Utopia

I've been fascinated by the idea of utopias I think since around 4th grade when

I read The Giver (and btw, I'm soooo excited about it becoming a movie soon).  I loved books like Fahrenheit 451, 1984 and Brave New World that show an alternative view of what life could be like.  Maybe that's why, as an adult, I was so drawn to the Hunger Games series and really relate to the people of the Capital in those books, as well as the Divergent series.  I loved The Great Gatsby in high school and was thrilled with the recent movie adaptation, because the parties were just as over-the-top and out-of-control as I imagined them to be.  The current TV show by the name of Utopia I think is anything but that; it's more of a Real Life show meets Survivor.  The fact that the producers intentionally put people with very opposite extremist views is just the first hint that this mini society was meant to be a complete failure.  It's a little obnoxious how bad it is.  But there are some tidbits of interest that come out of it; Hex is by far my favorite character, alcoholism aside, because she can be level headed and talk to anyone, even if she disagrees with him or her, and ask them what their utopia is.  I think I also like her because she naturally looks like a real-life Katniss from Hunger Games, complete with being handy with a bow and arrow.  All literature, cinematography and bad reality TV aside, I still love the idea of a utopia and wondered what my utopia would be like.  

The problem with trying to create a utopia is that we're so used to what our norm is that there is a hesitation, if not outright resistance, to try anything or imagine anything different.  For example, the utopians in the TV show naturally formed a democracy without officially declaring it, and only a couple weeks in decided to formalize and modify the political structure.  One person on the show said that their utopia was one without money, but the economist in me likes the way money rewards efforts and can be spent on (somewhat) fairly equitable goods or services; an efficient market is the cleanest and best way to trade goods and services, keep costs down and drive innovation - not bartering or equal distribution.  So rather than trying to start with a blank slate and recreate a society from nothing, my utopia realization would come from removing the things I don't like and adding things I want.  

First to go: chores.  In my utopia, I don't have to clean dishes, mow the lawn, wash the windows, do laundry, sweep the floors, pull weeds, water plants, vacuum, feed the dog or even pick up after myself (let alone picking up after my roommates).  I have always related to the main character of Pippin, who believes he is just too extraordinary to be bothered by these types of everyday things.  I have these big ideas and crazy aspirations, but I have a pile of dishes in the sink that I have to attend to from time to time.  I know there are maids and landscapers available, but with three perfectly capable people living under my roof, I just have a hard time justifying spending money on simple activities that we could do on our own.  Still, chores bring me down; I like a clean house but I never enjoy cleaning.  Usually wine is the only way to get myself to clean.  If I could, like, dance and my house cleaned itself with the same effort that I put into my dancing, I think I would dance every day and never have a messy house.  That leads me to...

First to add: a better place to dance.  I have trained briefly in ballet and jazz dance, as well as performed in musicals in junior high, high school and college.  In college I also took hip hop and swing dance, and since then, I have been swing dancing on and off (with a stint of hip hop again when I went back to school for my MBA).  I love our swing dance community, but the venues never have the air conditioning capacity to support the hoards of people who come to dance.  It's a good problem to have, I suppose, but still, I think I would dance more if I didn't dread sweating in front of everyone so much.  The other issue is that I often want to dance at home to practice, and I just don't have my house arranged in a way that really supports that.  But I do like how my house is furnished, so I don't want to change it; I just want to add a huge room to the back with wooden floors and its own amazing A/C and mirrors and cameras so I can review my dance and improve myself, and a large screen (or four) to watch videos from the greats.  

Next to remove: human-driven transportation.  I know autonomous cars on a mass scale are still in the future, and it's going to be a long, long time before everyone adopts them or they are legally the only option.  But people are stupid, and driving is the most dangerous thing most of us do in our lifetimes, and we do it every day.  I personally despise driving, although I think I'm good at it (when I'm awake), and I have a problem staying awake behind the wheel at times.  Life would be so much better if I could get in a vehicle and use my laptop or watch a show while the vehicle transports me to where I need to go.  Some utopias are so small that they don't require powered transportation at all, one could easily walk or ride a bike to where they are going on a regular basis, but I don't think that's realistic, especially because I like to travel.  I don't think a small distance utopia could ever include everything I would want to do.  If we could just eliminate all bad drivers, that might make a big enough difference, but unfortunately, we all have dumb moments and I will still fall asleep.  So autonomous vehicles can't come soon enough.  Come on, Elon, I know you can do it!!  I'll be your first volunteer to test it, or your first customer, if you let me!  

Next to add: food that tastes delicious and is super healthy and exactly what I need.  This is one area where 3D printing has some potential, but its even further in the future than autonomous cars, and I'm not sure that 3D printing is really practical as the means of achieving this.  I think its a lot more of formulation and finding ways to flavor that won't cause cancer; I could care less about the shape. If I had a cheese-flavored shake that gave me all the nutrients I needed, I could switch between that and a chocolate-flavored protein shake and be pretty dang happy without solid food at all.  Ideally, certain tasteless substances could be made into several formats and textures, infused with the nutrients we need, and then flavored based on our tastes.  Imagine going to a party, having custom food made to meet your nutritional needs, but getting to try new textures and flavors that you've never tried before.  But alas, cheese is high in fat, along with pepperoni (even turkeroni, which I often eat in lieu of the real thing), and Ben and Jerry's just cannot be made healthy without taking away what makes it so amazing.  At least not yet, but I think maybe there's hope for some day.  

A big picture removal: political parties.  Okay, a lot of my items so far have been somewhat minor, personal preference type things.  But if I was designing a utopia, I would upheave the entire political system and replace it with an even more democratic process.  I wrote a whole post about this previously, so I'll only summarize it here: we would essentially vote for issues we are concerned about, establishing both the solutions and the priorities, and then voting for the people whom we think are most capable of making those things happen.  So instead of voting for a person because he is of a specific party or because she promises to do such-and-such, we vote for people based on our belief in their ability to make things happen, and we vote for the issues we care about, and we vote for what we want out of the political system.  Then its the politicians' jobs simply to execute on what the public voted for.  If they do a good job, they may get re-elected.  If they sucked a big one, we'll find someone else to lead the way.  Read more about this idea here.  

