Hello from Fallon, Nevada, USA (1 Viewer)

TanyaCharbury

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Hello,

... from a small town near Lake Tahoe, about 60 miles east of Reno, about 3 hours' drive to Burning Man site in the Black Rock Desert, and about 400 miles north of Las Vegas. Sadly, we do have cold & wet winters with snow. Sometimes it gets down to -12 Celsius which is very much not the toasty stereotype most people think of when they read "Nevada."

This little town and the immediately surrounding area has about 25,000 residents, and is part of Churchill County (not named after Sir Winston, much as I admire him) which has a population density of almost nothing. The county is more than 5000 square miles in size, and the main road through it is highway 50, appropriately named "The Loneliest Road in America." This is cowboy country, as in cattle ranching is one of the main industries, and the Pony Express ran past here when it was in operation. The low population density has a practical appeal so there's a huge Naval Air Station just a few miles out of town, and just over a decade after the 1980s Top Gun movie was made, the actual Navy for-real Top Gun relocated from Miramar to Fallon, and they've been here ever since. So sometimes when I'm outside, there's a massive roar and I see one or more F/A-18 planes flying around above.

I manage my own little software development business, and I've been into MS Access since version 1.1. back in the mid-1980s. I developed my own framework, and since the late 1990s I've specialized in making custom applications using that framework. It's been used for probably a hundred projects by now, most notably several at Hewlett-Packard in Silicon Valley, and one at Philips in Silicon Valley. Ever since the early 2000s I've specialized in integrating MS Access with a MS SQL Server back end, not just for data storage but also for functionality such as calling user-defined T-SQL functions and stored procedures.

I enjoy being detail-oriented and although I've not been diagnosed, I might well be somewhere on the autism spectrum, which I conclude based on how relatively well I deal with complex technical concepts and how very badly I dealt with typical social dynamics, when I was growing up and as a young adult. By now I've learned how to respond to most social cues so I can generally run a good enough virtualization that I can function OK in polite society.

I grew up in South Africa, France, Germany and the U.K. (specifically Oxford) and so I speak Afrikaans, French, German and English.

I like windsurfing, surfing, small-boat sailing and snorkeling. I also enjoy classic cars, such as 1980s BMWs and Mercedes-Benz vehicles. I own a few; hardly any of them run.

I tend to milk old technology for all that it's worth; some of my production databases are still in 16-bit Access 2.0 -- and yes, 1994 was a long time ago, I know. Consistent with that mindset, the Audi I drive is a 2000 Audi Quattro A6 4.2 V8 and it's blazingly fast, and out here in the middle of nowhere, there's a lot of opportunity to drive quickly. I have some paperwork to prove my 100 mph transit on occasion, issued by the local Nevada Highway Patrol with a candid request that I contribute to the State coffers.

I live financially humbly but happily, and enjoy working in MS Access. I'm glad I found this forum. I did so while investigating a security-related issue, and some posts by Galaxiom impressed me so much that I decided to join.

Thank you for having me.

~Tanya
 

isladogs

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Hi Tanya
Thanks for the detailed resume about yourself and where you live.
Also thanks for being a supporter.

Until this spring, I also used to live in Churchill but in my case its on the edge of the Mendips, UK. The village featured in a WW2 edition of Time magazine as a typical English village chosen because of its name but in fact because it once had a church on a hill!

As you like old things, you might be interested in this thread A trip down memory lane. Notice that Access 1.0 was actually released in Nov 1992.

Anyway, glad to have you here. Explore the site. I'm sure you'll find lots of useful info
 

NauticalGent

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Ciao Tanya and welcome to AWF.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post as well and am looking forward to your contributions to this forum.

What took you so long?!?

John

P.S. Being a former Navy "airedale" I have completed many a detachment at NAS Fallon (F-14's baby!) and concur with the sportsmans's paradise you described
 

TanyaCharbury

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Thank you for the warm welcome. A church on a hill is a much-more-logical place for deserving a name of "Churchill" :)

I looked at the Access 1.0 thread ... I love it!! Thank you!!

~Tanya
 

TanyaCharbury

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Ciao Tanya and welcome to AWF.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post as well and am looking forward to your contributions to this forum.

What took you so long?!?

John

P.S. Being a former Navy "airedale" I have completed many a detachment at NAS Fallon (F-14's baby!) and concur with the sportsmans's paradise you described

Hi John,

What took me so long ... tunnel vision ... :)

Oh wow! I was still working at NAS Fallon while they were flying the F-14 ... good memories.

Thank you for saying "hello"!

~Tanya
 

jdraw

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Welcome to AWF Tanya.
 

theDBguy

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Hi Tanya. Welcome to AWF!
 

vba_php

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that's a pretty long intro for us to read dear. welcome. Top Gun is a great movie. and they're making a sequel called "Maverick" now too! Tom Cruise is back!
 

The_Doc_Man

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Welcome, Tanya. I retired as a Navy contractor back in 2016, but I have visited quite a few Navy sites. In winter of 2005 I was at NAS JRB Ft. Worth, which was next door to a Lockheed plant. We got to see new planes "taken out for a spin" now and then.

Because we were short walks from the airfield, we could watch the pilots put the new planes through their paces. Because they were over a Navy base, they could fly low, so we got to see the wisps of vapor forming just behind the leading edges of the wings. The pilots would do their best to stress-test the machines. Quite a sight to see!
 

pbaldy

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Great post Tanya! Welcome to AWF. If you find yourself heading west to the big city and need a lunch date, my wife and I are here to help. :)
 

pbaldy

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Yup! You've been at it longer than I. I started using Access 97 in 99.
 

TanyaCharbury

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That's quite a while for each of us :)

Thank you for the invitation... I was just in Reno today and I plan to be there next week again.

~Tanya
 

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