I’m celebrating a little. As usual, it takes a few months at a new job before you accumulate a surplus. Mimosa is not cheap but I can manage the specials. Wallace has mentioned Flamingo, the place we visited deep in the Cypress forest. He wants to see it again, and I’m all for that. There was a boat ride we missed last time by arriving too late in the day. We’re unlikely to miss it again. Those swamp tours are a must, don’t ever pass up an opportunity to go on one.
The thing about shoemaking is how you learn by mistakes. There is no completely right way to do most of it. I built a pair of (women’s) shoes from nothing but the soles today, which might not sound like much, but then I don’t know what everyone else accomplished during the same time period. The process is just as technically complicated as any other job I know of. In its favor, I may have found the least stressful job left in town.
The mini-database of shoe tickets is progressing. Except for address type programs, there are no real beginner’s level database applications I know of that are easy to implement. You know I like to talk database, so here is a report of what is happening at this stage.
I found the original input screen to be faulty, in that it required the data entry person to turn the ticket over at least three times to collect the information. This is not an uncommon find when converting paper forms to something more efficient. I put forward that nobody who has not undergone this step can grasp how utterly idiotic most paper forms really are, or actually, the people who designed the paper form.
Also, we need a field that will extract the last four digits of the customer phone number. It is the only unchanging field that is unlikely to be misremembered during the lifespan of a ticket. I rejected the [customer] name field as a lookup since there are too many in Florida who might forget their own name, and because I, as a former programmer, appreciate how many different ways people can spell “Elizabeth”.
I have not been cooking breakfast much since nobody is around when I get up. Let me correct that. I usually awake around 4:30 AM (5:30AM this time of year) and write this blog. Over the years, I have trained myself to go back to sleep until 7:30 AM. Now you know too much. That is why I am planning on going to Wallace’s new spot, the Mimosa Café, tomorrow for a store-bought breakfast. Well that, and his account of a new blonde lady waitress. When did I last go for breakfast myself? Probably 2007.
Here’s your daily trivia. As a heart attack victim back in the prime of my time, I noticed a lot of healthy doctors take Lipitor (according to National Geographic). You can do the research on your own; it is a statin, which controls not your heart, but your liver. That’s where cholesterol comes from. Guess where profit comes from? Lipitor all the way, with sales of over one billion dollars per month. Or around $25,000 per minute. Can we shoot the first person who says that’s enough to give Bill Gates a coronary?
[Author's note 2014-06-10: All these years later I have the feeling that these liver pills, while saving me from a heart attack, have affected my system to the extent that I cannot walk very far without lower back pain. I cannot say for sure there is a cause and effect, but I sure never had any trouble walking before Lipitor--and it is the only medication I have every taken long term that affects anything except my heart. I really have the sneaking suspicion that some new study is going to find a connection.]
[Author's note 2015-06-10: This condition eventually evolved into a lower back condition. By 2015, I can ride a bicycle all day, but cannot walk more than a few blocks. And the Mimosa was finally taken over by the Cuban Mafia, so it will always be in business with its five customers a day.]
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