Checking email...

It turns out there's a document I need to sign for the lawyers back home, and fortunately, it's not one that requires notarization, because I asked the lawyer to email it to me, as I intend to sign it and send it off via postal mail tomorrow. With any luck, and fair winds, the document should make it in time to be filed with the court near the end of the month.

The mail also brought another set of kind words from a relatively new client:

The quality of your work is impeccable, and the speed.... wow!

I can, of course, read these kinds of messages all day, but must also remind myself not to become complacent.

Speaking of which... I've started working with TurboCASH, and note that - as seems to be the case with an awful lot of documentation out there - the tutorial and the "actual application" do not entirely coincide. Fortunately, the difference is not serious enough to undermine the entire tutorial, but it is a bit on the annoying side.

I once read a book - I think it was the first edition of The C Primer - that spoiled me forever, because it seemed to have been written for me and the way I think. As I went through the book, I would find myself absorbing the information presented, and from time to time, I would pause and think to myself, "But what about...?" And miraculously, more often than not, that same question would be answered in the next paragraph.

That book was why I was so late getting into the computer-book-writing business: I couldn't see how one could write a better book, or even a comparable one. (In retrospect, it would appear I was naively mistaken.)

Anyway, those "But what about...?" questions are not getting answered over the course of the current learning curve. Customer accounts have addresses whose fields are "Address," "Postal Code," Address 2," and "Address 3," in that tab order. The sample addresses in the tutorial appear to assume that the student is from South Africa (as are the originators of the program), so I am left with the choice, through a sort of intuitive inertia, of entering the mailing address, line by line, into the available slots just as I would on a typewriter and hope nothing comes out of the murk later to kick me.

At any rate, the further I progress with TurboCASH, the more I distance myself from InvoiceManager, and that's a Good Thing™.

Cheers...

Wasteful consumption?!

Via LJ friend mkay422, news comes that, after calling upon Britons to stop wasting food in order to address global shortages and high prices, Gordon Brown and the other G8 leaders ended their day with an extravagant eight-course dinner that included 19 dishes, among which were the following offerings:

• Corn stuffed with caviar


• Winterlily bulb and summer savoury


• Hos d'oeuvres that included kelp-flavoured cold Kyoto beef


• Milk-fed lamb


• A special selection of cheeses with lavender honey and caramelised nuts

This was, naturally, all washed down with a selection of fine wines and champagne from France, California, Hungary and Japan.

I expect Mr. Brown will realize the error of his ways and, in the future, make sure to make disclosure of what is eaten at such meetings a criminal offense, or perhaps grounds for being held without charges for several weeks.

The hoi polloi must, after all, not be distracted from its main objective.

There are times I think Europe is in jet-assisted free fall.

Cheers...