Excel VBA code to Delete a Cell

Sub DeleteCell()
'
' DeleteCell Macro
'
' Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+M
'
    sCurSheet = ActiveSheet.Name
    sCurCell = ActiveCell.Address
    sCurVal = ActiveCell
    bScreenUpdating = Application.ScreenUpdating
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    Logit "@deleted '" & sCurVal & "' from " & sCurCell
    Range("Backup_data") = sCurVal
    
    Selection.Delete Shift:=xlUp '  1004         Cannot use that command on overlapping selections.
    Application.ScreenUpdating = bScreenUpdating
End Sub

Laser Habit Fail

One habit I've failed at is using a laser to restore my hair every other day. I bought something called HairMax Laser comb many years ago for $500. I have trouble remembering to use it.

One reason I forget is that  I'm supposed to use it every other day. I think I'd be better off doing it on specific days Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

This activity takes 15 minutes and now I'm going to add it to Microsoft Outlook. My Excel to-do list could use a way to automatically add the task to my to-do list.

Daily 5 Minute Journal March 25, 2016

I Think it Moved

If you haven't seen the Seinfeld episode, check it out, it's quite funny. George gets a massage and his reaction is priceless.

Then he breaks the news to Jerry.

Yesterday I went for my yearly urologist appointment. The doctor checked me down below the equator. But this time something was different. The doctor was very gentle and asked me first to drop my pants. The doctor looked and manually checked my private parts but...

                     I think it moved...

and then asked me to bend over to check my prostate. I was getting worried about this, but she didn't say anything so I guess it didn't bother her.

Quiet day due to good Friday

It was very quiet when I arrived at work at 11 AM. There was one guy there and me. It looked like a ghost town. But it was nice that it was pretty quiet. Next week my boss is on vacation and that's always a good thing.

Son back from College

It's always nice when my son is home from college. My other son and the dog really miss him like I do. On the downside when he's home I'm more likely to eat ice cream which I did after he went to Carvel and bought it for me.

Smith Machine

My Gym Habit Continues

I continue to make it to the gym at Planet Fitness. I've picked 3 days per week, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and my goal isn't any particular work out but just to go.

I picked these days because they have the least number of people at the gym. I found this info on Google, I do love Google. 

I find that people are very unfriendly there and I haven't talked to anyone since I joined. I also don't like that there are no Olympic weight lifting bars that aren't attached to a Smith Machine. There isn't a track, pool or basket ball court or class either, though many other machines, steppers, bikes, treadmills. I guess you get what you pay for, $10 per month.

Top Things

Some top things I want to focus on this weekend are:

1. Get Listi to not be unzoomed when using on phone
2. Speed up Listi during adds
3. Be able to quickly go to an item in my focus list
4. Add to a sheet with the shortcut and text
5. Load a shelf to list
6. Blog on one item from my focus list
7. 20/80 the list of items in my focus list
8. Use spreadsheet I've develople to a list into top 50/Bottom 50
9. House chores
10. Read/Record my ideas
11. Record a podcast then transcribe it
12. Record then transcribe model

Using Excel VBA Code to transcribe a podcast faster

I developed some code in Excel that allows me to transcribe a podcast faster. I'm wondering if this is a good idea to transcribe a podcast. This software certainly makes it easier to transcribe them. It uses Excel VBA to type in one window which is a form and control YouTube with Function keys. I use F5 to pause/start the video and F4 to go back 5 seconds. I'll post in a future blog how this works but if you're interested post a comment below and I'll post it sooner. 

I'm going to update the code to track how fast or slow it takes to transcribe a podcast. I've also been considering creating a process that allows me to outsource the creation of the podcast in parts and then charge for the transcription.

Excel VBA Time Tracking via Caption Monitoring

I've used what called caption monitoring at work to automatically track time spent on various tasks. Each window has a caption at the top and this information can be used to monitor what you're doning. This piece of Excel VBA software will log the caption of whatever window I'm on and the class name. Then I have code that looks for keywords in the caption or class name and tracks the time and counts the times I've used the window. I generalized the code where I can just add keywords to a spreadsheet to capture different windows. One thing that surprised me was how much time I spent on Outlook, which was over an hour 2 days in a row. This might be incorrect because if I was on Outlook and went to the bathroom this code would track thatI was on outlook the whole time. The next thing I need is to add is code to track when I'm not using the keyboard or mouse so this won't happen.

