Wow, I just realised how long it has been since I wrote something on the blog. The last few entries have been about the american elections which I must admit are huge entertainment value (all be it a little scary). Actually most of the last few weeks have been about following whats going on. I’m rather addicted to the ‘Daily Show’ and the ‘Colbert Report’. If you have a good internet connection you can watch directly from the site.
I do find it interesting that most of the fun is poked at the republican party and there are no shows which can poke fun at the Democrates. I guess its because McRage and Caribou Barbie are giving so much material for entertainment!
I have been spending the last few hours trying to figure out how I can take a single report, then update the header information (and the underlying query) as I have a number of reports that have the same layout and information, but just need to have a different heading, and query.
I could have just created a duplicate report with different heading and query, but as I’m still working out the layout of the report I don’t want to have to redo each report.
You think this would have been easy, but nope. I spent hours looking over material from the internet and just couldn’t figure it out. I tried global variables, but that didn’t work. A function to update the titles was a way around it, but also not nice. There had to be a better way.
I ran into problems because you by default you cannot access a reports object unless is been opened. Then you can access the controls on the report and update them, but you I couldn’t figure out how to refresh the print preview.
Then I stumbled onto something that works perfectly (well at least in the test model I did in 2003 and it will hopefull work in 2007).
What you need to do is open the report in designer. The look at the report properties and goto the ‘Build Event’ option. This will transfer the report into an class and let you edit in VBA various values of it. You don’t actually have add any code!
Many years ago I used to work for a very small company in New Zealand in the freight industry. (fond memories).
During this time we had installed a software package that could deal with transtasman shipments and a multi currecny general ledger. I know this quite well as I was the programmer who did most of the work on the GL. Our head of the company was in charge but after I proved I could do it and with an accounting background I was left to it.
We had this international client that took on the package in another part of the country and it did all the freight stuff no problem, but for some reason the accounting side never quite worked correctly. This really got to me as I knew it should work with all the information it was getting and I also used to do the air freight side of the system so it was a complete mystery.
Well this went mystery went on for a while then they pulled in the head office chiefs to go and figure out what was going on. I had spent alot of time working out the currency conversion between the ledgers and was certain it was right. (Back then it took about 3 hours to run the GL listing). And in that industry they don’t think of money they know they owe now, they think of money they expect to owe (accural accounting its call). Well after me being flown down on site to try and figure out what was going on. The investigator told me, it doesn’t mater how you try and reprogram the system, all you are doing is rearanging the deck chairs on the titanic!
He never told me exactly why but I found out later, that the office administrator was fiddling the system to steal from the company and so was the branch manager. Ironically neither knew the other was also stealing. I don’t think they ever figured it all out. But it wasn’t my GL at fault, it was just major theft!! (the office administrator had back door access to ‘fix’ transactions’, we just never realised she was fixing them cos they were actually right!!!!).
Oh how that all changed now as proper change control would never allow this!
1. Learn about al-Qaida. 2. Learn about Washington, D.C. 3. Order Bristol’s dress (Elastic waist!!! Is white inappropriate after six months?) 4. Fire brother-in-law. 5. Learn about Russia/Georgia/S. Ossetia (Locate Abkhazia???) 6. Nurse Baby Trig. 7. Order flowers for wedding. 8. Fire people who haven’t fired brother-in-law. 9. Learn about ethics rules. 10. Fire at brother-in-law? (Option: aerial shooting?) 11. Nurse Baby Trig. 12. Learn about Iran. 13. Learn about U.S. Senate. 14. Learn about contraception. (Too late???) 15. Investigate homes for foundlings? 16. Govern Alaska. 17. Life insurance on J.M.?
Back on track now. The other day i watch Sex in the City Movie. To me it was great. I had seen most the episodes upto last season and when I was last in the UK with one my great friends I discovered I was not quite as upto date as I thought, so after a wonderful sofa day I was!
I guess if you never followed the series you would be in two minds of follow it or follow an know the ending. To me it was fairly predictable what happened. But what really pulled it up a few notchs to just predictable was the actessees. They really put it all into. The scene of Bridget telling Big "No" is so well done and powerful it pulls the whole act off. Before then it was rather predicable, and the emtions well, they were pulling them all in as predicable. But that particular display of emotion grabbed!
Well done, it was a great movie to us who know the story, it completed the story almost! We all know that Samatha didn’t want to be part of the story, and sorry that bit did show, but over all, it was great.
