Entries from September 2008 ↓

Creating Pivot Tables in Excel 2007:

I’ve always thought that pivot tables were the epitome of what you could do with Excel. You can look up formulas and you can stumble through the sort & format tools by trial and error, but pivot tables take effort. (Usually more than the average person wants to give.)

Not so. Pivot tables are easy.

So let’s give this puppy a try, shall we?

Step 1: Set up Your Data

Here’s an example of data. All well-organized world dominatrices should have a list of all the countries of the world. You should also have one of those maps with the red and green territory pins, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, be sure to give your columns headers, and try for a solid block of data. (No empty cells.)

Next, highlight your table of data. (Key command = CTRL + A) With the info still highlighted, go to Insert>Pivot Table>Pivot Table. A prompt will come up, asking if you want to create a pivot table. Click OK, and don’t freak out when all sorts of strange things happen.

Now, this is the fun part. When you clicked okay, a new sheet should have opened up, and it should look something like this:

Step 2: Choose the Data You Want to in Your Pivot Table

1. Choose Your Row Data

I’ve chosen “Country Name,” since this is what I want to see on the left-most row. To select data, go to the box on the right, called the PivotTable Field List. If you don’t see this box, click anywhere within the pivot table on your spreadsheet to make it appear.

Drag the data name (in this case, Country Name) to the Row Labels box in the PivotTable Field List.

Alternatively, you can also drag your selected data directly onto the pivot table, where you want it to appear.

2. Choose Your Column Data

Choose your column data the same way as you’ve chosen your row data. I’ve chosen “Resistance” for my columns. You’ll probably want to choose a column where the fields are numerical. Dates also work well here, and can be sorted by ranges including months, years or quarters.

3. Choose Your Report Filter and Values

I’ve chosen “Population” for my report filter, and “Cost” for my Values. Again, try to choose data with numerical fields. Your PivotTable Field List should look something like this:

And, your pivot table should look something like this:

So, now you know how much it will cost you to conquer each country, sorted by the anticipated level of resistance.

But there’s still a lot of information here, so much so that it’s almost overwhelming. That is where your “filter” function comes in handy.

Step 3: Breaking Down Your Data So It’s Useful

To create a data filter, click on the down-arrow to the right of your column, row or report labels.

Un-check “Select All” and select just the items you want to view. I’ve chosen Albania, Croatia, Eritrea and Spain for my rows. I selected 1,2 & 3 for my columns, and I’ve left the population filter alone. So, now, you have a much more manageable data table.

From this data, you know that of the 4 countries you’ve selected, either Croatia or Eritrea will be slightly less expensive and less difficult to attack and conquer than that pesky Albania.

Step 4: Analyzing Your Data

Sum vs. Counts

Now, you can also change the function, and find out the number of countries that fit your specifications, rather than the cost.

Right-click “Sum of Costs” or whatever you have in your value slot, and select “Value Field Settings.” This should get you to a screen like this:

Change the value field to “Count” of whatever else you would like to measure.

Charts

You can also use this data to create charts. Highlight your data, click on the insert tab, and select the type of chart you would like to view. This one’s not terribly fascinating, but it does underline the point that, if you’re budget-conscious, Croatia or Eritrea are the way to go.

Detailed Data

Another neat something about pivot tables. If you double click any number in your table, it will automatically create a new sheet, with more detailed information. For example, if I click on C6:

This is what I get:

Creating Page Fields

Finally, to create a sheet for each page field, go to Options>Options>Show Report Filter Pages. If you do not have a lot of repeating values in your data, I would not recommend doing this, as you will suddenly have 6000 pages of data. If you do have a lot of repeating values (for example, if 200 countries cost 500 goats each), this can be a useful tool.

Step 5: Where to Learn More

I learned how to create pivot tables at a Skillpath Excel course, taught by Instructor Tom Fragale. I found the class to be useful, and the instructor to be helpful and knowledgeable.

Additionally, as a result of the class, I learned how to create macros, scroll bars, drop-down lists, forms, auto-fills and histograms, but most importantly, I can also set up little buttons that generate prompts telling people if they click “yes,” I will drop a bag of scorpions on their heads. Granted, the other things might be more useful, but that one is far and away the most satisfying.

I hope this has enabled you to create a pivot table in Excel 2007. If you have any questions, please post them, and I will do my best to answer them. If I don’t know the answer, I will either 1) Smite you or 2) Find the answer elsewhere and post it and the referring link.

In her September 8, 2008 article, “Drill, Drill, Drill,” Eve Ensler expressed her concerns about Sarah Palin’s political beliefs.

I am re-posting the article for 3 reasons.

If you have not yet made up your mind, I hope this will encourage you to think about how electing McCain and Palin will affect your life.

If you have made up your mind to vote for McCain and Palin, please read the article to confirm that her beliefs are your beliefs and that, whenever possible, her decisions would be your decisions.

If you have made up your mind to vote for another party, please continue to voice your reasons why. Be fearless but conscious of others’ opinions, passionate but level-headed, and firm in your beliefs but willing to listen.

Enough of my motivations and wishes.

Here is Drill, Drill, Drill by Eve Ensler

American playwright, performer, feminist and activist.

“I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it’s their snowy whiteness or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the polar bears.

I don’t like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of Feminists.

But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story — connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women, giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance, and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a metaphor. In her world and the world of Fundamentalists nothing changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God’s plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered species list. The earth, in Palin’s view, is here to be taken and plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, “It was a task from God.”

