I love good ice cream. Last weekend, I picked up some Ben and Jerry’s Vermonty Python. It’s okay. I’ve had better. And I’ve had much worse.

Next week at this time, I’ll be in San Francisco. My first stop will be the Bagdad Cafe for Bagdad Fries. I am so excited.

This is something I wrote for work. Most people won’t get it unless they work with SalesLogix regularly. I just want to keep it in case I need it for future reference.

Every Saleslogix record has a unique key, a twelve character code that can look a bit daunting. But these keys can be dissected into some useful information.  I wanted to give an explanation to hopefully demystify these keys. What’s really great about this scheme is that it completely eliminates key collisions when entering data, even though users can be hitting different databases.

Use these keys for an example:

H6UJ9A0005TS
O8OJLA10000A
CIN4FA100000
A6UJ9A00CA4G

Every key can be broken down into four parts, the entity, site code, key base, and sequence.

Entity:

This is the type of record. By looking at the first character of the key, it will often tell you what type of record it is. One of the things I’ve learned in training is that the foundation of SalesLogix entities is the TACO, Tickets, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities.

t – Ticket
A – Account
C – Contact
O – Opportunity
H – History
V – Activity
B – Association
a – Address

This means that every record in the Account table will have a primary key that starts with the letter A, and every record in the Opportunity table will have a primary key that starts with the letter O.
When one of the main entity types is not involved, SalesLogix will use a Q.  Notice that addresses have a lower-case A. Tickets use a lower case as well, but we don’t use tickets in our environment.

Site Code:

The site code refers to the database where a record was created. Every remote database, whether a remote office or a remote user, will have a unique code to identify it.  The site code for our master database is 6UJ9. These codes are system defined and can’t be chosen. I expect that 95% of the data in our system will be created in 6UJ9. Keep in mind that this identifies the database and not always the user.

Here are some of the site codes in our environment:

6UJ9 – SLX Server
8OJL – BD-NE
9DVO – NE-R-EU
8I1X – BD-R-NY

Key Base:

The key base, simply put, is a version.  From time to time, it becomes necessary to cut a remote database. When doing that, it increases the key base. The most frequent use of this would be when a laptop gets replaced. Key bases start at A0 and go as high as Z9. 6UJ9 will always have a key base of A0.

Sequence:

The sequence is just the series or ordinal for that type of record. It uses all ten digits plus the English alphabet.

After being sunburned on Sunday, my forehead is now peeling. It’s rather gross.

Reggie had to go the vet today. Details are here. I was mentally preparing myself for a $300 visit. Fortunately, we walked out spending less than a hundred bucks, and that includes a shot and his medication.

Now I’m not so worried about being poor when I go on vacation.

(link)

Would you really do business with an airline that says “Don’t call us. We don’t have a phone number.”? And not being able to carry your own food onto the plane? That’s just fucking rediculous.

Yeah, I won’t be flying Skybus.

I had a fantastic appointment with my neurologist today. She’s kind of old school, but damn, she knows her stuff. We went through my entire history, which took about 45 minutes. She told me not to worry about the time because I had an hour appointment and then she had some time until her next one. Who does that anymore?  I was telling her about always being wiped out and how I felt. She asked a question I couldn’t answer. She asked if I had ever been tested for allergies to the medication I’m on. She said that could certainly explain some of the side effects I have with both the Avonex and Rebif.

She also explained why so many doctors are keen on prescribing one of the key therapies for MS. A lot of doctors are on the payroll of the drug companies as speakers. She said that she won’t do that because she believes its a conflict of interest. Wow. She said that the MS therapies are used to smooth out the bumps in a rocky road and that sometimes you have to have a rocky road to smooth out. She’s not so sure that the injections are really helping me.

What really impressed me was just how focused she was on my history. So many things that I mentioned showed patterns. No other doctor has ever asked these things before, and it was incredible how she put the pieces together.

So now we’re going to chase down some old medical records and see what more we can do.

I was in the house way too much today for it being so nice outside. So I went out in search of dinner.

I headed to Belle Isle Seafood to find fish. On the way, I stopped along one of my favorite spots to watch planes. It was a great day to watch but not photograph planes. I saw a Trade Winds Cargo 747 and a British Airways 747 take off. Watching the 747s take off is an incredible thing.

Shortly after I picked up my food, I came back to the same spot and watched a Lufthansa A340 land from right over my head. It was such an incredible sight.

I’m working from the couch today. I slept until about 9:30 because I had an aching pit in my stomach.

So now I’m on the couching testing some new software upgrades. Reggie is curled up next to me. I think he enjoys having me here.

I sometimes joke about the people who have time to update Memory-Alpha.org, the Star Trek wiki. What scares me is that when I have some obscure little thing in a Star Trek episode and find a reference on Memory-Alpha. For example, this morning I was looking for Raktajino and found it.