dotFAF.com | Lazy Person/Productive Worker

Primarily, i'm updating records to show that addresses customers provided are wrong. This enables the shop assistants to "confront" them next time they go to the shops for example to complain about some charges on thei phone or report an error.

Now this job is monotonous. I'm sitting there all day like blergh! It only took me a few hours to decide i wasnt gonna have a hardcopy of the list in front of me an keep typing all day. [apparently the girl before me did it that way].

So first i asked for it in Excel format. So i started copying, switching windows and pasting. By the end of the day i was sick of that too already. Especially the constant pressing of alt+tab. So i kept poking around further and found out that the was some built in scripting that could send keypresses. The problem with this is that it sends commands to the terminal, not windows. It doesnt say: "Hey Windows, pretend the user pressed a b c d". This meant i couldnt tell it to switch windows

The good news though was that, i was past pressing F1,F1,F4, blah blah blah continuously. But i wasnt happy enough. I wanted something to switch the windows to copy the text for me. Switch back to the VT wasnt a problem though cos i wrote a macro in Excel on the first day to delete the previous transaction ID, copy the new transaction ID, and switch windows.

I decided to find one of those programs that record keyboard presses and mouse movement and play them back. Trouble is most of them are too big and require registration. The computer isnt mine and i'd rather i got into no trouble even if it's at the cost of being lazy/productive.

I found one small enough. EZ Macros[2] requires registration and expires after a few days, but what the makers overlooked is that because it a Winzip Executable file, you dont have to actually install it for it to work.

I just extracted into a folder. This means no registry changes are made. Every single time you run it, it shows up a "Hello thanks for trying out product. You have used this product for 0 days" .... or close. Dont bother telling me how wrong it is to use a program i'm supposed to pay for illegally. I dont need it anymore so it's chucked. Another thing is that, I couldnt have installed it anyway if i wanted cos i dont have administrative rights on the comp.

Anyway so i managed to record some macros that will switch windows for me. To call it, i tell Powerterm to run ezmacros and tell it which macro to run. Worked a treat. Except by this time i was tired of actually having to switch. I mean why cant Powerterm ACTUALLY read from a file? Oh! ma bad.. it seems it does. So i coughed up this script in about an hour:

# get the file and read its contents
myfile = [open datafile.txt]
data = [read $myfile]
close $myfile

#define my list
list $data

#how much data is in my list
mylength = [llength $data]

#script to check for records in file

proc mycheck mylength {

if {$mylength > 0} {return -code ok} else {
return -code error -errorcode NODATA "There are no records in the data store
specified."
}
}

eval mycheck $mylength

#send the first line
myfirst = [lindex $data 0]
send $myfirst

#define modified list. ie. delete first record, no need for it NEmo
newlist = [lreplace $data 0 0]

#open file, store new list and close file
myfile = [open datafile.txt w]
puts $myfile $newlist
close $myfile

#now go ahead and do your magic

send "<pf1><pf1>"
wait 1 seconds
#copy customer number from screen
custid = [screen-rect 8 69 8 78]
#message $custid
send "<pf2><pf4>sc<right><right><right>"
send $custid
send "<pf1><pf1><pf1><pf8><pf4>adAs per formation, [and so forth]..."

Genius "at work", literally..you never cease to amaze me,lol. Love your site, no " ".

i kindda wasnt telling exactly the truth about letting it cycle thru the list on its own w/o any intervention from me. check out the entry after the next one

hey I like ur work man...good job...I wish I wear u to do all of things going on...that's all...

Trackback Pings Received count (2)
It All Pays Off
Being Lazy/Productive does pay off afterall. I've just had a meeting with Paul. As of next week Monday, I'll not be working for CPW thru an agency anymore. I've just been offered a permanent position with a slight pay rise. I havent been moved to the I...
Site: dotFAF.com | Version 2.3
Date: February 3, 2003 2:59 PM
URL: http://dotfaf.com/archives/000778.php
Up the Beanstalk
I started the job in 2002 doing basic data entry into a terminal... Last 2 weeks I got promoted to the Main Projects team at CPW. For the past year and a half.. maybe more i cant be sure, I've been working as Band 1 Projects which was one way of saying...
Site: dotFAF.com
Date: October 19, 2004 3:32 PM
URL: http://dotfaf.com/archives/000874.php