As a blogger with a worldwide readership base (well, excepting Antarctica... c'mon my loyal readers- someone has got to know someone [or someone who knows someone] in Antarctica- please recommend my blog... I'M BEGGING!), I suppose I should comment on the events of November 8, 2016, a.k.a., the General Elections in the United States of America.
But first, my blog title.
As the gentle reader may be aware, my blog titles are often tied directly to my subject matter, but also can be puns or cultural references. In this particular case, it is a bit of all three. Most importantly, it has absolutely nothing to do with RU-486, which became available in the United States in 2000, and was known as the "morning after" pill.
It is, in fact, a reference to the Maureen McGovern song from the original 1972 Irwin Allen classic disaster movie "The Poseidon Adventure". In a way,this movie symbolized the beginning of the demise of the hippie era, but it also shows that, when faced with dire straits, we all need to come together.
In a very broad way, this ties in rather well with U.S. politics and elections.
To some readers, this might seem rather odd, but please bear with me- I hope give a short, understandable explanation of the U.S. election process.
For starters, the basics: the United States is often referred to as a "constitutional federal republic". That's a mouthful, and quite honestly, many U.S. citizens would refer the the U.S. as a "democracy". This is inherently incorrect, as it merely says that the people participate in the government- primarily by electing proxies, or representatives. These "representatives" can be called representatives, senators, sheriffs, or any of a host of other titles.
"Constitutional" means that all of our laws are based upon a common document upon which all of our laws are derived. "Federal" means there is a strong central (national) government, and smaller (states) local governments. "Republic"- the head of state is elected or nominated by the people or their representatives.
Having said all of that, we have a new leader who will be installed as the President in January, 2017.
For what its worth, I did not support either candidate.
Anyway, its the morning after. I have a crashed HDD to deal with. In all honesty, the hard drive is more of a concern than the election.
...and for all those who follow this for my data snippets... nothing today, I'm sorry to report.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
Don't just do well... Excel!
I'm going to talk a bit about some of my favorite Excel tips and tricks in a bit, but first I'd like to explore a certain fantasy of mine.
In another, more perfect world, I'd be an acclaimed, excruciatingly well-paid (and well-off) director of cinema with such an impeccable track record, I could write my own ticket for ANY movie. In this "perfect" world, I would have unlimited finances for my signature movie: a fantasy... or possibly sci-fi epic. This movie would be so epic that highly regarded movies such as "Gone With The Wind", "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" would pale in comparison to my movie. Sci-fi and fantasy standards such as Harry Potter (all of them), Star Wars (the complete series), Star Trek (the original TV series, every TV variant, and ALL of the movies), Blade Runner, the Peter Jackson LOTR epic or any other classic or standard one could think of would be mere footnotes in the story of the greatest fantasy epic ever filmed.
It would be so awe-inspiring, in fact, that, that Congress would unanimously pass the "hochspeyer Cinematic Protection Act" which would make the mere mention of Sting or Dune on my property a Class A misdemeanor, as this aberration of a movie could seriously undermine the morale of everyone associated with my movie, which in the law would be defined in the wording of the law as "property theft over 1000USD" (Legalese, in my own words).
In fact. my movie would be so perfect that I'd have to pay the leading actors and actresses of the day NOT to come and waste everyone's time by coming to my casting call, because I'd already have hand-picked my cast. I do know one thing, though: the soundtrack has already been recorded... in my mind. All of these songs are already in my collection. These songs would be so perfect for my movie that when I'd announce them, the folks who own the rights to the songs would would give me 75% of the royalties, and record companies would gift me their entire catalogs just to get one or two more tracks included. In my mind, ...
(hint: read the following in Superhero Speak)- that's Just. How. AWESOME (my movie will be). But... back to the soundtrack.
I'm actually a bit conflicted as to exactly what I should use as the main theme orchestral music, although I'm leaning pretty heavily towards Sibelius' Symphony #1. Why Sibelius... or, probably better, who is Sibelius?
Jean Sibelius is, from the narrative on the linked site above, a hero of Finland. I'm not an expert on classical music- and I'm using the term "classical music" in the popular, rather than the technical sense- but I think of his works as a bit "lighter" than German composers, but not as "sweet" as French or Italian folks. There would be other classical pieces, of course. Orff's intense "O Fortuna" would be prominent, as would several other easily recognizable pieces.
There would also be rock... symphonic, metal, epic, the very best of the best, curated, so to speak, by me- lots of it. There would be some obvious choices (to me, anyway). Uriah Heep would contribute The Wizard, Lady In Black, Stealin', and Easy Livin', at least. From Styx, I'd have Lords of the Ring, Castle Walls, Born For Adventure and Snowblind. Scorpions add Send Me An Angel, No Pain No Gain. Nazareth provides Please Don't Judas Me. Axe gives us Silent Soldiers, and Jennifer. Moody Blues? Nights In White Satin and For My Lady. Pink Floyd gives us Breathe and One of These Days.
