Still looking to put together macro for sum of skips!

[gsobier]

TomTom:

You have Windows because Bill Gates did a better job selling it to the world than IBM. If IBM didn't make those stupid mistakes to fall behind more than 15 years ago (boy, this makes me feel old) we would not have this virus called Windows. Unfortunately, you and most people have no idea or expectation of what a good operating system really is... ...Windows is NOT. In a nutshell, Windows is a very poor design!

You have heard in the media Bill Gates was fighting in the courts because of his greedy business practices and other issues.

Bottom line, the world is stuck with Windows and all the crappy Miscrosoft programs they sell.

Regards,
George

Well, I like those guys pretty much. If they didn’t make windows and all the other stuff after that, people at this forum would communicate by a …telegraph?

 

[gsobier]

Snides:

The errors at run time should not happen if you put in a routine to validate each record read before it causes a failure. I don't trust anyone, most of my critical routines does a check and screams when it finds something invalid instead of blowing up. Its the extra mile and separates the men from the boys.

You really do need a dB Editor of some kind for the user to use when data stored needs to be repaired. I hope you told her to do backups

Regards,
George

if an access 97 database is set up properly you can easily convert it to access 2000, I've done it many times. If you don't convert it, you can still use it, you just can't change anything, it becomes read-only. This is a access 2000 mdb file that i'm using, with a vb6 frontend. The exe file can open it no matter if you have access installed on the machine or not, it uses the jet engine. This is also why i want to create an install package, Mirage mentioned she doesn't have access installed, so she may need several dll files to make jet work.

George, I don't know the difference in the rate of I/O between txt and mdb, but i do know that the main database I created at work is over 40 meg, and I certainly wouldn't want to write code to constantly change the data that it holds if it were a txt file! mdb files follow a stricter format, you set each field for the type of data that it will hold, and therefore it provides it's own form of error-trapping. Yes a txt file would be easy for an end user to update, but there's no formatting done by notepad to decrease errors, and having information entered wrong could cause the program to freeze, crash, or produce unexpected results..

I'll figure out this stupid 'path not found' error soon, and if i don't i'll drink some beer and modify the program to make the user find the right path

 

[tomtom]

TomTom:

You have Windows because Bill Gates did a better job selling it to the world than IBM. If IBM didn't make those stupid mistakes to fall behind more than 15 years ago (boy, this makes me feel old) we would not have this virus called Windows. Unfortunately, you and most people have no idea or expectation of what a good operating system really is... ...Windows is NOT. In a nutshell, Windows is a very poor design!

You have heard in the media Bill Gates was fighting in the courts because of his greedy business practices and other issues.

Bottom line, the world is stuck with Windows and all the crappy Miscrosoft programs they sell.
Regards,
George

Sorry to say, but can’t agree. Those guys made a fine part of the world history already. It was probably not that easy to organize all that, and the guy deserves every penny he earned. Well, that is my opinion…Still, every competition is always welcomed.
BTW, the guy fights for his opinions and ideas at courts?
I haven’t heard any lottery players fighting in the courts because of the the lottery ticket prices.





Snides: because it is read only, in my opinion it is not possible to convert the MDB into MDE, without a converting utility or without a MDB file maker's Access version..

 

[gsobier]

TomTom:

The problem is IBM's OS/2 (ever heard of it?) was much better quality and the ignorant public bought the garbage which was marketed just like Bill Gates was trying to accomplish. Its a real shame. The world dominated with Windows was a step backward.

You are not a programmer, trust me on this... ...you guys don't have anything to compare with like I do.

When Windows 95 finally came out, you got an operating system which crashed much too often. OS/2 from IBM hardly ever did at that point in history.

You should also understand the programs Microsoft sells has a consequence... ...YOU get stuck having to buy a computer to run it because the one you have does not have the speed because the demands on more CPU are dictated by sub-standard programming quality.

There are so many people who have Windows and neglect it... ...it starts to run slow and even crash... ...the poor smuck being non-technical, the poor sole decides to get a new computer instead of performing routine maintenance... ...its like a car, you didn't keep it tuned, it won't run well. You could most likey be suffering like most.

Bill Gates was not in court for his ideas, he was in court for trying to eliminate competition which you yourself support.

