Here's what I did at work this week:

• I finished up Friday's job of copying specimen ballots (or so I thought), which took me all of Monday and some of Tuesday to finish.
• I had to insert receipts with the envelopes I rubber-banded earlier for a portion of Tuesday.
• From Tuesday to Wednesday, I had to prepare boxes containing voter's supplies (pencils, signs, ballot puncher, etc.). For each box, I had to open it, temporarily remove three books (two of which were identical, though that's intentional) from the middle of it to free up some room, add the signs and accessories (mentioned above), put the books back in (they take up less room when placed on top of the rest of the stuff), close the box, tape it shut on two sides, and label it with a number and the district it goes with.On Wednesday, I had to stop preparing the boxes for awhile to copy, laminate, and cut out signs for one particular sign that I didn't have enough copies of. I took a few minutes after the end of the work day to finish up all of the boxes, so I wouldn't have to do this tomorrow.
• On Thursday, I took some time to clean up the box containing ballot-punching tools - I separated the ball-type and pen-type ones, threw away the broken ones, put away any chains not connected to the punching tools, and threw away any trash I found in the box that was mixed in with the tools. After that, I typed up election judges' names on envelopes...And after that, I found out that there was a last-minute page addition to the ballots I copied, so I'd have to get out the mask puncher again and add one more column of holes for this page. Fortunately, it was identical for all districts on both ballots (and only two holes needed punched), so I only had to set the holes to punch just once this time...And I got it done rather quickly =) After that, I started making copies of the eighth (last-minute addition) page for ballots, and used a heavy-duty paper slicer to split them apart (two per page).
• I spent the rest of Thursday, and all of Friday, stapling that page to all of the ballots I copied...And I couldn't get it finished, so I won't be done with this task until Monday.

And as for what I did during the weekend:

• On Friday, after work, Mom wanted me to come see the Youth Group at the church. I didn't really want to go, but she wanted me to, so I did (just this once - no offense to them, but I don't think I want to go there again the next time they do something like this). When we got there, no one was around to work with the sound system, so I got stuck with having to run it - All I really had to do in this case was put in CDs, make sure they're set to the right track number (the player I was using let me select the track before putting the CD in), and adjust the volume on the microphones they were using while they sang (and messed around between songs). They said I did OK, and could take over if no one else is around...Which might mean I'm going to get stuck with another job at the church that I don't want to do, but got drafted for anyway. I'm also tired of having to take up the Sunday School offering plate nearly every Sunday (which, if I recall correctly, I've been doing since I was at the old Limestone church, when there wasn't anyone else old enough at the time to do this), especially now that there are some kids in the church that are old enough to take over for me now. I enjoy helping people in general, but I honestly wonder why I continue to help some people at times when I know things like this will happen...After that, the group watched a movie, called "Napoleon Dynamite". I didn't really enjoy it, especially considering that most of the group was talking loudly during most of the movie, and the TV, at its highest volume, wasn't really that loud. I lost interest in the movie, and left before it was finished, so I could get around to installing a DVD slideshow program on the Pastor's computer (he asked me to do so earlier in the week, when I had some free time; the program was his, and he had lent it to me awhile back to do slideshows for the new church's dedication, and I'll be using it again soon to do a slideshow for Memorial Day). I couldn't find the disk (I did bring it with me, but forgot where Mom put it), and so I messed around on the computer for awhile. I managed to find it laying on the table shortly before having to leave (I didn't see it there when I came in, so Mom probably told one of the kids to find it and put it there), and installed it. We got home late, and both went to bed, as we were both too tired to do anything else for the day.
• On Saturday, I went to Larry's to do data entry for the program he's using for fingerprint authentication (so people wouldn't have to keep signing in on a paper when they came in). This was a long day, as not only was it cold in the building (I brought my coat for when I was outside, but didn't think I'd need it in the gym), but the design of the program he was using for this (made by ASF International) made it difficult to the get work done, and didn't get as much done as I wanted to. Here's what I noticed about the program:
  • For Internet Explorer Only: Data can be entered online (via a secure connection), so I fired up Firefox (which I installed on his computer awhile back) to take care of entering in the data...And promptly got a database error when trying to log in (the User Agent Switcher extension had no effect here). I tried it in Internet Explorer, and it worked just fine. I originally thought it may have been a glitch, but given what I've noticed about the site (uses ASP, the server runs MS IIS, the site was designed in FrontPage, and the manual states that Internet Explorer 5.5 or above [nothing else] is required for access), I'm pretty sure they want it to be accessed only with Internet Explorer.
  • Constant Logins: Logging in to the main part of the program works OK, but this program forces you to log in every single time you want to add a new member! Couldn't they have set it up so that you'd only have to log in once, and log out when someone else has to enter in new members?
  • Bad UI Design: I don't consider myself that knowledgable about UI design, but I definitely know that there's quite a few screwups here:
    • For the name, the form has it set up in the order of "First Name", "Middle Initial", and "Last Name" - The club's paper form uses "Last Name" and "First Name", in that order...And so does the program's own site on the part where you order cards, which lists "Last Name" and "First Name", in that order.
    • For the address, they have it set up in the order of "Address", "City", "Country", and "State" (except for "Country" [which is a drop-down box], they're all input boxes)...And on another form for the site, there's no "Country" box, and "State" is a drop-down box instead.
    • Phone numbers are put into a single input box, as one continuous line of numbers (no parentheses, hyphens, or spaces)...And in another of their forms, the single input box for phone numbers is split into three parts.
    • The "Gender" field is two radio buttons, and defaults to "Male" (and it's very easy to overlook here)...But on another of their forms, it's a much more noticeable drop-down box, with neither gender selected as the default.
    • In the manual, some images of the program make it look like parts of the program were designed by someone new to Visual Basic (nothing personal against the program - this is in regards to the appearance of some programs I've seen that were created in it by people new to Visual Basic). In some, the appearance of the buttons and text looked like something all the way back from Windows 3.1 (which I haven't used in a long time)! This isn't that old of a program, either - The manual for it was last revised in February of this year, and in some parts of the manual, the images of the program clearly show it being run on Windows XP (by how the window borders, title bar, and Minimize/Maximize/Close buttons look).

In my opinion, this was a horribly inefficient program, and personally, I don't want to do any more data entry with that program, given the trouble I had with it.

As for today, I pretty much laid down for awhile, sat around, and worked on getting this blog entry posted. That's about it for what I did this week.