20-80 Rule vs. 80-20 Rule

The 80-20 Rule also known as Pareto's Law. This basically states that 80% of your outputs comes from 20% of your inputs. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. 80% of the time you wear 20% of your clothes. 

I don't like calling it the 80-20 Rule as I think 20-80 Rule better describe it. What 20% of the tasks I do give me the 80% of the desired results? I want to focus more on this 20%.

Car Shopping and Buyer's Remorse

I'm in the market for a new car since my lease is up. I first went to a Buick dealer to see what their new car is. Their commercial worked. I thought about the attractive women looking at the car and saying is that a Buick! The Enclave is a nice looking car, but the trunk was too small. Their other model the Buick Encore was okay but too expensive. The dealer also sold GMC cars. There was a blue GMC Terrain that we test drove. Our salesman Roberto was nice and the car was okay but the price of $258 was higher than we liked.  

We then went to a Honda dealer to look at a Honda CRV. We wound up leasing a Black Honda CRV. with 10,000 miles per year for  36 months for $279. Of course my buyers remorse has set in. Will black get too dirty? Will it be too hot in the summer? It certainly looks nice. I could be an Uber driver with this color. 

For those not familiar with the term buyers's remorse or seller's remorse it's pretty self-explanatory. After you buy something or sell something you'll be sorry that you did wondering if you made the right decision, got the best price...

I violated one of my rules. "Never buy something the day you see it."  So when you go car shopping or shopping for any big purchase, go home and mull over it for at least one night. Though doing this could cause another problem "analysis paralysis."

The negotiation was simple. We were offered $279 a month and wanted to get it down to $250 a month or avoid the $400 return fee on our current lease and $850 damage fee. So we asked if the $1250 could be waved. The salesperson Briana went to her manager and came back and accepted our offer. This made me a little suspect that my counter offer was too good.  We did take the car for a test drive and we already have a CRV so the risk is low. At first I wanted a grey version, but then thought the black would look nicer. 

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness

I developed a way to transcribe a podcast by using shortcut keys instead of the mouse. Am I wasting time transcribing the podcast? It's the efficiency vs. effectiveness debate introduced to me by +Tim Ferriss.  Now I can transcribe a podcast faster than ever before, but is this an effective use of my limited time. 

There is something about transcribing what +Seth Godin says that makes me learn it better so that's good. 

I was getting very annoyed at the previous method which was way to much typing and switching windows, moving the mouse back and forth. But on the other hand now I have a transcription of Tim Ferris and Seth Godin podcast. 

I did notice that Tim and Seth aren't as good speakers as I thought they were and could improve. Tim's questions would start somewhere and then go somewhere else and Seth's answers were also long winded. I guess they could both be more concise. Of course I'm not close to their skills but the transcription process taught me something.

I vs. You vs. People

One thing I'm not sure about in writing is when to use I, you or people. Recently I've notice that I use the term "you should" when I mean "people should." Even when blogging I'm not sure. I do know too much "I" is bad as I'm just talking about myself. I could DAMAGE (Don't Ask Me Ask Google Everything). I have software that does word counts so it would be interesting to analyze the number of times I use "I", "I'm", "my" or "we" vs. "you", "they", etc. I could also use a list of positive words or list of negative words to analyze my mood or a writer's mood

Don't Bother Me

Yesterday both of my son's wanted me to do things and I said "No." One  wants to go to city, Yankee game, and the other to play chess. I'm not sure why I said "No." I'm looking for someone to be closer with and my family is right there. Why did I avoid these. I believe that part of the reason is that these things aren't fun to me. Each one has it's issues. Maybe I need to have them do something for me first.

I work in New Your City everyday and walk between 1 - 3 hours there. It's not how I want to spend my weekend. But I would go to take the dog as I'd be interested in how she is with all the other dogs around. Chess is okay but I do find it boring. I've beaten my son and I'm also afraid of losing. I feel my time could be better put to use doing something else. I think I'll make a list of trades of things they could do for me if I do these things for them.

