Access vs. FrontPage... and a silly meme

[altivo]

Well, here's the latest word in my battle with Access, ODBC, and SQL Server. Today was not a good day. By about 1 pm I was angry enough to throw a microcomputer through a window (or Windows) which is extremely unusual for me. There were other factors of course, but the utter obtuseness of Microsoft Access and the vile state of the so-called documentation for it was primary. Even books purportedly for the exact version (down to release number) I was using were telling me to make choices from menus that did not exist and showing pictures of dialog boxes that were not being presented. Even though the data access page I created was functional on my workstation, it refused to work elsewhere. The official advice was that it must be served from Microsoft's own IIS server, to Microsoft's own browser, which is just what I was doing. Still no luck.

Finally I decided to try something else. I knew that Microsoft's active server pages are supposed to handle database reads and writes. All right, switch to FrontPage, another Microsoft program I totally despise. But... after a lot of fiddly bits (I was reminded of Slartibartfast and the fjords) and at least a dozen trips between my desk and the server console, it works. Furthermore, it works with non-Microsoft web browsers on non-Microsoft platforms, which is much superior to the state of the Access solution. Just possibly that eliminates the last obstacle to switching another three staff workstations over to Linux. Now I only need to tidy up the screens a bit and it is functional.

So... By way of celebration, here's a meme for folks who like maps.

Geography Master You scored 100% Accuracy!

All bow before the geography genius. Will you be our master? Will you lead us, all powerful geography master? You definitely know your stuff. Colorado and Wyoming didn't get you confused, and you can find the North East states in your sleep. You were probably always wrecking the curve in school. Even if you cheated by using a map, this is still a decent score. This state naming skill of yours will definitely get you far in life. There are myriads of times where it is important to know the shape of the states. Ok, I lied, it doesn't really matter. But it does show you know your stuff. And knowing stuff is good. P.S. I don't want to die on the "Newest Test" list. Thanks for rating me.

My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Accuracy

Link: The State Locator Challenge Test written by kafkahateszeppo on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

And yes, I could pass the same test on Canada, Europe, South America, or East Asia. I'm not sure I'd get all those middle eastern states, especially the newer ones created by the breakup of the Soviet Union, though. And Africa I know I'd mess up. The borders are mostly still familiar, but those countries keep changing their names. I'd get the ones that have been stable for decades, I think.

Comments

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

... aren't those curse words already, Access, Frontpage? *grins*

And I'm on the other far end on the knowledge of geography.
"The Immigrant: You scored 35% Accuracy!"
I guess I'll be buying a nice States map on the wall... =)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't really expect anyone who didn't go to school in the US or Canada to be able to instantly tell the difference between Wyoming and Colorado or between Vermont and New Hampshire. The interesting thing about that little quiz is that most Americans under 30 or so will do no better than you did.

There are two reasons, I think. The large one is that geography is no longer taught as a subject in our schools. Don't ask why, I can't explain that. The other is that because people travel almost exclusively by air now, they no longer have any sense of how places relate to one another spacially. They get on an airplane in Atlanta and get off in Los Angeles. They watched a movie or something while in flight. The places between Atlanta and Los Angeles no longer exist. They have lost their reality in the same way that a person who takes the elevator from the ground floor to the eighth floor of an office building every day may have only the vaguest idea of what lies on the intervening floors and little interest in finding out.

[farhoug.livejournal.com]

I think geography is still a taught subject over here, though it's one of those "memorize and forget" things again. If I were to name the European countries, with luck I'd get about half of them right.

I guess it's a slowly disappearing thing, as all the information is readily available, and traveling is more jumping from point to point via air. Gaining new friends around the world sure helps memorizing new places, that I have noticed. Helped a bit on naming the states too. =)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we used to say that about amateur radio, before there was the internet. Another dying art, that.

[bariki.livejournal.com]

A part of me, a small and bitter part that I usually keep locked away in the basement with only some rusks to chew on, wants to point and laugh at the Access-related suffering.

But I won't do that. If anything, all this to-do with inferior database technologies and their ability to drive you to chuck hardware around has only increased my opinion of you. ^)^ Looking back over the past month or so, at my own tentative forays into the unfamiliar world of non-Microsoft operating systems, and seeing someone else have similar problems but the other way around (so to speak) is rather a comfort. Misery loves company? No, it's not that - rather, it's the reinforcement of the absolute that no one is infullable... er, infallible. XD

Bit surprised you didn't solicit my input, since Access and ASP are two of my stronger points. Still, as you've done it already and the solution is (probably) superior to anything else that existed previously, the only thing left to say is congratulations - you beat mdb. ^)^

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I did post about it previously. You must have been busy. :)

And I never laughed at your Linux difficulties, though I was puzzled as to why they should have occurred. I am well aware that *NIX environments have a steep learning curve for the beginner, as I was a beginner at one time myself. The truth is, though, Windows and Mac are just as bad for the beginner. I get to watch computer illiterates struggle with the "obvious" and "intuitive" stuff daily. It gets tired fast, believe me.

