Lisa Slater Nicholls These are my old SoftSpoken terms, for people who are interested or curious... However, I am presently employed fulltime by Acxiom Corporation, and don't take "Code Doctor" assignments anymore, unless you are a former client with a real emergency ! e-mail: lisa@spacefold.com As most folks on CIS/msnews.fox groups know, I am generally available to answer questions of general interest for you, as for everyone, gratis on FoxForum or the newsgroups. However, sometimes people need more tailored or extensive help than that -- and this is the service that I provide. I am a specialist in the improvement, optimization, and debugging of FoxPro programs. As you may have already experienced, I enjoy explaining FoxPro to people and do it well. I've been a featured speaker at almost every conference that is Fox-centered for several years, and have spoken on wider database and interface design issues to other groups as well, including appearances at Database World and an on-line Genie database conference. I wrote a best-selling book with Steve Arnott, published by Que Corporation, called _Using FoxPro 2_, and an advanced book on the FoxPro 2 Report Writer, released by Pinnacle. The Que book is now in very successful 2.5/2.6 editions for DOS and Windows, and has been issued in several foreign-language editions. I edited Pinnacle's second _Pros Talk Fox_ book series. My most recent book is _FoxPro MAChete: Hacking FoxPro for Macintosh_, a developer's book, with Andy Griebel, Randy Brown, and Doc Livingston. It was published by Hayden Books in August 1994, and is currently in its second edition. I was a monthly columnist for _DataBased Advisor_ and then served as editor of _FoxTalk_ magazine, a monthly journal for Fox programmers. I've written widely for other publications. I resigned from FoxTalk after a year and a half, to concentrate on teaching FoxPro RAD methodology through a curriculum and video tapes, developed with Virtual Firmware. Although I came into Xbase as a writer, I have fairly extensive business and office experience, mostly in direct mail marketing, which gives me a good grasp of problems that programs are meant to solve. I am thoroughly conversant with the tools FoxPro provides to solve those problems. I support a number of vertical market and custom FoxPro systems which I wrote before starting my "developers-only" consulting practice. No matter how good a programmer is, sometimes s/he gets "too close" to what he or she is doing to see why their code isn't working. I can often save people a week's debugging in an hour, just by having a fresh perspective -- with a great deal of information and experience to back it up. At other times, I can offer an entirely different approach that will run more efficiently in FoxPro or present a more effective interface. If you have no idea where to start on a particular task, I can point out the appropriate FoxPro resources you'll want to investigate. Every once in a while, I can reproduce what you've perceived as a bug, and help you present it to Microsoft/Fox, by identifying it more clearly. This isn't a common result of my work, but it saves you considerable time and stress when it happens. Every once in a while, also, FoxPro may not be the right tool for the job you have in mind. If that's what I see, I'll be honest about it. You can e-mail me to find out how I generally work, including terms. >L<