I have not blogged as much lately because I have been pretty busy lately. One of my current projects is updating an Access database used to handle registrations for the upcoming alumnae reunions at the end of May. The database does more than just list who is coming (I wish). It is used to help coordinate meals and housing on campus, along with tracking class fees, One cards, keys, dietary restrictions, children's programs and name tags. Some of this stuff does not change much from year, while other items do. For instance, this year we are using a ala carte system, instead of packages which offers more flexibility to alums for pricing their reunion trip. But on the other hand it contributes some some additional complexity to the database in some ways, but simplicity in others. Needless to say it has it's challenges. I make my wife's head swim just trying to explain parts of it to her.
Another reason I am busy is because a co-worker, Stacey - our web content coordinator left us last week to move closer to her family. We do not have a replacement for her so I have picked up some of the tasks she use to do, such as, the broadcast emails for classes and clubs, along with providing technical support to classes and clubs for their web sites which they are eager to update before reunion. I'll miss her, probably more than I had previously imagined.
Instead of blogging, I've been doing more Twittering which is much easier when you only have 140 characters to use for each post. I've embedded a Twitter reader in the right sidebar of this blog, so readers can see what I'm up to. I just enabled the Twitter plugin for this blog, so new articles should be posted to Twitter as we post them here. I did the same thing for the Alumnae Quarterly which has some followers.
It's time to get back to the database.
This is another cool tech tip sent in from M. J. (who by the way, also works at Mount Holyoke College).