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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

To all my Dear users...

I know things have been pretty quiet around here, and updates are almost non-existent.  And now, there's a new S-28 form available (on JW.org).  And rightly so, people are wondering...will LRO get the update?

The short answer?  Probably...but it may will involve a little work on your part.

So now you might be wondering what's been going on with me?  Why would there be trouble with the update?  Well, here's the long answer:

Unfortunately...all updates for LRO are currently broken.  Since I offer LRO to everyone for FREE, I choose to use only FREE methods of hosting my update files.  This severely limits my options.  As you might suspect, the FREE methods don't tend to stick around...so I chose 3 different sites to use for LRO's updates.  ALL 3 ARE BROKEN!

So...that means I need to publish a new version of LRO, which I haven't done in over 2 years, and the computer that I used to build it on is broken.  So that will make me take a bit more time than I would normally have needed.  Now...I have to:

  1. Get another computer set up with my programming environment
  2. Get VirtualBox set up with multiple versions of Windows/Office for testing purposes.
  3. Get alternate update sites set up.
  4. Remember how to compile everything for deploying.

As if that were not enough, my wife will be having a major surgery in 2 weeks!  We will be spending a week in Texas as "vacation", but we may end up just staying at the hotel the whole time...depends on how much pain she's in.  If that happens, I may use that time to try to fix up LRO's update system.  But I cannot promise anything about that...I probably won't have the best mindset to be doing coding...

Now with that being said, my wife's health has been a roller coaster ride for the past 5 years. But for the past year or so, it's been more on the downside than up.  Which means in addition to my full-time job and being an Elder, I also have to do more housework, since my wife is in pain half of the time and unable to do things around the house.  So I hope that explains why my circumstances for the past year have made it very difficult to even look at my own program.  :-(

Thankfully, I have 2 fail-safes in place in the event that I would be unable to update my LRO program:

  1. If I don't have enough time to fix LRO up the right way, I can at least provide an Excel spreadsheet that everyone else can import into LRO.  This will take some work and understanding on your part.  But it will be MUCH quicker than trying to fix LRO's update system.
  2. I provided a way for LRO's users to update the S-28 manually.  Hopefully it won't come to this, but you can certainly update the S-28 form in LRO yourself.  Message me if you need help with finding this tool.

I certainly do not want to leave anyone hanging, but my current circumstances do not allow me to do much other than what I need to do on a daily basis.  I will provide some kind of direction for everyone by April 18th.  The 19th is my wife's surgery.  Please keep us (Jeremy & Skye Zoulin) in your prayers.  It will be much appreciated!


Warm Christian greetings,
Jeremy

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