The Assistance List. It's not dead, I just haven't sent out an update in a while. Blame work, no time and just general piss-on-it-attitudeness.
I've asked if somebody wanted to take it in on with no takers. I don't want to let it die, but I just don't have time.
So, what to do?
Well it being Christmas and me saying piss on that too, I had a couple of days off work with not much to do. I'm a programmer. I'll automate it! ya, that's the ticket. I'll give it big ****s too! I've spent the last couple of days banging it together <include sounds of chainsaws and hammers here>. It's done and working, but not anywhere near presentable yet. Give it a couple of weeks.
However, the existing database, which migrated from an Excel sheet from Jude way back in the day was hardly 'right' in database terms. Oh, it worked, but just. Obviously, if I'm going to show off my handiwork, I'd have to fix that first. Easy peasy. The problem now being the data itself. I could spend many hours importing and massaging the data and theirs that piss-on-it attitude I've had lately coming out again. Their is another problem, despite me asking a while back for everybody to send an email to verify they're still breathing and the trimming out everybody who didn't (culling out the deadwood), I still get LOTS of bounce backs every time I do a manual run.
I'm going to start the list fresh. Ya, you heard me right. Your going to have to re-register for the assistance list soon. Don't worry, it'll be a breeze and you'll get notification when it's time. We get good, formatted data, and the list will be FAR more capable. Imagine really needing help and the closest people to you moved away 2 years ago!
"So, Steve, what's the deal"
Glad you asked.
Upmost of my concerns over automating it is security. I don't want your stuff getting out there in the wild. To login into the site, you will supply your current email address, I will send a link to your verified email address that you click to enter the site. The link will be valid for 24 hours. After which, you'll have to do the email hokey-pokey again. No cookies on your machine and I don't have to write an authentication module. Win win!
Oh, did I mention the site can be viewed on anything? Your desktop/laptop/iPhone/Android/Tablet? It'll work for all of them. On a trip and forgot to pack the list or upload it to your GPS? If you can surf you can get help. Right their on your cell phone on the side of the road!
You can log in and choose to retrieve the entire list/POI's, or only certain provinces or states to keep the list nice and short for printing.
You can create many locations. Suprisingly, their is a number of guys on the list who spend time at different places <cough>BeemerDons<cough>. You can have seperate contact numbers for each of them. But what happens when you call one location and the person is away in Mehico for 3 months and theirs no answer? Well with the existing list, tough-*******. The new list lets you set start and end dates for your locations, or if it's just one, leave it the dates empty and your 'always' available.
One of the big problems with automating the list was looking up longitude/latitudes (Geocodes) from an address, or more specifically a city/state. Before, I had to do it manually and it took lots of time. Well Google/Bing/Yahoo all offered these services in the past for free. Not anymore. I found a HUGE player in the GIS game that will do it for a very nominal cost. But our volume will be so low that I can't imagine breaking through the free queries threshold in 475 years. So net cost = 0. Even cooler, it opens up the oppourtunity for real time routing and all sorts of cool *** **** (just like routing on Google Maps). But at this point, I just want it to Geocode.
You can define as many emails and telephone numbers as you desire and they'll be in a consistent format which will look much better on the GPS/List.
It's kitties-******* time. Bust out the big ****s.
I've added a new feature to the Assistance List. You know your spot tracker? You know how you can define only a handful of contacts when you press the help button? Feck that mess, when I want help I want EVERYBODY to know. You will be able to point your spot tracker at the assistance list and define ANY NUMBER of people to contact. Hell, I could even have the assistance list contact the people closest to you even if their NOT in your Spot Tracker contacts.
Oh ya, I've also written it to handle different assistance lists. Say you also have a ST Owners Forum assistance list, offload that to this app. No problem, no cross overs. they're all seperate and distinct.
****s. Big perky ones.
Stay tuned.
