Lee's Mailbag

by Lee Hudspeth
(This article appears in The Naked PC #5.25, December 5, 2002)

** 03. Lee's Mailbag (by Lee Hudspeth)

It's time to catch up on my reader email backlog. Here goes...

-- Gregory B. has a neat tip for storing online purchase 
confirmation and other transaction pages, "Another thing I like 
to do with those [online] order confirmation pages is take a 
screenshot and paste it to a Word document which I then save with 
a detailed explanatory title in my 'Confirmations' folder. Then I 
have a mail-able document to send right away to any customer 
service agent. I normally don't print anything, but rely on the 
doc file to be legible enough. Luckily, I've never needed to use 
these files. I do the same for any payment confirmation on credit 
cards or phone bills as well."

-- Gary F. offers this online resource for college planning. It 
points to Sandusky District Library's "Scholarships & Student 
Loans" links page.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/525/tr.cgi?lee1

-- Karen A. has a helpful online resource related to college 
planning. "This site is sponsored by a group of guaranty agencies 
who participate in the Federal Family Education Loan Program 
(FFELP). Although it also has useful tips for selecting schools 
and so forth, its primary aim is to help you get the funding you 
need for school. The information about the Loan Counseling 
Interviews may be very useful to a parent who's worried about the 
financial portion of the college experience."
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/525/tr.cgi?lee2

-- Bill H., Lane Public Library, has put together a truly useful 
and very cleverly-designed Web page "Internet Research - Using 
the Web to Plan for College." It is divided into these 
categories: Finding Information, Getting Organized, Choices, 
Financing, Preparation, Traps, Resources. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this 
Web page.
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/525/tr.cgi?lee3

-- Mike S., a documentation consultant, responded to my article 
"Guidelines for Excellence in a Software Development Team." Mike 
was wondering why I didn't discuss user documentation. Good 
question. Answer: I just ran out of room! The development 
methodology I use allows the team to produce user documentation 
direct from the project's development documents (help-production 
tools like Doc-To-Help or RoboHelp among others are beyond the 
scope of this article). Mike writes, "I'm also a firm believer in 
printed manuals. My article on printed documentation was 
published in TC Forum, a publication for technical 
communicators."
http://www.TheNakedPC.com/t/525/tr.cgi?lee4

-- Jeff R. had some thought-provoking experiences and insights to 
share related to my article on software development. "Kudos for 
the points you mentioned. I have been involved in Data Processing 
(mainframes) for 33 years now, most recently as a systems 
programmer, installing operating systems on big iron and I can 
tell you that attention to detail is about as important as it 
gets. I like your point about templates and reusable code. I 
think that anyone involved in the business for any length of time 
at all has probably figured this out and I am glad you pointed it 
out for less seasoned programmers (no use re-inventing the wheel 
each time). I consider the effectiveness of a test plan one of 
the items on my checklist that can either make or break a smooth 
installation. Good lines of communication and a central point of 
distribution contribute greatly to this. Lastly, the subject of 
coding practices has always been a pet peeve of mine. A long time 
ago, one of my mentors gave me two basic rules to live by that 
have proven incontrovertible over the years: (1) keep it simple 
(no tricky code) and (2) make it readable. Unless you enjoy 
winding your way around someone else's spaghetti code, then code 
unto others as you would have them code unto you. I once looked 
at some really tricky code that a programmer had injected into a 
program and had to ask them exactly WHY they would do such a 
thing! Why, you ask - why because it was possible and no one else 
was doing it. Efficiency be darned - I wanna show off and confuse 
everyone. Needless to say, we ripped that piece of code out! Just 
because it can be done is not good enough."

A special note of thanks to everyone who has written in to me. 
I'm not able to reply to every email individually but I read and 
appreciate them all.

(c) 2002, Lee Hudspeth
You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
mailto:LeeHudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

You can reach Lee Hudspeth at:
leehudspeth@TheNakedPC.com

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