People and businesses enter and collect vast amounts of information with computers. In the days before affordable computers, most of our information was written or typed on paper. We organized the paper information into file folders and usually created multiple copies filed under different categories. A letter might be filed in correspondence folder by date, client's file, follow-up folder and of course the "cover your ass" copies to everyone. The more copies there where, the more likely you were to find a copy when you needed it.

Of course, once you found the file you had to read it's contents to find the information you seek. As hard as this process was, imagine that all the information you recorded on paper was on one long roll of paper. New information was written at the end of the scroll.

Computers store information on one long digital roll of magnetic material. Great for recording....not so great for finding information. One option to organizing this information is to put similar information into spreadsheets and word processing files and search the computer for a series of characters that you think are included in the file, or file name. Just hope the boss doesn't give you five minutes to come to a meeting with the file!

Word processors where designed to automate the typing process. Spreadsheets were designed to replace the pencil, multicolumn paper and calculator. Text was for column and row labels and little else.

A computer database is a tool for organizing data. The data is broken into small pieces such as name, street address, city, state, zip code, income, age, sales, etc.. There are two reasons for doing this. The first reason it you want to know where to find your information and the second is it is combining data fields is easy and breaking data into fields is not. Unlike a spreadsheet or word-processing file, a database was designed for the retrieval of data. You could query, ask, a database a questions such as: In 2008, how many salesman had sales greater than $5,000 in New York? How many customers do we have in this zip code? What are the sales for ABC Company in 2007, 2008 and 2009 to date? Show me all contacts for whom we do not have email addresses?

There are two major types of databases. Flat file databases are like a spreadsheet. If you want to record ten people for the ABC Company, you will have ten rows of repeated, and eventually, different data. You will be amazed at how many ways people can enter "ABC Company, Inc.". The second database type is relational. This means that all data is linked to related information. An example would be a corporate address book. All information pertaining to a corporation can be retrieved with the name of the corporation.

A database is a great tool for business but it must be designed correctly to yield the desired results. An error in database design can be very costly. Some examples of errors made by others, which cost millions of dollars to correct: A brokerage firm provided for 999 offices....when they tried to add one more, the system crashed and the database had to alter it's design and transfer vast amounts of data to new database. An Illinois bank entered customers names as First Middle Last Suffix (Jr., III, etc.) thinking that they would always retrieve information by customer's account number. One day someone asked for the customer list sorted by last name. They gave them a list consisting of blanks, Jr., III, Esquire, etc.

Computers are great tools but they have their limits.
Computers work with numbers only. You search a computer's data file by telling the computer what position to start at and giving it a string of numbers to search for such as "a12B" and the computer translated that to 97 49 50 66. The computer than retrieves the number from the position you entered and subtracts 97 from it. If the answer is 0 then it repeats the process until the last number, 66, and if the answer is still 0, the computer knows it has found the search pattern. If the answer is not zero, the search fails. The computer does not know anything about these numbers. It does not know if it is part of a word. A word could be described as a string of numbers with a white space number at both ends. A white space is a space, tab, linefeed, carriage return or new page character.

The user does not need to know about all this math and numbers stuff with a modern computer.

You	computer
0	48
1	49
2	50
3	51
Space	32
period	46
coma	44
Quote	34
a	97
b	98
c	99
A	65
B	66
C	67

Contacts Database for Outlook 2007® beta version

This program was written for the person who wants to convert their Microsoft Outlook 2007® contacts into a more functional database without any knowledge of how to do it. Install this program and click one button to import your Outlook 2007® Contacts into a Jet database which can be opened with most Microsoft Office® application version 2000 and newer. The program will find your Outlook Contact folder for you. Use the database for merge documents with Microsoft Word® or load into Microsoft Excel® or open with Microsoft Access® version 2000 and up.

This program has been tested with Microsoft Outlook 2007® running on Vista Ultimate 32 and 64 bit. It is compiled to run in 32 bit mode. It installs to C:\Program Files\Small b Systems folder and creates C:/OutlookDB folder to hold the database files. Every action the user takes with the database creates a serialized backup file in the same folder. The Outlook Contacts folder and entries are not altered in this version. The PRO version will allow user to update Outlook contacts as an option.

Your are welcome to download a trial version. Download Trial Version

 

Most of my driving is in Westchester County New York. The roads are narrow and winding over mountain terrain. Great for motorcycles, sports cars and good drivers. Not so good for poor drivers. Almost every week some driver crashes due to loss of control of their vehicle. This, I believe, is because they were never taught how to drive. The driver's test requires you know the state laws of the road and your ability to handle your vehicle at very low speeds. Very few drivers are taught how to control a vehicle at 55 miles per hour on up and down hill curves. They are also not taught how to stop a car while retaining the ability to steer or recover from a high speed slide.

I took Skip Barber's Advance Driving course some years ago and my driving has improved every day since. Each student was tested at the first class. I had been driving more than thirty years and considered myself a good driver. I was a private chauffer while in college. Guess what, I was not doing anything correctly!!!

Here is what I was taught and how I have used it ever since.

1) Always hold the steering wheel with one hand at 9 o'clock and the other at 3 o'clock.
2) Never cross your hands on the steering wheel. Shuffle the wheel in your hands or, if absolutely necessary, keep on hand stationary and spin the wheel with the other hand.
3) Control the car by pressing on the steering wheel with the heel of your hand. Pushing on the wheel will hold you in your seat. Turning left by pressing up with the right hand and the left hand to turn right. DO NOT PULL on the wheel.
4) Reduce speed entering a turn and gradually increase speed exiting the curve. When the wheels are facing the direction you want to travel, increase speed to maximum.
5) While in a curve, increase speed to move to the outside of curve and decrease speed to pull to the inside of the curve. DO NOT USE THE STEERING WHEEL if possible.
6) You must control the vehicles weight. The car steers with the front wheels. At maximum acceleration, the ability to steer is decreased because the weight is shifted to the back wheels. When the weight shifts too far to either side your ability to steer, brake and accelerate a geatly reduced.
7) If you feel the car rolling too much in a curve, slightly reduce speed and straighten the steer wheel just enough to shift weight back to a more neutral position and brake gently. Now you can continue navigating the turn. This is an advanced technique and is only used as last resort. If you find yourself needing this maneuver, you entered the curve at wrong speed.
8) Most drivers cannot judge the right side of their car. I developed a way of teaching myself how to put the right side of my car where I wanted it to be. I adjusted my right mirror so I could see the full length of the passenger's side and the rear wheel. I would then check the passenger's side mirror while driving to see where I was on the road. I practiced this until I could correctly judge the right side of my vehicle while looking straight ahead. This can be critical making a tight right hand turn or passing on a very narrow road.
9) Finally, a good driver does not have any distraction to his/her vision or concentration. No cell phones, things hanging from mirror, anything that may move in hard corner or stop and gain your attention and eating or drinking while driving. If I feel my mind wandering while driving, I increase my speed to the point that my attention jumps into survival mode. WARNING: This can lead to speeding tickets.