I got a taste of Microsoft Excel before I deployed. My boss loves spreadsheets. Especially colorful ones. Previously, I took a class through Embry-Riddle on the Microsoft Office Suite of products. That was a while ago. Guess I managed to dump all that knowledge into the 'not going to ever need that' portion of my brain.
Well, that came around to bite me in the ass.
I use so much Excel these days that its ridiculous. I've also never used the 'Help' feature in a program so much. Man, is that feature good to have.
I manage a total of 12 teams. So that's 12 spreadsheets I have to look at daily to track and analyze a variety of data and see how we can reallocate personnel and other assets based on how much work they do, have, or don't have.
But I'm lazy. It's a pain to open all those spreadsheets, nested inside of our database of files. Click here, log in, open this, wait, wait, wait, finally loads, check. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat...
Laziness brings about inventiveness and creativity. I'm a firm believer in that. So I got ambitious, and creative.
After a lot of time searching the Help feature, and even more time experimenting, I finally achieved my goal. One single spreadsheet, with a column for every single team, for every single day, linked to pull the data DIRECTLY from the online the spreadsheets. Sure makes life a lot easier for me, and anyone else that wants to quickly view all the data from the week.
Unfortunately, I didn't do ALL the formulas to add the cells right. I didn't do the formulas originally, but I've found some errors (brought to my attention from others).
So guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? You got it, combing through every cell, making sure the formulas are correct. Believe me when I say that some of them are super long.
Looks like another long day as desk jockey.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Staying Busy
The last week or so has been pretty busy. Lots of stuff going on, a few new changes (some good, some bad), and that's on top of the every day work I do.
Finally got that giant container handler out of here. After having to re-weigh and re-measure the dimensions, it was finally accepted as cargo. You never really realize how big something is, until you put something gigantic such as the RTCH in it. There was plenty of room to spare. That's one HUGE aircraft.
Diesel decided to take an adventure in the Claremont Ranch earlier this week. So glad that everyone pitched in to help Jillian find him, especially the owner and other customers at Aspen Meadows that went out looking for him. I'm glad he's back home safely!
This is my last week before I get back into the books for my upcoming college course. I'm a bit nervous and excited at the same time. It's been over 2 years since I've taken a class, but I'm ready to get into it again, and hopefully continue on with it this time! We will see how I feel about that when the class actually starts! But on the up side, the Army has reinstated tuition assistance again, so I will only have to pay a small amount of the fees when I do continue.
I am however, incredibly upset that I will not spend my summer in Colorado. I'm going to miss an entire summer of being outdoors with Jillian and Diesel, riding the ponies, getting up into the mountains, and most of all, going to watch the Rockies and exploring LoDo with Jillian.
Which leads me to my next point...
Happy Birthday Dinger!
On this day in 1994, Dinger was 'hatched' at Mile High Stadium. Rockies are off to a pretty good start this season and I wish I was home to go to a few games. I guess watching SportsCenter on AFN at work will have to suffice for all my Rockies updates.
Finally got that giant container handler out of here. After having to re-weigh and re-measure the dimensions, it was finally accepted as cargo. You never really realize how big something is, until you put something gigantic such as the RTCH in it. There was plenty of room to spare. That's one HUGE aircraft.
Diesel decided to take an adventure in the Claremont Ranch earlier this week. So glad that everyone pitched in to help Jillian find him, especially the owner and other customers at Aspen Meadows that went out looking for him. I'm glad he's back home safely!
This is my last week before I get back into the books for my upcoming college course. I'm a bit nervous and excited at the same time. It's been over 2 years since I've taken a class, but I'm ready to get into it again, and hopefully continue on with it this time! We will see how I feel about that when the class actually starts! But on the up side, the Army has reinstated tuition assistance again, so I will only have to pay a small amount of the fees when I do continue.
I am however, incredibly upset that I will not spend my summer in Colorado. I'm going to miss an entire summer of being outdoors with Jillian and Diesel, riding the ponies, getting up into the mountains, and most of all, going to watch the Rockies and exploring LoDo with Jillian.
Which leads me to my next point...
Happy Birthday Dinger!
On this day in 1994, Dinger was 'hatched' at Mile High Stadium. Rockies are off to a pretty good start this season and I wish I was home to go to a few games. I guess watching SportsCenter on AFN at work will have to suffice for all my Rockies updates.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
In the Sunlight
So the last couple of days I've had a chance to step out of the office and work on some HAZMAT and transportation related issues. Things rarely go smoothly when you set out to do one specific task. For example, we went to drop off 8 sheets of plywood a couple days ago. Pretty simple task. But we get to the yard, and now we have to move this giant piece of equipment, along with all the rest of the wood for it, to a different area.
This is what we are sending. Via airlift. And yes, it somehow does fit into an airplane.
All that wood is needed to keep it in place on the aircraft. And none of it is light. So moving that around, and then having to fill up two tires in the back (you can't see them in this picture) too much longer than anticipated. But I got to spend some time outside, and even got a little color. So life is good.
In case you are wondering, this thing is used to move 20' and 40' containers around. It can lift 53,000 lbs. It's called a Rough Terrain Container Handler. And the one we weighed, clocked in a 118,644 lbs.
In other exciting events, I finally got to sample another one of the dining facilities here. We took a walk to the British dining hall and got some fish and chips for dinner. I'm not a huge fish eater, but it was pretty darn good. Definitely something different from the other 2 dining halls near us. And best of all, they had bananas! I've been looking for them since we got here, and this is the first time I have seen.
Other than that, life goes on, and the weather gets even better. I'm just hoping we've seen the last of the rain!
This is what we are sending. Via airlift. And yes, it somehow does fit into an airplane.
All that wood is needed to keep it in place on the aircraft. And none of it is light. So moving that around, and then having to fill up two tires in the back (you can't see them in this picture) too much longer than anticipated. But I got to spend some time outside, and even got a little color. So life is good.
In case you are wondering, this thing is used to move 20' and 40' containers around. It can lift 53,000 lbs. It's called a Rough Terrain Container Handler. And the one we weighed, clocked in a 118,644 lbs.
In other exciting events, I finally got to sample another one of the dining facilities here. We took a walk to the British dining hall and got some fish and chips for dinner. I'm not a huge fish eater, but it was pretty darn good. Definitely something different from the other 2 dining halls near us. And best of all, they had bananas! I've been looking for them since we got here, and this is the first time I have seen.
Other than that, life goes on, and the weather gets even better. I'm just hoping we've seen the last of the rain!
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