Yeah, I was hoping someone had figured that all out already...

My issue is mostly that I'd still be paying the cable company for internet...but I'm also waiting to see what my next bill is, since I dropped all the fancy cable last month and just kept local channels (...but mysteriously am still getting cable like HGTV and USA, just not in HD??). Also then I'd have to give up my TiVo, which would also save money but I've had one since 2002!

That would be a big adjustment! I get my internet from Comcast and my TV from DirecTV right now, and that should probably change regardless. I do already have my Hulu subscription which I am pretty happy with, but the live TV and recording aspects of YouTube are enticing.

I did a trial of Sling TV, but it was when it first came out, and it wasn't very good.

There is a standalone TiVo now that you can use for streaming, I think, but it's expensive.

So, what database platforms are all the cool kids using these days? I just need to build something relational, do a little sql reporting. It's what I would have built in Access last time I was industry adjacent. Would it still be Access? Is there an Open Office thing? Should I just build it on some cloud thing to begin with, since it may later morph into the basis for app development?

I'm still an Access fan, although it's been five years (yikes) since I've done anything in it professionally. I think the cool kids would use sql calls from web pages because, you know, the cloud. Access is still probably the best bet if you want to avoid that. LibreOffice does have a db application as part of its suite, but I haven't used it, so I can't opine.

Ok, cool thanks, DX.

Hah! I just now noticed that in Gmail, when I go to my "Sent" folder, the search field displays "in:sent".

Speaking of Access...

Can any of my database-savvy friends assist with some hints as to how I should proceed with an access database I'm making? At work, they keep giving me excel spreadsheets for different tasks, and none of them are relational. THere's even one (Below Top) that I'm supposed to copy and paste into a sheet for each team member. They are not linked, so to see a team member, I have to find the right sheet. Really. Since I have access to Access, I decided to re-create the Spreadsheet as an actual core database, and hope to pull all the various spreadsheet data into one DB as I work. I've gotten this far (Below Bottom) but can't figure out how to reproduce the month/day fields so they can just be clicked upon to select the proper one. I'm temporarily using a rough "scheduled days" and "Hours" in the attempt, but it's not as useful.

Any suggestions?

[link]

[link]

Daniel, a question. I'm assuming that the grid shown in link 1 specific to one team member, with each team member having their own version of the grid.

In a database, you wouldn't duplicate the grid in a table. You set up a table with entries for each team member for each day, then reconstuct the grid using a query (and/or a report).

It seems to me that you could get by with two tables. The first would have a record for each team member with all the information you show in your form in link 2. In that table you also need to give each team member a unique ID. Then the second table would consist of three fields per record - [Team Member ID],[Date],[Attendance Code]. The table won't be visually useful the way your spreadsheet is, but you can use a query to build the grid for a given team member that draws only the records with the correct team member ID.

You could fancy it up with a third table that contains the symbols and explanations for the attendance codes.

Does any of that make sense?