NP: Sparta, Porcelain

The burning question -- such as it is -- is if the big, complicated MS Access query will finish running before the massive text search operation going on across some 5 or 6 million records in SPSS. Or if smoke starts coming out of the monitor before either of them are done. Meanwhile, I can pretty much just sit and watch and wait.

I feel like I've managed to learn a couple of tricks in Access that could put me further along the path of subverting the program to my will the way I typically do with Excel, a skill I'm trying to propagate through the team here in the office. It's not that I want to make these programs do things they might not normally want to do, it's just that, if I've got something I need done, I'm limited by the tools at hand. You can use the handle of a screwdriver as a hammer in a pinch, you know what I'm saying?

The other big revelation here this week is that promoting gigs via our shiny new internal blog is exactly as effective as promoting them via mass e-mails. Which is to say, not at all.