The world runs on Excel. There's really no competition for a fully featured spreadsheet.
Sure, but it breaks when you try to do complex functions in it, like planning and scheduling your entire company, or needing to export data from that spreadsheet, or having multiple people accessing it. There's better software for that kind of stuff.
I am quite confident that if you're breaking excel, it's probably user error. That said - yes, there are better tools.
Also export data....from....spreadsheet? IT IS THE EXPORT
Well yes it is user error, when you only have one person who understands the dozens of interlinked tabs and formulas to make this thing work, and all the data is entered manually by multiple people? Yes it will break, and badly. Then when you want to export a subset of that data? It just breaks.
At my first job, they built their annual parts pamphlet in excel, because I guess they didn't want to lay out all that stuff in publisher or something? They had me build a vb script for them to generate a code based on the part number or something, and I had to get fancy, and also that's when I learned that Excel (the 2003 or 2007 version anyway) had a complexity limit based on the number objects, that was determined by the number of cells x styles/fonts etc.
And they were right up against that limit. If they added parts they had to carefully readjust the whole thing to reduce the complexity enough to add a few more cells.
Yea ours was a master schedule tracking dozens of projects with hundreds of pieces of equipment with up to dozens of shipments per pieces of equipment, while also tracking the stages of engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and packaging in shipping. We're talking multi-million dollar industrial installations of equipment here. All in a custom excel spreadsheet.
*technical tension rising*
OH MY GOD, GET A DATABASE YOU TWO!
We did! We have a custom front end database that also interfaces with our ERP system now. It's much cleaner and works great! It has a nice user interface and reporting built in.
The world runs on Excel. There's really no competition for a fully featured spreadsheet.
Sure, but it breaks when you try to do complex functions in it, like planning and scheduling your entire company, or needing to export data from that spreadsheet, or having multiple people accessing it. There's better software for that kind of stuff.
I am quite confident that if you're breaking excel, it's probably user error. That said - yes, there are better tools.
Also export data....from....spreadsheet? IT IS THE EXPORT
Well yes it is user error, when you only have one person who understands the dozens of interlinked tabs and formulas to make this thing work, and all the data is entered manually by multiple people? Yes it will break, and badly. Then when you want to export a subset of that data? It just breaks.
At my first job, they built their annual parts pamphlet in excel, because I guess they didn't want to lay out all that stuff in publisher or something? They had me build a vb script for them to generate a code based on the part number or something, and I had to get fancy, and also that's when I learned that Excel (the 2003 or 2007 version anyway) had a complexity limit based on the number objects, that was determined by the number of cells x styles/fonts etc.
And they were right up against that limit. If they added parts they had to carefully readjust the whole thing to reduce the complexity enough to add a few more cells.
Yea ours was a master schedule tracking dozens of projects with hundreds of pieces of equipment with up to dozens of shipments per pieces of equipment, while also tracking the stages of engineering, manufacturing, supply chain and packaging in shipping. We're talking multi-million dollar industrial installations of equipment here. All in a custom excel spreadsheet.
*technical tension rising*
OH MY GOD, GET A DATABASE YOU TWO!
I mean nowadays I've got a couple dozen oracle instances and GCP big query bucket.
Third interview was the only one I felt solid on. Auuuuugh I suck. I should have friggin' memorized the HTTP response codes. But who the hell needs to know what 401 is ever? I figured knowing what 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx basically cover would be enough!
If you could speak to stuff like what 4xx vs 5xx mean and what practical difference there is, that would put you ahead of a lot of people I've interviewed that may or may not have memorized a bunch of codes.
I'd never want to work somewhere that memorization was important, or that the interviewer couldn't roll with forgotten details like that. It's the thought process you're supposed to be testing.
As long as they can vaguely guess "2xx is a success of some variety, 3xx is probably moved/deleted, 4xx is client error, 5xx is server error" that's good enough for me.
3xx is a special kind of hell in some cases. And why Firefox is the superior platform for debugging web apps.
hey Chief I really gotta go can I take a pee break boss
I swear every time I run into what non-11B jobs think is hard, even twenty years after, I'm just side-eyeing so hard.