At this point, some purists may take offense, but I'm going with Guns N' Roses' version of Hair of the Dog. I've got nothing against the original- it's just that I like Slash's Day Tripper riff and Axl's laugh at the end of their cover. Speaking of GNR, November Rain and You Could Be Mine are on the list. Poison contributes Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Cinderella gives me Don't Know What You've Got and Nobody's Fool. From Bad Company, Bad Company and Seagull. Bruce Springsteen has Badlands. Deep Purple provides Burn. Kix' Don't Close Your Eyes is a must. Queen, of course, gives us '39, Don't Lose Your Head. There are probably several few dozen more, at least.
You're probably wondering how one (exceedingly long) movie could have so much music. Pretty simple, really: technology. On current blu-ray discs, the viewer can select the language, subtitles or not, and in some cases even the camera angle. My movie will probably be a direct to video release, and will allow the viewer to select the soundtrack based upon their preferences and my impeccable offerings for them to choose from- and they'll choose from a list of songs for any given scene, if they so choose.
Whew! That was a bit more lengthy than planned. And now, a few of my favorite Excel Tips and Tricks.
I don't know about you, but I use the Microsoft Office suite quite a bit... primarily Excel.
I'm not trying to be a Microsoft pitch guy, but their Office suite does offer a lot of useful business tools. I regularly use Excel, Word, Access and Powerpoint, in that order. Here are a few of my favorite Excel tips and tricks.
White text- I'm starting off with a weird "in plain sight" trick. I have a spreadsheet that I use fairly often, and I need to track a quantity manually. As this quantity is unimportant to anyone but me, I don't want to draw attention to it so I've made the text in the cell the same color as the background- white.
"CTRL + ~"- If you know nothing about Excel except for constructing simple calculations, this is a vital shortcut. For those readers who are fairly new to Excel users, when you're working in a cell, you can see what you're doing in a cell by looking at the formula bar. When you type "CTRL + ~", you will see what is in every cell in your active spreadsheet- this is great for troubleshoooting.
Conditional formatting- a very sweet tool. It can be used in any number of ways. In a spreadsheet I currently co-manage, I use conditional formatting to alert me to when I need to reorder printer supplies. I also use it to manage my personal overtime.
Lastly, a just for fun bit of formatting.
You can make even a boring spreadsheet look a bit nicer by getting rid of the grid in some places, "simply" by changing the fill color.
Lastly, the most important trick is NEVER, ever do this in a production spreadsheet... that's tech talk for a spreadsheet which you really care about or would be lost without: ALWAYS MAKE A COPY, and work in the copy. I often need to use the data in a .csv or .xls/.xlsx file, and the first thing I do is copy the file to my desktop, rename it as a COPY_currentdata.xlxs, and then work from the copy. Never use the source file, unless your organization prohibits file copying. In that case, seek guidance from I.T. For all others, make that copy, and then delete it when you're done. If you have hardcopies (as I do), please be kind and deposit them in the shred bin.
That's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed my little movie fantasy, and can use one or two of my Excel "tricks". As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management do you don't have to.
In another, more perfect world, I'd be an acclaimed, excruciatingly well-paid (and well-off) director of cinema with such an impeccable track record, I could write my own ticket for ANY movie. In this "perfect" world, I would have unlimited finances for my signature movie: a fantasy... or possibly sci-fi epic. This movie would be so epic that highly regarded movies such as "Gone With The Wind", "Citizen Kane" or "The Godfather" would pale in comparison to my movie. Sci-fi and fantasy standards such as Harry Potter (all of them), Star Wars (the complete series), Star Trek (the original TV series, every TV variant, and ALL of the movies), Blade Runner, the Peter Jackson LOTR epic or any other classic or standard one could think of would be mere footnotes in the story of the greatest fantasy epic ever filmed.
It would be so awe-inspiring, in fact, that, that Congress would unanimously pass the "hochspeyer Cinematic Protection Act" which would make the mere mention of Sting or Dune on my property a Class A misdemeanor, as this aberration of a movie could seriously undermine the morale of everyone associated with my movie, which in the law would be defined in the wording of the law as "property theft over 1000USD" (Legalese, in my own words).
In fact. my movie would be so perfect that I'd have to pay the leading actors and actresses of the day NOT to come and waste everyone's time by coming to my casting call, because I'd already have hand-picked my cast. I do know one thing, though: the soundtrack has already been recorded... in my mind. All of these songs are already in my collection. These songs would be so perfect for my movie that when I'd announce them, the folks who own the rights to the songs would would give me 75% of the royalties, and record companies would gift me their entire catalogs just to get one or two more tracks included. In my mind, ...
