To Lose Your Mind

I never go back and touch my writing. Someone, sometime, somewhere once said that art is never truly finished, just abandoned. Then, it is discovered and appreciated, warts and all. Whether or not that's the case is immaterial, but anytime you put something in a public space it becomes shared. No longer does it belong solely to me; it is ours. Even my stupid tweets about stupid, shitty things are going to exist forever. I won't change that, and I wouldn't want to change that.

It's not as though there is a preservation society that works to contain and catalogue my impressive, leather-bound works, which is good for me; I'd carry it around all the time and be an insufferable twat about it. But I think fan passion and the sense of ownership we have towards favorite properties is fascinating. I wonder sometimes what I would do if something I did really exploded and became part of the social consciousness. In the future, am I going to be okay with what I've done? When confronted with it constantly, wouldn't I want to tweak and make it perfect? What do I care about what someone else thinks of my work? Sure, things become shared when they go public but what's the ownership strata? These weird, unspoken social contracts are just insane.

For me, I go nuts about Neil Gaiman. There are a few generational touchstones that everyone experiences, like when you have your first profound realization or when you finally realize you are an adult. Another one is when you first "get" art. When I started The Sandman, just a few pages into the first collected volume (ugh, sorry), I think actually felt the power of the moment. Every year I reread the whole series and I still look forward to certain parts and dread others. Captured by a storyline you can sum up in one sentence. They recently released an Annotated Sandman that includes Gaiman's notes and discusses in-depth some of the choices that were made in each panel.

This makes me wary. I can never read these annotated versions because my interpretation of the art is my own. Mining the reasoning behind every decision made in the story would be doubtlessly interesting, but I'm very protective of my interpretation and connection with the work. Besides, I'll never--no matter how often or hard I try--capture the same feeling of discovery I had when I first read it. Maybe that's why we feel so passionate about art: it is the continued, fruitless pursuit of feelings extinct.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

The Monday News Roundup

I read the news because you don't want to. With links and everything!

John Edwards begins his trial
Get a load of this lede paragraph:

John Edwards "made a choice to break the law" by accepting illegal campaign contributions to hide his pregnant mistress from the public as he campaigned in 2007 to be the Democratic presidential nominee, prosecutors said Monday in the opening day of the former U.S. senator's criminal trial.

Essentially, that is every country music song ever written, but classed up a bit. Would we all consider John Edwards to be such a douche bag if Elizabeth wasn't dying/died? Cheating is bad enough, but man... It's hard to have any sympathy for the guy when she was real sick. Spoiler alert: even if Edwards is found guilty of any of this shit, is that really going to change his life? He'll pay some fines, and that's about it. He's no Blagojevich. Really, I just wanted to type out "Blagojevich." Isn't that the bad guy in the Modern Warfare games? I don't care. Does anyone?

Buddha's Skull is on tour; Simple Plan is the opener
This is pretty rich. Millions of years from now, when we as a society have been mercifully swept from the planet, I wonder what future generations will take on tour. Buddha was a ostensibly a cool dude; he taught about being nice to others, pursuing knowledge, foregoing personal wealth, etc. All great character traits (unless you are an asshole). What does modern society have to offer? Those big bazookas used to fire t-shirts into crowds? That's awesome, but not exactly a legacy. I'll be dead, though. Who gives a shit?

Dutch Government Collapses
Fuck 'em. Fuckin' Dutch.

Secret Service Hooker Fiasco Blows Up In Face
What a lazy joke. I'm kind of surprised this is as big of a deal as it has become. Protecting government/public service official, especially in Columbia (which, according to all of the movies I've seen, is filled with guerrillas and drug kingpins), must be stressful. Are we really going to fault a guy for getting a BJ on the side? He should have just paid. When you find out the lady is hookin', you always pay. Trust me.

