Another miracle. Ho hum.

Hey, anyone who's an expert Excel wrangler gets the miracle-worker kudos in my book. I used to have to teach people how to use it, my least favorite subject to teach ever, I think.

Hey, thanks. I also proofread a passage to eliminate the use of quotation marks for emphasis (hey, ya might wanna use bold or italic type instead) and was also marked awesome for that as well.

Reminds me of my last full-time job afore vet school. Went to a university department, got my fingers whet on grant budget prep before the three senior people who handled those things got the hell out of the dept.

Took over, put together an interactive excel workbook to prepare budgets for he various fundint agencies that automatically took care of little things like inflation and overhead costs and the various random contingencies surrounding salaries. It took a couple of weeks, but it allowed anyone in the department to prepare budgets.

All were agog. The last 18 months or so of work pretty much consisted of sitting in an office with my feet up on the windowsill, looking down at the fountain, goofing off on the web, going out for a lot of coffee and beer breaks, and occasionally spending ten minutes solving some problem that one of the residents simps (sorry, but most of these really were simply folks; the state of Washington does not pay a very competitive wage, though the benefits are nice and it's nearly impossible to get fired after the 6-month probationary period) decided was intractable.

It was hard when somebody would say something like, "You're so good at this! You're so smart!" not to respond with "No, really, I'm not -- you're just so very bad at this..."

I hear, "You're so good at this!" all the time, but it's invariably because they want me to do something else for them.

Doesn't seem like much of a problem, truly, jes. Even if the accomplishment isn't newsworthy, at least they notice and are appreciative. That's not so bad. Think of all the people out there who perform real miracles in their jobs every day, and nobody thinks to thank them.

Jes--

I know what you mean. You start thinking, "Is my I.Q. going to drop because I'm a one-eyed witch in the land of the blind?" and "What am I being set up for?" and "I wonder what they are saying behind my back?"

Oh, do I hearya, Jes - folks of that sort are why there's a warning lable that says "Do not attempt to sharpen blade while saw is running". The way the world is, an "IT Expert" is just about anybody who isn't an "IT Idiot".

I mostly just nod slightly, say "Thanks", and forget about it ... no sense even trying to explain things to the types who are impressed beyond measure by the truly simple stuff, and no reason at all to expect they'd even recognize anything smacking of a real flash of brilliance ("flash of brilliance", of course, often translating more correctly as "incredible stroke of luck ).

Ah, take the kudos while you can, Jes. I imagine it has more to do with taking the initiative to do these things than with the actual knowledge and time required to do it. People like folks who come in and just straighten things up. Especially folks who have been working without guidance for a while, which may or may not be the case.

Don't worry, over the full lifecycle of the application, there will be plenty of opportunities to earn kudos for truly working miracles.

When i worked at Southern Illinios University, in the days just before PCs appeared (the dawn of PCs, we were just getting IBM PCXTs), one of my duties was supervising student workers. We had dedicated Word and Data Processors, which operated with a duel floppy slot set-up--one floppy for the program, and one for the data. I wrote programs in Basic which allowed the student workers to type from a draft or a manuscript, and the simple little program i had written formated the document as they typed it, so that when they reached the end and printed it, it was in what is known as "50% Block Style." In correspondence, that governs how the date, inside address and complimentary close appear, but in all other documents, it just means that there are indentations at the beginning of paragraphs, that headings are nested with indentations, and that paragraphs succeed one another without spaces between them.

The professional staff were overjoyed--they asked and i complied with a program which would allow the student workers to type from manuscript to produce reports or educational activities according the style manual of the OEA. (Outdoor Education Association, this was an environmental center.) This greatly facilitated everyone's work, as they didn't have to wait until a secretary felt like doing it for them, and student workers were cheap, plentiful, and eager to do anything which wasn't mind-numbingly boring.

So, i soon set up programs for correspondence and "in-house" reports--this allowed student workers to take over a great many jobs previously done by secretaries, and greatly increased the speed with which paper work was accomplished.

But that's where i hit a snag. The secretaries at Academic Affairs (a catch-all organization, we were under their supervision) were not at all happy. They had adopted a 100% block style, no indentation, spaces between paragraphs, no italics, no bold-face--basically, no nothing. They had apparently told their employers "no can do, this is the only format available with these new word processors." Of course, when our correspondence and reports showed up, it make them look like monkeys. My boss actually got a call from Mr. High Mucky-Muck, the Vice President for Academic Affairs asking why we weren't using the expensive word processors we had been provided. He got on my case, and i told him we were, and showed him. Then the VP his royal highness himself showed up to see what was going on.

The secretaries in Acadmic Affairs were not happy with me. They intentionally dragged their heels on anything we wanted, and it was literally years to get them to stop pouting and play nice.

Being a "genius" is not always a good thing, especially if it upsets someone else's comforatable little set-up.

I'm no genius with excell (self taught) but a chap showed me a spreadsheet with lots and lots of figures. The trouble was when he scrolled up or right the headings dissapeared and he couldnt tell which columns were which. So I put a freeze headings/pane in (two or three clicks) for him, then showed him ho to set the print area
The guy was so happy he bought me a slab (24 pack of beer). I still chuckle about that.
I'd be happy to help him out anytime.

