Today, I went into the city for a meeting and birthday shopping (pink skates). I deposited my children with my sister and headed out for an unencumbered meeting. After the meeting, I went to retrieve my children from one sister and then walked next door to my other sister's to help her with plans for an addition to her house. We didn't get to spend much time together but it was indeed a reverse sister day and I needed it so much today.
I do network maintenance for a few businesses. One is my husband's Livestock Auction. He is having a sale tomorrow. He asked me to go check his ancient (and I do mean ancient) system. He said a monitor had a line through it and nothing else. I thought no problem. I have salvaged every piece of obsolete computer equipment I have taken out of every business I have ever helped to step into computer bliss so I could have spare parts to keep my husband's system going. His auction software is functional for the limited business he does so why spend money? Anyway, when I replaced the monochrome monitor with another monochrome monitor (does that date the computer for you?) I realized that the problem was not just a monitor it was the server. The hard drive for the server had collapsed without any warning. The server is so old and so oddly configured that I am not able to substitute, at least not before tomorrow when I had this meeting in the city today. I did not sleep a wink last night and had that chest tightening defeated, I may throw up feeling all day. True panic.
But . . . I did what any "Let nothing get in my way" computer geek would do. I wrote a database program for tomorrow's sale. I have only a little left. The only problem is that the computer will not be able to issue the seller checks. I suppose people will still accept hand-written checks. I feel better. I may be able sleep tonight unless I start worrying that the program will not work when the calves start selling.
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3 comments:
People love hand-written checks! We do payroll via electronic deposit, but because of Intuit limits being such a pain to alter, at bonus time we issue hand-written checks. You can kiss a hand-written check. Kind of hard to kiss an electronic deposit :-)
A farm girl who is also a computer geek? My, I am impressed!! I thought you were wonderful as a mere canning guru ;)
No one gave their check back to me. Though I have learned some tremendous lessons. 1) don't write a database program in one night 2) get office help if you are going to reprogram during the sale 3)plan for the unexpected glitches.
I am finished with the sale. The program worked with limitations. I survived. Now, I will go back to something I feel calmer while doing - canning and gardening.
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