Free Access 2007 tutorial by Crystal Long

Crystal Long – Access MVP – has published a 100-page tutorial on Access that she makes freely available to everyone! This 8-part series covers everything from database design basics and normalization to form and report design. Here are some tips from Crystal herself on getting the most out of this wonderful resource.

“To get the most out of ‘Access Basics’, try to clear your mind of your immediate needs and focus, instead, on generalities… otherwise you may skim over essentials that you see no immediate application for…

Print it out and read it once a week. As you read, use a highlighter for things you want to emphasize. Put ‘?’ in the margins of paragraphs that you skip or don’t make sense with a pencil. Each time you read it, erase the pencil marks as you understand.

Also, copy the chapter files to your hard drive and follow each one of the links — to familiarize yourself with other available resources.“

It is this sort of activity that makes Crystal such a valuable resource in the Access technical community and one of many reasons that we’re proud to count her as an MVP.

Beware of UPS Virus!

The latest virus making the rounds is the ‘UPS Delivery Failure’.

With this virus, unwitting victims receive an email from the “UPS Packet Service” along with an alleged packet number.

The mail will claim to be from UPS and will explain that UPS was unable to deliver a package to you. You are requested to print the attached invoice.

DO NOT OPEN OR PRINT THE ATTACHMENT!

Opening or attempting to print the attachment will launch the virus.

Please inform anyone in your social/work circle about this virus as it has already caused millions of dollars in damage.

Note that this has been verified via the Snopes Web site

Local Women’s 8-ball Tourney

Had a great time today watching Krista (my better half) play in only her second tourament – a local women’s 8-ball tournament in Valhalla (Kirkland, WA). Krista is currently a 2 in 8-ball so her first match against Mary (a strong 4) was a 2-4 race. She won the first game with some very nifty shot-making and came very close to winning each of the next two games. Ultimately, she fell 1-4 and moved to the loser’s bracket.

On the losers side, she ran into dear friend and very good 8-ball player (SL5) Randi Sue Andrews. Once again, Krista took the first game and was immediately on the hill. However, Randi Sue is a veteran player with many years of tournament experience under her belt so she wasn’t fazed and took the match 1-5.

All in all, a great showing for Krista as she has less than a year of pool experience and had a couple of nice 4 ball runs. Great job, Krista!! You can see many of the photos I took on my Facebook.

Rosenberg Grand Jury Transcripts Released

I’ve always had a personal fascination and academic interest in cryptography, codes and espionage.

So I was especially pleased to see on MSNBC tonight that the transcripts of the grand jury testimony of Ethel Rosenberg and Ruth Greenglass were released today by the National Archives – as a result of a lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive.

Julius and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg were alleged American communists who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. The charges were in relation to the passing of information about the American atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. (Ruth Greenglass was Ethel’s sister-in-law and provided key testimony against Ethel)

The guilt of the Rosenbergs and the appropriateness of their sentence have been the subject of perennial debate and from the little I already know about from reading these documents, they are only going to add fuel to that controversy.

Sadly, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein decided to make public the grand jury testimony of 36 of the 46 witnesses but not that of David Greenglass (Ethel’s brother). Citing the objections of David Greenglass and two other living witnesses, the judge claimed that their privacy rights “overrides the public’s need to know.” How many lives has the government and media destroyed (Can you say “Richard Jewell“?) while supposedly serving the “public’s right to know” and now we’re supposed to believe that the privacy of a witness to a crime committed over 50 years ago is more important than the rights of citizens to see for themselves if a miscarriage of justice occurred? Is it me or does our government have less respect for our collective intelligence each passing year?

That little diatribe aside, I’m definitely looking forward to carving out some time to read through the documents that marked a critical time and issue in our country’s history.

1. List of Witnesses Interviewed (including interview, pages numbers and page counts)
2. Downloadable options for reading transcripts