This post is so long overdue I'm almost ashamed. If I'd had the entire summer off, that would be one excuse, but the real reason for the delay was that I've been too busy writing code to write anything else. Okay, I will admit to enjoying a reduced workload in July - 20 hours instead of my usual target of 120! In any other month this would be a catastrophe, but I try to keep July work-free, as a personal reward for the year's efforts. That's one of the principal advantages of being self-employed, after all.
As mentioned in a previous post, I landed a return engagement with the company for whom I created an Excel front end to an Access database. Another department within the company saw how effective the first application was, and hired me to build something similar, to handle their Purchase Order processing workflow. This has kept me busy for all of August.
The business logic was a lot more complex for this project, but I was able to re-use quite a bit of the architecture from the previous application: User Account Management, database connectivity code, list filtering and sorting... There's nothing like the efficiency and confidence you get from writing code around a proven framework: instead of messing with the fiddly bits, I was able to focus on adding business functionality and making the software friendly and usable. Client's don't generally get excited to learn that the TCP/IP bottleneck has been optimized, but they are always thrilled to hear about the one-click report engine you've designed! This project is currently in testing, and so far, the reception has been 100% positive. I aims to please.
As a challenge to myself, I decided to do this development entirely in Excel 2007. I usually do my work in 2003, since I find that version of Excel more responsive and pleasant to use. If the client will be running 2007, the "xls" file from Excel 03 usually just works. But this time I opted to skip 2003 altogether, to see what would happen. To my surprise, I found I was able to make the transition with very little pain and suffering.
It took me a few days to really get the hang of using the Ribbon - I still find myself hunting around for some Excel features, but the learning curve was not as steep as I had predicted. The benefit is that the file is running "native" in Excel 2007 - no "compatibility mode." I'm not sure if this is a real advantage (other than looking cleaner on the Excel title bar), but at least I'll know that, if some strange bug or behaviour pops up, it's not an artifact of the file conversion process. More importantly, I am now more efficient using and interacting with Excel 2007, and feel comfortable porting my personal spreadsheets and Client work to this platform.
Looking forward to the Fall, it appears I will continue to be very busy for the foreseeable future. Since starting out as an independent consultant 4 years ago, I have been slowly building my roster of clients. Many projects are one-off, where I go in, figure out what needs doing, write the app, and that's more-or-less the end of the engagement. But several of my clients are power Excel users who are constantly looking for new short-cuts, utilities, or techniques to apply to their daily business activities.
As I add more and more of these types of clients to my roster, I'm given an increasing load of "casual" hours - short fixes, mini projects, and extension of existing work. This ad-hoc stuff is taking up enough of my time that it effectively fills in the gaps between bigger projects. It has taken a few years, but now I have the business humming along perfectly - working enough to pay the bills, but not so much that I'm overwhelmed. If that starts happening, I'll just start raising my hourly rate. Everything is going according to plan.
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