Old Fox Databasing

Well, with the small sum of my monthly retirement now added to the pot, I have to be more serious (at least pay more attention) to my medical bills. I’ve already sent them all some money, but certainly not all. I decided I should enter it all in one of my old FoxPlus databases to keep track of the plus and minuses of it all. Unfortunately, I’ve done so little programming in the past couple or more years that it turns out I’ve gotten rusty, if not stupid.

Some things in Fox I remember and others are just below the surface of my memory. I almost remember, but not quite! That galls me. I guess I now approach the age or temperament of Old Mr. Drew who I knew briefly back when home computers were just getting popular—he always said computers couldn’t do anything that he couldn’t do with a pencil except do it faster and he wasn’t in any hurry! Being younger back then, I thought he was nuts. Now that I’ve aged a good bit, his thoughts are not so foreign to me, though I am still a fella who gets in a hurry! I want to program the computer to do it, not only fast, but automatically. I don’t want to add it in my head or to use a pencil or a calculator—but I may have to use those old methods for a while if I can’t remember all the aspects of database records that I used to know!

Today I beat back a few of the monsters. I created two databases and Set Relation between them. But I only have about 7 fields in one and two in the other! Each database has only five records at present! Most of the time and arduous work were spent on working out a field structure that was logical enough and light enough for me to manipulate them with some ease. I got partway through the jungle today.

I guess now I’ll have to read. Damn! It’s coming back to me slowly, but not all. I see I’ll have to work at this. Being self-taught, my methods are too convoluted to seek much help from others, so I’ll just have to wade through it. Other programmers who ever knew this have probably moved on to the next fancy edition several times in the 15 years since my programming began. But I only have to be good enough to satisfy me, so what’s to worry? Everything will work out.

Or fall through the floor!

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