It’s easy enough making them do what they want to do. It’s trying to get them to do what you want them to do…that gives you a headache. –Azolan (Peter Capaldi) Dangerous Liaisons

The above epigraph was said about women but today I think it applies more to computer software.

As part of my house arrest “work” I spent part of the day redoing the spreadsheet I use to record marks and do all the cipherin’.

This involves lots of clearing and cutting and pasting and swearing when the formulas don’t paste correctly. Things that should have been easy cut-and-paste jobs required lots of extra attention as I was forced to manually edited formulas. Some cells that should have been class names had been replaced with random formulas. (More on that in a second.) Then there were the sections that could only be handled a certain way and couldn’t do what I needed them to do. Then there were the missing columns that required an internet search and a live animal sacrifice to recover. (Well, I tried anyway, but it really didn’t help that much, but there are still lots of feral cats around here to experiment with.)

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.

Eventually I got the spreadsheet into shape and all the parts and formulas seem to be working. Now, though, I have to move on to the second phase of swearing, er, preparation: making sure it all works on my tablet.

For some reason I have the only major brand tablet on the planet that can’t use a version of MS Office and, until recently, Open Office wasn’t available. I tried using a different office program, but it wouldn’t let me save to the tablet and was so buggy I went back to pen and paper until they ran a couple bug fixes.

Now, that program is destined for the scrap heap of software history. However, its legacy will be a lot of swearing as I get used to the new software.

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.