Regards,
George

Sorry to say, but can’t agree. Those guys made a fine part of the world history already. It was probably not that easy to organize all that, and the guy deserves every penny he earned. Well, that is my opinion…Still, every competition is always welcomed.
BTW, the guy fights for his opinions and ideas at courts?
I haven’t heard any lottery players fighting in the courts because of the the lottery ticket prices.





Snides: because it is read only, in my opinion it is not possible to convert the MDB into MDE, without a converting utility or without a MDB file maker's Access version..

 

[tomtom]

TomTom:

The problem is IBM's OS/2 (ever heard of it?) was much better quality and the ignorant public bought the garbage which was marketed just like Bill Gates was trying to accomplish. Its a real shame. The world dominated with Windows was a step backward.

You are not a programmer, trust me on this... ...you guys don't have anything to compare with like I do.

When Windows 95 finally came out, you got an operating system which crashed much too often. OS/2 from IBM hardly ever did at that point in history.

You should also understand the programs Microsoft sells has a consequence... ...YOU get stuck having to buy a computer to run it because the one you have does not have the speed because the demands on more CPU are dictated by sub-standard programming quality.

There are so many people who have Windows and neglect it... ...it starts to run slow and even crash... ...the poor smuck being non-technical, the poor sole decides to get a new computer instead of performing routine maintenance... ...its like a car, you didn't keep it tuned, it won't run well. You could most likey be suffering like most.

Bill Gates was not in court for his ideas, he was in court for trying to eliminate competition which you yourself support.

Regards,
George

Well Gsobier, don’t know what to say…. people are different in many ways. Somebody likes Intel processors and somebody not. Still, from the beginning of DOS and all the way after a nice part of computing and hi-tech history is fulfilled. BTW, the OS/2 is widely available, and as I said the tastes are different. Unix programmers have quite nice salaries. Probably because it is user friendly?

About competition and “uncomplicated” the most user friendly OS and applications programming money, a quite few countries struggle to make a decent OS for a longer period of time, because of various reasons. Haven’t heard they were successful

 

[gsobier]

TomTom:

IBM development for OS/2 stopped more than a decade ago. There are many Operating Systems. User freindly is a good one... ...I use DOS in Windows XP the most... ...my poor mouse starts crying from neglect... ...instead of using the scroll bar with the mouse, I use Page Up and Page Down... ...if you took the time to learn how to get around without the mouse using the keyboard, you can do things faster... ...this is user friendly for me. Those who use a computer once in a while depend on the mouse which is much slower.

There are many Operating Systems right here in Canada and the USA... ...I've worked on (Systems Programmer) and know all of these more than most would in a lifetime (half of them are mainframes)...

1. VM/ESA
2. z/VM
3. MVS/ESA
4. OS/390
5. VAX/VMS
6. MPE/E
7. IBM PC DOS
8. OS/2
9. Windows (all kinds)
10. Linux
    [/list=1]
    
    Then there are programming languages which is another long list.
    
    Regards,
    George
    

    Well Gsobier, don’t know what to say…. people are different in many ways. Somebody likes Intel processors and somebody not. Still, from the beginning of DOS and all the way after a nice part of computing and hi-tech history is fulfilled. BTW, the OS/2 is widely available, and as I said the tastes are different. Unix programmers have quite nice salaries. Probably because it is user friendly?
    
    About competition and “uncomplicated” the most user friendly OS and applications programming money, a quite few countries struggle to make a decent OS for a longer period of time, because of various reasons. Haven’t heard they were successful

 

[tomtom]

TomTom:

IBM development for OS/2 stopped more than a decade ago. There are many Operating Systems. User freindly is a good one... ...I use DOS in Windows XP the most... ...my poor mouse starts crying from neglect... ...instead of using the scroll bar with the mouse, I use Page Up and Page Down... ...if you took the time to learn how to get around without the mouse using the keyboard, you can do things faster... ...this is user friendly for me. Those who use a computer once in a while depend on the mouse which is much slower.

There are many Operating Systems right here in Canada and the USA... ...I've worked on (Systems Programmer) and know all of these more than most would in a lifetime (half of them are mainframes)...

1. VM/ESA
2. z/VM
3. MVS/ESA
4. OS/390
5. VAX/VMS
6. MPE/E
7. IBM PC DOS
8. OS/2
9. Windows (all kinds)
10. Linux
    [/list=1]
    
    Then there are programming languages which is another long list.
    