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should have a right to determine whether they have their rapist’s baby or not.

She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could and might very well be the next president of the United States. She would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector, when war is declared in God’s name, when the rights of women are denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the future not just of the U.S., but of the planet. It will determine whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don’t move you to go and do everything in your power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, “Drill Drill Drill.” I think of teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis, doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing we call life?”

Thank you for your time. Please keep reading - there is so much available to you - and please keep thinking, instead of just accepting.

Another fun article on Sarah Palin.

I asked Jenny, Princess of Candy Mountain, for a Bag of Awesome. It’s good to demand impossible things when you’re taking over the world, in order to test the resourcefulness of people around you.

Cleverly, instead of insisting there was no such thing, Jenny immediately recommended a bag of Aquatic Oceanic Gummis.

“Aquatic Oceanic Gummis!?” I asked. “I will take two bags!” (Candy makes me excitable.)

Cynthia with the Contents of the Bag of Awesome

I took one of the bags to work, and asked Cynthia to help me examine it, to see if it really was a bag of awesome or if I had once again become the victim of cruel marketing.

After going through several keyboards (the tests were quite strenuous), we came to a decision. It was indeed a Bag of Awesome, but it was gone too fast and sadly, it did not have enough octopuses.

The Mysterious Sea Beast

On a side note, we could not identify this gummy in the course of our examination.

What the heck kind of sea creature do you think this is supposed to be? Any ideas? Also, what impossible demands do YOU like to make on a regular basis?

Experts Say He Was There for the Chicken Bakes.

This morning, Jon & I went to Costco to get new tires, bulk food & enough paper towels to build a small, super-absorbent plane.

Costco is not really a scary place, although sometimes I find their raw meat section intimidating, and once a crafty toddler tried to rip off my wallet at the picnic tables.

That being said, sometimes terrifying things are lurking beneath their shelves:

I get it that Halloween is coming. But when I’m searching for yogurt and a bag of fruit snacks, I don’t want to stumble upon a spider the size of a Smart Car.

Possibly, Costco is trying to push their seasonal merchandise by planting it in weird places throughout the store.

That would be funny, and I would buy 6 or 7 to support this campaign, and then plant them around the office. In high, dark corners of the supply closet. Or halfway hidden behind someone’s workstation, under their desk. Or, better still, stuffed into the credenza in the conference room.

What would you do with 7 gigantic spiders, access to anywhere, and enough time?

The CIA’s website

• It’s decent, especially for a government organization.
• It’s easy to find what you’re looking for.
• It’s current (there’s even an RSS news feed).
• The copy’s accessible and the font is readable.
• There are puzzles on the Kids Page.

The Languages

The CIA offers training in 16 different languages. And they give you “monetary incentives” if you learn them. Wow, pay me to learn a language! Paying for it myself only got me to the subjunctive tense in Spanish and to the point where the French don’t want to kill me when I visit their fair city. Just barely.

It’s Classified

Aliens. UFOs. The real reasons behind the wars. Apocalyptic messages in the Bible. Codes. The minds behind political assassinations.

Seriously, who doesn’t want to know this stuff?

The Salaries

Based on a brief glance through the open positions, the average salary with the CIA seems to be $50,000 to $100,000 a year. So, I know you make more as a hedge fund manager or a consultant. But seriously, as a sign language interpreter?

Whoa, I take that back, sign language interpreters clean up.

Anyway, $100,000 a year sounds nice.

Clandestine Service

Here are the keywords that got my attention in this job description:

• “Clandestine”
• “weapons of mass destruction”
• “elite corps”
• “national security”
• “narcotics”

I want to be part of an elite corps of clandestine spies who traffic in weapons of mass destruction and narcotics with detailed knowledge of national security.

Oh wait, maybe I just want to be in the mafia.

Shooting is a Skill, Not a Crime

So, I didn’t see much about weapons training on the website. This is a shame.

I did find a lovely article about the Iraq War and Biological Weapons (here) and an interesting article about Vietnam (here), which you may read at your leisure.

I Can Use My Major and You Can, Too

Look! Look! They have graphic design/illustration. So, it’s not fine art, but hey, it’s something. Check out yours here.

Apply Now

You can apply to work for the CIA on their website. It can take 2 months to 1 year +, and it involves a background investigation, polygraph, a mental & physical exam, and a test to measure your potential to be coerced.

Although this does not sound like fun (especially the coercion test, which to me reads “TORTURE”), most of these skills are handy if you’re actively pursuing world domination, so I suggest you start now.

On August 26th, my father gave his last sermon prior to retirement from being a pastor for 40 years. Like his many previous sermons, it is thoughtful, truthful, sometimes humorous, and always slightly unsettling when you suddenly find yourself relating to a part of it.

Basically, it’s a good read.

I’d like to thank my Dad for allowing me to post this, and I encourage you to offer comments, all of which will make their way back to Dad. Except the crazy ones. The owners of those will be thoroughly chastised with the wooden pole mentioned in the sermon. (Thwack!)

Without further ado, I invite you to click here to read his sermon, reproduced in its entirety except for our street addresses and a personal part where my father recognizes my mother and her contribution to his life. You have to get the video version to hear that, folks, and it ain’t out yet.

Any typos are mine, as it’s late, and I’ve found that I lack the intrinsic ability to correctly type the word “funerals.” I know it’s disrespectful, but despite that, it still rolls off the fingers as “funderals” every time.