Dateline Woodstock:
There are two groups of people who live here in Woodstock: those who want Spring to come as soon as possible, and those who want Winter to linger on as long as possible. You might be surprised to learn that, despite their apparently disparate points of view, these people get along quite well. Those of you who live in parts of the United States (or the world for that matter) where the snow has already melted can sympathize with Vermonters who still have 1 to 2 feet of the white stuff in their dooryards. Many of us haven't seen bare ground since the beginning of October, so we can't wait for the last remnant of the winter to disappear and for green grass and real flowers to appear. On the other side are all the maple sugar makers who are tending their fires hoping that the sap will keep flowing a few more days, even a week or so, so they can get a good c! rop of sweet maple syrup in. Here in Vermont a good maple crop is an economic necessity. Or tiny state is the top maple syrup producer in the United States, and many Vermont farmers depend on it for their livelihood. Starting about mid-March, maple syrup makers (called "sugarmakers") start drilling small holes (called "taps") in large stands of sugar maple trees. All up the side of a Vermont hill you can see hundreds of trees connected to each other with plastic tubing, with 2 or 3 taps per tree each contributing a steady but slow drip, drip, drip of clear and tasteless sap. At the bottom of the hill, each drip has turned into a gusher of sap which collects in a 200-500 gallon tank. The contents of the tank is pumped out quickly and transported to the "sugarhouse" where it is heated to 217'F and about 39 gallons of water out of every 40 gallons of sap are boiled away as sweet-smelling steam. What is left is bottled and used by Vermonters on blueberry pancakes (the official ! state breakfast). What we don't use ourselves is sold to tourists (cal led "people from away"). Our neighbor Mary, over at Top Acres Farm, is just finishing a great crop of Fancy and Grade A syrup which she can ship anywhere in the US in quart cans. If you'd like to sample some of Vermont's finest, give Mary a call at 802/457-3779 with your particulars. You won't be disappointed.

Training on MISys SAE. Speaking of training, users who can benefit from additional training on MISys SAE should not miss the Basic Training and Advanced Training workshops scheduled for the week of May 19th and June 2nd respectively. Click here for more information or contact MISys Customer Service at 802/457-4600.
New Service Pack For MISys SAE. A new Service Pack for MISys Manufacturing for Sage Accpac ERP (MISys SAE) version 5.4 was released last week. All users of MISys SAE v5.4 should download and install this update as soon as possible. The best way to get this Service Pack is to click the CHECK FOR UPDATES button when you next log in. This will take you directly to the file you need to download. You can also download the file from the MISys Web site.
The details of this and other Service Packs for MISys SAE are posted in the Public Notices area of the MISys SAE Community Forums. If you don't currently have access to these forums, it takes just a moment to register. Once registered and your registration is confirmed, you will have regular access to a world of information about MISys Manufacturing software.

MISys Manufacturing Satisfaction Survey. The recently completed survey of users running various versions of MISys Manufacturing for Sage Accpac ERP (MISys SAE) has yielded some very valuable insights into how our customers are using the software, what they find most valuable, and what functionality (if any) they would like to see in future versions of the product.
Clearly, seamless integration with Sage Accpac integration is still a very important reason why manufacturers buy Accpac in the first place -- and why they stick with Accpac. By and large, users are exercising the full range of integration with Accpac; integrating with General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Inventory Control, and Order Entry. On the other hand, the majority of users reported that they did not feel they were using the full pallet of features available to them, and that additional training would help alleviate this.
Each user who completed the survey received a $1000 reward, issued as a credit toward the purchase of selected products. This credit expires on May 1, 2008 so, if you are one of those who completed the survey, don't forget to make your purchase (either through your business partner or directly with MISys) before the end of this month. For more information, or to claim your reward, contact MISys Sales at 802/457-4600.

