I'm a highly skilled Information Technology (IT) professional with over sixteen years of real-world business experience in designing and building low-cost software, database, and web-based solutions to complex data and information delivery problems.  My professional services are available and reasonable rates.  I have extensive technical experience, practical know how and a down-to-earth approach to building good straight-forward managable software.

Personal Resume

Otherware

I have, throughout the course of my career so far, had to find ways to provide low-cost solutions to problems of all kinds.  Below are some of my favorite finds, solutions and tools.  Please note that the files available for download here contain unaltered full credit to the original authors where applicable.  Please refer to the documentation in each file (where applicable) for support information.

re·a·gent (n.): A substance used in a chemical reaction to detect, measure, examine, or produce other substances. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

AceText

AceText is an excellent text organizer and text clip manager.  I've created several portable (see Ceedo below) collections of updatable, reusable text including code snippets, hyper links, passwords and canned e-mail replies.  I keep a running to do list in AceText as well.  The left side tree view pane makes it easy to add nodes to the tree view as well as drag, drop, nest, alphabetize or otherwise organize/customize nested text collections the way I want them.  You could organize any sort of text collection using AceText.  It includes live spell checking and best of all... double clicking on an item pastes the selected text right into the last active window, so pasting long pass phrases/passwords or hyper links becomes a breeze!

 AceText Demo

AutoIt

AutoIt is an excellent automation scripting tool for performing any keystrokes or mouse movements a user could perform manually automatically instead.  It uses mouse coordinates, keystrokes and window handles for manipulating the GUI.  There are so many advantages to this awesome little tool.  The scripting language is extremely simple and familiar and supports programmed loops, there is no install or modifications to your registry and you can create standalone .exe scripts.  And this is just from my past experience with v2!  The author has updated it and I've not even played with v3 yet.  The very best part is that AutoIt is 100% free ware.

Ceedo

I'm using Ceedo Personal with a 20 GB USB portable drive enclosure.  This arrangement allows me to carry and use my favorite essential programs, such as AceText and EditPad, without having to install them on any of the computers I use.  I can of course carry with me whatever personal files I choose as well.  I prefer Ceedo over U3 or PortableApps since almost any software becomes installable rather than a limited list of portable-only versions.  The Ceedo installation is also relatively small.  I'll admit I had some initial problems with running Ceedo on my work machine that have now been resolved.  Ceedo is an excellent portable solution!

 Ceedo Personal

EditPad Pro

EditPad Pro is an essential tool for me and probably always will be.  I was introduced to it when I switched from a software-oriented programming job to more web-oriented programming job.  I've been using it ever since.  I've seen others and EditPad Pro is the best.  I even use it in place of Visual Studio on occasion because it's navigation is simpler. 

I use it primarily to edit code files and strip formatting from text pasted from other applications and browsers.  It has syntax coloring by file type, live spell checking and excellent search and replace capabilities.  I also use it to: locate carriage returns, tabs and spaces; view code with line numbers; toggle word wrap; group files together into projects; convert case and .  The latest version probably has feature I've not even started using yet!

 EditPad Pro Demo

Find & Replace for Microsoft Access

Find & Replace is an add-in for Microsoft Access proving the ability to perform find and replace operations on the design elements of Microsoft Access database objects.  If you have a need to change the name of a table throughout a database, find and replace will search through all the Tables, Queries, Forms, Reports, Macros, and Modules for the table name and replace it throughout.  It has full logging capability and instructions are provided for loading mass changes from a table, which I've used many times.

The only thing I'm not fond of is using the Access add-in menu to make it available which is a feature of Access rather than Find & Replace.  A 30-day evaluation is available and license costs are reasonable.

Scheduler

Scheduler is a simple program that allows the user to execute a command line instruction according to a schedule the user specifies.  When the system time arrives the command line instruction (plus switches if any) is executed.

This little gem has long been one of my favorites.  It is small, light weight and requires no installation at all; place it in a folder and it runs.  It utilizes a simple editable .ini (text file) to store the schedule and command lines.  It sits quietly and reliably in the system tray, taking up virtually no resources and is more friendly and accessible than WinAT.  I have long used it to open Access databases and Excel spreadsheets which in turn launch macros and code.  Via scheduler I have performed all kinds of scheduled tasks such as running reports, sending e-mail or collecting data from other databases. Placing a short cut in the startup folder will launch it automatically on reboot.  This is the easiest most accessible little scheduler I have ever found and it's free!

Softricks Popup Date Picker

This popup calendar has been a favorite of mine for several years.  Databases are very particular about date formats while users may not be (to put it kindly).  Selecting and inputting a proper date in a form field is a mouse click away with this little gem.  Feel free to view the source on this page for an example of how to set it up and reference the form element.

The only technical downside to the calendar is that the colors aren't necessarily easy to edit as they're scattered throughout the functions in the file.  The fact that popup blockers block it might also be viewed as a downside.  The calendar is free for non-commerical, non-profit use.