Grunts in the Corps always caught a lot of shit from various angles, usually for no reason whatsoever and I don't like bullying; I was always that Amphib Crewman who was like an overly jovial, might-actually-be-insane flight attendant. Most infantry guys thought I was fucking with them at first out of some sort of devilish spite, but no, we could literally die any minute in this oversized floating beer can built by the lowest bidder, if my face is the last thing you see, we're going out laughing, roaring and swearing while we tell the Devil to kiss our collective asses.
I got to be quite popular, especially since I hoarded MRE Tabasco bottles, jalapeno cheese spread and all the powdered coffee/creamer/sugar nobody wanted that day. Many a firewatch or radiowatch were made possible by my secret stash ... which actually filled an entire ALICE pack, so not really all that secret.
Then there were the 'training manuals' we had on my vehicle, wrapped in plastic bags and sealed with duct tape against the ocean water. This exact conversation happened at max volume because that Cummins turbo-diesel is loud as all fucking hells:
"Lance Corporal, why is that ALICE pack secured to the bulkhead like that? What's in it?"
"A carton of Marlboro's, log of Skoal, log of Copenhagen, log of Kodiak, bigass bag of sunflower seeds, spare MRE crackers, cheese spread, peanut butter, Tabasco, coffee, creamer, sugar, deck of playing cards ... oh, and spare batteries for flashlights and in case someone's Walkman craps out."
"And what's in those plastic bags?"
"Training manuals, Gunny."
"What kind of training manuals, marine?"
"Mostly Hustler and Penthouse, the occasional Playboy to keep it classy."
*brief pause, hands-on-hips, looks around*
"This is the most locked-on, squared-away amphibious assault vehicle I have ever seen in my entire career."
The world runs on Excel. There's really no competition for a fully featured spreadsheet.
Sure, but it breaks when you try to do complex functions in it, like planning and scheduling your entire company, or needing to export data from that spreadsheet, or having multiple people accessing it. There's better software for that kind of stuff.
I am quite confident that if you're breaking excel, it's probably user error. That said - yes, there are better tools.
Also export data....from....spreadsheet? IT IS THE EXPORT
Well yes it is user error, when you only have one person who understands the dozens of interlinked tabs and formulas to make this thing work, and all the data is entered manually by multiple people? Yes it will break, and badly. Then when you want to export a subset of that data? It just breaks.
People use excel as a database and its tools as a software system built to process their database constantly.
It crashes because it's not meant to do that kind of work on datasets larger than about a hundred thousand.
If you think to yourself "I need multiple people to access this data" or "I need to run some deep analytics on this data" you don't want excel or a spreadsheet, you want a fucking database.
If you're a small company that needs to track a small warehouse, sure, by all means, use excel. But once you're bigger than like 7 people you should move into the big boy leagues because it'll be nothing but a nightmare to deal with this data otherwise. SQL isn't really that hard, it was literally designed for this job and its syntax was specifically designed for data analysts and not programmers.
Like for real you can pick it up in a day, you don't even really need to worry about the types of joins and when to use them until you're basically ass deep in it anyways.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yeah there's a bit of a learning curve, but if it's even possible to do what you were doing in excel, it's not just possible, it's faster and easier in SQL.
Our in-house land surveyor fell off his bike and broke his collar bone, so he's out of the running. The subcontractor he hires to do most of the actual surveying just called in that he broke his arm whilst kayaking and is also out of the running for a while.
I feel like I need to pull a guy out of retirement, but they're probably going to break their arm if I call them.
Our in-house land surveyor fell off his bike and broke his collar bone, so he's out of the running. The subcontractor he hires to do most of the actual surveying just called in that he broke his arm whilst kayaking and is also out of the running for a while.
I feel like I need to pull a guy out of retirement, but they're probably going to break their arm if I call them.
Once you do get someone without any broken bones for the job, search them for a monkey's paw.
Our in-house land surveyor fell off his bike and broke his collar bone, so he's out of the running. The subcontractor he hires to do most of the actual surveying just called in that he broke his arm whilst kayaking and is also out of the running for a while.
I feel like I need to pull a guy out of retirement, but they're probably going to break their arm if I call them.
