities. In SQL
Server and MySQL, I try to stay abreast; in Access I am a version -- soon to
be two -- behind. Staying abreast of SQL Server is itself is a huge project.

The rest of the time I want to devote to learning Mandarin, reading The New
York Review of Books, various novels and non-fiction books (current reads
include "Reamde" by Neal Stephenson, "Ruby on Rails Bible", "The Hot Kid"
by Elmore Leonard, and the second edition of "The Selfish Gene", by Richard
Dawkins. That's the list for the next ten days; I read all of them a bit per
day.

I ought to add that I'm also trying to learn Alpha Five v11, and also
spending some time watching its tutorial vids and trying things out.

Currently I have a part-time gig done remotely, a few hours a week. It
boosts my income modestly and I am happy to devote so relatively little to a
project. Of course, this is a myth, since some of both my waking and
sleeping hours (unbillable) are devoted to reconsidering problems related to
the project. However, this is the life we have chosen. Develop or die!
Semper fi!

Arthur
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