A big picture addition: more technology in schools.  I think it's a crime for people to graduate high school and college and not know more than the very basics of Microsoft Excel.  Most people don't know how to program.  With technology being so prevalent these days, I just don't think people should become professionals or go into the workforce and not understand how computer logic works.  I see people that are completely baffled by the computer programs they use every day, and that scares me.  I understand that college is more generally about learning and theories and not so much practical technical instruction, but a person with a college degree should be able to comprehend and repeat a simple Excel formula.  Kids, learn how to program; learn it early and do it often.  That will set you apart instantly, even if you don't go into programming (or I should say, ESPECIALLY if you don't go into programming), because technology is just not taught at a competency level required to be awesome in the real world.  Learning how to type should be mandatory in elementary school just like learning how to write.  Learning spreadsheets and presentations should be mandatory in junior high, just like history or science.  Learning programming, battery technology and computer maintenance should be mandatory in high school.  College should include photo and video editing, CAD or other 3D modeling, and more programming.

And more: more life skills in schools.  I consider myself lucky to have fallen into a musically inclined family, and have taken that into theater, as well as on the completely opposite end of the spectrum having a good understanding of finance and economics.  The idea of arts being pulled out of schools is appalling to me.  Even though I've never aspired to be an actress, the spacial awareness I learned in theater has had so many applications in my regular life, and I can tell instantly when a person does not have that skill.  How much better would this world be if everyone had spacial awareness, understood the financial impact of their money spending decisions, and learned not to be afraid of speaking in public?  School should not just be about memorizing dates and definitions, it should be about learning how to live life fully.  When I tell people what I do, there are a lot of people who didn't even imagine my career path existed, and I see people who fall into careers (I think) because they saw options that they were aware of included: doctor, architect, lawyer, musician, teacher.  There are so many more career paths, and people don't know about them.  Engineering is shrinking, and it needs to be expanding.  

Let's also take out: the legal system.  I'm sorry, it's crap.  Every time I've had to interact with it, I've felt burned.  I'm a good person, I shouldn't have to prove it.  We pay lip service to "innocent until proven guilty" but the legal system assumes guilt until proven innocence.  Meanwhile, I see people driving illegally all the time and not getting caught.  I know men paying child support to ex-wives who aren't doing a damn thing to improve themselves because then their child support would get reduced.  I've seen someone unable to perform his professional obligations because a nasty, bickering woman put a completely BS restraining order on him.  And I've been part of a jury that convicted a man of a crime for which the only evidence was technically "thrown out".  If it's going to be garbage, than let's call it what it is, and not pretend that "innocent until proven guilty" has anything to do with it.  In the case of having a restraining order on someone, I think if the complaintant knowingly puts herself in a place where the accused is going to be, the restraining order should be null and void; as it stands, if she shows up on his doorstep, he's breaking the law.  Better yet, let's let common sense prevail, and not evidence that is thrown out or assuming a woman is telling the truth because she's a woman, or assuming a cop is telling the truth because he's a cop.  I love the idea in Divergent with the people having aptitudes for selfless leading the government.  Let's have the justice system be filled with people who have the aptitude to read people and apply common sense, and not have to worry about covering their butts.  Today's judges don't actually judge anything, they're not allowed to, they just apply legal procedures and ensure those procedures are being followed through.  Let's have judges who are really strong moral judges, and make the case to the judge who is not incentived to rule one way or another, only to make the best judgment, and leave the peanut gallery of uneducated hicks and racists and prejudiced people out of it.  Maybe a panel of judges for each case, just to be sure the decision doesn't weigh on one individual.  Think of the case scene in Patch Adams, where a moral appeal can win.  Judges, like the politicians in my utopia, would be voted on based on their ability to make good calls.  In my utopia, people would take responsibility for their actions, and suffer the consequences, but they would understand the consequences going into it.  Better education and no way to cheat the system.  

Add to that: a more self-policing society.  Let's imagine that, without autonomous vehicles that obey the laws to the tee, our vehicles are equipped with cameras that watch around us in four or more angles.  If we see someone breaking the law, i.e. unsafe lane change or what have you, we simply hit a "report" button and the last 30 seconds of footage gets sent to a center of workers who decide if that footage is sufficient evidence to convict the driver, and then send a ticket in the mail similar to how they handle red light camera tickets today.  I've always wanted this.  I'm not sure where else it would apply other than on the road, because I don't witness law breaking in any other aspects of my life on a regular basis, but it could be applied to solicitors on door steps or other like cases.  Imagine how few people would drive recklessly and cut you off if they knew that anyone around them could report them and cause a financial burden for them?  

Another removal: the hidden sales tax and semi- and fully- mandatory tipping.  What I mean by this, is a menu or a price tag should have the price that it will cost.  It should include the tax, so there is no guessing.  When we have to split the bill, its clear exactly what we owe, because we don't have to add in the tax.  Along with that, we should not feel obligated to leave a tip.  A tip should be 100% discretionary based on extraordinary service, and not expected, and certainly not added to bills for groups of 8 or more.  It's hard to deal with a group of 8?  Tough, that's called your job.  I don't get tips at work when I have to go to a meeting with 30 people.  But I'm paid fairly.  So our wait staff should also be paid fairly to do their jobs, and not expect the customers to shell out the rest of their pay on top of the price of the food we're paying over priced amounts for.  Some other countries do this, so there is no reason we need to continue in this awful tradition.

Plus add: waterproof electronics.  It's a niche need, but do you know how many times I've carefully wiped my hands off while in the bathtub in order to access my laptop or phone?  It's a lot.  And I'm sure I'm not completely alone on this.  I just want electronics to be sealed up and safe from water damage so that I can comfortably use them in the bath or shower or pool without covers that inhibit the ability to hear or use the devices.  

