February 27th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
This is so cool – Jon and I are into Stella, so I made him lamps with the 3 main character’s faces on them.
Jon’s sister Tessa happened to indirectly know David Wain (the lamp in the middle), and sent him the link by way of her roommate’s mom.
So, today, David Wain blogged about it and posted the picture and now our wall is famous!
This is wonderful, although I think our ceiling and floor are kind of jealous and might need to be placated.
February 5th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
I’ve been working on a couple big projects this week. Unfortunately, every time I started working on one, a bunch of small tasks would crop up and need to be addressed. You know how it is. Nothing unmanageable, just enough to keep my hands out of their regular mischief.
Anyway, I like to keep logs of everything in a text file, something I’ve picked up from a clever coworker in Tech Systems, Dave. But this week, I’ve been too busy to keep up with my usual organizational methods.
As a result, I was looking for a place to stick a post-it note with a reminder written on it when I noticed that the baby makes a pretty decent shelf. The aforementioned Dave caught me walking by and snapped a picture, which I’ve posted for your amusement.
Tomorrow should be easier – I’ve caught up, to a degree, and while I do have two interruptions to my day tomorrow, they are good ones. We’re doing another photo shoot with the Spawn (our third ultrasound) and then in the afternoon, we’re having a company event which largely consists on us eating burritos.
To explain – I don’t ever get any real phone calls at work (I’ve trained the world well), but last week someone freaked out our office administrator by calling our company and asking for me.
Turns out, it was a woman named Mary who wanted to give me 10 burritos from Chipotle. Apparently, if you drop your business card in their fishbowl, they really do call you and try to feed you.
The baby is already pretty darn excited about this. He likes burritos, or, you know, food in any form. Should I get back from my appointment in time to take a picture of that beautiful mound of burrito goodness, I will certainly post it tomorrow.
January 29th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
When I was a kid, my parents let me build tents in my room all the time. They were pretty tolerant – I’d usually leave the tent up for months.
Also – you know those paper chains people make out of construction paper? I made hundreds of construction paper rings and stapled them together like a honeycomb.
Then, I built off the honeycomb shape until I had this huge structure and it was impossible to navigate through my bedroom without diving in and out of massive paper tunnels.
Yep, they were pretty tolerant.
Growing up didn’t help this habit at all. I went to school for fine art, which means you still get to play with paper and staples, you just have to call it installation art or sculpture.
Senior year, I raided a recycling center and crocheted miles of computer wires together to make a huge web in the basement of one of the buildings on campus.
They also let me string dozens of threads from the floor to the ceiling. Sometimes art is just OCD at its finest.
Next project? Do something to improve my cubicle at work.
I’ve thought about building a roof for it. Or setting up a second story with a green plastic slide. They’re doing construction in my building, so there are plenty of materials lying around.
But this person’s idea is way better. I’m not sure how management will feel about it, but I figure if I get in early enough, it will just be too late.
Image Credit: original honeycomb image, Cubicle Castle
January 19th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
Jon’s been saying that more websites are using flash these days. Not for archaic site intros, but for interactive interfaces like YouTube or Seeqpod.
It’s been awhile since I’ve used Flash, so I thought I’d brush up my skills (or lack thereof). So, I started working on a movie, with the help of an online tutorial.
You’ll be glad to know that after several hours, I finally got my skill level to be about equal to 1989 graphics.
For all of you old school gamers out there who remember the 1989 NES game A Boy and His Blob, this one’s for you:
And if you want to get real nostalgic and listen to the theme song, check out Press the Button’s article – I decided to spare you from embedding it in the flash file after hearing it for the 5th time while editing. Some things are better off not remembered.
January 13th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
In Valve’s game Portal, you are promised cake upon completion of the game. Rumor has it, the cake is a lie, perpetuated by a deranged computer program.
Good news for everyone out there – if you strive to complete new challenges and are unafraid to blast holes in walls with experimental weapons, people WILL eventually give you cake.
True story – I got cake today. It didn’t look exactly like Princess Sabrina’s castle cake pictured above, but it was chocolate with chocolate frosting, and a little chocolate on top. So, clearly, it was better.
Although my co-workers do sometimes hand out cake just for fun (not kidding, they should add free cake to the HR benefits), today’s cake had a PURPOSE.
Due to the kindness of management and also from a pile of hard work, I’ve been granted a promotion, which happily includes a new title, new responsibilities, and cake.
I’ve been working in projects and operations for this company for a year, and in operations before that. For the most part, I’ve found that projects can be accomplished through organization, networking, and common sense. It also helps if you are kind of OCD – you can kind of get an idea of my loving relationship with Excel from this post.
I’m reading Project Management for Dummies by Stanley E. Portny so I can get a bit more up to speed. Also, so I have an excuse to create more charts. It’s basic, but full of good information, and it’s helping to fill in the gaps in my project management knowledge.
Next step, Microsoft Project. I’ve tried Basecamp, but I am inexplicably drawn to Gantt charts, a feature that Basecamp currently lacks.
If you think about it, taking over the world is really just one big project to manage. Just for fun, when I complete Dummies, I’ll apply Stanley’s project plan format to world domination and post it.
January 9th, 2009 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time, World Domination in Everyday Life
Kind of cool – like being underwater in Alaska without the hypothermia and risk of death.
The ominous dark shadow in the second picture is Jon scraping ice off the windshield so we can go to work. (I am the toasty warm preggo inside.)
September 21st, 2008 — Dominating the World One Project at a Time
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?
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
