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Other What's ruining your life right now?

Discussion in 'General' started by TheMusician, 28 Oct 2009.

  1. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    Don't get me started on Excel usage. I've seen it used for everything! Project planning, shift schedules, HR, invoicing, and even as a "homepage" with lots of buttons which just link out to different shared folders! :wallbash:
     
  2. MadGinga

    MadGinga oooh whats this do?

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    I love excel. its my default work location. BUT i also recognise and use more appropriate software when necessary. As somewhere to collate my thoughts its great - lists, simple calcs, etc. but to take it further? take it where it belongs.
     
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  3. Midlight

    Midlight Minimodder

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    I have had arguments with people over using excel as a database, when we have an SQL database that they could use instead. One that is properly maintained and backed up etc. But no, shared excel file on sharepoint that decides to crap itself every other day is the superior solution.
     
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  4. MadGinga

    MadGinga oooh whats this do?

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    my "leadership" think that onenote is an appropriate space to share/store project/programme critical information...
     
  5. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    Meanwhile, my corporate overlords are trying to cram everything they can into a single smartsheet. :duh:
     
  6. mi1ez

    mi1ez Modder

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    We have a team that insists on using a highly customised on-prem Jira (that we have to manage) as a sales tool. Been trying for years to get them to use Salesforce.
     
  7. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Oh man, don't get me started on Smartsheets. The Sales team love using them and as a result there are about a million of the damn things. The sad thing is that they don't even have a priority or due date column.
     
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  8. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    I work in the technical support and system design department of a company that deals with HV power earthing and lightning/surge protection, and our workstations are pretty high spec as we do a lot with CAD and also the simulation of power earthing system designs. Now our finance department should be perfectly fine with the standard office PCs that other departments such as purchasing, quotations, and shipping use, but they have been working through the same 2 or 3 spreadsheets for YEARS and as a result these documents are massive with hundreds of sheets and pages, thousands of links to pages and cells built up over the years of use. They now need workstations that are similar to ours, at least in terms of RAM capacity just so that they can get things done... There should, and I am sure that there is, a much better way of doing it, but as is the way with these things, left too late and would take a few new hires to go through and renovate things.
     
  9. Pete J

    Pete J Employed scum

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    Some git's signed for my latest Lego delivery a week ago and not realised (accidentally or otherwise) that it's not for them.
     
  10. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I'm old enough to remember when spreadsheets had a "CALCULATE" menu option, 'cos it took so long you pressed it and went away for a cup of tea...
     
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  11. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    By no means ruining, but.... frustrating....

    Setting up a new website and having to wait for DNS changes to propagate, domain ownership to validate, etc, before I can carry on. Just... incredibly frustrating when hyperfocus has kicked in I have to stop and wait every 10-15 minutes.
     
  12. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    That menu option is still there in Excel, albeit it's largely redundant. Unless of course you have a spreadsheet that's so badly setup leaving auto calculate turned on brings even high end workstations to their knees every time you change a single cell.

    This may or may not be based on actual events :lol:
     
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  13. Almightyrastus

    Almightyrastus On the jazz.

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    We used to have to do the same with the power earthing simulation software that we run. It is a suite of modules called CDEGS and calculates (among other things) the voltage rise over an area that has an HV earthing system in it. Thankfully things are a lot better now with more modern hardware, but still can take a while while it chunters through things, especially over large area systems using multi layer soil resistivity models.

    This is the problem that our finance derpartment has. Their spreadsheets are years old and just been built on over time to the point where they now have workstations that are like ours, typically Xeon based with as much RAM as they can sensibly get away with speccing, all to run Excel...
     
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  14. Spraduke

    Spraduke Lurker

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    I may or may not be responsible for generating such spreadsheets in my early career. Makes me cringe now but the company philosophy was (and often still is) to use Excel for everything: Database - Excel, Dataprocessor - Excel, Simulation - Excel, Finance System - Excel etc etc.

    It is a testament to Excels design that it really can be used (incorrectly) for so many different business tasks. The world certainly wouldn't work without it.
     
  15. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I can't judge, the first tool I ever reach for is a Bash shell script...
     
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  16. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Not touched it for decades but used to create a lot of hungry mess with Excel and a bit of VBA, oooh the power, had to justify IT spends :D
     
  17. noizdaemon666

    noizdaemon666 I'm Od, Therefore I Pwn

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    It seems endemic, certainly in smaller companies! You are right though, Excel is an incredibly versatile tool, even if that isn't always useful.
     
  18. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Wrote one just yesterday :D
     
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  19. IanW

    IanW Grumpy Old Git

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    I just remembered that the equivalent to Excel for the Acorn Archimedes & RiscPC concealed an entire flight simulator as an easter egg.
     
  20. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    You sure you're not thinking of Excel '97? 'cos that had a hidden (rubbish) flight simulator - a follow-up to Excel '95's Hall of Tortured Souls. Excel 2000 had a Spy Hunter clone with the programmers' credits written on the road.
     
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