My first serious effort to program (Access97) was an automated engineering log in Access that extracted my operating hours for the month and wrote them out in M

My first serious effort to program (Access97) was an automated engineering log in Access that extracted my operating hours for the month and wrote them out in MS Word as a draft Navy message. It really didn't have much in the way of error checking to ensure that the state of the equipment was consistent i.e., you didn't start a generator or main engine twice in a row. Which became crucial when I handed my baby over to the FNG at transfer time, and went on house-hunting orders. Came back, ran the report, and he'd gooned the data so bad that we ran our equipment for negative time. Which was an outstanding business opportunity! Run the hours off of the equipment! Yes! We can name our price for this device! Other than the part where time doesn't exactly work that way, the idea was great.