Solutions by Softech - Company Newsletter - Third Edition, December 1996

Solutions by Softech Third Edition - December 1996

Solutions by Softech
Third Edition - December 1996

Softech Solutions, Inc. 300 North C.R. 427 Suite 100 Longwood FL 32750
1-407-331-TECH(8324) 1-407-331-5570(Fax)
SSI@SoftechSolutions.com

Softech Solutions' Homepage

Welcome to the third periodic edition of Solutions by Softech. We apologize for the long delay since the last newsletter, but we have had a lot of things going on (See "Softech on The Go"). Also, our "Techie Tips" section really hits home to a lot of DP shops, and in order to cover this subject in enough detail, you’ll have to visit our Home Page on the Web. Speaking of "The Web", so much is happening in that area that we’ll probably make that a regular feature, pointing out any Web Sites we find useful, interesting, or unique. We have the opportunity to travel often and we occasionally run across all kinds of Windows Software that we are often impressed with. Find out what has impressed us in the new "Software Review" section.

Virus Alert - In our ‘soon to be ending’ attempt to keep our clients free from all the current PC viruses, here are our latest discoveries:

The Nike Virus - Just does It!; The Gallup Virus - 60% of the PC’s infected will lose 38% of their data 14% of the time. (plus or minus a 3.5% margin of error.)

CUT ME OUT AND HANG ME UP

Just as a follow up to last issue’s Cut Me Out And Hang Me Up article we had some magnets made up for you to put on the file cabinets in you office so you’ll always have our numbers when you need our services. You can also take them home and use them to keep you kid’s artwork on the refrigerator. Thanks again to all the people for their positive comments on that article

Solution Needed

Well I guess our first puzzle really puzzled most of you since we only had two responses. Fortunately both responses were correct and we decided to just go ahead and give them both golf shirts! The question for those of you new readers (or forgetful ones) along with the answers follow:

1 - name a word with three consecutive dotted letters (hijinks); 2 - name a word with four consecutive vowels (queue); 3 - name a word with three consecutive sets of double letters (bookkeeper) The hint was "If you were horsing around while you were standing in line waiting for your English accountant you might use all of these words in describing your experience!" We did have some debate over hijinks but it was certainly in all the Webster dictionaries that we consulted. Fortunately we decided not to put the fourth part of the question in - name a word that has every vowel of the alphabet in it in alphabetical order! Again we believe that there is only one solution and we are not kidding around!(yes that is a hint.) See the end of the newsletter for the answer.

Now here’s another chance to provide Softech with a Solution and win a great prize while you are at it. A random drawing will be made from all correct answers received by December 25, 1996 and the winner will receive a Softech Solutions golf shirt. Put your thinking caps on! This is not a trick question but it is tricky! Which states, of the 50 United States, are the furthest North, East, South and West? Just as a potential tiebreaker, how about the same question with just the 48 continental states-leaving Alaska and Hawaii out.

Techie Tip

Mainframe/PC File Transfer

There are a lot of businesses today utilizing the PC and Mainframe connectivity to perform file transfer. Almost everywhere we’ve been, transferring data files seems to be a problem for many individuals. When transferring data files from the mainframe to the PC/LAN, you never want to do translation from EBCDIC to ASCII (a pure binary transfer), and you never want to remove Carriage Returns (CR) and Line Feeds (LF). If you want a detailed explanation and examples of what can go wrong and why, visit our Web page on the Internet and click on "Techie Tips". www.SoftechSolutions.com

Non-Techie Tip

The New Millennium - The end of Data Processing as we know it, or just another ho-hum conversion. Well are you as sick as we are about all the hype in the industry as well as local rags concerning the end on the century and how all the date routines will stop working. While we are sure that some problems will occur and that nobody in the industry will be at any New Year’s parties that year, we are also sure that it is not as big a problem as we are being led to believe. A brief conversation among our techies came up with a couple different ways to minimize a potential conversion involving the ‘Turn of the Century’. The first way we thought of was if your date were 4 byte packed fields (which would be a common way of storing a 6-position numeric). You could simply make the definition a 9(7) and then use a 1 position century- 0 for 19 and 1 for 20 – you will have to make some logic changes to programs, but NO FILE CONVERSIONS. Another suggestion we came up with is to simply leave the dates alone and let the year 2000 go to 00 and make the necessary coding changes to accommodate editing and comparison., once again a solution with NO FILE CONVERSIONS. Obviously, testing whatever option you decide on will be the key to attending the big party 12/31/1999! Considering that many applications have already had to accommodate centuries to allow for birth dates, maturity dates, expiration dates, etc., suddenly the hype of the ‘turn of the century disaster’ diminishes. However, for all of you who think the year 2000 will be a non-event since your system utilizes Julian dates that include century, you may want to review your CICS programs that use EIBDATE. EIBDATE is a Julian date without century. Many programmers have hard-coded 1900, in different ways to populate the century. We would suggest testing the year < 70, 80, 90, the move 20 to the century. This should work for the next 74+ years, then it is someone else’s problem. If you would like us to give you an estimate for converting an application please give us a call.

Softech on the Go

First we would like to welcome the newest addition to Softech On The Go - Dave Reed. We are sure that many of you already know Dave as he has been around for over 20 years with the last 16 spent primarily at PaySys(CCS) and Kirschman. His recent experience has been with PaySys as a posting expert for Vision 21ă and Vision Plusă . The addition of Dave to our staff has provided us an additional area of expertise as he has considerable experience in the Vision Plusă product line and has already implemented a new enhancement for variable interest rate processing in Vision Plusă . If you are in need of specialized enhancements for your Vision 21ă or Vision Plusă application we advise you to call Softech before the line gets too long.