    Regards,
    George

1. 
   
   Again, tastes and ways of doing things are different. You might use arrays in your programming and you might need a faster processor. Somebody else will keep old processor and use Case selection. In both ways you don’t need a mouse. But if you drink a coffee reading the newspapers, it is pretty disadvantageous to avoid using it.
   However, as I said, it seems that the Windows nutshell advantages are far from reaching for many overseas OS makers.
   
   BTW, if you missed to learn or interested to learn any of the present programming languages here is a nice tool. A powerful freeware editor that supports something like 20 programming languages.
   
   http://www.garybeene.com/free/gbcodelib.htm
   
   
   Still, you might need to use mouse to download it.
   
   

 

[Snides]

Snides:
You really do need a dB Editor of some kind for the user to use when data stored needs to be repaired. I hope you told her to do backups

That is a feature that would be added to version 1.2.345z I'm just trying to get the skeleton of the program to her to see if it's worth putting more effort into it, and to get feedback. I'm sure there will be other things that she (or others) would like changed or added to the program, but to start off I want her to see what it does, and then the finishing touches can be added..

I have nothing to add to the discussion/arguement about windows and languages.. I'd still be using an Amiga to this day if they didn't go out of business...

 

[gsobier]

Snides:

I know how you feel about Amiga brother... ...there is something very similar which happened to me too.

Regards,
George

That is a feature that would be added to version 1.2.345z I'm just trying to get the skeleton of the program to her to see if it's worth putting more effort into it, and to get feedback. I'm sure there will be other things that she (or others) would like changed or added to the program, but to start off I want her to see what it does, and then the finishing touches can be added..

I have nothing to add to the discussion/arguement about windows and languages.. I'd still be using an Amiga to this day if they didn't go out of business...

 

[gsobier]

TomTom:

Thanks for that... ...I'll come back to this once I've prepared for the draw today.

Regards.
George

BTW, if you missed to learn or interested to learn any of the present programming languages here is a nice tool. A powerful freeware editor that supports something like 20 programming languages.

http://www.garybeene.com/free/gbcodelib.htm


Still, you might need to use mouse to download it.

 

[mirage]

Maybe because I'm closer in age to gsobier than I would guess tomtom, my experience with computers (which is limited, granted) I tend to side with gsobier. My experience with Windows has been like a not so subtley disguised:

Welcome to the Nation/Police State of Microsoft. You are free to operate in our Nation as long as you abide by our rigid rules. We make things difficult or impossible for you to do things in any other way. We threaten to revoke your Microsoft Citizenship if you try to do things which are not in line with Microsoft.

Microsoft's latest news is that it is currently embroiled in controversy again over it's latest upgrade, SP2 because it blocks some add-ons and causes equipment failure, in the name of security.

I have heard it said that Bill Gates true genius was in his incredible skills in writing really good legal contracts, which he learned from his father.

Just my opinion. And I'm way too opinionated for my own good.

 

[gsobier]

Mirage:

Well put... ...its all to our misfortune that A$$ was good with legal affairs.

XPSP2, oh my... ...another partition of mine took care of that disaster. My e-Mail and other files are on yet another partition so switching to the other one to run Windows XP was ZERO impact for me.

I'm never going to be ready for the draw posting here... ...later on will be better.

Regards,
George

Maybe because I'm closer in age to gsobier than I would guess tomtom, my experience with computers (which is limited, granted) I tend to side with gsobier. My experience with Windows has been like a not so subtley disguised:

Welcome to the Nation/Police State of Microsoft. You are free to operate in our Nation as long as you abide by our rigid rules. We make things difficult or impossible for you to do things in any other way. We threaten to revoke your Microsoft Citizenship if you try to do things which are not in line with Microsoft.

Microsoft's latest news is that it is currently embroiled in controversy again over it's latest upgrade, SP2 because it blocks some add-ons and causes equipment failure, in the name of security.

I have heard it said that Bill Gates true genius was in his incredible skills in writing really good legal contracts, which he learned from his father.

Just my opinion. And I'm way too opinionated for my own good.