Google Ad Annoyance

One thing I've been finding annoying is seeing the same ad on every webpage I visit.  Once I search for something on Google this happens. I was looking for a car and now every ad is a car ad. If I buy protein bars then every ad is a protein bar ad.

On the other hand the content on the internet is free because of the ads. I don't mind seeing non-flashing type ads that I can ignore or view if they are something I'm interested in. But once I bought a car I don't want to see car ads over and over again.

Facebook Posts without Permission

I was searching for a solution to a problem on one of my spreadsheets. I wasn't seeing the grid-lines in Excel anymore. I tried everything I could easily think of and then searched Google and found a website with a very nicely documented answer at GuidingTech.com. I went to post a comment but my name showed via Facebook on the post. I didn't want to post it with my name but it did.

A Larry David Moment

My son told me about an incident at college that was right out of Curb your Enthusiasm. He can't find his Yankee hat and he sees a kid wearing it in his frat house. He says "That's my hat" and the kid says "My dad gave it to me." This reminds of where Larry's Joe Pepitone jersey goes missing and he sees a guy on the street wearing. Leon leaves the car and gets it for him.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - March 24, 2016

Garry Shandling died today

Twitter always seems to be the bearer of bad news. I didn't know his work that well but the few times he subbed for Johnny Carson I thought he was very funny.  Recently he was on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Garry Shandling - It's Great That Garry Shandling Is Still Alive - Episode - Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee by Jerry Seinfeld

4 Coincidences

I was sitting in the conference room at work while Evan ate his lunch. We were talking about my brother. I want my brother to meet Yanek a guy I work with. A second after I mention Yanek's name he pops into the conference room.

I'm walking my dog and we pass a male dog Rocky's house who for some reason my dog loves. All of a sudden the owner and Rocky show up in the car. It's stranged that our paths coincided at the exact same time.

I'm singing a song from Blazin Saddles the movie and my says that Madelin Kahn died at a young age. I asked her to check my list 187 Famous People Who Died Before Their Time. Tonight Garry Shandling passed away and I have to update the list

The final one was that I was working on a Comedy List today which was randomly selected for me and a comedian died so now I'll try to learn from his work.

Tweet comparison

I do two tweets and the results are interesting.

the first one was generated by YouTube when I liked the video. I didn't know it was doing this. The second was my tweet of the video. The tweets were 1 minute apart.

1. I liked a @YouTube video http://youtu.be/RkAxbHrwtpI?a  Happy Guy (1988-11-03)
2. "Time keeps ticking away" - #Devo - #Happy Guy

The key to why the second tweet had more engagements is likely the #Devo and #Happy hash-tags. I'm not 100% sure of this so I'd have to do more testing.

6 take-away's to improve your tweets

1. Use #hash-tags in your tweets
2. Keep the link at bottom not embedded
3. Use readable text in the link then a random set of characters
1. RkAxbHrwtpI vs. bit.ly/HappyGuy
4. Use an interesting quote from the video
5. Keep it short
6. Don't use the standard text from a system like YouTube

Daily Journal March 22, 2016

Excel To-do List

Today I got a lot done at work.

And why?

I have a great tool to help me.

It works on a pretty simple principle. It answers the question "What should I do now?"  

Now as I get distracted it also answers the question "What should I be working on?"

In addition, it time-boxes the task so I can use Parkinson's Law to set a limit on time I spend on it.

The basic idea is to capture things I have to do into 3 columns of a spreadsheet. 

1. The first column is the highest priority stuff to get to
2. The second column is the next level priority
3. The third column is the backlog of stuff I need to get to

The I randomly select a task to do from the 1st column. The spreadsheet selects it and I start to work on it. I can select 15, 30 or 60 minutes to work on the task or skip it if I want.

When the task is selected it shows me in a form what I'm working on with the elapsed time. When I finish the task I use the Strike-through font (Ctrl+5). .  

I'm sure that doesn't make sense so I'll have to put a video together showing the power of this tool.

