first let me mention that I had a lovely dinner with melanie, pj, and jackie tonight. we broiled salmon with lemon, garlic, and rosemary, we half fried/half sauteed the potatoes with garlic and rosemary, and we cooked the asparagus like you cook asparagus, kind of boiling it and kind of steaming it. this lovely time was made all the more lovelier with some apricot beer. after dinner we watched y tu mama tambien.

i realize lately i’ve been kind of beating myself up for not being a better programmer. seems i’ve kind of forgotten two important details. one. i only started programming in april. and two. i’m not a programmer. or at least i’m not exactly a programmer. i’m interested in using computers at a higher level, like using database software to build databases, or using content management software to manage content.

that said, i made a discovery today. i have two major problems with microsoft access (see: nov 21). and today i made some headway with problem (1). turns out that if you have adobe acrobat, Access can generate professional looking reports as PDFs. granted PDFs are a small evil in and of themselves, but at least at least with a PDF, style, formatting, and layout are maintained, you can minimally edit a PDF, and multiple PDFs can be assembled into to larger, complete documents. and once you have your complete PDF, it can be printed, it can be emailed, it can be put online.