Stupid Assholes Insist on Bringing Video Games into Tragedy
You know what really grinds my gears? Shit like the above-mentioned article. The guy who perpetrated the Norway killings is a little crazy--you have to be, to just start killing people like that. I don't care if some court-appointed professional says "he is mentally fit to stand trial," if you kill a bunch of people, regardless of circumstance, you are fucking nuts. The fact that he played video games is immaterial, as everyone plays video games. Sure, some of the games he has played are violent, but all games are inherently violent; slapping balls around with pong paddles can be construed as a violent act. Pac-man eats ghosts all day long! Mario crushes anthropomorphic mushrooms! Angry Birds is a thinly-veiled allegory for the Holocaust, with birds as Nazis and pigs as jews! See, anyone can talk crazy shit about video games. I'll defend games because I think games are an interesting way to tell interactive stories and they get us to engage with difficult ideas in ways that movies can't. But regardless of that, to say--to even imply--that video games had some sort of impact on this awful event cheapens what happened. It's terrible that so many people died that day because of a crazy person. He was crazy. Blaming his intentions--again, even tangentially--on an entertainment medium is pretty disrespectful to the victims' families. Even by my fucked up standards.
Besides, nobody blamed Pilotwings for 9/11.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Liveblogging my Microsoft Excel training

This seems like an appropriate use of my time. I'm going to forego the time stamps; just assume this goes in chronological order. I'll be taking notes here as well just to keep track of some of the "great tips and tricks" this guy has in store.

My bosses--most of the admin team, excluding the vocational coordinator and the human resources professional--are helping this guy get his technology and stuff set up. He seems like a good dude. People are starting to show up now and get set up. I have a pretty solid spot in the class; it's sort of in the back, near an outlet. I can literally feel the power of this spot.

The breakfast spread ain't too shabby. I'm eating a croissant with some artisan jam. It's pretty nice. They got these small oranges--they keep calling them clementines but I like small oranges--and various juices and coffee. Apparently there is even going to be a lunch? Maybe this won't ruin my day as expected.

Things are about to get started. We are doing some introductions. This guy has a great last name, like some sort of viking god.

Although I use Excel every day, I'm not super comfortable with it. Making it do what I want is easy, but I'm interested in some advanced stuff used to streamline my work day.

Using templates and things through the Options menu can set it for each subsequent workbook--pretty cool but I knew that stuff. You can author it, etc. I love that this guy's presentation is ostensibly a PowerPoint presented in Excel. He's committed.

Basic customizations and ribbon work in order to reduce workspace clutter. Setting up page layout through ribbons. Etc.

Okay, getting in to ways in which you can simplify work stuff. Switching to Excel for a second.

Sort of cool. Probably wouldn't mess with this too much in order to keep things similar between workstations.

Review tab offers all the stuff you'd normally find in Word for keeping track of errors. Text wrapping. Basic things for making printing easier/clearer/more correct.

Adding cells to formulas so they are not missed when making calculations; it may be useful to differentiate some stuff with a garbage row--formula autocorrects to stop at row. Kinda cool.

Filling formulas left and right to reduce reentering.

Haven't exactly covered stuff I'm not aware of. Good refresher, I suppose.

For my data tracking purposes, I'm not sure of using other functions when tracking numbers--general with two zeroes tends to do the trick when tracking behavior/goal data. Maybe I'll play around with this and see if there are better ways to present data.

Using conditional formatting to highlight desirable/noticeable items could be good when calculating success rates; reader can see when goal is met/not met without having to jump around. I like this conditional formatting. Apply it to quarterly data tables in annuals and it could be pretty powerful.

Formulas. Going to go to Excel and putz around a bit.

F2 key sort of "hard resets" the formula in a cell to recalculate. Sort of cool; but more a cautionary tale of not messing around with cell formats all willy-nilly.

Not convinced there is a value for me in using absolute/relative references in data books. A dollar sign locks the reference row or whatever in place when filling values in some direction. A double dollar sign when referencing the cell locks the specific cell. Cool to know, but usefulness is in question.

Commenting on cells could be good for multiple people working on the same work book--maybe when I work on stuff and pass it on to Linda to review? Would she catch this type of thing?

Autofilling some cells with designated names--months, highlighting numbers together, can be useful in pattern stuff. Not sure there is a work function in here.

Copy and paste. Pretty sure I have this stuff on lockdown. Well... Pasting values versus pasting formulas. This is in paste options when right clicking. Pasting formats moves visual changes, etc. Not exactly new information, just a new spin on stuff I knew. Copying versus cutting. Cutting cells doesn't break formulas, which is pretty interesting. Amazing what you can do with computers I guess.