Caption Monitoring

One thing I'm working on is better time tracking. I was wondering how much time I spend in Outlook so I developed some Excel VBA code to monitor the Active window and track the amount of time I'm in Outlook.  I think this could be useful for detecting time other software is being used. After developing it I'm not sure that it's that useful as there is a process that I take when I get emails. There are 3 types of emails:

1. Useless stuff that I didn't need to look at
2. Information that I may need in the future
3. Some request that I need to answer

Now the 3rd item can take me from minutes to days depending on what the request is. So knowing that I was in Outlook gives me some information but it doesn't track well the issue that I'm working on. I would be nice to be able to track information related to the request that came in.

Ernie Belittles me

My friend Ernie at work belittles me because I told him about my list of  > 100 things I'm focusing on. He's a Buddhist and to him it's the opposite of focused.  "You can't do that!" But maybe I can and maybe it's exactly what I want to do. I can explore new things and put to rest tasks that I don't want to do and figure what to work on. I got the idea from +james altucher who says to be working on 20 ideas because you don't know which one will get traction. Then he minimizes my video on how to transcribe a podcast with shortcut keys.

Left out again

Not sure why I wasn't included in a meeting this morning. My boss invited everyone on the team but forgot to invite me. WTF. He realized it an then invited me after the meeting was in progress for 10 minutes.

Interesting Titles

I was at Barnes and Noble and they had a number of interesting titles. I bought War of Art

• The Art of Thinking Clearly
• This Book will make you Smarter
• Idiots Guide to unlocking Creativity
• Wired to Create
• The Art of Creative Thinking
• Why we Snap
• One Simple Idea

Voice Recognition to Transcribe a Podcast

I tried to use the Windows and the Google software to transcribe a podcast but it doesn't work. I think it's still quicker and better to just type it. The software could barely understand any words. The only thing that worked partially was playing the podcast to headphones and repeating what the guests were saying. I'm going to try a test for a fixed time say 10 minutes and see which has better results.

Yesterday I posted a video on how to transcribe a podcast using short cut keys. The main keys to use are:

Key	Action
Alt+Tab	Switch Window
Alt+Shift+Tab	Switch Window
Space	Play/Pause YouTube video toggle
Left Arrow	Back video 5 seconds on YouTube
Right Arrow	Forward video 5 seconds on YouTube
Ctrl+PgDn	Next tab in Chrome
Ctrl+PgUp	Prev tab in Chrome

Nice Guitar

While napping yesterday I awake to the following video on PBS of Paint it Black.

Daily 5 minute journal - March 21, 2016

At work there was a networking session for an hour where you chatted with a co-worker. There was a basket where you could put your business card into or just write it on an index card. A pretty woman named Patina picked my card so she talked with me. She was from India and was very friendly.

We watched video feed of a boring meeting, with 3 executives on stage. One them Lori was asked a question and went on for 15 minutes with a boring corporate speak answer that could be right out of Al Yancovic's song Mission Statement

Today I collected information for my taxes. Tax day is coming up soon. I have a corporation that doesn't sell anything and every year I pay $250 to have my taxes done.

I looked at Amazon today and see that they have many ways of making money, maybe too many so that you get overwhelmed and don't sign up for anything.

It was a cold and windy day in NYC, I walked 3 - 4 miles in the evening with my fried Evan.  I'm looking forward to watching "Better Call Saul."

I want to transcribe these executive talks and get word counts.

5 Keys to Success at Work

Today I felt left out. Ivan and Mary were working on a problem and a demo and I wasn't included. I haven't been invited to meetings with the user and have been left out of important emails that would help. This angered me a little. I've been left out in the past. I remember at an old job all the traders were going out for drinks, but I wasn't invited. I need to get this email and read email's I've received.

I worked on something I find very boring. Working on something that you find boring is a guarantee for failure. This is a process that I took over from someone else and I'm not even sure if it's still used. I did some research and sent out some emails. I'll have to wait until tomorrow to get an answer.

My success at work always came from spending more time at work than others. At my current job I really haven't spent much overtime at work.

I've been interviewing people lately but don't feel I've been prepared enough for the interviews. I have it on my to-do list but don't seem to be able to make the time for it.

