Thursday, October 29, 2009

Dateline Woodstock
Now that November is almost upon us, only the oak trees on our mountain-top still hang on to their leaves, the tour busses have headed south, many Woodstock shops and restaurants have been shuttered, waiting the return of the skiers mid-December. The Vermont Department of Miscellaneous Information (VDMI) tells us that, on average, there are 28 cloudy days in November, so most Vermonters spend the month hunkering down, gathering nuts, and getting ready for winter. For a town that is usually abuzz with tourist activity, Woodstock takes a breather in November as local residents catch up on the things they should have done over the summer and earlier in the fall. George Doton, head of the Woodstock Highway Department, and his helper Tuck have been busy running the Giant Leaf Vacuum up and down Main Street sucking up the last vestiges of Foliage Season. At the Woodstock Selectboard meeting last night, George reported he had also recovered 13 cell phones, 6 sets of car keys, 7 miscellaneous articles of attire (including one pink bra, size 36D, submitted to the Board by Tuck as Article of Evidence #1), and one large stuffed bunny. Tuck always wanted to be a lawyer, but since he never graduated from high school, he now makes a living driving the Town Vacuum or the Town Grader and, whenever possible, submitting Articles of Evidence to the Selectboard. From the front page report in today's Vermont Standard (our weekly newspaper) the Articles will be combined with like items recovered when the snow melts next May and sold at the annual Town Auction. Proceeds from the Auction are donated to the Visiting Nurse Association, the volunteer Fire Department, and Freedom House (formerly the Woodstock Home for Wayward Mothers). All worthy causes they be. Both the VDMI and the Old Farmer's Almanac are predicting a snowstorm around Thanksgiving, with other snowy periods in mid- and late December and mid- and late January, so Woodstock residents have just a few weeks to get the lawn furniture gathered up, the last of the woodpile stocked and covered, and the John Deere fueled with winter-weight diesel. When the VDMI tells you that the average temperature in Woodstock is 60 degrees, they fail to mention that it actually ranges from -20 to +100. With winter coming, you want to be sure the tractor will start on any day.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Free videos of the MISys features and functions
If you think you think you know all the features and functions of MISys you might be surprised at what you don't know. Got a minute or two or three? Go to the MISys video page and signup to view any of many videos showing all the functions MISys has to offer. MISys Videos.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Simplifying MISys SBM Menus

When we added a good number of new entries to the menus for MISys SBM version 4.0, we started to think that users whose jobs required them to access only a few functions might appreciate the ability to hide the menu selections they would never use. So we added this new feature -- one that you might never discover unless we pointed you to it.

In the Administration panel where you establish User Security Groups, the Security Groups window has been replaced by a new multi-tabbed notebook. By selecting a particular Security Group and clicking on the Menu tab, you will see a tree view of the existing MISys SBM menu. By default, all the menu selections are checked, meaning that they all display. To hide a menu, just uncheck its box, save the result, and close the window. The next time a user belonging to that Security Group logs in, only the checked menus will be displayed.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Dateline Woodstock
The snow came to Woodstock last night. This annual event should not be a surprise, but it always seems to catch us unawares -- with plenty of outdoor work yet to accomplish: window boxes to put away, garden hoses to roll up, carrots to pull, and wood to stack. In these parts, Winter, Spring, and Summer are reasonably predictable and consistent. Each year, sometime between August 15th and the 29th, you can wake to find the distinct feel and smell of Summer missing. Instead, the air is crisp, the sky is cloudless and dark blue, and the chirp of junebug has been replaced by a throaty "who cooks for you" emanating from a forest full of barred owls. On a day like this, Vermonters enter a state of denial: that sunny days spent swimming at the mill pond are coming to an end, that harvest suppers will soon replace after-dinner trips to the creemee stand, that huddling under the deck umbrella will soon give way to huddling around the parlor woodstove. Its not that Vermonters dislike winter weather and the lifestyle changes that come with it. After all, we choose to live here, instead of in a place where the sun shines 300+ days a year and 3 feet of snow overnight is unheard of. The problem with Autumn in Vermont is that it comes in the middle of summer, and uninvited. And the problem with letting Autumn get an early foothold, is that Winter will set in early, too - often in the middle of Autumn. It's behavior like this that gets Woodstock a blanket of snow even before the last of the leaf-peepers and other tourists have boarded their busses and headed south.
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Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Dateline Woodstock
More than a few readers out there have asked when we would be posting the current link to the Vermont Foliage Cam. There's good news and bad. The good news is that very colorful foliage is progressing southward from the northeastern corner of Vermont (aka the Northeast Kingdom, or just The Kingdom) about a 2 ½ hour drive towards Woodstock. Most years, peak foliage hits Woodstock on October 12th and there's no reason to think that this year will be any different. What makes one foliage year better than another is the condition of the trees about the time Mother Nature is telling them "STOP -- go into hibernation." This year we had a very wet June and July so the leaves (mostly sugar maples in the hills around Woodstock) grew to be very dense. A few years ago, we suffered a significant summer drought so the maple leaves were very brittle and thin. When the first wind and rain of Autumn hit around mid-September, the leaves came tumbling down, leaving at least 42 busloads of tourists scouring the naked branches of sugar maples, usually ablaze with an intense display of yellow, orange, and red. Not Autumn 2009 however. Judging from the fact that you can't find a place to park anywhere on Main Street after 8:30am, we'd say that the town is buzzing with tourist activity - which makes the merchants of Woodstock very happy, but sometimes aggravates the townspeople who sometimes tend to forget who pays the rent. Foliage season does require some readjustment of our lives however. For example, there's only a very narrow window of time when you can get anywhere near the Post Office in downtown Woodstock. Most likely where you live, the Postal Service actually delivers mail. Here, we have to go fetch it because, if the postmaster were required to deliver mail, then he would have to lock the Post Office while he was out making his rounds. We're not certain of this, but we guess there is some Post Office Regulation that requires a Postmaster to lock the Post Office when no one is there. Doesn't that sound like a regulation that the US Postal Service would have come up with sometime in its 234 year history? We're sure that more than a few Woodchucks eschew picking up their mail until after the tourists are back on their busses and life in Woodstock settles back to its normal solitary state, that is, until Ski Season cranks up about mid-December. A recent study by the American Association of Junk Mail Producers (AAJMP) indicates that the mail contains 82% bills, 15% catalogs, and 2% pre-approved credit card applications. So what's the hurry, they figure? The bad news? Oh, the foliage cam got eaten by a porcupine last week. Sorry.

Monday, October 12, 2009

The MISys guys have just returned from exhibiting at the Intuit ISP Summit in Chicago. With over 500 Intuit Enterprise resellers attending the MISys guys had their hands full answering questions and demonstrating MISys SBM for QuickBooks. The guys also showed off the new MISys SBM Shop Floor Control module http://www.misysinc.com/misbm/shop_floor.php. If you missed us in Chicago plan to attend the Next Generation Accounting Solutions Conference Nov 9-12 in Orlando, FL http://www.sleeterconference.com/. We'll be exhibiting at the conference and look forward to seeing you.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

MISys SAE Training Scheduled
Users of our legacy manufacturing system MISys SAE should mark their calendars for the comprehensive training workshops starting October 19-23. If you don't think you're getting the most benefit from your investment in this software, or if you have hired new staff members who have never been trained on every aspect of the program, don't miss this opportunity to get everyone trained for one low fee. For a detailed agenda, contact MISys Customer Service at 802/457-4600 or click here to register online.