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Barely has the smoke cleared from my last blogging for money post and there's already another new blog network launching: Instablogs (tagline: "A News Organization based on Blogging"). Apparently this one is based in India, and their aim is to launch 50(!) blogs on October 5th. Seems like a lofty goal. Of the first seven blog teasers they list, the astronomy blog sounds the most interesting.

Being a construction company, we use Intuit Master Builder pretty extensively at work. It's basically an all-in-one accounting/construction management package and while it does the job reasonably well—for the average user—I thought I'd relay some of the problems with it from an IT/computer programming standpoint. (Kind of an anti-review.) Which is sure to be amusing (or frightening) for other people in my position.

First of all, it's a database-driven application, which is fine, but the underlying database format is Visual FoxPro—and not a new version of FoxPro. I'm not even positive it is FoxPro for that matter: the tables are all in DBF format, and the indexes are CDX files. That's one problem—I mean, it's 2005, and we're still having to deal with DBF files? Even worse: each table name and field name inside the tables is constrained to exactly six characters long. No exceptions. So you either have ridiculously-abbreviated field names (like "invttl" for "Invoice total" or "lstupd" for "Last updated") or short names that are padded out with underscores ("state_"). Uhm, hello? DOS called, and it wants its lame database back.

Second, the relational qualities of such a database are a joke. Sure, there are key fields that build relationships to other tables (foreign keys), but there's no consistency between them—primary key field names are duplicated, fields in different tables linking to the same foreign key field are named differently, etc. But—and here's the dealbreaker—you can only have one "company" per database; in other words, if you have multiple companies (or projects), then each one requires its own database in a separate directory. And there's no inherent way to combine these separate databases to share data among them (like a master list of vendors or cost codes) or to build consolidated reports of any kind. This is probably the single biggest flaw in Master Builder.

So one of my tasks is to build/maintain consolidated reports and software to manage the data among the databases. This, of course, is a huge pain, but I have a variety of tools that I use to do this (which illustrate how hackish this all really is):

• Crystal Reports. Great application, it'll hook into just about any data source and build just about any report you can think up, so I've built a number of consolidated reports in Crystal. Here's the problem: I'm stuck using CR version 8 because that was the last version which allowed you to compile the reports into standalone executable files that people can run without needing Crystal Reports installed on their computers. I have to do this because at least half the PCs here are still running Windows 98 and we don't have a server capable of publishing Crystal's distributed reports.
• Microsoft Access. This is like, the hacked method of managing the databases. I connect to a Master Builder database via ODBC, and I can directly access (no pun intended) the data. The drawback is because of ODBC, I can't connect to more than one database at a time—if I want to copy-and-paste data from the Master Company (the source) to any of the others, I have to close Access completely after each database to sever and then renew the ODBC connection.
• PHP. Yep, PHP. I've built some web form interfaces to the databases (running on the server intranet in-house), one of which is a utility to copy vendors out of the Master Company and paste the new or updated data into each subsequent database. I've also done a bunch of consolidated reports via PHP, accessible through a browser—I find it's much quicker and easier to write the reports in PHP than in Crystal Reports. The drawback? You have to have a web server and PHP running on the intranet. And, have ODBC connections set up for each database on the server as well. And, you have to know PHP.

What really sucks is when a new company/project is added, and I need to go through the existing consolidated reports and update them to include the new database. In the PHP reports, this is pretty much a cinch. In the Crystal reports, though, the pain level ranges from moderate to severe, depending on which report I'm modifying. All of them make extensive use of formulas, so I always have to weed through and update all of those. The worst report is one that uses subreports to break down data from each company, and global variables and formulas to consolidate all this data into the master report; each subreport has to be formatted exactly the same (which is anal retentive beyond words) and I've got this daisy chained house of cards of formulas in various sections of the master report relying on an EvaluateAfter cascade to properly calculate certain values... the anxiety levels creep higher and higher just thinking about that damn thing...

