Our Lady of Databases

I spent my last day off of the holidays, yesterday, as the MS Access database monkey for two different organizations.

First, the PTA at my son's school. Other folks have taken over the part I find stressful, namely arranging all of the activities and making sure the presenters have what they need. I'm doing the part they find stressful: scheduling the students per their preferences as much as possible. Symbiosis is happy making. I find a DB much less anxiety-inducing than pissed-off students & parents.

Second, Lambert House. I've been tweaking a monstrous and VB-infested pair of DBs to do things like remind volunteers to fill out annual intake forms, and get the race data sliced & diced the way the city of Seattle, one of our donors, wants it. Yes, Access is silly, but rewriting the whole damn thing is not how anyone wants me to spend my time. Besides, Access does a fairly decent job of building & integrating custom UIs. If only it didn't speak pidgin SQL.

How much is a normal sex life worth?

I was looking at my benefits web page for an unrelated reason when I saw the claim for my surgery: $59,715.57. I'm walking around, a bit painfully still, with the equivalent of a Mercedes between my legs. I believe that figure includes everything but hotel & air fare.