[Hallicrafters] Lesson Learned

[Duane Fischer, W8DBF]

Roger, 	
	
A request to you, and a suggestion to all who post - 	
	
Please do not do this mixing of text. For those of us who have trouble in seeing
the CRT, as well as for those of us who are totally blind and use screen reading
software, we have to read the whole mess every time to find the comments. Much
easier if you do not quote the previous stuff, unless it is NECESSARY for the
construct of the message. If so, then cut and paste the necessary portion only.
Put your comments at the top of the reply. Thank you.	
	
Duane W8DBF	
 

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From: rdhalste <rdhalste at tm.net>
To: hallicrafters at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Hallicrafters] Lesson Learned
Date: Monday, January 20, 2003 2:24 PM

OK...Now I'm going to have to admit something really embarresing.
My answers are interlaces with previous points below.


> In a message dated 1/20/03 11:13:12 AM Central Standard Time,
rdhalste at tm.net
> writes:
>
> > You'd think a guy who lives, eats, and sleeps computers would have known
> >  better...Guess I'll have to chalk it up to lack of ambition.
>
By profession, I was a Sysadmin, then a Developmental Analyst (fancy name
for programmer) and finally a Project Manager installing large databases and
their management programs.  The last system was FDA Validated. This is not
the same as what an engineer calls validation.  It is far, far, more
complex.

> Roger,
>
> I think what you describe has probably happened to most of us, and if it
> hasn't, it will. I used to run a BBS, and had a big sign over my computers
> which read: "Blessed are the Pessimists, for they hath made backups." It
>was a lot easier in the DOS days, without all the thousands of interlocked
>files

Actually the interlocked files are not that much of a problem as long as you
do a bit copy.

> we now have. You have my sympathy. If your truly value your files, I have
>two suggestions. Either buy a streaming tape drive and do regular backups,
or
> consider networking to a second computer whose sole purpose is to store

<sigh>  When I said it was due to lack of ambition I was not kidding.  This
computer is one of four on a peer to peer network. One of the machines
serves primarlily as a backup for the others, but each is backed up to at
least one of the others.  This one *was* backed up to *two* of the others
AND to a seperate drive on itself. (It has over a quarter of a terabyte of
disk storage and will soon have a half terabyte)  Unfortunately all backups
were way out of date. (I did say I had gotten lax)

> copies of your critical files. Networking a couple of computers used to be
>a big deal, but is now pretty simple.
>
> I like your idea of creating a database of relevant posts and indexing
>them. I've done this sort of thing on occasion, and found that for a
presentable
> look you need to expect to do a fair amount of editing.

Probably the easiest is to import each post into a database record from a
text file. Then index the whole works not only by subject, but by key words
and phrases.  I'd like to keep the headers to keep credit where credit is
due. It would be similar to, but much more capable (and faster) than Google.
I have no interest in the personal posts, or even in ones like this thread
although they are relavant to keeping boatanchor data.

Search programs are actually quite simple with virtually any of todays
Visual languages be they Delphi, Visual Basic, or Visual C++.  I don't like
the latest incarnation of Visual Basic as it's designed around the dot net
structure and I want nothing to do with that, so it looks like Im moving
toward the Delphi platform.  Trying to keep up the latest compilers is
expensive, so all mine are at least a generation old.

I have written search-and-modify programs for very large databases (under
contract) that could search on any field, including non unique
fields and even do partial matching on things such as names and
addresses.  If you had an idea as to how the name was spelled you could try
that, or just input part of the name along with wild cards.  The program
would return a list of all records with those search parameters and you
could pick the one you thought was correct. It would then bring up the whole
record organized by fields in a window.  IF you had the authority you could
modify the fields or make corrections.  This worked on Access and Excel as
well as text files, columinar delimited and comma delimited files and it was
*fast*.

Actually they were SQL searches, but designed for an end user who was not a
computer person...IE Geek. (They filled in the blanks)

One source of information for boat anchors is QST.  I'd truly like to find
the time to go through the ones on CD with OCR and restore the articles to a
searchable form.  If I ever get it done, I'd give it to the ARRL which
should make the QST CDs much more saelable. Currently they are nothing more
than PDF "image" files that come with a limited and pregenerated index
rather than being searchable, making them...well...not as useful as they
could be.

73 & thanks to all for the suggestions. Now I need one for finding more
ambition.

Roger (K8RI, EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
>
> Good luck and 73,
>
> Doug Moore



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