The end result is I've got a lot of scripts, reports and techniques for handling Master Builder that are only known to me, and would be very hard to explain to someone else. Some might say this is "job security," but I was talking with someone about this today and we decided it's much more of a "lock-in" (and not in a good way).

Now, compared to much of the competition out there, Master Builder is a good program. It does accounting voodoo that is a total mystery to me, and seems to do it well. It's got a low barrier-to-entry user interface that makes it easy to learn and use for non techie types. It's an open system to the extent that the database schema is available and there's an API that allows the development of independent software that ties into it (a lot of third party developers have developed PDA modules for it, for instance).

But good god, I pity the poor fool who has to administer the system...

Yep, finally did it: I turned off trackback on this blog and The Brew Site. 99.9% of all traffic I received via trackback was spam, so in the end I decided it's just not worth it. So, just over one year since I turned trackback on, it's gone. It was an interesting experiment, though.

Well, the "Blogging for Money" meme is rearing its head again. Wired just ran this story which is kind of an overview:

Whether you are Calacanis, Denton or Hauslaib, to create a profitable blog requires much more than a keyboard, an internet connection and too much caffeine. You need a talented writer entertaining enough to hold an audience, a consistent publishing schedule, content worth linking to by other bloggers and worthy of press coverage, marketing savvy to sell advertising or enlist third-party networks and, as a culmination of all of this, plenty of traffic.

Says Hauslaib: "If a blog debuted with virtually zero startup costs, then it takes little to earn a profit. One ad will do it. But at the bare minimum, a lone blogger will likely need to attract high four- to five-figure daily visitor figures to even attempt a blog-based livable wage."

And, there's a new blog network that just launched: b5 media, with 13 or so blogs in the network. Their blogs range from the predictable, well-worn ground of Microsoft, movies and sports, to some more promising, interesting ones, like Literally Blogging (about literature), Unplugged Living (how to live off the grid, which seems ironic to blog about), and She Knows Best (terrible name, IMHO, but "lifestyle tips for guys" which could work).

So, when am I launching my own blog network? Riiiight. :)

Bend is yet again on another top ten list: we're the sixth fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country (via the Bulletin). This list is according to the U.S. Census, though, so probably has a bit more weight than whichever flavor-of-the-month magazine's top "whatever" list of cities... although, they're considering all of Deschutes County to be the metropolitan growth area, so your mileage may vary.

Is this a good thing? Depends. Read through the comments on my Trump Bend post, you'll see varying degrees of opinion. Really, go read them, the good ones start about halfway down, past all the "rumors" about Trump. It's some good stuff in there; maybe I'll re-post some of those comments on the front page here...

According to Metroblogging Portland, Corno's Food Market is going to be torn down. Wow.

I say "wow" because there's a more personal connection for me: my grandfather is one of the Cornos that used to run the place. Granted, it's been closed for something like 10 or more years, and my grandfather hadn't worked there for longer than that, but it's still kind of a shock. (In fact, I think my dad may have mentioned to me that Corno's was going to be destroyed.)

During the holidays, we'd always get the gift box from my grandparents full of (among other things) fresh fruit and nuts and such from the Market. One of the perks. And before that—well before that, before I was even born (or at least too young to remember)—we'd get the hookup from my grandfather when he ran the meat department. Yep, cheap meat.

I ran across this last night, and it's the funniest thing, hands down, than I've read in awhile: Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time. Picked it up via Boing Boing, and it's totally, utterly random. Vulgar as hell, too, but that's part of what makes it so funny.

Disclaimer: I don't understand so-called "black metal," never listen to it, don't believe I'd care for it if I did. I mean, really, it just looks like those whiny, narcissistic goth kids from high school haven't grown up yet.

This is indescribably cool if you're an old-time geek who cut his/her teeth on the Commodore 64: Quantum Link Reloaded. Basically, someone has reverse-engineered the original Quantum Link online system that was for the Commodore 64, and made it available online (for free), and you can actually connect to it via a Commodore 64 computer—or an emulator.

Read this Wikipedia article on Quantum Link. What many people don't know is that it became... America Online.

Via Slashdot.

