I resolved one challenge today, more or less, and then ended up starting a couple more.

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been tinkering with Excel and MS Word to make files do what I want them to do and trade a lot of work and swearing now–Cortana, make this sh#t work–for only having to swear at the students then–work you little sh#t. (Something like that. Although, officially, nothing at all like that. Really.)

As expected, I found an easier way to do what I wanted to do and that, oddly made the linking unnecessary. I did it anyway because 1) it is still useful and 2) helps me satisfy two “work” days instead of one.

The project partially passed phase two in that the main file works on my tablet and the linked file works when everything is brought back to my desktop computer.

However, my success (in so far as it can be described as such) created a level of overconfidence that led me to try to fix something that isn’t broke. I’ve used the same spreadsheet to record and tabulate students marks since I started at the school. The form has gone through very little change as it does exactly what I need it to do. The only changes I’ve made were to record the scores in class using a tablet rather than recording marks on paper and entering them in computer later.

The problem with the latter system is that I often put off entering the marks until the last minute. However, the form does have a couple limitations, the main one being is that it can only handle one term at a time and there’s no way to keep a running score of how the student is doing for the entire year.

My confidence has led me to experiment with this. This means that I’ll have some “work” to do on Monday, and that the neighbors are probably about to learn a few new swear words.