Blog on the Lillypad
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
 | Eight Hours Straight of MicroSoft Access
I was told a couple months ago at my new job that I had been picked to become the Access Guru. I was handed a huge book on how to use Access and a trouble ticket for something that needed to be fixed in one of our databases, and that was the beginning of my career. However, my main role is to write documentation. I spend most of my time creating "Requirements" documents for software applications. But intermittently I am pulled back to the Access work. The result of this is that I learn a lot of details about our databases and how to use Access, and then I forget it all as I am called back to writing documents for weeks at a time. So then I learn it all over again when I have to attend to trouble tickets. |
Harris, the 26 year old head of our IS department, alternates between being patient and impatient with me, but usually he manages to at least appear patient. All of this database detail work comes naturally to him, but he's busy creating applications to revolutionize clinical research management (and besides he hates Access). So he wants me to learn it and do it.
However, with several projects piled up on us over the last six weeks, Harris kept telling me to just store the trouble tickets and we'd get to them when we got everything else sorted out. I knew, in terms of Access and me, that this plan would have consequences, as once again I forgot most of my accrued Access lore while spending six weeks documenting the amazing "Smart Pen". This device, unlike me, remembers eveything it writes and can download exact reproductions of all that it has written.
So yesterday, Harris called in the new IS guys, Jeremy and Max, and handed them several of the trouble tickets. But I still got six of my own to work on. Meanwhile, Mark, who is expert in Access but also expert in VB, had to stay at his computer doing VB stuff while we took care of Access issues.
For the easy problems I would run into Harris's cube (which he shares with the other three IS guys. They have a huge cube that includes a mini-refrigerator and a sofa. Yes, a sofa in a cube.) and ask him to run a script to get the Access front piece to be updated through Oracle. Or I would ask him to check my work.
But for the big problems, I was in there every five minutes. Harris took it pretty well. He told me he was prepared to just help us all day long as we figured out the variety of ways to keep users up and running. Sometimes the users themselves get too smart for their own good and really mangle a report or form. And sometimes they need additional functionality that we have to create.
As Harris was in my cube trying to figure out one of the glitches I was seeing, he laughed at something I said, and I saw the telltale glint of metal in his mouth.
"Harris! Is that a tongue stud?" I was stunned.
He quickly closed his mouth and looked off to the side. "Yes," he said at last.
"You have a tongue stud?"
He nodded. I had my hand clapped over my own mouth. After a horrifed moment I asked, "Doesn't it hurt?"
He calmed down. "Uh-uh."
"It doesn't hurt when you chew?"
"No."
"What if you eat crunchy stuff. Does it hurt then?"
"No, I've had it for eight years."
"Did it hurt when you got it?"
"Not as much as you'd think."
This sidelined us into a discussion of how one gets a tongue stud, the mechanics of installing it. But Harris was more cagey on why he got it. I'm still adjusting to working with such young people who have such different mores from my own. Believe me, Harris, Jeremy, Max, and Mark are great teachers.
However, after this amazing diversion into the facts of almost-painless body piercing, it was back to Access. By days end, I was on my last trouble ticket, which Harris said he would finish for me, as it was time for me to leave. My mind is full of Access details again, ready for more work. But now that all the tickets are signed off, it's back to writing, and another six weeks of slowly losing all that knowledge as the experience oozes out again.