With summer nearly gone and school started, it seemed appropriate to have one of those "what I did" posts, but I'm not ambitious enough to talk about much beyond the weekend. :)

And even then, Saturday was the only day really worth writing about, Sunday was a lazy day. So let's see, on Saturday we had kindergarten soccer—made all the more exciting by the fact that most of the kindergarteners have no real idea of competition. But they have a lot of fun, so that's good. The weather this weekend was much better than the weekend before, but with fall nearly here, who knows how long that will last.

Saturday night I went to a bachelor party for Shannon's soon-to-be husband. Nothing unusual to report, it was a night of drinking at Stars and I kept my alcohol intake down and left earlier than the rest of the guys (all four of them). A later night than I'm normally used to.

No hangover or anything, either. I doubt I could say the same about the groom, though.

And that about wraps it up.

Scanning through my Bloglines Clippings list, found a few items that I'd probably been meaning to point to but hadn't gotten to yet.

• Builder has plans for trap club site - from the Bulletin. Yep, that's the company I work for, promoting one of their next projects. I expect the homes to be very expensive, unfortunately.
• Pictures of the Thunderbird Motel in Bend from Stumptown Confidential. That's normally a site that shows historic Portland, but I thought the '70s Bend photos were interesting.
• I'm really enjoying the new Slashfood site. I'd been thinking recently that there's a need for a good food blog.
• Via Jake, the Bulletin is previewing their new site. Executive summary? There's still no RSS.

This looks interesting: The Bend, Oregon Celebrity Weblog.

According to this list from MSNBC/Forbes, seven of the 10 safest places to live in this country are in the Pacific Northwest. Central Oregon didn't make the list, presumably because of the Sisters bulge and our general proximity to volcanoes.

I'm a little surprised to see Medford/Ashland make the list, though; part of the selection criteria was taking account of extreme weather, which they define as "abundant rain or snowfall or days that are below freezing or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit," and Medford is routinely hotter than most parts of the state during the summer—easily over the "extreme" 90 degree mark.

Even more surprising though is Honolulu, Hawaii, as the nation's safest place to live. Who'd'a thunk it?

Via LifeHacker.

Change, indeed. Today was our eldest's first day of kindergarten. Huge transition! She'll be riding a bus and everything. She attends in the afternoon; our youngest is in a new preschool, attends in the mornings, five days a week (at the old preschool it was only three). The schedule change is still taking some getting used to, I think.

The whole household dynamic is different since our cat died. It feels that way to me, at least; things seems shifted, somehow, at angles to the way they were before.

We painted the kids' rooms this past weekend, changing from the rather bland "toasted almond" that came with the house to more vibrant blues, purples and pinks. The difference is striking.

And of course it's that time of year again—the weather's changing; you can feel the autumn coming in the air. The days are getting shorter. It's definitely feeling like fall to me.

So this seems to be the month of change. What's next?

Two interesting factoids from ADTmag's 2005 Salary Survey:

[Application Programmers] Programmers in mainframe and Unix shops make the most, topping $59,000 a year in base salary. By development language environment, programmers in CICS and COBOL shops fare best, drawing average salaries of almost $62,000 for CICS-based development and $59,000 for COBOL.

[System Programmers] Mainframe skills continue to be a strong suit for systems programmers, who earn an average of $71,100, outpacing their Unix counterparts by about $2,000. By development language environment, systems programmers in CICS and COBOL shops fare best, drawing average salaries of $72,100 and $70,200, respectively.

$59K to $70K per year for being a COBOL programmer? Whoa.

Oddly, it ties into my COBOL note from almost exactly a year ago.

I may not be posting much this weekend. Today we had to have our oldest cat, Bob, put to sleep. He had a cancerous intenstinal tumor that was inoperable. He was also 12 years old, he lived a long good life; we'd raised him from a kitten so this is especially hard.

...it's like losing a member of the family. He really was the best cat you could ask for. Thankfully I got to be there with him in the end, and bury him.

I'm not functioning all that well right now, good thing it's a long weekend.