I Found a Bug

I’ve never before been the first to find a bug in Microsoft software. But I did it this week. Actually, it was the office manager that found the bug. She couldn’t open our Residents Database. I figured out what was not working. There was nothing on the boards. I reported it to the Microsoft community. They reported it to Microsoft. Microsoft reported a work-around. Woo-hoo! My name in lights. The bug involves a depreciated feature in Microsoft’s Access database called “Switchboard”. This was a way to show the user all the data entry and report options available. A user can click on the option they want and watch Access announce a “202” error. Before Microsoft could publish a work-around, I came up with my own solution. I got rid of the Switchboard and wrote a home page. But I very much appreciate the response from Microsoft. Access isn’t a popular product. It’s nice to know they’re still supporting it.

Our community uses a door security system to control the clubhouse doors. It’s like hotel doors that guests open with by touching a plastic card to the doorknob. It’s an old system. Parts are no longer available. I presented options. The board asked me to come back next month. This is rather frustrating, because it has been going on since January. I must admit, it’s harder to discuss these things with Zoom than it was when we were all in the same room.

Our condo had a significant Zoom meeting this week. As I have mentioned, there were several builder errors in our condo. The most significant was that some buildings had the flashing installed incorrectly and have significant water damage. There’s also less urgent issues, such as decks that can fall down and exterior stone veneer that’s falling off the walls. (I exaggerate, but not by a lot.) We won a lawsuit. The repair project was divided into seven phases. The board announced phase 2, where the seven units with the worst water damage will be rebuilt. There was a lot of interest in the meeting. The meeting itself had so many attendees that there wasn’t room on the screen to show everybody. Some residents had trouble starting Zoom on their computers, but Zoom itself never glitched.

The day before the meeting, our board president had her computer fail. I don’t know how old the computer is, but I know it was running Windows 7, so 10 years is a reasonable guess. She needed the computer for the Zoom meeting. I lent her my travel computer and downloaded the files she needed from her backup. She had to adapt to a small computer running Windows 10. She was up to the wee hours. The board meeting was a great success. The board seems to be taking a very logical and measured approach.

After the meeting, I was talking to our president and learned several things about my unit. A person the next building over replaced the doors onto his deck. The contractor examined his flashing while installing the new doors and determined it was installed correctly. As part of phase 2, our engineering company is developing a testing methodology that will let us know whether there is internal water damage without taking the walls down. Every unit will be tested. The expectation is that there is no significant damage to my unit. That is consistent with what I observe.

Our neighbors the Jones had two separate “emergencies”. A light was flashing on and off. I replaced the light switch for them. Their laptop camera stopped working. (That means there’s no Zoom video.) It took me half an hour to convince her the camera doesn’t work, even though it worked last week.

Bud is not doing well. Danita finds this to be very upsetting, especially since she can’t go on campus and visit him.

So, all in all, it was an action packed week for me, not an easy week for Danita. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

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