Remove too: welfare and any type of government handouts.  This is the economist in me, and maybe the general population in my utopia would disagree and institute them through our superior voting system, and I'd have to live with it.  But how many stories have you heard of someone living in a nice house driving nicer cars than you, and not making a contribution to society?  I would vote for any movement that would bring us closer to the efficient economy that rewards effort and results, and that means not giving anyone a free ride.  

Another addition: Streaming of important athletic events.  Back to the nit-picking personal preference stuff.  If I graduated from ASU, I should be granted lifetime access to high-def, legal streaming of all football and basketball games for ASU.  At a minimum.  I think its despicable that we would need cable and a special channel to watch half the games.  Few of the bars locally have that channel, and when traveling, its impossible to find a bar with that channel.  I should be able to type in a code and wherever I'm at can have the game.  At a minimum.  I would much rather be able to watch all major games on regular cable or Hulu or whatever.  Make it accessible to everyone, and we will get more excited to go!  Make it less accessible, you might just start losing fans, or income because we'll figure out a way to stream it illegally.  

Another removal: 40 - 60 hour workweeks.  Companies should pay a person to do a job, not spend a certain number of hours in the office.  I truly believe that some people are better than others at their jobs, and yet we do this weird equalizing thing to require efficient workers to stay so many hours, while inefficient workers may not even get their jobs done but they put in their hours so they're good to go.  The reason we do this, I'm sure, is because it's far too difficult to quantify what the job should be in any other manner, so its simplest to just assume it should take about 40 - 45 hours per week.  There's also discrimination that might play in, presuming that most women can't physically lift and load as much as most of their male counterparts, and you don't want to be accused of paying women less in a discriminatory manner.  Then again, maybe a physical job isn't good for women who can't keep up with the boys, why is that wrong?  Maybe those women who can't keep up should go do a job better suited for their brilliant minds or physically less demanding.  Regardless, in my utopia, we would figure out how to quantify work effort and results, and allow efficient workers the freedom to leave after the equivalent of 40 hours of work, even if that's 32 hours for them, and they get Friday off, but they are paid as if they were there for 40 hours because that's how much work they did.

And add: more positive news journalism.  I know, they're based on ratings and the violence and awful stories get more attention than the positive stuff.  But kind of like in Divergent where people with a certain aptitude go into certain fields, I would mandate journalists to want to report on the positive stuff, and downplay the violent stories that lead to copycats.  Celebrate the heroes and the victories over disease.  Don't name the name of the killer in the mass shootings - don't give them any credit or attention whatsoever.   Also, let's not make stories about race if they aren't about race; hell even if they are, let's not focus on that because that only raises more racial tensions - a crime is a crime no matter what the (ignorant) motive may be.

Going back to my first point about chores,  I suppose if the help was cheap enough, it could be worth it to pay, but then there's trust issues and the weirdness of a random person coming into your residence.  I would prefer to just find a way to eliminate the need for chores altogether, like having a goat that eats the grass, or maybe just have robots do them.  A lot of these wishes require future technology or a full re-vamping of a country, and obviously I'm not single-handedly capable of doing all those things.  This is also why the TV show Utopia will fail, because they made those people become farmers and live off the land and removed much of the technology; without technology, you're not really allowing them the full utopian-creating potential.  Also, they're just a few people, not a whole society of hundreds of thousands.  It's more like a make-your-own summer camp than the building of a new society.  For me, there are a few things I can do in my own little world to make a partial utopia for myself, and that is what I will strive to do.  I've already made my house quite comfortable with excessively nice luxuries in some places (like my amazing bathtub).  There's always more to do, of course, but that's what it's all about for me.

The Tools of an Anal Retentive Organization Freak

It's been a while, admittedly, since someone has asked me, "How do you do it all?", but I think that's probably because I haven't entered any new circles recently, and the people in my life have just gotten used to me.  I am also not quite so go-go-go right now, because I actually like where I work so I'm not quite as driven to get away from it (what a difference!!).  Regardless, I still have some obsessive organizational qualities about me that I need to manage, and I was inspired to catalog a number of them for you today in hopes of helping others who either need such tools to balance their anal retentive style, or who need such tools because they lack motivation to stay organized.  I will qualify this post with the fact that this is not nearly an exhaustive list of all awesome tools, nor do these tools reflect the best or only tool in their category.  There may be other ways of achieving these functions, and perhaps even better ways of doing so; in short, these are simply the tools that I have experience with and like. 

EverNote
I am a convert from previously using Microsoft's OneNote, but both are very solid tools for writing, keeping and organizing notes.  I think where these tools lose people is that they associate note-taking with school, and if they're not in school, they assume they don't take notes.  So what is a note?  A note can be a to-do list, a journal entry or blog draft, a means of tracking performance qualitatively, a visual that you need to refer to only once every so often, and so much more.  But before I dive into all the many kinds of notes, I want to talk briefly about why I like EverNote.  EverNote (as does OneNote) allows me to group my notes into "Notebooks", so I know where to look for a specific note that I'm looking for later on.  It also magically Syncs between computers and even my SmartPhone.  The syncing was the initial differentiator for me; at the time of my conversion to Evernote, OneNote didn't sync with everything else just yet, although I believe that has changed now.  So this means that I can write a note at work, and without emailing or saving to a flash drive or anything like that, my note is magically on my phone and on my laptop at home.  This seems simple and straightforward enough, but its a very powerful thing to not have to think or worry about saving or sending this kind of data.  For example, I keep a checklist in Evernote of work tasks, and sometimes I'll remember something I need to do at 3 am.  Rather than getting up and going to my computer to send an email to myself, or taking the risk of forgetting it, I can open up my list on my phone next to me in bed, add that item to my list, and go back to sleep. 

So, what is a note?  I will differentiate lists with visual elements to them and lists with more textual information here, and put forth that To Do Lists, Shopping Lists (especially for something broad like Christmas shopping), and Favorite Quotes lists are all ideal candidates to be put into a note.  I have a dedicated Notebook called Lists, and each note is a separate list.  OneNote and Evernote have a checkbox capability, which is especially nice for those of who like to feel the victory of checking a box after accomplishing something (hey, it's the little things that count)!  I also have lists of goals, notes for house guests (on numerous occassions I have offered up my home to visitors and this list helps me make them feel welcome and ensures they understand the nuances of my poor old house), interview questions and good examples to use in response (great for job seekers to review right before an interview) and a Watch/Read/Listen to list. 

