Silent For Too Long
by Jon Peltier
Monday, July 12th, 2010
Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2012.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
For the past two months or so, I have been absent from the blog. Sure, I’ve answered questions and replied to comments people have left. But new articles have been scarce.
I have plenty of excuses for this, and none of them involve not having any topics worth posting. I’ll describe a few of them, and you can judge how valid they are.
Classes
I taught two classes, a three day Excel Dashboard Bootcamp in Texas with Mike Alexander of DataPig Technologies and the Bacon Bits blog, and a one-day Excel Dashboard class here in Massachusetts with Alex Kerin of DataDriven Consulting who blogs here. During preparation for the classes, I suspended my blogging, and I couldn’t get back into the habit.
The classes were very successful, and I’m considering how to offer this advanced material over a broader geographical area.
Error Remediation
I’ve gotten reports from some foreign users that my utilities either raise errors during execution or make mistakes when labeling charts. It turns out that in Excel 2003 and earlier, some regional versions of Excel do not treat link addresses in chart text elements correctly in VBA. For example, in German Excel 2003, VBA code fails while creating a link from a data label to a worksheet cell. In French Excel 2003, similar VBA code fails when creating a link from an axis title to a worksheet cell. These failures occur despite correctly converting English R1C1 (Row-Column) notation into, for example, German Z1S1 (Zeile-Spalte) notation. I know the conversion is correct, because some text element links are correctly created, just not these that I’ve identified.
A small consolation to users of Excel 2007 is that Microsoft rebuilt their regionalization system in Office 2007, and these problems no longer seem to occur. For Excel 2003 users, I’m dumbing down the labels to include static text.
Work
A few of my long time clients have requested follow up projects, and this cuts into time available for blogging. I’m not taking on new projects, not enough time for that.
Non-Work
Several non-work activities are taking time away from blogging. Last fall I needed physical therapy to fix my shoulders, which were inflexible from years of poor posture, probably related to too many years of sitting hunched over the keyboard. The shoulders are great now, thanks, though I’ll never pitch again (but could I ever?).
The therapy group is located in the front half of a building, and they run a gym in the back half. I decided I needed to keep up with my shoulder exercises and I needed to get myself back into shape, with the World Cup coming up and everything. So I joined the gym. It’s a great gym, too. It has tons of equipment, especially free weights, so there’s never any waiting. The staff is very knowledgeable and helpful. And people don’t show up just to be seen in their fancy workout clothes.
Also last year, my daughter told me she’d teach me some chords on her guitar so I could pretend to play a real guitar, nor pretend to play an air guitar. Well, she went off to college, but she left her guitar at home. I’d always wanted to play guitar, and my daughter had planted the seed in my head. I found out that a friend of the family studied music theory and guitar performance in college, and he’s giving me lessons.
I’m really bad, but I’m making progress pretty rapidly. I can find the tabs for a favorite song online and play recognizable riffs. I’ve just started working on a few whole songs, like Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding and Santa Monica by Everclear. It’s wicked fun, and I wish I’d started years ago.
The hour-plus workouts three or four times a week and the 30 to 90 minute daily guitar practice sessions are well spent, but reduce blogging time. Before my hiatus I was posting 4 or 5 articles a week, but I may take a lesson from Chandoo and aim for 2 or 3 weekly posts.
Related Posts:
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- Link Chart Text to a Cell
- Book Review: Pro Excel 2007 VBA
- I guess it’s supposed to be funny
- 2008 East Coast Excel User Conference
- 2008 Excel User Conference – Next Week
Posted: Monday, July 12th, 2010 under General.
Comments: 10
Comments
Comment from Tom Quist
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 11:39 am
Jon,
Glad to have you back. Personally, I’m thankful to get free content whenever I can. I hereby grant you permission to post whenever you like! :)
By the way – good for you on your new hobby. I’ve been playing guitar for over 10 years now and I still stink – but it is indeed fun. Also, I’ve recently learned the value of the gym, so keep it up!
Tom
Comment from Dick Kusleika
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 4:02 pm
My 10-year-old nephew taught me the opening riff to Smoke on the Water. Great fun, but my fingers hurt.
Comment from Jon Peltier
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 7:38 pm
That riff is actually pretty easy, what, four two-note chords. Well, easy to play badly, but that doesn’t make it less fun.
My first week, my fingers hurt like hell, and when I woke up in the morning I still had deep grooves in my fingertips from the day before. My instructor straightened me out, told me it’s all about conserving energy and economy of motion, which I can get into. Now I rarely get grooves, and only sometimes have red lines on my fingertips.
Comment from Matt Lanagan
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 7:55 pm
Hi Jon
Good to hear you’re back and glad the silence was for good reasons not traumatic ones. There is so much good content on your site that I still have plenty to read even without the blog entries.
Matt
Comment from drew
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 11:04 pm
Jon ,
Your site is such a beacon and treasure for anyone who wants to learn, that you do not need to make any excuses!. thank you for making all this available to us.
i’ve been playing over fifty years, and its the best thing i know how to do. I play chord melody style against Gershwin, Berlin and Arlen. i used to improvise against the blues box, but these composers’ songs are such treasures that i get more enjoyment out of following them than making up my own.
The Dashboard class was transformational. Excel has risen meteorically in importance, and thanks to you and Alex, ive graduated from rube to grasshopper!
drew
Comment from chrisham
Time: Monday, July 12, 2010, 11:09 pm
Glad to know that you are considering too offer your advanced material over a broader geographical area. Can’t wait to hear more about that…….
Comment from Doug Glancy
Time: Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 12:02 am
Sounds like you are leading a rich and (very) full life.
Just to echo what others have said, your blog is a wonderful resource and I’m grateful for all the content you’ve created.
Comment from JP
Time: Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 7:36 pm
Welcome back! We’ll all be waiting for the next article.
Comment from Paresh
Time: Tuesday, July 13, 2010, 10:52 pm
Great to have you back !!
There is so much stuff on the site that we all can keep reading –
But it so much more fun to keep the conversation going.
Comment from ck
Time: Friday, July 23, 2010, 3:28 pm
Jon,
I have an easy question – hope it isn’t insulting…
I am using a formula in VBA shown below. Simply said – I just want to divide two cells in VBA so I can refer back to the answer.
Sub Rate
Dim Rate As Integer
Rate = (Worksheets(“Sheet1″).Cells(69, 20).Value) / (Worksheets(“Sheet1″).Cells(22, 8).Value)
Label1 = “Cost: ” & Format(Rate, “#0.000″) & ” per Room”
End Sub
Many, many thanks
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