The subject of conversation in the Sweet Tooth Cafe today: bears. Black bears, hostile bears, docile bears, bears up on the mountain, bears in the alleyways in town... bears! Lots of em, if you believe half of what you hear being discussed across a couple of tables near the front of the restaurant.

Well, why not? This is some rugged country. Skagway sits on one of two flat pieces of land anywhere around here, a small triangle whose base is along the Lynn Canal, and whose sides are closed down by the mountains that hover right over town. It's impressive to look at, and when you start to realize that those are pine forests way up there near the treeline, and they are much farther away and therefore higher than they first appear, it gets more impressive all the time.

This was all borne in on me yesterday morning flying in. Last time, we swooped in off the canal, at the wide part of the triangle valley... lots of room! Yesterday the wind dictated the other approach: you come in off the water at altitude, flying along the left shoulder of the valley where the Dyea Road starts off the main road, then stand that baby on its right wing and crank it around before you encounter the mountainside on the right side of the valley. Looking out the window as we started the turn, all you could see was trees coming at you.

But the pilot was the same guy I flew with last year, and he's still alive and well, and for him its probably pretty straightforward stuff. For someone not used to the immediacy of the mountain everywhere you look, it was a nice shot of adrenaline to start the day.

So now its Wednesday, a day and a half into the onsite part of the project, and the new Inventory system is running, the barcode scanner has been installed and is working like a champ, and the next order of business is to get the label printer going. While not doing all this, I've created a new Booking Intake workflow that includes the DUI Offense Report question form, written an output to the FBI Fingerprint cards, incorporated a new video capture section into the Arrest Record file for video recorded statements and interviews, rewritten the Traffic Ticket section top to bottom, screwed up everyone's account privileges, fixed them again, handled two remote tech support issues back in New York, and gotten halfway through a quick example file for a tour company in town back at the bed and breakfast last night.

Can you say Rapid Application Development? Every time I get a chance to really immerse myself in Filemaker, in the deep end of the pool, so to speak, I am impressed all over at what you can get done and how fast you can do it if you have a game plan and some expertise behind you. This Skagway project is looking pretty snappy. Ray Leggett (the Chief of Police) is on a mission to get rid of paper wherever possible, and this is going a long way towards realizing that aim.

The rest of the afternoon? The Alaska State Criminal Case Intake and Disposition form, for starters... then maybe on to the evidence file and some applications for the barcoding stuff there, as well as in the department's inventory system.

And lunch at the Sweet Tooth - yesterday and today - was pretty damn good as well. Tomorrow it's the Haven Cafe again, a favorite from last year's trip.