What to do with the few free evening hours on the recent PolicePro trip to Skagway, Alaska? Why not write a quick program for a local tour/adventure tour outfit owned by some friends of one of Skagway's officers... not rocket science, but a basic, solid and useful tool for these guys to get their work done.

There is a force in the design/programming universe called Scope Creep which says that every project will grow beyond all recognition as requests for One More Little Thing are made and addressed, which lead to more and more. This project, being self-limited as far as my short local access, was an exercise in fighting that force. We whittled it down to the most basic useful form and worked to that and nothing more.

The result? No fancy audit trails, no endless snazzy automation, but a hell of a nice interface and a shot right at the heart of the work that actually needs to be done. The program tracks bookings and clients, sends automated email confirms, and handles the rest of the nuts and bolts stuff. If they ever want to go bigger, they certainly can, but this is a small family outfit and all they really need is to be able to track the clients and make sure everyone gets what they expected.

So they don't all have to be huge showcase projects... and it was a nice change, cranking this one out.