There is also lots of technology I need to improve at and business concepts that I don't know that others are more familiar with. Some of the tech is:

• Java
• Debugging Java
• IMM Basel
• Basel
• Tableau
• MapR
• Apache Drill
• Application Database
• Other systems
• Unix
• SVN
• Jenkins
• JQuery
• Build/Release process
• Terminology

To summarize the key take-aways:

1. Work overtime
2. Read important emails
3. Follow up
4. Be prepared
5. Spend time learning each day

Daily 5 Minute Journal - March 8, 2016

Where's my F@#ken Lunch

Today, I went to the kitchen at work to get butter so I could make my Bulletproof Coffee. When I got there my butter was gone.  There was a sign on the refrigerator that said "All food will be removed on Friday March 4th" which I did.  So on Monday I bring in my butter but notice that the refrigerator isn't that clean. When I go to get my butter it's gone. I had also wrote all over the box.

Do not throw out!!
My name
phone number.

 But it was gone. I got so angry that someone threw it out. It turns out they came to clean out the refrigerator on Monday and not Friday.

Later in the day I realized that it was only $4.00 and there are people who don't even have food. It wasn't the end of the world.

Interviews

I interviewed 2 people today and some things I need to do and noticed.

Both resumes had summary sections which were way too long. Summary means summary and not 385 words.  There is a general rule of presenting data in 7+/-2 which means a bulleted list should have from 5 - 9 items. The same goes for PowerPoint slides, number of people reporting to a manager, chapters in a book, etc.

When I see a resume its the first impression I have of the candidate. They're setting me up for a negative confirmation bias. I feel that the resume is an assignment the candidate does. If it is sloppy, too long, has typos it reflects how they'll perform on the job. A bad resume can show an inattention to details, not caring, not verifying what the recruiter is sending out.

I showed this to two managers and one said it's okay for a programmer but not okay for a manager. The other manager said that it doesn't correlate with work performance and that these guys don't have to be great writers or marketing wizards.

These were both phone interviews today and I couldn't understand the first candidate. He seemed smart enough but was very hard to understand. I almost ended the interview early, but didn't. When considering a candidate I hire people at the company I work for as if it was my own business.

The second candidate appeared to be lying to me. We are looking for people with Tableau and Apache Drill skills, but this candidate made it seem like he did these on the job but didn't. I found this out by asking very specific questions.

One of the things I noticed that the resumes repeated terms over and over. I'm not sure if this was to do well on search, but have two resumes if you're doing this. One for the search engines and one for the interview. Before the interview I developed a spreadsheet that counted the words used.

I did this by copying the text from the resume and importing the text delimited by space, Then I ran a script that created one column out of the data. I removed blanks with filtering and then ran a pivot table to get word counts.

Resume #1

• and - 6.3%
• Data - 2.5%
• Hive - 1.2%
• Java - 1.2%
• Hadoop - 1.0%
• ETL - 0.7%
• MapReduce - 0.7%
• Pig - 0.7%
• Sqoop - 0.6%

Resume #2 (2,240 words)

• and - 6.3%
• Data - 3.2%
• Hive - 1.5%
• SQL - 1.1%
• HDFS - 0,9%
• Hadoop - 0.9%
• Pig - 0.9%
• Sqoop - 0.8%

The routine to extract this data is:

Sub ConvertToOneCol()

Dim i As Long

'select data and paste into sheet set the delimiter to space, comma, period

'set the 26 below to the last column

lr = FindLastRow(1)

'Find the last column

For i = 2 To 26 'the 26 is the last column

    Cells(1, i).Select

    r = FindLastRow(i)

    Range(cl(i) & "1:" & cl(i) & r).Cut

    Cells(lr + 1, 1).Select

    ActiveSheet.Paste

    lr = FindLastRow(1)

Next

End Sub

The above routine uses two functions:

• FindLastRow( )
• cl( )

The first function returns the last row of the passed column. The cl function does a column lookup converting column i to it's letter equivalent. For example cl(27) returns AA.

This seems like it would be a nice webpage to extract word counts. One strange thing I noticed was that two different resumes used the word "and" 6.3% of the time. That's just weird.

One thing I just learned is that before you develop a tool, see if someone has already solved this problem. https://wordcounter.net/ solved this problem and I could have saved time by just using their webpage instead of developing the code myself.

I still need to have better questions for the interviews I do and prepare not before the meeting.

How will I get to the next step and what is the next step?