Another kind of note is a reference.  Perhaps the best way to explain this is with some examples.  When I first moved into my (fixer-upper, old, ugly, broken) house, I spent a good deal of time mapping out the electrical network: for each circuit, what light switches, which fixtures, which outlets are on each circuit.  I used some generic architecture software to draw a floorplan of my house and label each fixture and outlet so that I could visually see where each circuit goes.  Now, I certainly don't need this every day, so if it had been a simple file (which I suppose it was at some point), I probably would have lost it with a new computer or just in the shuffle of moving files around.  But because its in a note under my Home Notebook, I can quickly pull it up on my phone or computer whenever I need to shut off the electricity to a certain appliance or outlet.  Another example of a reference I used a lot during my job search was job descriptions.  I was applying to about 5 jobs per week, which doesn't sound like too much to keep track of, except when you consider that it might take four to eight weeks to get a call back.  Suddenly, I would get a call from a recruiter wanting to ask me more about my experience as it relates to job x, and I would have to either make something up, admit that I don't know which job they were referring to, or fumble about trying to find what the hell job I applied to.  And it's such an easy fix!  I simply created a new dedicated Notebook called Job Descriptions (duh), and everytime I applied to a job, I would just copy the entire job description and paste it into the note.  Usually, the title of the job is the first thing on the page, and Evernote adopts the first line of a note as the title unless you specify a title, so I literally didn't have to type in anything!  Just copy, paste. 

I like to write my blog posts in my Evernote, rather than drafting them in the blog site itself.  I'm wary of writing inside websites because there are 100 things that could go wrong and cause you to lose all your work.  With a note application like Evernote, the work is saved automatically from time to time, and not just to the machine I'm on, but to my very own little cloud.  That's a nice feature when you are constantly at risk of a phone dying or computer crashing.  Plus, it does a better job of spell checking than most websites.  An added benefit to the always-on-the-go person is the fact that you can dictate into your smartphone, so that if you have a brilliant idea but you're an hour away from home, you don't have to wait until you get home to get your idea down on (virtual) paper.  Also, by keeping journal entries and blog posts in my notebook, I can easily search them if I'm looking for a specific reference. 

Brilliant Ideas and Gift Ideas are two other notebooks I maintain.  I am terrible at buying gifts for people as Christmas and birthdays approach, but throughout the year I tend to think of great ideas for gifts (usually when I least need ideas).  So keeping a record of gift ideas helps me when I actually need them.  Likewise, I have dozens of (what I consider) brilliant ideas to make the world a better place, but I don't have the means, position or resources to pursue all of them.  So I feel better having at least documented them for reference later, if I happen to be in a position or have the means of accomplishing them.  I also come back to them when I need inspiration; they help recharge my mojo so to speak. 

For anyone who is employed in a rigorous professional job, I have a recommendation for you that I've only recently implemented myself in the last couple years: Performance and Potential notes, sometimes called Praise Piles.  I keep track of every email that gives me an earnest recognition of a job well done at work.  In addition, I keep notes on activities that demonstrate the skills and attributes set forth in the goals and performance evaluations of my company.  So when it comes time to for my performance evaluation, I can back my ratings up, or make a case for my manager to increase my ratings, with concrete examples from the previous year.  I cannot say this actually won me anything in my last job, but there's a reason I left that job that may or may not be related to that.  I am optimistic it will help in my new job. 

Alright, I think this blog is already getting a bit long, so I'll wrap this section up with a list of other "notes" I keep, and by saying that pretty much anything wordy that you'd want to track may qualify as a "note" that you'd want to enter and store in a notebook program like Evernote for future reference. 

Other notes:

• Shared notebooks for start-ups or teams to load research, draft copy, updates, etc.
• My favorite massage therapists (and my least favorite ones) so I hopefully know what I'm getting into when I book a massage
• Packing checklist for upcoming trips (i.e. bring sand castle mold to Hawaii)
• Places to go / activities to do for upcoming or unscheduled (dream) trips
• Taxes - to document mileage to/from doctors, charitable donations (non-monetary), etc.
• Measurements of windows and other physical attributes of my house for shopping purposes
• Reimbursable expenses (with pictures of receipts)
• Drug prescriptions (with pictures)
• Restaurant orders for my honey (in case I'm surprising him with something like donuts or Chipotle)

Pinterest

If you don't know what Pinterest is, they describe themselves as a virtual pinboard.  It's a very broad, loose definition and I don't think the world has grasped its novelty and usefulness just yet.  In fact, I wrote a whole post about the various uses (and sins) of Pinterest (and thus, do not feel the need to exhaust every opportunity I see again here).  I mention it after Evernote because they can be used for some of the same things.  For example, before I started using Pinterest, I maintained a Watch/Read/Listen to list in Evernote.  But most such items can be graphically represented, and thus, look a lot more exciting as virtual pins on a Pinterest board.  So the differentiation is whether the "list" you are starting or keeping is more textual or more graphical - that should determine whether Pinterest is better or Evernote.  Also, if most items on your list can be associated with links, Pinterest is a better option, because they will preserve the links for you as well as the graphical imagery and your specific text.  Other boards I recommend people create / maintain in Pinterest include:
local places to try (i.e. restaurants, museums, etc.)
Things to do in ______ (i.e. Vegas, so that you have it ready for your next Vegas trip)
Wish List (this is the best way to keep a public wish list that I've found)
Gift Ideas (keep this board secret so nobody knows what you're getting them)


Hootsuite

I've probably raved about Hootsuite in half a dozen posts all over the web, but I think its worthwhile to reiterate here.  Hootsuite is a great way to manage your social media presence, whether we're talking a company, volunteer organization, part of a softball league, or just you (and even better when you're dealing with a combination or all of the above)! 

