The All New 2011 Mileage Tally is Coming! Options

[BillMagee]

First, thanks to Kevin for extending my term in office as the OTOL Mileage Czar through 2011. It's been fun, and that probably says something about the sort of things I find fun. Does the term "nerd" come to mind? Guilty.

Now, for the real excitement...

Coming on January 1, 2011 will be a new look, new capability Amtrak Mileage Tally. The trains will be the same; the miles will be the same (with a couple of exceptions to be described later), but the engine pulling the train entries and keeping the miles will be brand new. The new system will have endless capability to provide all kinds of interesting info. Want to know the most visited station; the most traveled train; the favorite day of the week for travel? Maybe not, but regardless, I’ll be able to tell you anyway.

As we roll through the last few days and the last few miles of 2010, let the excitement build for the debut of the 2011 OTOL Mileage Tally. Your miles in 2011 will be looking good!

[KevinKorell]

And a big OOPS on me for not mentioning publicly that indeed you'll be doing this yet another year. Thanks, Bill for a great 2010 (even if we didn't cooperate in surpassing our record mileage). We look forward to the positive changes you have in store for us in 2011!

[Long Train Runnin']

If I may ask did you switch software programs, or did you write your own program?

[BillMagee]

If I may ask did you switch software programs, or did you write your own program?

Up until now I was using an Excel spreadsheet with one worksheet per participant and a worksheet that did the totals and ranking. It had some Lookup capability to fetch trains and miles, but was still limited in what it could do. It required a lot of manual input for entries other than routine trips. Starting in 2011 I will be using an Access database. Learning Access was one of my post-retirement projects. The new database has all station codes, trains, and miles. I'm running both systems in parallel right now.

[steve4031]

First, thanks to Kevin for extending my term in office as the OTOL Mileage Czar through 2011. It's been fun, and that probably says something about the sort of things I find fun. Does the term "nerd" come to mind? Guilty.

Hey, its cool to be a rail fan. We have more fun, and this stuff is legal too. And for anybody who doesn't respect my interests, they can keep on stepping. And I'll paraphrase a James Brown song title, "Say it loud, I'm a railfan and proud." LOL

On a lighter note most of my non-railfan friends at work were enjoying my progress to select plus.

[KevinKorell]

Bill, I have noticed in the coded listings you've done so far in December that it is displaying some of the trips out of the order in which they were taken. Probably it is sorting the lists of trips by some other field and not chronologically. I guess though that in order for the program to display multiple trips taken in a single day in the order taken, you would have to have another piece of information such as departure time, so it could sort by that field. Just as an example, we know Steve lives in Chicago, yet it looks like he took a round trip from Detroit to Chicago and back to Detroit, while the reverse is true.

[BillMagee]

Bill, I have noticed in the coded listings you've done so far in December that it is displaying some of the trips out of the order in which they were taken. Probably it is sorting the lists of trips by some other field and not chronologically. I guess though that in order for the program to display multiple trips taken in a single day in the order taken, you would have to have another piece of information such as departure time, so it could sort by that field. Just as an example, we know Steve lives in Chicago, yet it looks like he took a round trip from Detroit to Chicago and back to Detroit, while the reverse is true.

That same thing happened with Bob_H where his San Joaquin trains and San Francisco Thruway bus trips were out of order. Fortunately there is an easy fix.

Access adds an ID field to each trip record when I enter the data. The ID is an autonumber that Access increments and applies to each trip record. Since the trip ID field is included in the query that drives the report, I can sort the listings by the ID even though it does not show on the report itself. As long as I enter a set of trips in the proper order, the report will now show them in the proper order.