Live to fight another day

I live to fight another day. I am still working on site, through a total shutdown blanket order. With 24 hours to go before I was leaving for good, I managed to get a little meeting with the project director and explained my idea. They liked it and gave me a months' grace. It buys me time and in all likelihood I have to continue beyond to train the people how to use it and generate the reports.

My idea involved using excel, avoid the word database and build the shutdown log as a centralised plot-plan focus. They could see the merits of collating all useful information and having the tasks identified and assigned from this. At least they had something to show their bosses, now they have a plan! It is ironic that this idea is the nucleus of the core ideas for book 4, The Engineer's Database. I know I can make it work well for them.

I grew through the computer age having a lot of familiarity with databases. Seeing Access in action was an incredible but lonely experience. I could see it was a career split. I made a conscious decision to avoid Access and databases at all cost as I was becoming a specialist in something I did not want to be. I consciously chose to figure out how to make Excel work so that I could expect engineers to follow it as well.

Once again, the Mote Method rides....