Thanksgiving Weekend

[sraun]

Thursday - Christmas at Thanksgiving with my wife's family. Her parents go to Texas for the winter - they'll leave in a week or so, and be there long before Christmas, so they have the family Christmas at Thanksgiving.

Friday - Advanced Civilization! 10+ hours of Advanced Civ - I came in 3rd of 6, IIRC. And had much fun while doing so.

Saturday - slept late, got Einblatt published. Well, kind of - the Dead Tree Edition is being subsidized by Dreamhaven, and I got over there and got Einblatt and their flyer printed. Dreamhaven staff was supposed to do assembly, sealing, and applying postage today (Sunday), to get it into the mail tomorrow (Monday).

Sunday - Irene & I went out to see the afternoon matinee of Pirates of the Caribbean at the Riverview. If I'm not mistaken, it was the last showing there. It was great fun - we want a copy.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Is there a new directory coming out?

B

[sraun]

Probably sometime in December. Current theory is I'll print out a couple of dozen and pass them out upon request. Electronic versions will be available - currently that's Palm and Word DOC formats.

I'll post in natter, talk about them at Minn-StF Meetings, and probably mention them in the January Einblatt. I don't know if I'll mention their existence here.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I always assumed they came out in November specifically for the Christmas Card season.

B

[sraun]

They did. Or more accurately, all the previous years that I have been maintaining the directory they were shipped out with November Einblatt for that reason.

This is one of the issues that was discussed when we killed the Dead Tree Einblatt. Producing directory, and mailing it to the union of the Directory list and the Einblatt list, meant it cost somewhere between three and four times the cost of a regular Einblatt - over twice as many mailings, at the 1 oz. price instead of the 1/2 oz. price.

I didn't get to in November. I'm hoping to get to it in the next couple of weeks.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

If you have it now, can you just email it to me.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Can you generate comma-separated fields, like the GT Moblist? Please?

K.

[sraun]

I cannot easily do so, no. Mostly because it is not currently a database.

It's currently in a Word Table, or a Palm DOC with a very free-form block structure. Two problems with generating a comma-separated version - first, the actual address block - "XXX Streetname, #Y, City, State ZIP" - is one big tab-delimited entry, and there isn't always a "#Y". Second is the second line of data per name - it includes e-mail address, web site URL, fax, pager and cell numbers. But all people do not have all types of data - the individual data elements are either assumed to be instantly recognizable (e-mail & web URL) or labeled to indicate type of data. Someone would have to do significant massaging to turn it into reasonable comma-separated data, and I have neither the energy nor the time for it.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I can turn a Word table into a CSV, and an Excel spreadsheet.

B

[sraun]

My, I was out of it yesterday!

Let's go through this from scratch, just so everyone knows how it is working. (And I know this is a stupid way of doing it, I'm having to do the same work multiple times, etc. - this was supposed to be a temporary work-around until the OTML was resurrected, which has been going to happen any month now for the past 4-5 years! RealSoonNow, I'm going to figure out what database I want all this to live in, and how to get reports out that are reasonably close to looking nice, etc.)

OK - there are currently three (semi-)relevant data files:

1) The Einblatt Mailing List Word DOC file
2) The Minn-StF Directory Word DOC file
3) The Minn-StF Directory Palm DOC file

The Einblatt Mailing List Word DOC file

This is a Word table - columns are:
FirstName
LastName
StreetAddress (since this is a Word Table, it can be - and sometimes is multiple lines
City
State
Zip
Country (blank if USA)
MagicCode (Yes, No, Dead, Hand, Subscribe - this code is going to get turned back into Yes soon)

The Minn-StF Directory Word DOC file

This is a plain (?) Word file with custom tab stops, and some mildly doctored styles.

Format:
FirstName LastName (DOB){tab}Address of record, with City, State Zip Country{tab}Home Phone{tab}Work Phone{new-line}
{tab}{tab}e-mail address, web URL, fax number, cell number, pager number{new-line}

The first tab on the second line lines up with the first tab on the first line. The second tab goes another quarter-inch in. All fields are skip if blank. One of the {new-line}s is skipped if there is no data for e-mail address, web URL, or alternate phone numbers.

The Minn-StF Directory Palm DOC file

As close to plain text as I am currently maintaining.

FirstName LastName (DOB){new-line}
Mailing address of record as above{new-line}
HPhone: {number}{new-line}
WPhone: {number}{new-line}
{e-mail address}{new-line}
{web URL}{new-line}
Fax: {number}{new-line}
Pager: {number}{new-line}
Cell: {number}{new-line}

All fields are skip if blank. Labels are skip if no matching data. Blank lines are suppressed. Records are separated by one blank line.

---

That's what I'm working with. Since all this is pretty much designed to be looked at by a human and evaluated, it seems to me that it would take significant massaging to turn it into something that looks like comma-delimited. Especially if you wanted to reliably drop into pre-defined fields in some other database.

Admittedly, at this time I am not inclined to make it any easier for someone to dump into their favorite database - when I was Keeper of the One True Mailing List many moons ago, someone that I had trusted with an electronic copy of the directory ended up dumping it into some third party's mailing list. I was never able to figure out exactly who it was - it may have gone (probably did go) through several hands before the final abuse - but I'm once burned, twice shy.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

If you can send me the MS-Word file, I would appreciate it.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The Directory coming out is an Event, so please post it to Events as well. And perhaps the mnstf community on LJ?

Thanks,

K. [not reading Natter]

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

Fortunately Pirates of the Carribean comes out on DVD on Tuesday.

[sraun]

Yeah, we know - I presume that is why it was the last showing at the Riverview. We're unlikely to buy it right away, but will definitely buy it sometime!

[davidwilford.livejournal.com]

Scott, thanks again for hosting the game on Friday, Erin and I both had fun. We'll have to see about hosting a Diplomacy game sometime this winter.