Welcome to the Seventh Edition of  Solutions by Softech.  Sorry about the long delay but we had an unusually busy last 3-4 months which interrupted our attempt to produce an issue before year-end. As always, we hope you enjoy this issue. As most of you are probably aware, we are not a marketing organization. We don't pester you with sales calls, junk mail, or email. This newsletter is more than likely the only correspondence that you ever get from us, so we like to think that, at the least, the majority of the recipients read it. And, if nothing else, it usually has some good jokes! The biggest news for this edition is the availability of several new products and our newly designed web site. So please read on . . .  

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We had a terrific response to our last puzzler (thank you!), with some people guessing multiple times (you know who you are - BW, JR, DS), and even though we had several people come really close, and, even with the multiple guesses, we still had no correct answers. For those of you who guessed the tire valve or the cap that goes on it, you were the closest. We actually sent out four golf shirts as rewards for either being close, or just for being a prolific guessor. Just to remind you, our last puzzler was - What part of a car is inter-changeable with virtually any other car, foreign or domestic, within the last 30 or so years. It's not liquid or air - it's an actual piece that you can take from any car, no matter where in the world it was made, and it would fit on any other car. No, it’s not the cigarette lighter either, but it is something that you would likely come in contact with doing normal maintenance - no not the dip stick either . . . The correct answer is the Strader valve, which is the valve INSIDE the tire stem. The stems themselves are not interchangeable, nor are the caps, batteries, cigarette lighters, radios, windshield wiper blades, and a few other assorted guesses.

Now for this edition’s puzzler: There is a five letter word containing five other words within itself. The letters that make up the word do not have to be rearranged in any manner and each word is complete with no intervening letters. What is the word? For a bonus, name a second word that has six letters and seven words with all the other criteria the same. Don't try too hard to come up with anything elaborate, as both of the words that we are thinking about are very common. As a matter of fact, you can find both of them within this newsletter! Good luck.

Solutions Offered. Since our last newsletter we have completed an add-on product for VisionPlus called PCT Manager. We feel it is a must for any organization that has more than just a handful of PCT entries. It simplifies the task of managing your PCT entries, including all the associated tables. There is a Power Point demonstration available on our web site. Go take a look! Another product that we have recently completed is a gift card interface to VisionPlus. While this interface was done specifically to accommodate gift cards, it could be easily modified to handle any type of pre-paid cards, and naturally could be adapted to work with any authorization and receivables system. Call us for more detail.

Travel-R-Us . . . Well, after a slow start to the year (2000 that is!), which we attributed to a general letdown from the Y2K ‘experience’, we once again picked up with our travel. Since our last newsletter, we have been to India, Brazil, Peru, Puerto Rico, Oregon, North Carolina, Illinois, Delaware, and California. Ron has made multiple trips to Chicago and North Carolina for various clients, as well a trip to Peru where Debbie joined him for a quick weekend trip to Machu Picchu. He has also been spending a lot of time in the office which he also enjoys as he gets to play more with his grandson (or maybe it’s his grandson’s toys that he plays with!) Ed has been to India, Brazil and Delaware (talk about opposite ends of the travel spectrum!) Ed and Janice also managed to sneak in a couple of short vacations to Dublin and Aruba. Bill and Kathy visited their son in Germany in April and again for Christmas. He (Bill Jr.) had been deployed to Kosovo where he headed up a MP platoon as part of the UN peacekeeping force. He was there for six months and has since returned to his regular assignment in Germany. Bill has kept his business trips local so far with several trips to North Carolina and Delaware. Doug has made several trips to Oregon and has been rotating in and out of Brazil every three weeks since October of last year. Aaron got to go on the road for the first time with several trips to North Carolina. He also vacationed with his wife Aggie in Portland. Joy has been travelling so much that we have almost forgotten that she is on our staff. She has brought new meaning to the term Road Warrior. She was on the road for almost three quarters of 1999 and has continued into the new millennium with trips to Puerto Rico, Great Britain, Las Vegas, California, Oregon, South Dakota, and has vacationed in Australia and Tennessee. Leanne has returned to Australia after using her time at Softech to see the USA. She saw the Florida Keys twice, New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Monterey, LA, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Juan, Puerto Rico and New Orleans. That's more than most of us native "yanks" get to do in a lifetime!

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By the way, all of our previous Techie Tips are available on our newly designed web site at www.SoftechSolutions.com.

We had so many election jokes and especially Florida election jokes in our joke folder that we considered printing a separate supplement to this newsletter, but before going to press we found a web site that contains the majority of the jokes that we were going to print. Since this web site does contain some things that some people might find offensive, we hereby publish the official disclaimer that, we neither have any association with this site, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the opinions of any employee of Softech (although we all thought that most of the jokes were funny regardless of our political affiliation, which, by the way, spans the entire political spectrum!) The URL for the website is http://politicalhumor.about.com

 Softech Solutions?  Who the heck are we anyway? Well, sometimes even we wonder! The never-ending consultant vs. contractor question seems to come up more and more often lately and we need to keep reminding ourselves, and our clients, that we are consultants, NOT contractors. Sure, we often function in the role of contractors, but our lot in life is most often to provide consulting services to our clients. What's the difference you may ask? Well, contractors generally get paid for 40 hours (or more) a week whether you have something for them to do or not. Often they are not familiar with your applications and sometimes they are only somewhat familiar with the technology (COBOL, VSAM, CICS, MVS, . . .) As consultants, we bill you only for the hours we work and, if you don't have work, we don't bill. We generally know the applications well, often from both the technical and user perspective, and if we don't, we frequently have someone else on our own staff who does. We are also a real company. Not to say that some contracting firms are not real, but we do have real employees; we pay benefits; we have a retirement plan; we have workman's comp and business liability insurance; we have real office space; a real phone system with real voice mail; and yes, all this does equate to real overhead. This is our seventh year in business with very little turnover so we maintain our knowledge base which is a benefit to the majority of our clients who do repeat business with us. While we are pretty sure that the majority of people who get this newsletter know who we are and what we do, we'd like to emphasize that Softech provides a cost effective way to keep from hiring staff you may not be able to keep productive when their "crunch" cycles go away. For many of our clients, we offer the expertise to get important projects completed in the shortest amount of time possible. Most of our work can also be performed from our offices, saving our clients the costs associated with travel, work space and associated fixed assets. We can also offer very competitive rates when compared to all of our competitors, big and small, even those with little or no overhead. Call us for a price quote today!

Half the people you know are below average

And last, but not least, just in case we forgot to mention it earlier, we'd like to make sure that everyone knows that we have a NEWLY DESIGNED website. www.SoftechSolutions.com is the same URL that's it's always been, but with a little more up-to-date look and some new content. Try the Search feature, or go take a look at our bios, which have also been updated. We have several product demos out there, and a fairly comprehensive list of products/projects that we have worked on in the past. Also check out our favorite web sites with links to language translators, Darwin Awards, Urban Legends and much, much more.

Win a golf shirt! Submit an interesting bit of trivia, a joke, Techie Tip, Great Software, or anything else that we end up publishing in our newsletter, and we will send you a free Softech golf shirt - new shirts are one the way! Submit your entries to SSI@SoftechSolutions.com.