 

[mirage]

Snides,

1. It's time for me to eat humble pie, or crow, or my own words at the very least. (No gsobier, I am being sincere here....) I am sorry for the now embarrassing post of the other day,
to wit: "....I thought to myself at the time, Snides! What are you doing? ....". I take the whole post back. Essentiallly boils down to my own psychological issue in that I worry too much. Ok, enuff about that.

2. (Originally posted by Snides)

hmmm.. I'm trying to create a package for you to install Mirage, but It's not liking me at the moment.. I've installed and removed it from my laptop about 15 times and continue to have errors where it can't find the database.. Must be some stupid little error somewhere, but these beers are making my brain swim... Hopefully I figure it out before the next beer, and then I'll have it posted for you tonight...

and

(Originally posted by Snides)

i'm not reading from an exe file, i'm reading from a mdb file. I'm not a big fan of txt files for data storage, I'd choose an ascii or binary file over txt anyday, would save a pile of disc space too, but that's not an issue these days with huge hard drives available.. I use mdb files because I use them more often than I use toilet paper (ok, that may be a bad analogy..)

There also is no glitch going on anywhere. I'm used to programming for myself, I usually leave everything in project form and rarely create exe's for any of my 'finished' programs. I put finished in quotes, because i rarely call something finished, I always find new things to add to them, and am always experimenting. I have only distributed 3 programs to the public in the past, one to a dude in south africa, and two that a few members of this board know about/use.

This is the first time I'm trying to make a distributable program that yer average non-computer geek can get running. I'm trying to add all the run-times dll's, references, and databases that are needed into one distributable package that doesn't require any tweaking by the end user...

I'm sorry that it is taking so long, but it's not like any deadlines or contracts were agreed to prior to commencing this project. I do have other things that need to be done, and my health hasn't helped out much. Comments criticizing the program, length of time since inception, and methods used certainly don't increase my speed of production either, in fact they may hinder it and make me wonder if it's users will truly appreciate it when it is finished..

This project was started for Mirage, so I'll ask her...

Mirage, can you wait a few days for a easy to install and maintain version of this program, or would you like to tweak 2 files into a specific location on your hard drive and possibly download a few missing files from microsoft that you might need, or do you think that this whole mess is a glitch that will never work and you want me to scrap the whole project?

Responding to the above. Sorry about the comments criticizing the program or length of time, etc.

Yes of course you are right: both you and gsobier. When a program to a non-computer geek is being developed "free gratis", then of course I (and anyone else who might be using it) am more than grateful. It's been said on this forum elsewhere these projects take a lot of time. I guess I was taking you at your literal word (which was silly, in retrospect - boy am I naive!?) when you kept saying several times, again and again - program will be ready in by end of next week, ... ready in next few days, ... ready by this weekend,... when in fact this should all have been taken with a judicious grain of salt as well as with the knowledge that you are perhaps being humorous or in the spirit of good humor really, just that.

No, I don't want you to scrap the whole project, and yes I'm pretty sure I will be very appreciative of any and all your efforts.

Take as long as you need to to finish the project. Don't feel you have to have it ready in a few days or even in next couple of weeks. I guess by same token, don't suggest suspensefully that you expect it may be done sooner rather than later when these things always take a lot longer than expected.

A lot of words. Take as long as you want Snides. I willing to be patient. I have some tools I can work with for now and the rest I can painstakingly do by hand if I feel a need to.

 

[gsobier]

"Ready Next Week"

Mirage:

I don't know how many times I made the mistake to tell someone next week and it took more than another week or even a month. Its the good old 80-20 rule where the 20% at the end to complete takes 80% of the time once in a while.

Part of the blame is Microsoft. Simple things are much more difficult because of poor judgement is design.

We know you are sincere, that is real obvious to me.

Regards,
George

 

[peter]

I believe Snides to be sincere as well, when he says it will be ready soon, he feels optimistic, and then a set back occurs.
The old saying a watched pot never boils, and do not look a gift horse in the mouth, apply here.
If I did someone a favor, and then got critized for it, my back would be up against the wall.
I'm sure Mirage would like to take back her critisizm, if she could.
I think for Snides to undertake this project on his own free time considering we all have other issues in our life, is truly remarkable.
Thumbs up to you Snides.