Paste special: mostly useful for bookkeeping? Like, actually keeping track of accounting books. I see no real value to doing this with my current stuff. Paste special, values, transpose can swap vertical/horizontal. Pretty cool.

Double-clicking edges of columns/rows will automatically make it as wide/narrow as it needs to be. Cool little shortcut.

Man, I guess I like Excel much more than I thought. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Referencing across sheets/workbooks is cool. Equal sign, click on other sheets/books. Not valuable but could be cool with multiple workbooks on related stuff. Might be more useful to paste values.

First break of the day at 10:30 am. My notes are all over the place. Found out some pretty cool things that might make information easier to digest. Everyone seems to be snacking and settling back in for round two. I guess we are halfway done? What am I gonna do after this? I need some afternoon plans.

Backtracking to referencing other workbooks. Moral of the story is not to move books around; file them accordingly. I have this at work, but good tip to have at home.

Moving on to advanced ideas. This is where I start to pay more attention. Starting with navigation. Switching over to Excel to keep up with stuff.

On bigger workbooks, avoid black rows. Basic navigation commands stop at these points. Utilize all spaces, dummy!

View:Freeze panes can keep a header attached no matter how far away you are from A1.

Just basically avoid blank cells as they will fuck up any type of navigation/selection you try to do.

Creating/inserting a table with well-defined headers can make navigation of information pretty easy. This actually blew my fucking mind.

Highlight table, data clear removes all filters. You can get as specific/general as needed. This is cool! No sarcasm! I would never use this at current job but this is pretty jazzy.

Always double-click everything. It just works in filling stuff up. Technically down but who gives a shit.

Tables, subtotals, and filters are definitely better when using larger, more information-heavy workbooks. I doubt I'd be using this too often here.

This viking horse lord has some workbooks that are fascinatingly gigantic. It's horrifying.

Find and replace is great, especially when writing. I guess it works the same way in Excel.

Lookup: goes through x cells vertically or horizontally, finds desired number, places it in cell. Could be cool on bigger projects, but we don't really use callbacks and stuff in day to day data keeping. This is the only time in my life I have wished I was an accountant. I'd feel like a golden god right now.

IFERROR is actually pretty cool, especially when calculating success rate on a goal that a client does not participate in. Man, the syntax of that previous sentence is a nightmare. Not gonna fix it.

For a gigantic math-related data application, Excel has some pretty metal terminology. "Just destroyed that cell. Fuggin' obliterated."

Could add a section below goals tabulation area with IF something is greater than you can have a quick "Did client pass this goal?" Just making it easier on the reader. I think I will add stuff like this to a workbook.

Thanks, Joe. For absolutely nothing.

After applying the IF formulation, I have a mental erection. It works pretty well. Going to have make some changes to the formatting of the tables/workbooks but it looks great. Combined with conditional formatting, you can make our data tables look really snazzy.

Concatenation has no place in my life or the lives of anyone else, thank you very much.

I think charts could be sort of useful, but a graphical representation of the data seems redundant with additions made using conditional formatting/IF functions. How much time are people going to spend reading our reports? Without any data to back it up, I imagine it takes longer to process data presented graphically versus numbers. But maybe I'm just an unfeeling machine.

This guy's attempts at spelling have been a nonstop laugh riot.

Man, we got a guy here who is such a wisenheimer. Asking questions just to get the boss happy. What a frittata.

I have a certain format that works great for my job--I wonder if I make the changes to it and it could be applied to other workbooks without fucking everything up? I doubt it. I think I have a lot of work to do.

Eh... Maybe make a new template on additional sheets and continue from there. Least amount of work it seems.

Pivot tables are pretty neat. I have absolutely no idea how that would apply to this job, but if I was working with reams of information and wanted to see some stuff in a geographic/itemized/etc. breakdown, I'd have a pretty powerful tool.

I made fun of this guy giving this presentation in Excel but he is a goddamn magician with this.

Use refresh on pivot tables if data from original fields change. Like banging F5 on a keyboard to reload a nudie pic.

Macros. Essentially developing new functions; baby's first programming.

Macros are so far outside the realm of things I'm going to work with. If I knew anything about basic coding it could be useful but I'm not going to be doing stuff with this. Just going to stick with basic formulas.

And just like that, he mounts his flaming stallion and rides into Valhalla. Overall, I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Until an asteroid,
Adam