Otis on Leadership
In Shawshank redemption Otis “Red” goes before the parole board with promises to be better. He tries to play by the rules and repeatedly gets denied. Finally, he has had enough and lets them have it. He is done with their game, they can keep him there forever. He speaks Continue Reading
Making PDFs editable
I automate everything and PDFs are so easy to fill in automatically. It’s a digital world and we just live in it. It’s so frustrating to get a “protected form” that doesn’t allow for appending documents, automated form completion or even filling out fields. It’s silly because all of these Continue Reading
Protected: 2019 Travel
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
New Jersey School Heat Map
This morning before church, I wrote some code to build a contour plot of schools in New Jersey. The “hot” reddish regions have the best schools and the cooler regions don’t. Tech Stuff: How it’s made This wasn’t that easy. Since I had all the code from my previous post, Continue Reading
Tax time automation
Happy New Year! Bring in the new year with some code to transform USAA bank statements into a set of transactions for 2016. It is a little tricky because there are some 2015 transactions in the list and USAA puts transactions on two lines. To use, just save the bank Continue Reading
July 4th Home Project: Thermostat Bracket
This post is about how to use design tools to save time and build nice stuff at home using computer controlled machines (CNC). In addition to describing my design process, I’ve also included the helpful references I found along the way. Our old thermostat was too small for our wall. Continue Reading
CY2014 Quarter 1 Financial Review
Chrissy and I review our spending on a quarterly basis. Updating every 90 days isn’t too long to correct mistakes and remember purchases, but it also allows for the busy multi-week sprints that life presents us. While we have used every financial management program available, I’ve found the most straightforward Continue Reading
Excel Sorting and Grouping
I had two tables downloaded from Amazon: Items Order Date Order ID Title Category 1/26/14 102-4214073-2201835 Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book A 1/13/14 115-8766132-0234619 Awesome Book B and Orders Order Date Order ID Subtotal 1/6/14 102-6956821-1091413 $43.20 1/13/14 115-8766130-0234619 $19.42 1/16/14 109-8688911-2954602 $25.86 I’m building our Q1 Continue Reading
Practical Cutting Stock Problem
Warning. This post is for an audience of close to zero. My technical friends will find this pretty basic, and my non-technical friends will find this too technical. Welcome to the middle space that I occupy between these two worlds. I wanted to build this series of retaining walls to Continue Reading
“I’m Busy”
As we enter the Christmas/holiday season, I’m asking lots of friends how they are doing and how their year has been. Almost everyone says “it’s busy”. This takes many forms, from “crazy busy” to “absolutely busy” or “scary busy”. Since words often lose their meaning, I’ve thought about a scale Continue Reading