For example, I might be traveling or business on Father's Day, having celebrated with my father on an earlier occasion, but still want to post something to thank my father and all fathers.  So I can use Hootsuite to load up my message (and associated photo), schedule it for Father's Day morning, and have it post without having to remember to log in or try to find internet service while I'm on the go.  This ability to schedule posts is awesome when I have something I think is hilarious to share at 3 am, because I can jot it down in Hootsuite, schedule it, and rake in all the likes and favorites and retweets once it gets posted at a time when more people are awake.  "Autoschedule" allows me to space out my posts if I am browsing and finding lots of interesting articles, videos, and tidbits, rather than bombarding my followers with a bunch of posts in rapid succession.  Last spring I converted a lot of my old VHS tapes of various high school performances to digital video clips, and rather than throwing them all up on the web at the same time, I spaced them out to weekly intervals.  So all summer my followers would be surprised and delighted (as was I) when some random old video popped up.  I scheduled my favorite to post on my birthday.  Slightly more sinister, if you're at work and you don't want your co-worker friends to know you were browsing the internet at work, you can schedule your post for whatever time you should be getting home so that it looks like you just saw it and shared it at that time. 

Besides the scheduling feature, Hootsuite has a very functional (albeit not as pretty) dashboard type of feel that allows you to view multiple "streams" of your choosing, which can be searches on specific topics or events going on as well as certain users' posts, etc.  Thus, in one screen, I can see who is talking about #NASA, what is going on at #PhxCC (Phoenix ComiCon), and what the tweeters I follow are posting.  Unlike in Twitter and facebook themselves, Hootsuite stores these searches so everytime I log in I can see them without having to recreate the searches every time. 


Microsoft Excel

Yes, I am considered an Excel guru, so this should be no surprise to some of you.  Most people will not use Excel nearly as much as I do, but there are a few reasons why most people should use it.  Banks and credit card companies as well as financial software claim to have good budget tools, but I prefer to do it myself in Excel.  I maintain a Cash Flow worksheet that is actually very simply but is the most effective tool I've found to help me identify where I have cash flow issues as well as to budget how much I can pay off student loans and car loan, as well as how much I have that could be invested and how much extra fun money I have.  It starts with the current amount in my bank account and lists all of the upcoming expenditures impacting my bank account for roughly the next 18 months.  I go in there every other week or so and delete the line items that have been taken out of my bank account, and update the current balance and any new expenditures I've learned of.  Then I tweak the payments on loans and credit cards until I'm happy with my cash flow status, and then I go into each of those websites and schedule the payments accordingly.  I also have clever notes about interest rate and how long it will take me to pay down each debt based on the payments, which motivates me to pay down the highest interest rate items more instead of giving myself more fun money.  If you stay on top of this, you should never have a late fee, overdraft issue, trouble making minimum payments, and yet you need to keep a very minimal balance in your bank account.  I  run a very tight ship this way, making the most of my income to get to a debt-free situation asap. 

Excel is inherently good at anything calculation based.  Thus, another application any person might use it for would be planning a vacation.  I recently used Excel to minimize costs for a trip to Cedar Point in Ohio.  I had about five airports we could have flown into, so I listed each of those as an option, and then wrote next to them the cost of each flight.  Then I looked up rental car prices from each airport and listed those, then added in estimated fuel usage and associated cost.  Another option was staying right at the park, flying into the nearest airport and then taking a taxi, so I enumerated and calculated that option.  That helped me determine the best way to get there.  Then there was the matter of deciding upon which hotel to stay at and whether or not to buy the 2-day passes from the hotel.  I listed out all the options with and without the ticket packages, with and without breakfast and added in the tickets to the options with no tickets, and added the estimated cost of breakfast to the deals without breakfast included.  I couldn't imagine doing all this manipulating and calculating in any other tool or by hand.  Excel is it for me! 


onStar

I love technology, and when I got my fancy new Chevrolet Volt a few years ago, it came with five years of onStar.  I didn't think I would use it much, and its true that I haven't called them more than three or four times in the past several years.  But what I didn't realize until I had it was that with the onStar app I can send destinations to my car's navigation system from my phone.  So before I leave for a new place, I send it to my car and then my car picks it up shortly after I turn it on.  This is cool, and also a big time saver.  Likewise, if I'm at a computer, I can use Mapquest to send the destination to my car (although the retrieval takes a few additional steps).  onStar also gives me a somewhat detailed report every month, which the data analyst part of me enjoys dissecting from time to time. 


Waze

I stumbled upon Waze while stuck in a traffic jam and using Google Maps to figure out what was going on.  Waze is primarily a commuting app that gives you traffic conditions, warns you of police and obstacles in the road, and provides a live ETA to you and whomever you wish to share it with.  The data primarily comes from users sharing their information, tagging where accidents, police or broken down cars are, etc., and automatically transmitting their speed through the app.  Since I am now driving in the carpool lane, I don't usually turn it on because I don't want my data to give an overly optimistic picture of what traffic conditions are like for the poor saps in the regular traffic. But it is incredibly useful for my honey to transmit his ETA to me when we're meeting somewhere or running tight on a schedule.  Once he sends me the link to his data, I can track his progress and see how far he is, which helps the psycho anal retentive person in me to make decisions, and calms the tightly-wound worst-case-scenario beliefs.  I wish I had had this app for previous relationships, it actually might have solved some problems and made life just a little better.  An added perk is that if you are meeting someone at a place that is new/different to you or to them, you can transmit your current location.  So, I parked on the south side of a large complex, and transmitted my location so that my honey could park in the same area as me.  Clever, right?  It's a pretty neat little app, not something I use all the time but helpful when I do use it. 


Retractable charge cord

What would this list be with only virtual tools?  One of the most useful things I carry in my purse is a little USB charger that retracts into a small cylndrical shape and never gets tangled as a result.  Paired with a USB to electrical outlet plug, it allows me to charge with a computer (or other device with USB) or with an electrical outlet anywhere I go.  And its compact enough that its really not a bother to carry with me at all times. 


