Jeff's Blahg

Let me start by saying that I despise Windows. I mean, I REALLY can’t stand using it or even worse supporting it (sorry Mom).

I have been working recently on a SecurityTrax import – where we move the companies old data into our system. The old data in this case is stored in Microsoft Access… which means you have to have a Windows machine (with Office installed) to deal w/ the data at all. That’s enough to make me sick. All of the data in our systems is stored in MySQL… which is great as it runs on pretty much *any* operating system.

Anyway, I found this great tool that allows me to dump direct from Access to MySQL. It creates the schema and all the data automatically… and the best part is that I installed it on the customer’s Windows server (that just doesn’t sound right) and pointed it direct to our servers. Therefore, I didn’t have to install Windows anywhere!

Did I mention this wonderful software is free? I do intend to donate however as it has saved me hours of Windows-induced heartache.

Access to MySQL by Bullzip

I have not purchased but 1 song from iTunes. My music library is about 40+ gig of mp3s… no DRM included. I wanted to make some ringtones for my iPhone, but wasn’t interested in paying Apple for songs I already own. Not to mention that the songs I wanted as ringtones weren’t even ‘ringtone capable’ in iTunes.

Anyway, after digging around for a while I have found the following to work:

(MAC OX X 10.5 based)

1. Select the song in iTunes that I want to use as a ringtone. Protected AAC files will not work.
2. Right-click on the song and select Get Info
3. Go to the Options page and select the start and end times for the ringtone (max of 40 seconds)
4. Right-click on the song again and select Convert Selection to AAC
5. Right-click on the converted song and select Show in Finder
6. Rename the .m4a file to .m4r (leave the rest of the filename the same)
7. Go back to iTunes and delete the converted song from iTunes. When I skipped this step, double clicking on the .m4r file to import the ringtone into iTunes did not work properly.
8. Double-click on the .m4r file. iTunes should change to the Ringtones folder under Library near the top and start playing the ringtone
9. Go spend your $2 /per song on something useful

Here is a news release we just posted. This will explain what I have been working on.

GRESHAM, OR-January 28, 2008- SafeTrax is proud to announce the upcoming release of a preventative maintenance program to integrate and coincide with SafeTrax Online. The SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program will help you track and monitor scheduled and nonscheduled maintenance on equipment. It is unique in that it allows you to seamlessly integrate your safety program and preventative maintenance… bringing them together, as they should be.

The SafeTrax Online Preventative Maintenance Program was created using feedback from a preventative maintenance advisory board, which consists of existing and potential customers, on how to best track and maintain equipment. SafeTrax took that feedback and over the past eight months has been building a preventative maintenance program on the solid SafeTrax Online framework, making the preventative maintenance module seamless with the existing components. With the input of the advisory board, we can assure our customers that as the module nears completion it will be what is needed and wanted for an ideal preventative maintenance and safety program.

Part of the appeal of the SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program is its unique bottom-up approach, which allows you to create maintenance procedures using a work order accessed in SafeTrax Online. The procedures can involve as few as zero or as many steps as necessary. So that the maintenance is done in a timely and cost-effective manner, the work order allows you to state an estimated time for completion and specify the parts and tools needed for proper maintenance. Once a work order is created, it is assigned to the appropriate employee in the system and can then be tracked by management to insure completion.

Further, the SafeTrax Preventative Maintenance Program allows you to create a maintenance group (or several) and assign equipment to that group that fit into the type of maintenance to be performed, and then apply procedures to that maintenance group. This allows for quick and easy assignment of common procedures to equipment rather than creating several equipment work orders for the same procedure. A single piece of equipment can belong to several maintenance groups depending on what type of maintenance services it needs.

Below are some of the features the new preventative maintenance module provides:

* One online location for creating, assigning, and tracking the completion of work orders
* Ability to schedule preventative maintenance days, weeks, months… even years in advance
* Simple yet powerful interface for assigning equipment to maintenance groups
* The ability for management to track man-hours on maintenance work orders, as well as the consumption of parts
* Seamless integration with the SafeTrax Online Safety Program

SafeTrax is proud to expand its SafeTrax Online product to include this work order and preventative maintenance module, as it will greatly benefit our customers. SafeTrax plans to roll out our Preventative Maintenance Program in April 2008.