grumble.

[valis2]

I was given a task yesterday at the day job, and I pushed through a third of it. Last night I had an "a-ha" moment--I realized I could use the VLOOKUP function in Excel to cut off about a third of the remaining time involved in the project.

This morning I spent an hour and fifteen minutes fiddling with LOOKUP, VLOOKUP, and even INDEX/MATCH and could not get the bastard to work properly. (I have a feeling that it's because I absolutely have no choice about storing numbers as text in the document, and somehow, when it's trying to match them, it's either a) thinking the numbers for the array aren't "sorted" and therefore it balks, or b) the reference to a cell is making the texty-number all sad and useless.)

So I was thirty pages short of finishing. I volunteered to come in tomorrow, thinking that they wouldn't bother with it, but they want me to. Sigh. (If I had just not spent that time trying to work smarter, lol...)

My two options:

1) Go in and work a half day, which (theoretically) leaves me time to do my errands, like going to the post office, working on Etsy/eBay stuff, packing boxes, buying pads, and going to the grocery store. However, then I have to drive in by myself (my sister is working a full day) and that's a big gasoline draw. And I'm so damned tired and sleepy because I've been writing (er, Riptide stuff) and I'm all full of story thoughts and I can't sleep, and my period started today, so I'm even more tired, and I don't want to get up and go in.

2) Go in and work a full day to save on gasoline and make some $. House, after all. But I'm so tired. And then I wouldn't have time for the errands. Poor Husband would have to do the post office stuff and he's already been running ragged this week. Plus, I'm on my period and I don't want to sit there all day during the worst day of my period. wah.

I've decided on 1. Plus, I can run and drop something off to a friend whose store is very near work, and I think she'd be pretty geeked about it.

*yawn*

Comments

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

I've been writing (er, Riptide stuff)

Much longer and I'm going to spam both your email and your LJ every day until I get a chapter of tLS.

:-)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

ahaha! Well, I'm in the writing mood, so hopefully this will all work out!!

[catyah.livejournal.com]

EEEEEEEEEEEE!! <--- happy squeal

:: bounces ::

Writing! Riptide stuff!!

:: celebrates ::

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I am 5300 words into a fic, believe it or not! And it isn't half-bad! I'm so totally excited. I'm really starting to put together their little universe in my head. I know what Murray sounds like now! Er, a little, at least. lol.

I must warn you, though, it's h/c, h/c, and h/c. Oh, and there's a lot of h/c. hee!!

[catyah.livejournal.com]

I must warn you, though, it's h/c, h/c, and h/c. Oh, and there's a lot of h/c. hee!!

OH NO! H/C?? Gee, I'm SO heartbroken, you know from my own writing how much I HATE h/c, right?? /amused sarcasm

LOL! Can't wait to read it!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

hahaha!!

Seriously, though, it's pretty damned shameless h/c. I have never written a fic so h/comforty. Ever! I really hope people don't hit the back button after two paragraphs...

[catyah.livejournal.com]

Ha, not a chance of me hitting the back button! After all, I've read Riptide *death* fics!

Which of the guys is/are hurt? Or do I have to wait until you're done writing it? And if so, don't reply to this post, work on finishing the story instead!

*grin*

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Nick, all the way. ;)

Death!fics? Oh, you are brave! I very rarely read them. I already cry too much, lol!

[drusillas-rain.livejournal.com]

um, this may sound a bit odd, but, how do you schedule your day? I've been at home for 2 months now, trying to start-up my consulting business, and I've worked a day or two (or week) here and there since, and I've been meeting with a lot of people, and I feel like I'm spinning in place not getting stuff done. I'm still not getting any writing done, I'm not really reading very much. So, it could be just me needing to learn to work better, but, if you have any advice you can share, or if you have a particular method of organizing yourself that you use that you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd very much greatly appreciate the advice!

(heh, sorry for the run-on sentences O_o)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I asked that question myself on LJ some time ago, but now I can't find the entry.

I'm still trying to work out a happy balance, but at this point I'm still flailing. Generally it works out like this:

*get up, bathe, get dressed
*eat breakfast and read LJ/catch up on stuff
*work on phone calls or things that need to get done during the day (photography, ordering supplies, appointments, that sort of thing)
*go to post office at 2 pm to do my post office run, and combine it with picking up bubble wrap/trip to the grocery store/whatever
*snack and a little LJ
*either craft at the desk while watching TV/DVDs or talking on the phone with friends, or work on listings, or scan stuff
*dinner with Husband
*continue whatever I was doing before or jump to a new fun thing
*after 9 pm--that's my time to write or whatever

I feel weird about giving advice, because I'm so bad at this stuff, but to me, the most important thing is the ratio. I'm still working it out, but there has to be a ratio of fun stuff/administrative/networking/appointments/creating/shipping/etc. Once you have a good ratio in place, it's helpful. Deciding to work during certain hours is a good thing if you're someone who likes a set schedule.