TripIt

I don't know of an app that is so simple and so helpful as this one.  Of course, it's used for a very specific purpose, so it's not something I'm in all the time, but when I need it, it's awesome.  I first heard about TripIt from LinkedIn a long time ago, before smartphones, and it was basically a website you could create an account with and link with your LinkedIn I guess just to brag about your previous and future trips, and also to see when/where you will be in the same vicinity as someone else.  Both a little cool in their own respects, but TripIt didn't mean much until I had a smartphone with the TripIt app.  Suddenly, I was able to carry my itinerary in a clean, simple form, with me on my phone all time.  Populating the itinerary is super easy, too, because you simply take your confirmation emails from your airline, hotel, rental car, or restaurant reservation and forward them to a generic TripIt email address from your email address that you used to sign up.  Within seconds, your itinerary is populated with dates, times, addresses, confirmation numbers, costs, and any other pertinent information TripIt identifies from the email.  Sharing trips is just as easy, you add a traveler, and that person also gets the itinerary on their phone.  So while we're traveling, I can open my TripIt app to get directions or check the time of our reservation at a specific venue.  Never again will I miss my flight while hanging out on the beach of Cancun because I got the departure time mixed up with the arrival time - (and yes that did happen once) - never again! 


Designated places

Organizing things virtually is one of my favorite things to do, but sometimes we get physical things, like tickets to a game or show, and they are so easy to lose track of!  So there are certain things that I have designated places for, and it requires so habit-forming to remember each of those places.  As an example, I have a board in my hallway where I put "spent" ticket stubs up with tape just for fun, and there's a little clip on the left side, so I slide in any tickets for upcoming events into that clip, thus I always know where to look for them when it's time to go.  Admittedly, I could probably use more of these "designated places" because things like my purse, incoming mail, and my boyfriend's backpack are always landing somewhere different every day. 


Google Alerts

I don't spend a lot of time browsing the internet or looking up the same things over and over again.  So when there is a topic I want to keep track of, or an eminent event that hasn't been scheduled, I will set up a Google Alert about it, so that I am emailed with information about that topic based on the frequency and relevancy that I choose.  For example, I was anticipating the Harmon Hotel in Las Vegas to be imploded, so I started having articles with the words "implode", "Harmon" and "Vegas" sent to me.  My hope was that as soon as a date was set, I would book a room at a nearby hotel overlooking the Harmon so that I could have a great view of the show!  Unfortunately, it looks like the Harmon is going to be peacefully disassembled over a very long period of time.  A more successful example is following the news of the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf when they first came out; I knew before anyone else when there was controversy, potential recalls, and how sales were doing.  I also got to see a lot of information about other electric cars because they articles would reference the Volt or the Leaf. 

I think it's especially important to have Google Alerts about yourself; that is, I have an alert for "Laura Winger" and "Laura Lee Winger" so that I can see what comes up about me on the interwebs.  You might be surprised what comes up about you.  Some of the top hits for me in the past have been my Japanese e-portfolio I did while studying in Hiroshima, the articles I wrote while working for ASU's school newspaper, The State Press, and fabric designs I've created that are really popular.  There is another woman who comes up from time to time by the same name, and she also went to engineering school, so I could see a potential employer getting us confused.  But as long as she doesn't become a drug dealer or open a porn website, I'm okay with her name intertwining with mine. 


Ceiling Studies

Okay, I made that term up, but stick with me because this may be helpful for you.  A while back, I signed up for a trip to China with my kenpo dojo.  We were going to Beijing, Shanghai, and Dengfeng, where the Shaolin Temple is.  Not being very good at geography growing up, I thought it would be a good idea to at least understand where those cities were on a map and in relation to one another.  So I google a map of China, and then googled a simple clipart of China.  Using the map as a guide, I marked the major cities in big, bold lettering, and then printed the graphic on a few sheets of paper.  I took the prints and taped them to the ceiling over my bed.  As the sun started coming up in the morning, I wasn't quite awake enough to get up, and didn't even want to play with my phone yet, but I idly eyed the map of China.  Every morning I'd wake up and see that map, and eventually, it got ingrained in my head, without any real effort to learn it.  After coming back from my second trip to China, the one I took with my MBA class, I had learned of up-and-coming cities in China that were of interest to me, so I added those to my graphic and put that above my bed until I knew them as well.  I did the same thing with India when I started meeting a lot of people from India and wanted to be more knowledgeable when they told me what part of India they were from. 

There are a lot of things that can be made into visuals that can aid our learning.  As adults, we may not be taking classes all the time, but there are certainly things that we want to learn, and if those things can be made into a large visual like I've described here, perhaps they can be learned with minimal effort just by staring at the ceiling each morning. 

The Good, The Bad and The Kickass: Expectations of Microsoft Excel 2013

Since I pretty much live in Excel, I get excited by new features that I find useful, and disheartened by oversimplification (read, stupidification) of tools and analysis; it's a very personal thing for me because I work so closely with it.  Computers are very smart, and in a lot of ways smarter than humans, but there are some things that humans can see and do that computers are just not developed enough yet to get; it is for that reason that analysts like myself are empowered by Excel's tools, while people less skilled at Excel and data analysis cannot replicate our work by simply trying to make Excel "go". 

I will really only be able to evaluate Office 365 after it is forced upon me at work and have been working in it for a while, and really, a better evaluation could result from getting used to Office 365 and then having to go back to Office 2007.  I recently made a similar move when I changed companies; I've gotten so good and comfortable in Excel 2007 and my new company currently has Excel 2003, so I'm having to re-learn how to do things in that old format (the menus like File, Edit, Data, and Insert were replaced with ribbons in 2007).  Not only am I having to find where the functions are again, I have a feeling of being handicapped because I try to use the features of 2007 and then realize I can't (filter by color, filter by multiple values with checkboxes), so then I have to find workarounds. 