I'm not sure what's next for me. I'm working on a bunch of projects both at work and at home.  My list of projects in prioritized order based on time spent is:

1. Daily Blog
2. Twitter
3. Super Productivity
4. Health
5. Excel Class

No Rain - Blind Mellon

This song came up in my Google play today and I like it.

Penalty Kill Hockey Sticks

While watching the Islander game during a penalty kill I saw a player's stick break, so the 5 on 4 became a 5 on 3. There should be special sticks for when you're killing penalties so that your stick doesn't break.  Just a thought.

Better Call Saul

I liked this week's Better Call Saul. I could do without the scenes of Saul's brother but the scene with Mike and Tuco was really good. I'm leaving out the details because I don't want to spoil it if you didn't see it.

Daily 5 Minute Journal - March 7, 2016

Rebate from Staples

Have you heard of the rebate scam. This is where you buy a product and are given a rebate in the form of a coupon or action to take to get some money back. But the majority of people forget to submit it. According to Wikipedia the rates can be as low as 2 - 5%.  Also there are 2 times when the consumer could fail to get the rebate. The first is if they forget to submit it and the second is if they forget to cash the check.

On the receipt there was no indication of a rebate, so I called the 800 number and they helped me complete the Staples rebate form online.

Task at the last minute

I hate when I get a task to do at the last minute. My boss tells me at the end of the day he needs a report. So I have to work overtime from home on this. This couldn't wait until tomorrow?

Frustrating day at work

Today was a frustrating day at work for me. I was trying to copy data from my local PC to a MapR cluster and kept getting error messages when trying to read avro formatted files in a directory. At first I was having issues due to a bug in Apache Drill that was solved by updating it to a newer version 1.5. 

I was also getting an error -Xmx512m is not a recognized as an internal or external... This error was caused by my JAVA_HOME=c:\program files\.....  and the space in the directory was causing the problem. I did a Dir /x which shows the 8 character filename and used that which was PROGRA~1. 

Your draw is messy

A co-worker comes over to my desk and says "Your draw is messy." I wasn't in the mood to hear this and didn't care much about what he thought. Keep these things to yourself. So I said to him how come your shirt isn't ironed, it's all wrinkly.  Don't give unsolicited advice to people. 

He also made a comment about whether I was drinking Bulletproof coffee and a previous day he was looking through a bag of mine to see what I bought. 

Books at Barnes and Noble

I wanted to buy some books:

• 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions
• Start your own eLearning or Training Business
• Big Data for dummies
• Python for kids

But the line was too long. When I looked them up on Amazon I saw that they were all rated poorly and priced much lower. 

 Was on sale used for $10.00 with shipping vs. $30.
The eLearning book was $14 vs. $20.00 and only had 3 stars. The Interview Question book was $4.00 vs. $15.00 and was rated 4 stars

Find String Code

I have some Excel VBA code that will find strings in text files.  I have 6500 files that I have to search each for 6000 different strings or however many you specify. The output is the file names in column A and in column B - IV contains what matched.

This code takes a very long time and usage of Doevents and Application.Statusbar is needed. Also I have code to update the status bar every 500 items by doing a remainder calc as follows

If j Mod 500 = 0 Then

      doevents

      Application.StatusBar = Application.StatusBar & "."

End If

Daily 5 Minute Journal - March 5, 2016

Excel Diet (XD) - not doing well

My Excel Diet isn't going well. I'm still not doing the things I'm supposed to do. Last night I had pizza which is not allowed if I'm behind my goal and I'm behind my goal. I weighed 165 this morning but I have a new wrinkle that is weight lifting. I might not be losing weight but I might be losing fat.

Planet Fitness

Gym going good. I joined Feb. 10, 2016 and have consistently gone 3 days a week for almost a month. I made it my goal to just go without any pressure to workout and to not hurt myself.

One of the rules appears to be to wipe down the equipment after you work out, but the rule should be wipe down equipment before you work out.  This way if you don't mind laying in someone else's sweat you can but just not wiping down the equipment.

I hurt myself doing shrugs with 185 lbs. which is too much and now I have a pain in the neck.