I have weekly Excel spreadsheets that show a strip of cells at the top that correspond to the days of the week. In each box I write the main event(s) of that day, such as appointments or working at the day job, or shows.

Under that is an eBay checklist, with spots where I can write in the ending day and the listing day, and places where I can check off that I've scanned the items, or transferred the pics to my website. Under that is a similar Etsy list. And another bar for packaging and shipping.

There's a bar containing a checklist for shows, in case I'm doing a show that week.

Then there's a mundane bar with things like laundry and Paypal transfer.

There's a bar for phone calls I need to make.

Then there's a big box full of blank spots where I can write all the weird little tasks I have left to do. When it gets closer to the end of the week, I transfer the things that are left to next week's list.

Please feel free to ask me any questions! :)

[tinx_r]

Microsoft FTL! I am having a week of that myself, alas.

*hugs*

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Damned bastard texty numbers! I was so pissed when I left--I could have had tomorrow free and clear if I had just not wasted time trying to prove that I have a brain. hahaha!!

*hugs*

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

Do you know about my best friend "text to columns" which will convert the textiness to numberiness? I have certain downloads which barf mightily until I run text to columns.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

The problem is I can't actually change the text to numbers--it would be a disaster. The numbers are kind of like a Dewey decimal system...560 is not the same as 560.0, and if I change them to numbers, it will screw them up. :( Some have one decimal place, some have two, and it's a real nightmare.

The thing is, it should lookup the data anyway! You can do this with text OR numbers. argh.

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

Could there be either leading spaces or control characters in front of some of them? Especially when you have data that someone entered as keystrokes from a POS terminal, you can get that sort of glitch. And it can drive you nuts.
Edit: And the control characters won't necessarily display in Excel.
One thing to experiment with might be to dump the data into something like Notepad, save it as the most vanilla text file possible (to get rid of hidden formatting) and then copy it back to Excel.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it was entered directly by my own hands, so I can testify that it doesn't have any extra characters. I have a strong feeling that because the array was sorted by pretending that all numbers are text, that the array is not being read properly by the function--that's where the error shows up. It registers the value, but can't seem to find it in the array.

This bugs me to no end, because I would have loved to cut the time off this job! :(

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

How about telling the lookup to find an exact match regardless of how the data is sorted?

Blah...a bunch of stuff...blah blah

Table_array is the table of information in which data is looked up. Use a reference to a range or a range name, such as Database or List.

If range_lookup is TRUE, the values in the first column of table_array must be placed in ascending order: ..., -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ..., A-Z, FALSE, TRUE; otherwise VLOOKUP may not give the correct value. If range_lookup is FALSE, table_array does not need to be sorted.

What if you set the range_lookup to FALSE so the array doesn't need to be sorted?

[valis2.livejournal.com]

The lookup function does not find exact matches, unfortunately. Vlookup is supposed to, and I set it to "false" so it would, but it only finds it if I convert the texty number to number, which isn't possible for the ICD-9 codes. *sigh*

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

One more idea. I am finding that VLOOKUP wants text strings enclosed in quotes or it spits out an error message. So to look up a text 1, you would use the following--

=VLOOKUP("1",X7:Z22,2,FALSE)

Possible that Excel is reading some as numbers and some as text? Maybe reformat entire column as text?

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I can't do the quote thing because the thing to lookup is a cell reference. It finds the cell reference just fine and will display it when I use the evaluate formula dialogue box. However, once it starts to try to match the texty number that was in the cell, then it can't.

I've tried reformatting the columns, and that didn't seem to work. Excel is definitely reading some as numbers and some as text, and because what it's finding in the reference cell is a texty number, it won't match it with the array, which is half and half, even though I've tried to reformat all of them to text. :(

It's so awesome to talk to another Excel aficionado! ;)

[seraphina_snape]

I've been writing (er, Riptide stuff)
Well, maybe that'll cheer you up. The pretties always make me smile.

~ sera

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I have not been sleeping well at all because I keep thinking about the boys.

Though they were good company when I was doing my horrible data entry job, lol...