Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Party Of The First Part

I settled down to work tonight, first reading a (rare) email sent to me by my highly intelligent supervisor. It contained instructions for a new task. She wrote it as though it were in English and could be understood by anyone. Or at least by yours truly, who has been working on her stuff for the past 9 months....

I did okay until the second part. (And now I'm thinking..."The party of the second part and the party of the first part...") Part 2 involves creating a table or spreadsheet. I'm not up with that. I'm essentially a monkey who can type. Somehow, she has yet to figure that out.

So I'm writing this post instead. When in doubt, blog.

I hope that link up there works (you may need to log in to Facebook first) - it's a classic. What are waiting for? Go! There's nothing to see here but a puzzled primate scratching her head...


[Photo credit to the Ephemerist]

9 comments:

  1. Can I just say right before I clicked, I thought, "I bet that's the Marx Bros."

    I am bloggy psychic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Spreadsheets/tables are easy. Do you have windows office or open office installed on your pc? Office Excel if fairly easy to use. I bet one of your kids knows how. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I hated Excel stuff. When I was working, I dreaded any tasks that involved spreadsheets, and even when I got (tricked) people into setting the fmla up for me, I usually ended up deleting it by accident.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy Excel is to use. It does help if someone can show you the ropes, though. My husband is actually a master and loves to share his wisdom, so if you'd like to stop by . . .

    ReplyDelete
  5. I used Excel once, a decade ago - but I think I lost those brain cells since...

    ReplyDelete
  6. That schtick is great -- I'd forgotten about it, because I'm forgetful like that and my brain cells are going... going...

    My husband keeps showing me how to use Excel the easy way, but I don't "get it." He's one of those people for whom it makes perfect sense.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Spreadsheets give me the same kind of spine-tingling fear as the word-geometry. I don't want to attempt either.

    And come on! Just tell that boss of yours, you're too busy blogging because that's what we "mommy bloggers" do best, ignore our life so we can market ourselves. Can I get a holla?

    Love the Marx Bros.

    And thanks for the shout-out on The Bloggess! Dear Lawd, that woman is a genius of the funny. But, it's true. I can't help thinking about it every time I eat fish. My sister-in-law, by the way, won't eat it anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Tables vs spreadsheet...if you just need to put words into columns and rows, and won't need to sort or arrange things once you've done it, tables work fine. They're easy to format, and you can type any amount of text into one cell (box) of the table and the table will adjust to accommodate it.

    If you need to make a list that will be sorted or alphabetized, or if part of the stuff to be put in it are numbers that you need to do math on, spreadsheets are the way to go. They don't handle large amounts of text (paragraphs, for example) as easily as tables though.

    Feel free to drop me an email if you'd like some assistance. I do a fair amount of computer tutoring of beginners at work, so I've had experience in explaining things simply.

    ReplyDelete
  9. You are just great! :)

    ReplyDelete