Thursday, October 16, 2003

Andrew Sullivan, who is usually really good, posted a really strange meandering piece about how maybe the reason Rush sustained his wit and energy is that he was high on pain killers all day long.  It had a "don't be so puritan" tone to it.   So, certain elite people can handle powerful drugs like this and actually benefit from being high while at work? or.... is he saying that excellence is there for anyone at all who is willing to defy the current wisdom about narcotics?     11:50:49 PM    comment []

Mail Merge Annoyances Trying to do a mail merge in MS Word with MS Access data, Kate and I kept getting the 9-digit zip code all in a bunch like:  554129494 Access can store zip codes differently than it shows them to you in the "datasheet" view.  If the field was created with an input mask and you indicated that you wanted the data stored as nine straight digits (the default), then thats what you got in your letter.  Is there a way to fix it in the mail merged document?  I don't think so.  You just have the  You have to make sure the input mask for zip code looks like: 00000-9999;0;_ instead of 00000-9999;;_ Is there a way to tell how access is storing your data?   In both conditions, you can look at the table and it looks like a 5+4 zip code, regardless of the input mask.  Build a report with MS Access and a zip code always comes out as 5+4 instead of 9 The only way to tell is if that zero is in there in the code for the input mask.  There is no way to view the data in its raw form as Access stores it.  It is like there is a gauze film between you and the data.    You will never know about it until you try to merge 1000 addresses into a word document and you go nuts trying to figure out why there is no dash in the zip code even though there looks like there is one in the database. 11:31:13 PM    comment []