Our in-house land surveyor fell off his bike and broke his collar bone, so he's out of the running. The subcontractor he hires to do most of the actual surveying just called in that he broke his arm whilst kayaking and is also out of the running for a while.
I feel like I need to pull a guy out of retirement, but they're probably going to break their arm if I call them.
Is the subcontractor's name O'Brien?
O'Brien woulda just popped that shoulder back in and gone to work.
+3
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
The state BOE has advised the district that this year we'll be doing state standardized testing regardless of remote learning status.
Charlie is going to dance the Foxtrot soooooooooooooooo hard.
We’ve gotten no word about that as of yet. How are they expecting that to happen? We scrapped last year additionally because how do you remote LEAP test with any level of security? Oh god it’s going to be so bad, isn’t it?
thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
My favorite thing in the world* is when a very specific team I need to work with will respone to a request I'm making of them "is not possible". They'll do so in an authoritative way as to say, "Why would you even ask for a thing, peasant?!"
And it's always fun to watch the look on their faces when I get to come back with, "Here's the documentation that says it is possible. Perhaps we can do a technical review of why you feel it's not possible?" (and then in my internal dialogue I say to myself, "Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it not possible.")
*
This is not my most favorite thing in the world and wastes a shit load of my time.
FYI, for those dealing with forum bug (now and in the future), a fix has been found: read the new thread all the way to the end before you bookmark it.
the rest of the management team continues to ignore the issue of mandating masks despite losing a third of our work force to having to quarantine
one of the supervisors on quarantine doesn't live in an area with good signal of pretty much anything so i'm doing the majority of his duties on top of my other 2-3 full time jobs
and i'm taking 3 days of vacation next week :cool:
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Got the official notice from my job as well for the cuts. Our gross pay for all state employees is being cut by 9.23%, in exchange we are suspending the 3.5% monthly contribution to funding out retirement health benefits (which is brand new so we were basically going to pay for the retirees who didn't) until June 2022 and also being given 2 Personal Leave Program days a month that cannot be paid out and have to be used prior to any other time off.
All in all it could be worse I guess. I'll do fine, my costs are at a historic low while my income is enough to take the hit without hurting too much.
+1
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thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
My favorite thing in the world* is when a very specific team I need to work with will respone to a request I'm making of them "is not possible". They'll do so in an authoritative way as to say, "Why would you even ask for a thing, peasant?!"
And it's always fun to watch the look on their faces when I get to come back with, "Here's the documentation that says it is possible. Perhaps we can do a technical review of why you feel it's not possible?" (and then in my internal dialogue I say to myself, "Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it not possible.")
*
This is not my most favorite thing in the world and wastes a shit load of my time.
"Not possible" aka "this will take a really long time and be a pain to do and I don't want to do it"
The take a really long time is part of the fact they don't know how to do it, and it would mean their current design wasn't Perfect.
+1
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thatassemblyguyJanitor of Technical Debt.Registered Userregular
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Probably about on par with visiting their Animal Crossing island for the remainder of the time.
My favorite thing in the world* is when a very specific team I need to work with will respone to a request I'm making of them "is not possible". They'll do so in an authoritative way as to say, "Why would you even ask for a thing, peasant?!"
And it's always fun to watch the look on their faces when I get to come back with, "Here's the documentation that says it is possible. Perhaps we can do a technical review of why you feel it's not possible?" (and then in my internal dialogue I say to myself, "Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it not possible.")
*
This is not my most favorite thing in the world and wastes a shit load of my time.
"Not possible" aka "this will take a really long time and be a pain to do and I don't want to do it"
The take a really long time is part of the fact they don't know how to do it, and it would mean their current design wasn't Perfect.
I will admit to, sometimes and with certain users, saying something is "not possible" when it is in fact possible and I know it.
There's a myriad of reasons I've done this, mostly if it flies in the face of best practices/security/policy/etc AND prior experience with this specific person in regards to issues of this sort has shown me the resulting battle/drama is in no way worth my time, energy, and sanity.
This obviously doesn't apply to your situation and I much prefer honesty and education when I'm saying no, but for some people I'd just rather not spend a week not getting anything else done going 500 rounds and dragging other people into it just for them to try going around me for the same result anyway.