I'm a little bored with the gym as they don't have a track, basketball court, classes or pool. Free weights are lacking and people are very unfriendly. I was thinking about a system where each equipment was a computer and you pass your bar code to it and it tracks and records the workout helping you to reach your goals. I'm sure they have this already. The machine would help prevent you from getting hurt and optimize your time.

Four Hour Body

I'm reading the Four Hour Body by +Tim Ferriss and liking it a lot. One problem is that it's such a big and heavy book I don't what to take it with me.  I've been trying his suggested take 30 gms of protein within 30 minutes of awakening since Feb. 8th and today is day 26. I'm down about 3 lbs. but I don't know if this technique has anything to do with it. It does contradict the intermittent fasting idea which is to fast for 16 - 18 hours per day that is eat from 12 pm - 6 pm.  This is hard. Eating 30 gms of protein isn't that easy either.  Today I had a bag of quest potato chips (25gms) and cheese (8 gms).

Economy

I'm a little worried about the economy as I noticed 59 empty stores in New York City one day and 77 the next day. This reminds me of the Great Recession when I also noticed this.

I'm a little concerned about my job as there are constantly changes, we don't seem to have a budget. A co-worker keeps sending me news stories about layoffs. Worry isn't an option but being prepared is. I need to spend time preparing by updating my resume, website, interviewing skills and knowledge.

Diabetes

I don't like my endocrinologist. She was supposed to refill my prescription but hasn't. I'm thinking about seeing Dr. Berstein that's 2 hours away by round trip and would have to take a day off unless he's available on weekends.

Dog Fight

I had a fight with my dog the other day because she growled at me when I went near her bone. I got very angry and took the bone from here. It seems she knows she made a mistake. She recently stopped coming into bed at night. 

My dog has us trained two ways. We put up a bell on the door so she could ring it to tell us she wants to go outside, but she changed it to mean give me a treat. She also tells me she wants to play outside by knocking on the door, and waiting until I open it, she runs away to her toy and wants me to play tug-of-war or chase. 

Recently I've been very annoyed with her constantly interrupting me to go in and out and in and out. So many interruptions.

Overdue books

I've been trying to not be late with paying bills and renewing books from the library but I've been unsuccessful at this. I even set up some Excel code that goes to the library's webpage and looks up how many days until next book is due. I need to improve the code to check everyday and send me an email or automatically renew the book before it's due.

Job

I'm liking my job a little better these days. I've been interviewing people which I like to do. I've been getting more responsibility in terms of running meetings and interviewing people. I spoke with 3 candidates on the phone for 30 minutes. I'd like to better work out the technical questions I ask. I've identified 2 questions that can tell how curious someone is. 

1. What is the number that comes after million, billion, trillion?
2. How does a car work?

I also like to have people self-rate themselves on a scale of 1 - 10 on a technology then see if they are the number they say to show honesty.

I judge resumes as attention to detail by looking for typos. Communication skills, and other things which I'll update in a future post. 

One of my goals has been to find one question which will allow you to determine if a person should be hired or not. I'd have to ask candidates a number of questions and find a correlation between the success of the people and the questions they answered. 

In terms of running meetings or interviewing people one key is to be prepared. My meeting is on Tuesday mornings so on Monday I made time to go to the conference room and set everything up. During this process I got the Blue Screen of Death. I'm glad this happened while preparing and not in the actual meeting.

We have meetings 3 times a week to say what we worked what we'll be working on and any obstacles. On Friday we give a demo on what we worked on and I need to prepare better for this.

I'm liking the new things at work that I'm learning:

• Tableau
• Hadoop
• Unix
• Avro format
• Parquet format
• Python coding
• Drill
• MapR

I'm not liking that my boss is taking a co-worker to meetings that I'm not invited to. Whenever we do our scrum she always says she has nothing to report. 