 

[mirage]

I believe Snides to be sincere as well, when he says it will be ready soon, he feels optimistic, and then a set back occurs.
The old saying a watched pot never boils, and do not look a gift horse in the mouth, apply here.
If I did someone a favor, and then got critized for it, my back would be up against the wall.
I'm sure Mirage would like to take back her critisizm, if she could.
I think for Snides to undertake this project on his own free time considering we all have other issues in our life, is truly remarkable.
Thumbs up to you Snides.

Ok, ditto. I echo Peter.

 

[Snides]

Ok.. I feel like an idiot now.. I figured out the problem..

I had to read through the entire code and realized that I forgot about the csv file that it dumps when it runs and I had the path for it set to my E: drive, so I changed it to just dump to the current directory where the exe will reside. Thus, the program is now distributatable! I'm going to make some minor changes to the package, so I'll certainly have this program posted for downloading before the long weekend is over. I'm guessing tomorrow night it will be available for download. It's gunna be about 3.5 meg in total so hopefully you have a high speed connection, otherwise you could be waiting about half an hour

 

[gsobier]

...its always easy when you know why... ...I've done those kinds of things many times too...

Ok.. I feel like an idiot now.. I figured out the problem..

I had to read through the entire code and realized that I forgot about the csv file that it dumps when it runs and I had the path for it set to my E: drive, so I changed it to just dump to the current directory where the exe will reside. Thus, the program is now distributatable! I'm going to make some minor changes to the package, so I'll certainly have this program posted for downloading before the long weekend is over. I'm guessing tomorrow night it will be available for download. It's gunna be about 3.5 meg in total so hopefully you have a high speed connection, otherwise you could be waiting about half an hour

 

[Snides]

Program is Ready for download!

Click here to download.

While you are downloading I'll explain two known 'bugs'...

1. The automatic date for updating 6/49 is messed up, I will fix that for future version.

2. There is some massive optimization possible which will be changed for the next release. If you choose to eliminate numbers for wheeling, currently the program doesn't care, it still goes through all 13.9 million combinations. When this is fixed it will only use the numbers that you choose to wheel, therefore with each number eliminated the program will run much faster. Ideally if you only wheel 20 numbers it should finish in less than a minute, but as it stands right now it could take 10 minutes or so (depending on your computer's speed)

One other thing I should mention... The database that comes with this is not up to date. I did this intentionally, not only so that I could test the updating myself, but also so that you would have to try it on your machine to make sure that you know how to do it, and to see if you had problems so that I could make changes if necessary. You can update all the draws from any of the 3 programs, once the updates are done you will have to close the program and restart for it to read the new information..

Once you download the program, unzip it, double-click the 'setup' program, it will go through the installation, you just have to click in the appropriate places, do not change the path that it saves the program in or it won't find the data... Once the install is finished you will have a new program group in your 'start' 'all programs >' area called "Snides" in there will be the 3 programs, on/49, 6/49, and lottario. simply click on the one you want to use..

Top left box titled "Go to Draw #" you can type the draw number that you want to 'go to', the program will wheel tickets for the draw after that. You can scroll down the list in the big dark blue text box in the top left to see what the last draw was, then type in that number to wheel for the first draw in the future..

Next two boxes beside that are "sum skip to wheel combo's for", first box is the low number, second is the high number. So you can wheel from 24 'to' 41, or (as you'll see) you can enter both numbers the same like 41 to 41 if you just want to wheel combo's with a skip sum of 41.

beside those two boxes is the button to start the wheeling action, the draw number being wheeled for will already be entered in the box to the right showing which draw the tickets are meant for. So ya just click the 'wheel tickets for draw #' and away she goes... Remember to change the filters before you wheel or it will use the defaults..

I think the rest is self-explainitory, just play around and figure it out.. the grid of green numbers on the bottom right can be clicked to turn a number to orange..

So.. I guess just play with it and let me know what you like/dislike and tell me if you have any 'bugs' to report or questions about how to use it..

 

[gsobier]

Snides:

Having the draw results out of date is a good idea... ...how are you getting update? You are not expecting the user to type them in by hand?

I've written code to grab the HTML from ALC.CA and WCLC.COM (2 sites for confirmation so I can catch obvious errors). Looking through the HTML the right way gives you results when there are posted on draw night.

Regards,
George