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
That's the best. My intro meeting with one of my new hires and my team basically devolved I to me stating why most of my employees are smarter than me and how happy I will be that I can safely assign work and KNOW I would be the worst choice to do it.
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Nic, you're already one of the smartest people I know, so the idea that this guy exists is somewhere between inspiring and terrifying
Also, officially signed up for the exhibition design course mid-August! It's a short 4 week-er, but it'll be fun and maybe give me something to add to the ol' portfolio by the end. Gonna wait to sign up for the two uni-level courses in graphics design and interior design until I get a little more cash over the next two pays!
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Nic, you're already one of the smartest people I know, so the idea that this guy exists is somewhere between inspiring and terrifying
hmm well this smart person has somehow triggered a bug that renders the software I currently rely on for work completely unusable. Un-openable, in fact.
I'm currently re-downloading and re-installing everything I possibly can, but if none of that has any effect I can legitimately take the rest of the day off, right?
maybe the rest of the year if I can't fix it.
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Nic, you're already one of the smartest people I know, so the idea that this guy exists is somewhere between inspiring and terrifying
hmm well this smart person has somehow triggered a bug that renders the software I currently rely on for work completely unusable. Un-openable, in fact.
I'm currently re-downloading and re-installing everything I possibly can, but if none of that has any effect I can legitimately take the rest of the day off, right?
maybe the rest of the year if I can't fix it.
Wait, all I had to do to get a paid six month sabbatical was break something at work?
oh no I definitely meant it the first way
what will actually happen if i can't fix it is spending (weeks? months? centuries?) on the phone to tech support with the people who can.
I'd rather be fired, really.
WeaverWho are you?What do you want?Registered Userregular
edited July 2020
I had to fix our PA system last week because nobody else knew how to navigate a server rack and apparently I have special eyes that let me see if a vendor racked a tablet to the underside of a switch.
I had to interview another guy for a job today and this person was just, lightyears smarter than me, so my preprepared questions that were meant to really make him think were just fucking laughable
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
Nic, you're already one of the smartest people I know, so the idea that this guy exists is somewhere between inspiring and terrifying
hmm well this smart person has somehow triggered a bug that renders the software I currently rely on for work completely unusable. Un-openable, in fact.
I'm currently re-downloading and re-installing everything I possibly can, but if none of that has any effect I can legitimately take the rest of the day off, right?
maybe the rest of the year if I can't fix it.
Posts
Outstanding.
3xx is a special kind of hell in some cases. And why Firefox is the superior platform for debugging web apps.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Grunts in the Corps always caught a lot of shit from various angles, usually for no reason whatsoever and I don't like bullying; I was always that Amphib Crewman who was like an overly jovial, might-actually-be-insane flight attendant. Most infantry guys thought I was fucking with them at first out of some sort of devilish spite, but no, we could literally die any minute in this oversized floating beer can built by the lowest bidder, if my face is the last thing you see, we're going out laughing, roaring and swearing while we tell the Devil to kiss our collective asses.
I got to be quite popular, especially since I hoarded MRE Tabasco bottles, jalapeno cheese spread and all the powdered coffee/creamer/sugar nobody wanted that day. Many a firewatch or radiowatch were made possible by my secret stash ... which actually filled an entire ALICE pack, so not really all that secret.
Then there were the 'training manuals' we had on my vehicle, wrapped in plastic bags and sealed with duct tape against the ocean water. This exact conversation happened at max volume because that Cummins turbo-diesel is loud as all fucking hells:
"Lance Corporal, why is that ALICE pack secured to the bulkhead like that? What's in it?"
"A carton of Marlboro's, log of Skoal, log of Copenhagen, log of Kodiak, bigass bag of sunflower seeds, spare MRE crackers, cheese spread, peanut butter, Tabasco, coffee, creamer, sugar, deck of playing cards ... oh, and spare batteries for flashlights and in case someone's Walkman craps out."
"And what's in those plastic bags?"
"Training manuals, Gunny."
"What kind of training manuals, marine?"
"Mostly Hustler and Penthouse, the occasional Playboy to keep it classy."
*brief pause, hands-on-hips, looks around*
"This is the most locked-on, squared-away amphibious assault vehicle I have ever seen in my entire career."