(hint: read the following in Superhero Speak)- that's Just. How. AWESOME (my movie will be). But... back to the soundtrack.
I'm actually a bit conflicted as to exactly what I should use as the main theme orchestral music, although I'm leaning pretty heavily towards Sibelius' Symphony #1. Why Sibelius... or, probably better, who is Sibelius?
Jean Sibelius is, from the narrative on the linked site above, a hero of Finland. I'm not an expert on classical music- and I'm using the term "classical music" in the popular, rather than the technical sense- but I think of his works as a bit "lighter" than German composers, but not as "sweet" as French or Italian folks. There would be other classical pieces, of course. Orff's intense "O Fortuna" would be prominent, as would several other easily recognizable pieces.
There would also be rock... symphonic, metal, epic, the very best of the best, curated, so to speak, by me- lots of it. There would be some obvious choices (to me, anyway). Uriah Heep would contribute The Wizard, Lady In Black, Stealin', and Easy Livin', at least. From Styx, I'd have Lords of the Ring, Castle Walls, Born For Adventure and Snowblind. Scorpions add Send Me An Angel, No Pain No Gain. Nazareth provides Please Don't Judas Me. Axe gives us Silent Soldiers, and Jennifer. Moody Blues? Nights In White Satin and For My Lady. Pink Floyd gives us Breathe and One of These Days.
At this point, some purists may take offense, but I'm going with Guns N' Roses' version of Hair of the Dog. I've got nothing against the original- it's just that I like Slash's Day Tripper riff and Axl's laugh at the end of their cover. Speaking of GNR, November Rain and You Could Be Mine are on the list. Poison contributes Every Rose Has Its Thorn. Cinderella gives me Don't Know What You've Got and Nobody's Fool. From Bad Company, Bad Company and Seagull. Bruce Springsteen has Badlands. Deep Purple provides Burn. Kix' Don't Close Your Eyes is a must. Queen, of course, gives us '39, Don't Lose Your Head. There are probably several few dozen more, at least.
You're probably wondering how one (exceedingly long) movie could have so much music. Pretty simple, really: technology. On current blu-ray discs, the viewer can select the language, subtitles or not, and in some cases even the camera angle. My movie will probably be a direct to video release, and will allow the viewer to select the soundtrack based upon their preferences and my impeccable offerings for them to choose from- and they'll choose from a list of songs for any given scene, if they so choose.
Whew! That was a bit more lengthy than planned. And now, a few of my favorite Excel Tips and Tricks.
I don't know about you, but I use the Microsoft Office suite quite a bit... primarily Excel.
I'm not trying to be a Microsoft pitch guy, but their Office suite does offer a lot of useful business tools. I regularly use Excel, Word, Access and Powerpoint, in that order. Here are a few of my favorite Excel tips and tricks.
White text- I'm starting off with a weird "in plain sight" trick. I have a spreadsheet that I use fairly often, and I need to track a quantity manually. As this quantity is unimportant to anyone but me, I don't want to draw attention to it so I've made the text in the cell the same color as the background- white.
"CTRL + ~"- If you know nothing about Excel except for constructing simple calculations, this is a vital shortcut. For those readers who are fairly new to Excel users, when you're working in a cell, you can see what you're doing in a cell by looking at the formula bar. When you type "CTRL + ~", you will see what is in every cell in your active spreadsheet- this is great for troubleshoooting.
Conditional formatting- a very sweet tool. It can be used in any number of ways. In a spreadsheet I currently co-manage, I use conditional formatting to alert me to when I need to reorder printer supplies. I also use it to manage my personal overtime.
Lastly, a just for fun bit of formatting.
You can make even a boring spreadsheet look a bit nicer by getting rid of the grid in some places, "simply" by changing the fill color.
Lastly, the most important trick is NEVER, ever do this in a production spreadsheet... that's tech talk for a spreadsheet which you really care about or would be lost without: ALWAYS MAKE A COPY, and work in the copy. I often need to use the data in a .csv or .xls/.xlsx file, and the first thing I do is copy the file to my desktop, rename it as a COPY_currentdata.xlxs, and then work from the copy. Never use the source file, unless your organization prohibits file copying. In that case, seek guidance from I.T. For all others, make that copy, and then delete it when you're done. If you have hardcopies (as I do), please be kind and deposit them in the shred bin.
That's all for now. I hope you've enjoyed my little movie fantasy, and can use one or two of my Excel "tricks". As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management do you don't have to.
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