Bingo.

At my last job, I worked with a slew of programmers, plus the linguists were PhDs. With a law degree, I was actually one of the least educated people in the group. And that was fine. I learned a lot. Here, the situation is fairly well reversed.

Agreed, Eva. I can feel them adding more things to my plate as we speak. There are, um, five (?) temporary workers, but I'm the one who does the most of the sophisticated work. Everyone else either does very little or all they do is manual and very Rube Goldbergesque.

Yep, Noddy. I dunno if it's good being the smartest (or at least most organized and/or most interested in getting things done) idiot. Personally, I hate doing a lot of manual junk and I hate wasting time. I'd rather goof off with things done than with things hanging over my head. I suppose that's my motivation.

timber, I hear ya. I keep copying stuff from the Microsoft website -- and I tell them this; I'm not trying to palm it off as original work -- and I get kudos for that, too. Gee, anyone can copy and paste, or should be able to.

I think it's also the organizational thing, FreeDuck. I think that really nails it, too. We are talking about people who haven't set up any rules or subfolders in Outlook, and then wonder why it's always painfully difficult for them to find anything. They also never clean them out, and wonder why their mailboxes keep filling up.

They sort instead of filter. They hunt with their eyes instead of clicking "search" or "find" (depends on the program). They dither around and yak and overcontrol rather than decide, work and plan.

Setanta, you're right, too, it's also, potentially, a source of contention as I'm sure there's been that bill of goods sold, too. "Oh, we can't do this automatically. It has to be manual." Sheesh. You people are using computers that are more powerful than the ones used to run the Apollo freaking space program! It is, I know, a case of no one actually clicking a help screen or going online to find an answer.

They do use a small amount of the power that Outlook has, in order to send out emails. And that's fine, but some of the things they've had me figure out are on the same freakin' page. It would have taken no time for someone to scroll down a bit and read for themselves.

A lot of it is a lack of communication. When I tested whether certain things could be seen on a Blackberry device, I spent some time testing that, only to hear from another coworker that they had already figured that out a few weeks previously. So it's a bit of passive-aggressive nonsense going on. And, I'm sure, it's a lot of noncommunication in an effort to keep one's job.

All of the contractors are bored silly. I seem to be the only one who's actually got a significant chunk of stuff to do. I've suggested to one (a friend) that she go online and teach herself something, just to pass the time and beef up her resume, if nothing else, rather than simply sitting around. Evidently that's far too much effort and not very exciting. Well, sorry, I'm not here to entertain you people, and neither is the office. Eh, whatever.

dadpad, I need to start demanding better perks.

Thank you all!

Competency is the new superiority.

oh jespah....you made my morning.

excel's my forte. all self taught.
I've spent hours on the microsoft community board of excel questions, like a kid in a candy store.

That's just the kind of dweeb I am.

Then, someone will get all amazed because you show them how to copy a sheet into a new book.

so right...it's not I'm so great...you're so bad.



oh....I love when I get a call like this...

them: the file you sent me? I can't type in some of the areas.

me: that's because I don't want you to type there.

Support Tech: Good Morning. Thank you for calling the Support Desk. How can I help you?

User: My computer doesn't work.

Support Tech: What do you mean by "doesn't work"?

User: I mean it doesn't work! It just sits there - won't even light up!

Support Tech: Is it plugged in?

User: Huh? .... Oh. <click>

The problem with this is that when you call tech support and have actually done some troubleshooting and have a pretty good idea of what the problem is (or at least of what the problem is not), you've still got to pretend to work through their little idiot-screening-algorithm. It doesn't matter if you tell them, "This is the problem," because they assume (they must assume) that you are most likely an idiot and have one of the usual list of idiot's problems.




It's different when it's face to face, but over the phone.... sheesh.

One of the real skills of troubleshooting is in not making the client feel like an idiot.

One of my favorite stories (which may be urban legend, but sounds so true) is of a support desk employee who gets a call that the printer is not working. She goes through a whole routine with the customer, which arrives at seeing of the cable is properly plugged into the computer. He then states that he can't see that well down by the floor on that side of the desk. She asks him why, and he says that the light from the window doesn't reach that spot--so, with sudden insight, she asks him if the lights are off in his office. He gets indignant and says that of course they are, there's been a power failure. She asks if he has the original boxes. He says yes. She tells him to pack it all up, take it back to the store where he bought it, and tell them he wants his money back, because he's too bloody stupid to own a computer.

Ah well . . . i just checked Snopes . . . it's an urban legend in one of several forms--it's a good one though, very entertaining.

I received a yell of "I love you, jespah!" (well, she used my real name) from a boss-ish coworker because of the pretty print area I set up. It's so pretty. It has wrapping text and nice bold at the header.

Oh, and I say boss-ish because there are many chiefs and few indians here. For, um, ten (?) people in the group, four are bosses.

hey jespah, you miracle-woman....you made my day!!! I like this thread.... .

it's the same story with me - but it's only my new boss who thinks i'm a genius. No one else thinks so - my workplace has good s/w engineers and architects...When i do something really good, i do get appreciated - this works well with me. All the other managers are more or less sensible. But she is something else. She's very dumb and she thinks i'm a wonder woman - i was ranting about her in an another thread....