No, I haven't beat MDB, I've merely cornered it with a chair and whip. I am using that advantage to help me toss Microsoft out of the library on its fat ass, though. It starts to look like that fight has unexpectedly been won. Our projected software and maintenance costs for 15 public access terminals over the next three years: $28000 if we keep Microsoft, $15000 if we switch to Linux. And I didn't do the math. My Windows-addicted boss did it. (The one who was willing to let us all switch to Thunderbird for e-mail, but insisted she had to keep Outlook herself. Though she is now happily using Thunderbird...) This tentative solution to the database issue may increase the number of workstations converting to Linux from 15 to 18 or more.

I will have beaten MDB when I have a platform independent solution in place, such as MySQL with a JDBC interface and CGI scripts instead of ASP. For one thing, this make-do at present requires me to use Windows and FrontPage in order to maintain the database interface, even though the clients will probably be running Firefox and Linux. That is just wrong.

[bariki.livejournal.com]

You did? *looks* Ah.. yes, you did. Oops. x.x

As I said, it was a small and bitter part of me. Don't worry, it's still locked up in the basement. And for the record I never said that you had laughed at me.

*shivers* Frontpage. Even I dislike Frontpage. It's petulance and general inability to function as required have caused several outbursts of anger over the years for me and countless others. Notepad and gedit have taken it's place, and they don't whine about the layout.

Well, ganbatte anyway. Never played much with the dolphin myself, nor JDBC for that matter outside of uni coursework. SQL is SQL thankfully, so at least that part of the migration should be relatively painless. Hrm, at least in theory - MS has a long-standing habit of making it a total mare to port its db data from one platform to another. From memory there is a way of getting ASP to run on Apache, if you wanted to, but somehow I doubt if you've any intention of doing that. :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I had managed to avoid FrontPage until I took this job. The previous maintainer of the library's web pages was totally dependent on it, unfortunately, and it took me two years to disentangle those from the need to use FrontPage to maintain them (they still look like FrontPage products because I'm too lazy to redesign the look.) I generally use gedit or plain old vi to do html stuff. Not that I could write asp that way, of course, alien Microsoft species that it is.

So having disentangled myself from FrontPage so completely that I typically don't boot Windows on my work PC more than once a month, you can imagine my aggravation at finding myself running Windows again, just in order to have FrontPage. Ugh. Hopefully this necessity will end quickly.

[bariki.livejournal.com]

I hope so to. The thought of an intelligent person being dependant upon Frontpage is.. unsettling.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Seventy per cent right - it's completely unfair you get all these boxy square states. I say Wyoming and Colorado should immediately arrange for huge easily-identifiable lakes, or fight a confusing dynastic war with each other, or something.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

You did well. Very well, for someone who never lived in the US, in fact. The author did warn upfront that he was going to use the "hard" states, so obviously Wyoming and Colorado were going to appear. It was easy enough though because he showed bits of the surrounding state borders, which put them into context.

With an artist's eye for proportion, one can tell the two apart anyway, but only if they also tell you which map projection is in use. in Mercator, Wyoming is somewhat taller than Colorado, while in Lambert or most conical projections, it is more trapezoidal. ;P

The disturbing thing about these geography quizzes is the number of US young folks who utterly fail at them. That you should get 70% is excellent, but that they should only average 30% is appalling.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Success is always the best Revenge.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Especially since the result of that success means I will ultimately get rid of a whole lot of Microsoft products and licenses. Yay.

Further report: I have now added a record to the database, and the existing product recognized and accepted it. Modified the record and the modification was recognized too. So it is going to work.

[doco.livejournal.com]

For once I'm glad we only have sixteen of them. :)

(On a piece of land roughly the size of Montana, however.)

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Oooh! I wanna nudge the pony! Please? :)

I got 95%, and I wish it would have told me which one I missed! Most likely it was one of the Eastern Seaboard states. Oh well!

I'd probably get 50-70% on Europe or Canada (I know the names, but not the order nor the shapes), and a little less in Asia and South America. I used to know Africa a lot better, but that was too long ago.

The Middle East would be hard. I can get the general area of most countries, but the shapes and names keep changing :)

Thanks for the interesting tidbits about the test and about other stuff. Good luck with your computer-based woes, and have fun!

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The pony loves nudges, thanks. :)

Well, if you didn't miss Wyoming or Colorado, then I'd bet on North Dakota or Kansas, I almost swapped those two but caught myself. If you had missed Vermont or New Hampshire, you probably would have swapped them and got only 90%. Connecticut or Massachusetts? The rest seemed too obvious to me to be a problem.

[songcoyote.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's the thing: most of them were pretty clear as long as I stopped and thought about them. I'm pretty sure I got all the ones you listed, so I don't really know which one was wrong. As I said: Oh well :)

*gentle, yet firm nudging*
Mmmmm... pony!

Light and laughter,
SongCoyote