Virgil Bierschwale wrote:

> Right now we try to justify our existence by always moving to the next 
> tool, never really becoming proficient with our existing tools.

Hi Virgil,

In 1995 I entered a new life as an intern in a school of Traditional 
Chinese Medicine. TCM had been a one-on-one, master-student discipline 
for centuries but by that time, at least in the US, it had become 
hyper-academic and the course comprised all the material in basic 
Western medicine (as opposed to various specialties) and all the 
material of TCM. Thus, our program was more contact hours, and took 
longer than Western Medical School. It is a year longer now than it was 
then.

Software wise, however, the school was using Microsoft Works with 
Windows 3.1. I began putting all the course data in to a database in MSW 
2 for dos - because the student computers were such things as 8088s with 
CGA.

The student hardware was donated to a Foundation I had formed for the 
purpose. The headmaster liked the project, but the staff felt threatened 
that any students knew how to use MSW, even MSW 2 for dos. It developed 
that the people you thought knew the software, didn't really know the 
software so the student volunteers were regularly showing up the staff - 
and the pettiness around that!

I was learning software as I was learning medicine, from anyone who 
would teach me. I would use the tool preferred by my mentors. Thus the 
project began in MSW 2 for dos, then Lotus Approach 3 for Windows, then 
FPD and finally Visual Fox Pro 5, which I bought shrink-wrapped with my 
own money, once the hardware was available to support it.

I had great fun with VFP 5 and the VFP Community local and online. I had 
screen after screen made. When I tried to point the screens to the data, 
however, I discovered a mismatch. The data came from the text while the 
screens came from the syllabus. I was attempting to sort that out when 
MS decided that we couldn't be allowed to use Windows 95 under pain of 
lawsuit even though we had bought the disks fair and square and that 
ended the project. I have posted about this again and again on Profox, 
no need to rehash it now.
-- 
Regards,

Pete
http://pete-theisen.com/
http://elect-pete-theisen.com/

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