On-The-Road Newsletter
	Home Page	Information for Ministry Clients	Visitors, Volunteers & WorkCampers	Newsletter	Contact Links

A Report from David McQuoid,  On-The-Road  for   Computers In Ministry   and   Mission Builders International,    providing assistance with Databases and Software to Christian ministries / missions     primarily in the "lower-48" United States.

Supporting Computer Databases and Software in Christian Ministries . . . to Bring People to Christ

December 2009

Merry Christmas   from   Warrenton, Missouri.

This has been a year with very many miles on the road.

After departing Texas, going through New Mexico, Arizona, and California, places of note include:
* Village Missions in Dallas OR
* Hard Hats for Christ in Kelso WA
* Tri-Cities WA ( family )
* Mission Builders International in Lakeside MT
* Carbondale Tent Maker Project in Manhattan KS ( evaluation visit )
* Hospitals of Hope in Wichita KS ( preliminary visit )
* New Life Ranch near Colcord OK
* Child Evangelism Fellowship in Warrenton MO
* ICCM - an international conference at Taylor Univ. in Upland IN
* HCJB Global Technology Center in Elkhart IN.
* CEF in Warrenton MO ( short repeat visit )
* Hospitals of Hope in Wichita KS ( full project visit )
* Giving Children Hope in Buena Park CA
* three State Parks and a dentist chair in California
* * * * and since the last newsletter * * * *
* Village Missions in Dallas OR ( repeat visit )
* Hard Hats for Christ in Kelso WA ( repeat visit )
* Tri-Cities WA ( family again )
* CEF in Warrenton MO ( extended repeat visit )
- - - and I presume you noticed the two loops along the west coast.

The visits to both   Village Missions   and   Hard Hats for Christ   involved some more training and some minor code enhancements.

This visit to   Child Evangelism Fellowship   ( www.cefonline.com )   in Warrenton MO   has involved several projects.
*     During the second half of October we briefly evaluated the work needed on the CEF Mailbox Club database, generated a small statistical reporting system for the WonderZone web sites, helped institute a unified Gift-In-Kind process in the donor system, and began preparations for the Ministry Advancement (fund raising) department project.
*     During November the work focused on the Ministry Advancement department's need for workflow and donor information reporting. This included reports ranging from basic gift-follow-up through donor-moves analysis. The day after Thanksgiving, I installed 'skirting' around my trailer (foil faced styrofoam insulation boards - visible in one of the new photos mentioned below).
*     Beginning in December (and likely to continue into at least early January) the project is to convert a legacy database to both run in a current version of Access and to use a SQL Server to store the more-than-abundant information.
  The original database was written originally in Access 2.0 and is now running in Access 97 (even the last is a rather antiquidated version that is becoming harder to support). [More current versions include Access 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007.] This platform seems to stall-out (or lock-up) at times, requiring the staff to shut-down and restart the program -- a major work interruption for them.
  The default Access 'Jet' database storage mechanism has functional limits around 1-Giga-bytes per database file. Normally an entire Access database is stored in a single file -- however it is possible to split it out into multiple files. This splitting has already been done multiple times. Now single tables (which can not be reasonably split) are approaching the 1-Giga-bytes barrier.
  The challenge is to not break the intricate (and perhaps at times seemingly convoluted) code that has been built by different people over time -- code that works well enough to handle receiving hundreds of lessons being returned by students every day, getting them graded, and printing out new lessons to be mailed to the students for the next step in their discipleship series. This is a process that involves many "special case" alternatives.

During these recent months there have been a few sessions remotely assisting ministries where I have previously had major visits. The most notable of these include YWAM Orlando FL and Restoration Ministries International in Denver CO.

Getting here during October included encountering a winter storm that left a very icy roadway along one extended downgrade of Interstate-80 in Wyoming.
    I began to exit the freeway (following the example of most of the commercial big rigs),   however the truck and trailer lost traction and   I could not continue to slow down any further.   So I slowly redirected my path back onto the main travel lanes of the freeway - - and after passing the exit was able to ease off the roadway into the dirt where I was able to come to a stop.
    Of course it took at lot longer to accomplish this sliding-down-the-road-for-what-seems-like-forever operation than it takes to retell it.   Even while stopped, there was a near-miss where a oil-field rig's trailer almost struck the my truck and trailer.   In the end the few hours planned travel took all day, but the Lord was watching over it and I arrived at my next way-point safely and in one piece.

I have updated the   "neighborhood"   photos page for CEF on my web-site ( http://www.davidmc.org/photo_CEF.html ) to add a pair of   "seasonally adjusted"   pictures at the end of the page,

May the Lord's blessings be abundantly apparent in your life this coming new year.

Thank You, --David.

David McQuoid
Serving the Database and Software Development needs of Christian ministries through
    Computers In Ministry   and   Mission Builders International
David@CIMonline.org
303-906-0940 (cell, usually I am in a Verizon service area)
Skype: dmcquoid (email to pre-arrange time)