Dateline Woodstock:
About this time every year, Vermonters start thinking about Spring. Not that Spring will be sprung anytime soon, but we find no small comfort in just thinking about it. One of the major events of Spring, one that you may not have heard about, is the Joe’s Pond Ice-Out Contest. The contest came about as a result of cabin fever. In the mid 1980’s, Jules Chatot, a Joe’s Pond summer resident for many years, regularly visited his camp in the winter. He and his family and friends would hang out together to party, snowmobile, play cards—it was like “deer camp” in the dead of winter, or “spring break” in deep snow with howling winds and muddy roads. The weather is always a favorite topic of conversation among Vermonters, and by late February or March people in the area of Joe’s Pond invariably expand it! to “when do you think the ice will go out?”
Jules and his friends had been making wagers for years about when the ice would be gone. They’d go into West Danville every day for coffee at the Joe’s Pond Country Store or for supplies at Hasting’s store, and naturally local folks had strong opinions and took up the challenge. Jules kept track for everyone in a little notebook he kept in his pocket.
Jules was president of the Joe’s Pond Association and sometime in late 1987, he and his buddies decided to turn the rapidly expanding friendly game into a real contest. They decided “a buck a guess” was fair, but then they needed some foolproof way to determine the actual time the ice was out. They put their heads together and came up with the hi-tech, sophisticated control system that is still in use now, twenty-one years later. They placed an old electric clock (now estimated to be at least 40 years old) on Homer and Elsie Fitts’ deck, tethered it to a cinder block wired to a wooden pallet placed 50 feet or more out on the ice just off the fishing access by the Fitts’ camp, and there it was—the perfect solution to inevitable arguments about when the ice was actually out of all the nooks and crannies and coves of the pond. When the block went down, the clock stopped, and that w! as it—the “official” ice-out time. Whoever guessed closest to the date and time the clock stopped won the contest.
That first year, April of 1988, there were a few hundred people in the game. By 1990, there were 1500 tickets sold, and to keep track of all the names, times, and dates, Jules’ daughter, Judy, set up a database. In 1994, Manuel “Chico” Carcoba took over the database and logged in 2,500 tickets. The game has grown steadily over the years, and in 2007, “Chico” logged in over 9,000 tickets. People all over the United States and some from overseas play the game.
The Joe’s Pond Ice-Out Contest isn’t as much about winning (although last year the winner got $4,216!!), it is more about playing the game and shaking off some of the effects of a long, cold Vermont winter and muddy spring—and it’s about having fun. We aren’t sure why so many folks from other states like to get into the game, but it sure makes it more interesting for everyone.
After expenses, proceeds are split between the Joe's Pond Association and the contest winner. The Ice-Out Contest is the biggest fundraiser the Association has. Joe's Pond Association's share of the proceeds is used for its free public July Fourth Fireworks display.

MISys SBM Currency. One of the lesser-known features of MISys SBM, but of critical importance to companies operating in a global economy, is the ability to create multi-currency purchase orders. MISys SBM maintains a table of foreign (aka source) currencies and the current exchange rate to your home (aka functional) currency. When the multi-currency capability of the program is enabled, you can create a purchase order for any of the available currencies. The program will print the PO in the selected currency, but it can display the PO in either the functional or source currency. The applicable exchange rate is stored within the purchase order, so subsequent changes to the exchange rate do not affect an order once it is issued. Maintaining accurate exchange rates is easy, too. Because MISys SBM is a Microsoft .Net-based product, it can update its table of currency! exchange rates automatically from those published by the US Federal Reserve Bank. Cool!

Dateline: Woodstock - Like much of the country, Vermonters are breathing a sigh of relief that the transition of government in neighboring New York seems to have been completed on Monday without event. Rumors had circulated at the end of last week that New Jersey would take advantage of the fact that New York had no sitting Governor and was preparing to stage a coup which would expand New Jersey's influence north and east. Vermonters have a heathy respect for people from New Jersey (their SUV's are responsible for 28% of the gasoline sold in Vermont) but, frankly, we are not that excited about having them as neighbors. Since Ethan Allen began his fight against the Province of New York in 1777, Vermonters have been wary of flatlanders invading the Green Mountains of the Vermont Republic. Over the years we have become quite comforatble with our neighbors to the west, resting in the certain knowledge that managing ! the largest city in the United States would keep the power-mongers well occupied and away from people who just wanted to be left alone. Today, you will notice very little change as you travel west from Rutland, Vermont to Glenns Falls, New York except, curiously, that Cabot cheddar cheese sold in New York is colored bright orange, while the identical cheese sold in Vermont is its natural yellowish white. We're not quite sure why such cultural differences still remain after 230 years of peaceful coexistence. We can only image the cultural clash resulting from an unfriendly takeover by New Jesey. Good thing Ethan Allen didn't feel he needed to take up the fight over the proper color of cheese.

Network Server Selection. Whether you run MISys Manufacturing for Sage Accpac ERP or MISys Small Business Manufacturing, you have a number of deployment options. Both products are multi-tiered client-server applications, meaning that a significant amount of the "heavy lifting" is done by program code residing on a common network-accessed computer. Over the years, computer hardware suppliers have introduced "server" computers specially geared to such a task. At the same time, computer software suppliers have introduced "server operating systems" specially designed to handle the tasks associated with feeding data to many "clients." From time to time we hear of users who have decided to deploy their MISys software on a local desktop computer, or on a computer that is accessible to multiple users over a local area network. Such a deployment places a huge load on computer hardware and software least able to handle it. The result is frustratingly slow operation. If you intend to install MISys SAE or MISys SBM for a number of people to share, we strongly urge that you invest in 1) a dedicated network server (meaning that you are not running other applications on it, and 2) you run a network operating system on it (meaning not Windows XP, most likely Microsoft Windows Server 2003 <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/> or Windows Server 2008 <http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/> ).