Wisdom from the Master

If your touchscreen is clean, you did not need that device.

Query too complex - Possible solution

Look for suspicious query or field names in the query itself, or in any other queries leading up to it. Avoid anything in the Microsoft Access special characters list. At the time of this writing, round parentheses ( ) are not in the list, but they should be. I had a flakey "Query Too Complex" error, failing sometimes but not others. The error went away when I deleted a pair of parentheses from the name of a query a couple of queries earlier in the chain.

Presentation Update Interrupt Block

During presentations at the local, state and national level, from small classrooms to huge convention halls, I see this often. In the middle of a presentation, over the presenter's slide pops a dialog asking if you would like to update some software now. Of course not! This is the middle of a presentation.

Some people use elaborate systems of shutting down all updaters (complicated) or Internet access (not always desirable) or creating super-clean user accounts for presentations, but this should not be necessary. Presentation software, be it Powerpoint or Keynote or Prezi or whatever, should automatically block these update requests until after the presentation is over. If operating systems do not allow such a block, then they should be rewritten so they do.

When we go to a movie, we anticipate sitting through the entire film without being asked if we want to have the projector software updated. The same should be true of any presentation.

No, I am not that Bill Freese

Genetically modified foods? Yummy. Still, there is a lot to be said for an heirloom tomato.

[fa] = Former Acronym

I propose any organization that adopts their acronym as their official name add the lower case letters fa in square brackets to the end of their name so the rest of us do not waste time trying to find out the actual name of the organization. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development is now just ASCD, but if they do not tell us, how will we know. Call it ASCD[fa] and all is clear. In reading the name aloud, the [fa] is silent. Now if you will excuse me, I am hungry and am going out for some KFC[fa].

Too Late

At the bottom of the e-mail is this statement:
This communication contains confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, reading, copying, disclosing or any other use of the contents of this e-mail is strictly prohibited.
Shouldn't that have been at the top?

Spend a while Googling awhile

The phrase is, "it took him a while to." Google Docs suggests I should change it to, "it took him awhile to." That seems wrong, so I Google the phrase "it took him awhile to." Google Search suggests I should change it to "it took him a while to." Google Docs and Google Search need to get together sometime for a chat.