Back in the catbird seat... I think

Reviewing the translation went well this morning, and it's off to the client. (Reminder to self: INVOICE!) The next item on the plate is going to be somewhat messy, but it will also have a fair modicum of repetition (a bunch of water quality reports).

Too bad there's so much handwritten stuff, though.

* * *It looks as if the store might be getting past the annual post-New-Year doldrums. There was a period there, in February, where the daily receipts were negligible, but now, the seem to be picking back up. I hope the trend continues.

Cheers...

Coughing along...

Federal Express has been making noises for the past year or so about taking back the NT-based system that we've been using to generate shipping labels for FedEd (and, surprisingly, UPS) since buying the store. A couple of months ago, the FedEx software stopped supporting UPS shipments, and tomorrow - according to our rep - is the day we make the transition.

Fortunately, a new computer - Alice - is in place, running Windows 2000 and with QuickBooks and FedEx software installed. The only fly in the ointment is that we've misplaced the power supply for the thermal printer we've received from FedEx and I think I need to find a parallel printer cable for it. As an alternative, we could use the Brother laser printer that's connected to "Borg" (our UPS machine).

By the time all the store-related stuff was done, and I'd taken a short nap, it was 3 pm again. This has got to stop before I get swamped with work again.

I started on the new work, and it's sort of a mess. A lot of forms that have a lot of white space, which means that the word count is going to be light, which should work to make the job go faster. The counterbalance, though, is going to be having to decipher the handwritten stuff on the forms. Blyeah.

I've come to the realization that I really, really, really need to print out the daily spreadsheets that we use at the store to reconcile the day's activities. Unfortunately, doing all this by hand would take forever (assuming I didn't decide to take a long walk off a short pier first), so I sat down and figured out how to write an Excel macro that would do what I wanted to do.

It took about an hour, but the result is encouraging. While inside a spreadsheet, all I now have to do is press Ctrl+q, and an impressive amount of activity takes place, including the addition of some information on the page that summarizes the so-called "Z" tape (which summarizes sales per "department," e.g., postal, UPS, greeting cards, etc.). The section I'm talking about builds a small table of accounts, per the CPA's chart, and recomputes the "Z" tape figures accordingly).

The down side is that printing out the info is time- and resource-consuming. Each day prints out on about 12 pages, and the accumulated printout from just three months of operation - which is what I managed tonight after cutting my translation time short - is several inches high (a couple of reams, at least). 's gotta be done, though.

Tomorrow is the deadline for submitting ideas for presentations at the ATA conference in Phoenix this November. At this moment, I am bereft of ideas. I shall assign myself the task of coming up with at least two ideas for presentations while I am asleep tonight.

That should assure some sweet dreams.

Cheers...