The good news is that I just discovered my company would be moving forward with Office 365 in the new year, and that means, at a minimum, I should (I hope) regain the functions I have become used to in Excel 2007.  But upon hearing the news, I decided to take a peek into what we can expect in the coming year that goes beyond what I'm familiar with in Excel 2007.  So, without further ado, based on what I've seen and read about Excel 2013, here's my analysis.  

The Good

 

The most immediately useful and intriguing function I noticed is called Flash Fill.  The way Microsoft explains it, it is "like a data assistant that finishes your work for you."  They use vague, colorful terminology to describe it, but what I see it as is like an automatic VLOOKUP, with a twist that the lookup table is inherent in the data and does not exist elsewhere.  That is impressive and exciting for a few reasons: (1) people who suck at or forget how to use VLOOKUP will get immediate benefit, (2) people who are good at VLOOKUP will save time, (3) files can be smaller and less complex by not requiring lookup tables to exist in the files, and (4) where files would have referenced tables on a specific user's computer, those files are less likely to get corrupted or have non-evaluating formulas because the lookup tables are not needed.  It is a bit scary that, from a programmer's perspective, we're no longer in control of or prescribing exactly what the values should be, but exciting if it actually works intelligently.  This does not mean that VLOOKUP is dead, it will definitely have a very important role, but perhaps needed a bit less with the advent of Flash Fill.  Only time will tell how helpful this feature really is.  

"One workbook, one window" shows great insight on Microsoft's part into how users actually deal with multiple workbooks, recognizing the need for ease across multiple monitors and comparing workbooks.  It will be a big time-saver and reduce frustrations with Excel.  This is low-hanging fruit that Microsoft went after and I applaud them for doing so. 

Animation in charts is probably more of a gimmicky thing than anything else, but I still like it a little.  It's very Apple-kind-of-sexy-feeling, and may help real analytics in a small subset of scenarios of which it is used. 

The idea of using multiple tables and relationships may be a good one, but my guess is that most users won't get that deep.  This sounds a little like they're directly attacking Access and integrating its database operations into Excel.  This is going to make Excel more of a monstrosity than it already is, and perhaps push Access towards obsolescence.  Personally, I like the separation of the tools.  Excel is very good at x, y and z, and Access is good when you need more than that.  By blurring the lines, we are looking at Excel becoming much more complex and difficult to follow, bigger less manageable files, and much more technical skills required to be an Excel guru.  And I could just see scenarios all over the place of where you suddenly find that you do actually need Access, and it will probably require a whole restart on relationships and logic and will cause people to miss deadlines.  Still, I'll reserve my judgment and suffice it to say that this could be a nice feature in a pinch, and used on a small scale, will be a helpful time-saver in lieu of a quick VLOOKUP here or there.

Thankfully, Microsoft heard our cry on number format.  In Excel 2007, the ribbon contained a quick way to format numbers as Accounting, but to get Currency you had to go the long way.  This annoyed the frick out of me, and I'm glad to see they have wisened up.  Another good addition is better Conditional Formatting and "Sparklines".  In Excel 2007, Conditional Formatting was cumbersome at best, and wrong at worst.  Assuming this enhanced Conditional Formatting works, it will be a strong analytic tool as well as a nice visualization.  

 

The Bad

PivotTable recommendations make me shudder.  Who are these people who would go to create a PivotTable and not know what summary data they are after?  If I'm dealing with a sales spreadsheet, then I'm going to summarize sales by product grouping and time periods or a salesperson.  If I'm dealing with part counts, then my summary data is going to be a count of the number of parts.  My fear is that this will get in the way of doing real work on PivotTables, and at best it was a waste of development time and effort on Microsoft's part. 

A new file format?  Again?  I haven't encountered anyone saying that they wish their Excel files would save in an ISO8601 date format, yet Microsoft has introduced a new file format to do just that.  If I had been advising Microsoft, I would have told them to steer clear of new file formats, and instead offer, as they rightfully did, a function to convert the dates. 

Microsoft is using their updated save feature to push their cloud storage solutions.  I'm sure they are obligated by marketing to do so, but it's in poor taste in my opinion.  They are being a little Apple-licious and closed-minded.  Most companies already have shared drives or SharePoints and will default to continuing to use those.  It'll be one of those features that is always in the way and in your face but highly ignored. 

I have a few nested formulas that I use on a regular basis, and it would be great if Microsoft created single functions that did what my nested functions do.  So I had to take a peek at what new functions were coming out, and I was wholeheartedly disappointed.  Lots more niche math, trig, statistics and engineering functions have been added, which I feel are just going to convolute the function world.  We need more business stuff, and I'm not talking financial, I'm talking useful.  Nobody in business cares about the hyperbolic cosecant of a complex number.  I get spell check errors just writing the description down!  There are a few nuggets of goodness (with caveats) that I will credit them with:  

• IFNA function - this does replace my nested formula IF(ISNA(... and takes it to a new level of efficiency and simplification.  I initially thought this would be a direct replacement of what I was doing, but upon further examination, it is much better.  See, the downfall of my IF(ISNA(... nested formula was that it invariably contained a complex VLOOKUP as the argument for the ISNA function, and then I had to not only specify what to use if the VLOOKUP evaluated to #N/A, but then I had to repeat (usually by copying and pasting) the VLOOKUP for the "else" part of the IF function.  IFNA does away with that duplication.  Genius!  Just enter the argument to evaluate in as the value, and it will return the value of that argument unless it evaluates to #N/A, in which case it returns your value_if_na.  
• FLOOR.MATH function - this rounds a number down to the nearest number of significance, which is interesting.  CEILING.MATH is the version that rounds up, and is also new to Excel. 
• DAYS function - I thought this already existed, but upon further inspection, it was NETWORKDAYS that I was thinking of.  DAYS gives you the number of days between two dates, while NETWORKDAYS gives you the number of work days between two dates.  Regardless, the ability to calculate the number of days between two dates is already available; just subtract one from the other.  Microsoft's website did not define whether the DAYS function would treat the dates as integers or have a decimal element when working with dates that have time elements.  To make matters worse, NETWORKDAYS uses the syntax (start_date, end_date) while DAYS uses (end_date, start_date).  This is a jarring oversight.  The only redeeming feature of the DAYS function is that it converts date-like strings automatically, whereas without the function you'd have to use DATEVALUE to do so. 
• ARABIC function - I just had to highlight this one because it makes me laugh that its new and that its opposite, ROMAN, has existed and been flying solo at least since 2003.  It makes me think of the Super Bowl, because that's the only time I ever see Roman numbers.  So for those of you who need to figure out what Super Bowl number we're on, you can now get it from Excel 2013.  In other words, =ARABIC(XLVIII) evaluates to 48, but only in the new version of Excel. 
• BASE function - The best way I can explain this is with an example: how do you convert a number to binary?  Binary has a base of 2, so with this new function, you can type in =BASE(7,2) to convert 7 to binary, with the result of 111.  Base 16 would be hexadecimal, but only programmers to my knowledge use that.  That's probably true of binary, too, but at least more people know and understand it. 
• SHEET and SHEETS functions - this is very telling that programming-minded people are demanding more of Excel.  These functions have existed for years in the less-traveled recesses of Excel's Visual Basic macro programming, but are finally being given the light of day in Excel 2013.  An obvious and well-founded move on Microsoft's part. 

