Digging In and Out

Uncovering more and more things to get done is kind of fun!

I've recently been exposed to having to learn how to use Microsoft Access database. It's an old ass fucking application and style, but it's one of the things that I have to do until I build a newer and better process. That might come next year, or over the holidays later this year if I can swing it. In the meantime though, I am having a lot of fun digging into the various areas that I need to learn in order to troubleshoot and fix things!

I recently used it, with a semi-handy piece of documentation from a few years ago, to put together a set of data that was requested. The data is going to be a regular generation thing because of the nature of it, so one of the things I've been doing is updating the shit out of the documentation, adding many pages and creating lots of other things around it.

My wife says that I'm retarded for doing it this way, in that they could just fire me and be done with it. I agree in some ways, but in others I think that this is a bit of an outdated mentality. The dude who was doing this before got fired, and he was the only one who really knew it, so what hope do I have now that I learned it? Lol. I think the right mentality, the mentality I am approaching it with, is key to being able to keep my job, among other things.

I have a knack for being given something, learning it and then turning around and teaching it to others and writing lots of documentation around it, or updating existing documentation as time goes on. This is just one of the things that comes natural to me, and ends up being quite a bit of fun! With this Access shit, most of my colleagues would likely refuse to even take it on and end up trying to do things manually. I'm not about to do this shit manually, let me tell you! Lol.

One of the things that also happened is that the data was reviewed and initially looked great at first pass! I was stoked, and moved on. I knew it was too good to be true though... and now I've got a number of requests for things that have to be modified in order to make it useful, as well as some optimization things to spice it up if I can figure it out..

I find it really fun and fascinating to dig into things like this, especially because it solves a problem! I think that is one of the things that helps drive me to enjoy the work that I do, is that I end up solving lots of problems (as well as creating plenty of problems, let's be honest LOL but I usually am able to solve the ones I create eventually :D) and I for sure think that is one of the things that a lot of people are missing in their careers or work environment. There is a sad lack of things to do or solve for in a lot of jobs. Granted there is also a lack of desire, but it's a thorny issue for sure.

I am hoping that I can solve the immediate needs in a relatively decent amount of time, if all goes well no more than 2 days. With old stuff like Access though.. you never know!

What about you, have you found things at work where you needed to solve problems on a regular basis? Did it give you overall job satisfaction to do that? Let me know in the comments!