Another use for Microsoft Project – working out holiday itineries. Once you get your head around the program it allows you to play with schedules doing quick recalculations. Sure, it is not set up for this type of application but it does work. You can set certain events that must happen at certain times, and then see where you can adjust your schedule to fit in. Things like ‘Can I spend that extra night in Paris?’… It also highlights when certain things are – To be in Tuscon for a meeting on the 14th of September, I need to be getting to Thailand about 1st September.

I just found one gotcha with project… If you are planning a holiday where you are using the number of days as an indicator, make sure that you mark the weekends as working days. If you neglect this things will not work out how you hoped, and you might find yourself stuck in somewhere a lot longer than expected – for instance I was scheduling myself two extra days in Bangkok, and another two days in London… Something i can deal with I suppose 🙂

The reporting work is getting ‘fun’… I have realised that I need to do a heap more work thanks to the new way I am doing things. The good news is that then reporting will be better than ever. I don’t think it will be too bad – I have my head around what I need to do now… I just need to do it.