Emerging from the depths of Spreadsheet Zen
Hello! No, yer fav-o-rite blahgger did not blahg yesterday. It wasn’t because she didn’t have anything to say, even though she in fact *didn’t* have anything to say. It was because she could not get onto her site during her sorta regular blahgging time. It’s okay. She needed a break. Like I said, she didn’t have anything to say. Is it easy to write a blahg every day? No.
Today, yer fav-o-rite blahgger has managed to descend far enough down into the depths of Spreadsheet Zen that she has had to go to extreme lengths to dredge herself up and outta that in order to do things like, oh you know, cook dinner…
KW still remembers the first spreadsheet application she met. It was called Visicalc and KW immediately started entering all of her checkbook entries into it. Guess what? It was not useful for balancing your checkbook. Still, KW was entranced and Visicalc evolved into something called Excel and KW has a long, happy relationship with Excel (but she refuses to refer to it as *Microsoft* Excel, even though that’s who makes it now).
Spreadsheet Zen? Entering data into spreadsheets and manipulating it is soooooothing for me. I now use it mainly at work but one of my favorite Spreadsheet Zen memories is dragging all of the elementary school PTO treasury records into Excel, balancing the checking account (after five years), and figuring out the tax reporting mess (don’t ask). This prodject took me a few weeks and, given the era, involved a lot of paper documents, which I kept on the floor beside the computer so I had to keep diving down there to look stuff up…
At some point one afternoon, I dredged myself up out of Spreadsheet Zen and ambled out into the Old Landfill Chitchen and found that someone had cooked spaghettios. Apparently the Beach Urchins could not get my attention to tell me they were hungry so they took matters into their own hands. It was okay. They didn’t burn down the house or even the pan.
We all live in a yellow submarine…
April 22nd, 2014 at 9:10 pm
When I was the gymnastics club treasurer, I got really into reports; it was kind of fun and powerful. I liked seeing how all the pluses and minuses balanced out. There was a beautiful kind of symmetry to it.
April 22nd, 2014 at 10:52 pm
There was a time I was heavily into accounting. Payroll. Even complicated payroll involving unions and prevailing wage. Accounts receivable. Accounts payable. While also juggling marketing. The overlapping deadlines (taxes, ugh) finally took its toll and I had to pick a lane. I’ve never quite mastered Excel spreadsheets, but my husband LOVES them. Now and then at work (since I’m a *woman* and don’t all women know spreadsheets?) I’m asked to deal with one and I’m pretty much lost. I’m now a rooted Adobe Suite “woman.”
April 23rd, 2014 at 7:09 am
Lotus 123 was my first spreadsheet experience. a long time ago. 😉