Monthly Goal

March is here and I don't have a goal for the month. I'm not sure what my February goal was either. But some possibilities are:

• Work 60 or more hours per week
• Develop Excel class
• Figure what I like or don't like to do from a list of tasks and trying to write on it

Excel Class

I've been working on an Excel class or training and am finding this very difficult to complete. I think a method to help create training would be a fun but difficult project to complete. One technique that appears to be helping is 7+/-2. This means that the class or training should be broken into 5 - 9 chapters, lessons, etc.  So my first top level is:

1. How to learn
2. Problem solving
3. Excel beginner
4. Excel intermediate
5. Excel advanced
6. VBA
7. Advanced VBA
8. VBA by project
9. Reference

Time Tracking

One long time goal of mine has been time tracking without effort. I have x ways to track time:

1. Logger
2. Time-creator.com
3. hourly track what you worked on (timers.xlsm)
4. Caption monitoring
5. Idle time monitoring

Listi

My Listi.net website has some limitations when it comes to included data from Microsoft Word. There are special characters that don't show well:

• single quote
• double quote
• dash
• bullets
• bullets within bullets

Extracting knowledge from sheets

I've been spending time extracting ideas, notes and other concepts from projects I previously worked on. There is knowledge in the books I've bought, read, didn't read. I'd like a prioritized list of topics to write about to help prioritize my likes and dislikes.

Marcus Lemonis on James Altucher's podcast

This is an interesting interview with Marcus Lemonis who is star of the TV show The Profit on CNBC. James interrupts his guest too much and his wife Claudia is pretty annoying at the beginning of the show. I like +Marcus Lemonis, he should write a book of his wisdom. Some of the take-aways I got are:

• People
• Passion for business not $
• People are the most important thing as they control the process and product.
• Process
• Buy productive equipment
• Make little changes
• High overhead is bad
• Product
• Change name so it's scalable
• One dimensional products are bad
• If you don't want cupcakes you can't go to Crumbs
• If you want a spin class you can't go to Pro-fit
• 
  

Questions to ask

•  Product
• Can I use better/fresher/healthier ingredients?
• Use fresh instead of factory made
• Is the product too focused?
• Do I get hi frequency of visits?
• Do I get repetitive business?
• What new products can I sell?
• Is product authentic to the business?
• Did I get feedback?
• How does the customer see the product?
• Is the product of high quality?
• Can we think outside the box?
• What does consumer think?
• When they walk in the store?
• When they taste the product?
• Process
• Do I know my numbers?
• Costs to make
• Profit margins
• Is space being used efficiently
• Can I increase the profit margins?
• People
• Do I want to work with these people?
• Can they be trusted?
• Will there egos get in the way of making changes?
• Is person scared to take a risk?
• Do I love the story?

What to look for in a business

• Are these people I want to work with?
• Do they have a great story?
• Can this business enhance an existing business I have?
• Crumbs and Mr. Green Tea
• Eco Me and Camping World
• Does this business scale?

Negative rules

I keep a list of Key Principles that I believe can contribute to success. Recently a friend of mine helped me come up with negative rules. These are things to avoid doing or doing the opposite of something you don't like. For example if you look at bad customer service, doing the opposite can result in great customer service. 

1. Build people up
2. Don't tell people "they can't succeed" after they tell you something
3. Don’t call people old
4. Don't say "you" when you mean "people"

Build People Up

I recently started going to the gym and asked a friend if he could see a difference because I could and he said "No.". I think a white lie here would be more appropriate than honesty. I would have felt better for free. If someone asks me about themselves I will always agree with them if it helps them and doesn't hinder them.

You Can't

I also told this friend that I'm going 3x per week to the gym and it's already a habit after only going a few times. My friend challenged me and said it's too short to call it a habit. He could have said "Wow, congratulations on that success," instead of telling me "You can't."  My wife did the same recently. I don't remember the exact situation but it was very similar. I proposed some future positive state and she crushed it.

You're Old

I'm not sure why someone would say this. I do feel old and not happy with the way I'm aging. Then this same friend sames that I'm old. This made me feel bad. Basically don't put down people, build them up.

You

I use the term "you" when I mean "people", "others" or "someone." I could see how you, I mean people or someone might be offended by this.

Excel Class creation method

I'm in the process of trying to create an Excel class but I'm finding it very difficult. This could be a very valuable tool to help take someone's knowledge and convert it to a:

• Class
• Book
• PowerPoint presentation
• One page guide
• Computer based training
• Webpage

and being to easily modify, add, version, sell the content.

Chest pain

Last night I had some chest pains and not sure what it was. I did have spicy buffalo chicken pizza and it could have been from that or from something much worse.