Some functions I still have to use nested formulas for are things like what I would call CONTAINS.  You can filter on Contains and Does Not Contain, but you can't create a simple formula to do the same.  I'd like a =CONTAINS(target_cell,search_string) that is true or false, and an =IFCONTAINS(target_cell,search_string,value_if_true,value_if_false).  Today, I have to use a series of IF and FIND functions to do this.  STR or STRING to convert a number to a text format is another idea I see in the programming world that would be well-suited in Excel formulas.  Instead, I use =LEFT(target_cell,40) where 40 is some number of characters much larger than what I anticipate the number of characters actually being. A WEEKOF or STARTOFWEEK function would replace my slightly painful =date_cell-WEEKDAY(date_cell)+2 to get the Monday at the beginning of the week for a given date.  STARTOFMONTH would replace =DATE(YEAR(date_value),MONTH(date_value),1).  There is some possibility that Flash Fill will do some of these, but I'm not positive yet.  I would rather have hard-coded formulas that I know how to operate than have to trust a hokey, artificially intelligent algorithms which I don't understand or have any control over. 

As far as charting, there is one dire chart that still does not and cannot exist in Excel, even with workarounds, and that is one with side-by-side bars with internal stacked groupings.  That is, if I want a chart of all my inventory by category, and see what type of inventory it is (i.e. slow-moving, obsolete, high-runner), I need two or more separate charts, one for the total and one for each category or just type of inventory.  What I want is one chart with vertical bars side-by-side representing the primary grouping, each with the ability to show sub-groupings as stacked bars.  The stacked bars are like making a pie chart out of each major bar.  This type of chart would instantly be a big hit, if they only thought to create it.  Why, Microsoft, can you create intelligent things like Flash Fill but not give us a simple enhancement such as this?  

My rendering of what a bar chart with stacked subgroupings might look like.  In this example, within the "Vegetable" category there might be "Spinach" in dark green and "Carrots" in orange, and within the "Fruit" category there is "Apples" in red and "Bananas" in yellow.  You get both the total from each category as well as the breakdown within each category.

Histograms have been available for several iterations of Excel, and I presume will continue to exist, but hidden in the shadows of the Statistical Analysis feature.  I wish Microsoft would put Histograms as a predominant chart type, because they are so telling and powerful in business.  Until such time, the Histogram will continue to be my secret weapon.

 

The Kickass 

 

We have a new term called Slicers.  Not all users will understand this immediately, but I'm excited about it.  It is a way to "slice" the data, or filter it, probably in chunks rather than individual, painstaking filters.  It sounds like there is some setup to it, which is good news, because this is not something I would want the computers of today to try to guess at for me.  I suspect this will be one of my favorite new features.  Future enhancements will undoubtedly create automatic Slicers, just like we are now seeing automated guesswork done for charts and basic summary data, and I think it's wise to let the users create them first and then build the automation logic based on that. 

What Microsoft's page calls "Richer data labels" I call beautiful.  Having had to go back to Excel 2003 (temporarily, thankfully), I have been constantly reminded of how far we've come with our chart graphics, and this is absolutely the next step.  The look and feel of it is just so right.  It claims that they will stay in place when you switch to different types of charts, which is a relief if you've ever perfected a chart only to have to change one thing and have all your beautiful formatting get reset.  I am stoked to see more beautiful data labels. 

I'm going to return to Flash Fill for a moment, because there is a unique application that goes beyond VLOOKUP-type functionality, and this is perhaps the more ingenious aspect.  It can be used to "Split" a column of data.  Imagine you get an Excel sheet with names in one column, but they are first and last name all in one cell, and you need the first names in one column and the last names in another column.  What I've always done thus far is use some combination of string functions like =LEFT(cell_with_name,FIND(" ",cell_with_name)-1) for the first name and =MID(cell_with_name,FIND(" ",cell_with_name),40) for the last name (which assumed no middle names and thus was incorrect when more than two names were present).  I always thought they would create a formula which would find FIRSTNAME and LASTNAME, but instead, they made it even smarter.  Flash Fill will guess, based on the context of what you start typing in the column one over from the combined names, and if you accept its assistance, does the heavy lifting for you.  Now that is cool.

While Microsoft didn't readily spell it out for me, I'm seeing something called PowerView which is mega enhanced charting.  Finally a better pie chart (and not just the dumb old pie chart in 3D)!  However, this seems to be a premium feature, and does not come with standard Office 365. 

Quick Analysis is another feature I will definitely be playing with.  I don't know exactly all the ins and outs yet, but look for this to help summarize tables of data quickly and easily.  



All in all, I'm excited about what Office 365 brings to my Excel experience.  There is nothing devastatingly different like the transition from menus in Excel 2003 to ribbons in Excel 2007, but certainly a lot of goodness and some annoying things that we'll just have to look beyond.