Bill has recently been involved with Microsoft Access projects for a major International client, helping enhance client-server applications. With these types of projects, combined with some of the PC Interface projects we have performed, Softech has utilized the full spectrum of PC/LAN, Client/Server, Mainframe Integration.

Ed has been heavily involved with Private Label authorizations, utilizing VisaNet communications. Ed is one of only a handful of people in the country capable of designing, coding, and delivering this type of interface.

Ron has been very busy coding conversions, bit-twiddling with more Visa ISO "bit-mapped" messages, and interfacing PC based terminals to real-time application decision support applications.

The Year in Review

Since this edition of our newsletter will be our last for this year, we guess we should also publish our Year In Review. We didn’t think it was possible to have had a better year than last year but here we are in November and we are well on our way. As Steve Martin used to say at the end of his stand-up comedy routines. "I’d like to thank each and every one of you" so . . . thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you , - OK so that’s enough, if we left any of you out, we apologize. Last year we quoted the number of projects we worked on, the number customer we worked for, the number of states, countries, continents, and galaxies we have worked in. This year, suffice it to say, all those numbers have increased, except the galaxies. But we just stopped keeping track. Maybe Next year

Suggestions Wanted

Yes, we are still looking for suggestions. These are really nice Softech Solutions golf shirts that we are giving away! Submit a suggestion to us, and if we end up using it in our newsletter we will send you one. It can be a Techie Tip, a Non-Techie Tip, or an article, and yes, we’ll even take jokes, but only for the next newsletter!

THE WEB

If you are a web surfer and haven’t tried PointCast Network, it is available as a download from www.pointcast.com It is over 2 megs so it will take a while, but it’s a great product and it’s FREE. You will need an Internet provider (CompuServe, AOL, . . .) to make it work.

Looking for an old college roommate?A High School flame?A map to your mother-in-laws? Try the People Find option of the Lycos Search Engine-SPECTACULAR!

Software Review

Quicken ExpensAble® anybody that has to fill out an expense report will benefit from this nifty software. The Hotel Wizard lets you balance and verify your hotel statement with very little keystrokes. All expense transactions are categorized and the software will try to help you default most transactions as you start keying in the detail. Don’t leave home without it!

Visio® is a "drag and drop" drawing tool we found to be superior to any other flowcharting tool we’ve ever used. It has every kind of charting template imaginable, from program flow, system and machine diagrams, organization charts, and graphical import capabilities. If you move a process box with the mouse, the lines you had connected come right along with it. Try it, you’ll like it!

ClickArt® - we have been asked several times where get the graphics that we use in this newsletter. The answer is ClickART Incredible Image Pak 25,000. We didn’t do a lot of research into this, but for a price less than $50 we got 25,000 pieces of click art on 3 CD ROMs. It comes with a book that gives you a black and white picture of every image. The biggest problem using it is deciding which ones to use.

Home Sweet Home

Since many of our customers never get to visit our offices, we thought we would tell you a little something about them. We have office space in the historic Longwood Village Inn. Originally built in 1887, this stately three-story hotel is still the largest, most impressive landmark in the City of Longwood. In addition to serving as an Inn over the last century, rumor has it that during various ownership’s the building has also served as a brothel and gambling establishment. Earlier in the century, the Inn was visited by several Presidents who were said to have made "side trips" here by horse and buggy, probably to partake in a little gambling and other "official" business. The Inn comes complete with a ghost (no kidding here, that’s the story) of an owner that met an untimely accident in 1922 and later died in his room on the third floor. We don’t really believe in that kind of stuff, but most of us keep the office doors closed and locked when we are working late at night. In 1964 the movie "Johnny Tiger" with Robert Taylor and Chad Everett was partially filmed in the hotel. The Inn was purchased by a property management company in 1983 and converted into professional office suites which currently houses over 30 companies of all types and sizes. If you are into historic landmarks, come by and visit us the next time you are in Orlando.

Web Humor

Occasionally we get some humorous e-mails forwarded to us by friends, relatives, or acquaintances. This one is rated as a 10 on the belly laughter scale.

How will the media report the end of the world?

USA Today : "We're Dead"
Wall Street Journal : "Dow Jones Plummets as World Ends"
National Inquirer : "O.J. and Nicole, Together Again"
Playboy : "Girls of the Apocalypse"
Microsoft Systems Journal : "Apple Loses Market Share"
Victoria's Secret Catalog : "Our Final Sale"
Sports Illustrated : "Game Over"
Rolling Stone : "The Grateful Dead Reunion Tour"
Reader's Digest (Condensed Stories) : "Bye"
Discover Magazine : "How will the Extinction of all Life as we know it affect the way we view the Cosmos?
TV Guide : "Death and Damnation - Nielson Ratings Soar"
Lady's Home Journal : Lose 10 lbs. by Judgement Day with our new Amageddon Diet"
America Online : "System Temporarily Down. Try Calling Back in 15 minutes"
Inc. Magazine : "Ten Ways to Profit From the End of the World"
Microsoft's Web Site : "If you didn't experience the Rapture, Download Software Patch RAPT777.EXE"

The word that has every vowel of the alphabet in it in alphabetical order is facetiously (it even qualifies for the "and sometimes ‘y’")

Vision 21® and Vision Plus® are trademarks of PaySys International, Inc.
TRIAD® is a registered trademark of Fair Isaac and Company

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