*thumbs-up*
"We aim to please, Gunny!"
Today I wrote my first line of code. And by "line" I mean I changed a lower-case S to upper-case.
Productive week, this was.
(OK, there's more to productivity than code-slinging...)
People use excel as a database and its tools as a software system built to process their database constantly.
It crashes because it's not meant to do that kind of work on datasets larger than about a hundred thousand.
If you think to yourself "I need multiple people to access this data" or "I need to run some deep analytics on this data" you don't want excel or a spreadsheet, you want a fucking database.
If you're a small company that needs to track a small warehouse, sure, by all means, use excel. But once you're bigger than like 7 people you should move into the big boy leagues because it'll be nothing but a nightmare to deal with this data otherwise. SQL isn't really that hard, it was literally designed for this job and its syntax was specifically designed for data analysts and not programmers.
Like for real you can pick it up in a day, you don't even really need to worry about the types of joins and when to use them until you're basically ass deep in it anyways.
I feel like I need to pull a guy out of retirement, but they're probably going to break their arm if I call them.
Once you do get someone without any broken bones for the job, search them for a monkey's paw.
Charlie is going to dance the Foxtrot soooooooooooooooo hard.
Is the subcontractor's name O'Brien?
O'Brien woulda just popped that shoulder back in and gone to work.
We’ve gotten no word about that as of yet. How are they expecting that to happen? We scrapped last year additionally because how do you remote LEAP test with any level of security? Oh god it’s going to be so bad, isn’t it?
wish list
Steam wishlist
Etsy wishlist
And it's always fun to watch the look on their faces when I get to come back with, "Here's the documentation that says it is possible. Perhaps we can do a technical review of why you feel it's not possible?" (and then in my internal dialogue I say to myself, "Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it not possible.")
*
one of the supervisors on quarantine doesn't live in an area with good signal of pretty much anything so i'm doing the majority of his duties on top of my other 2-3 full time jobs
and i'm taking 3 days of vacation next week :cool:
*this guy*
:bro: Bummer, Doodmann.
I'm sort of waiting for this kind of belt-tightening to hit my team soon.
so instead we mostly just talked about some cool shit he's done while I wondered if it was ethical to use my interview time to pick his brains on my own work problems.
All in all it could be worse I guess. I'll do fine, my costs are at a historic low while my income is enough to take the hit without hurting too much.
The take a really long time is part of the fact they don't know how to do it, and it would mean their current design wasn't Perfect.
Probably about on par with visiting their Animal Crossing island for the remainder of the time.
I will admit to, sometimes and with certain users, saying something is "not possible" when it is in fact possible and I know it.
There's a myriad of reasons I've done this, mostly if it flies in the face of best practices/security/policy/etc AND prior experience with this specific person in regards to issues of this sort has shown me the resulting battle/drama is in no way worth my time, energy, and sanity.
This obviously doesn't apply to your situation and I much prefer honesty and education when I'm saying no, but for some people I'd just rather not spend a week not getting anything else done going 500 rounds and dragging other people into it just for them to try going around me for the same result anyway.
That's the best. My intro meeting with one of my new hires and my team basically devolved I to me stating why most of my employees are smarter than me and how happy I will be that I can safely assign work and KNOW I would be the worst choice to do it.
Nic, you're already one of the smartest people I know, so the idea that this guy exists is somewhere between inspiring and terrifying
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
hmm well this smart person has somehow triggered a bug that renders the software I currently rely on for work completely unusable. Un-openable, in fact.
I'm currently re-downloading and re-installing everything I possibly can, but if none of that has any effect I can legitimately take the rest of the day off, right?
maybe the rest of the year if I can't fix it.
Wait, all I had to do to get a paid six month sabbatical was break something at work?
Oh, wait
Oh I get what you meant now
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
what will actually happen if i can't fix it is spending (weeks? months? centuries?) on the phone to tech support with the people who can.
I'd rather be fired, really.
I call it, "Don't Do Any Work" and in this TED talk I
Anecdotally I don't think this is as surefire as you think.
An evil genius, then. Still counts.
Yeah, this is just management/supervisor track talk