LTE 2.0

[captmojo]

Being a native of 'The Rock', I'm leery of anyone from Wentworth.

Beyond that, he shares the same name as my PHB. (again)

[CathyCA]

Being a native of 'The Rock', I'm leery of anyone from Wentworth.

Beyond that, he shares the same name as my PHB. (again)

Oh, I'll bet your PHB has quite a few nicknames, doesn't he?

[YmoBeThere]

There was a mouse in the house...

[CameronBornAndBred]

There was a mouse in the house...

Get a cat for your flat.

[Very Duke Blue]

There was a mouse in the house...

Get a cat for your flat.

[Very Duke Blue]

I can't believe I'm brave enough (or crazie enough) to fly Sunday, 9-ll.

[Turk]

I can't believe I'm brave enough (or crazie enough) to fly Sunday, 9-ll.

I beg to differ, I've done it before. No day would be safer, IMHO. Might need to get to the airport an hour or two earlier for the bonus cavity search, though...

[YmoBeThere]

Mr. Mouse is no longer, I'm not sure who did it, but one of the 4 did.

[DukePA]

Mr. Mouse is no longer, I'm not sure who did it, but one of the 4 did.

Yay, kitty, kitties!!!!

[OZZIE4DUKE]

I can't believe I'm brave enough (or crazie enough) to fly Sunday, 9-ll.

One of my best friends (a fraternity brother and classmate) and his wife are flying to London on Sunday. They picked the date specifically as an act of defiance.

[DukieInKansas]

I can't believe I'm brave enough (or crazie enough) to fly Sunday, 9-ll.

One of my best friends (a fraternity brother and classmate) and his wife are flying to London on Sunday. They picked the date specifically as an act of defiance.

I like your friend!

My neighbors will be flying home on 9/11/11.

[captmojo]

Being a native of 'The Rock', I'm leery of anyone from Wentworth.

Beyond that, he shares the same name as my PHB. (again)

Oh, I'll bet your PHB has quite a few nicknames, doesn't he?

I sarcastically call him 'Fearless Leader'.

Unholy Three.jpg (10.92 KiB) Viewed 313 times

[ArkieDukie]

My PHB has multiple names as well. One of my faves, coined by a coworker, is Captain Crisis. Let's just say PHB is more reactive than proactive.

[ArkieDukie]

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

PHB has relegated me to doing lots of tedious, mindless tasks. They take a ridiculous amount of time, and they could be automated by a knowledgable person. So, this weekend, when I'm not at choir retreat, I'm teaching myself Perl by working through Robert's Perl Tutorial. I've also tried a little bit of VBA programming in Excel, but I think I might be able to do what needs to be done a bit better using Perl. My plan is to build (and troubleshoot) the Perl script and present it to him when I'm absolutely positive it works. I've chosen to start with automating a fairly simple task; I'll increase the degree of difficulty with future scripts.

It's win-win: knowing this type of programming improves my marketability. It also gives me the capability to automate menial tasks that take hours, thereby improving productivility. And, finally, it improves my odds of making myself indispensable before I find a new job.

Sure hope I can pull this off. Do any of you know Perl? Any helpful advice?

[YmoBeThere]

No helpful advice, all I seem to know right now is that it is well past breakfast time.

[Turk]

I can't believe I'm brave enough (or crazie enough) to fly Sunday, 9-ll.

One of my best friends (a fraternity brother and classmate) and his wife are flying to London on Sunday. They picked the date specifically as an act of defiance.

I like your friend!

My neighbors will be flying home on 9/11/11.

Never thought of this until now, but the people who will probably have the most uncomfortable time this weekend are those of Middle Eastern ancestry (or look like it). And here are a couple recommendations for the portable music device:

http://www.johnflynn.net/jfnet/lyrics/i ... t_fear.htm

http://www.lyricsdepot.com/neil-young/lets-roll.html

Save travels, everyone.

[Turk]

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

PHB has relegated me to doing lots of tedious, mindless tasks. They take a ridiculous amount of time, and they could be automated by a knowledgable person. So, this weekend, when I'm not at choir retreat, I'm teaching myself Perl by working through Robert's Perl Tutorial. I've also tried a little bit of VBA programming in Excel, but I think I might be able to do what needs to be done a bit better using Perl. My plan is to build (and troubleshoot) the Perl script and present it to him when I'm absolutely positive it works. I've chosen to start with automating a fairly simple task; I'll increase the degree of difficulty with future scripts.

It's win-win: knowing this type of programming improves my marketability. It also gives me the capability to automate menial tasks that take hours, thereby improving productivility. And, finally, it improves my odds of making myself indispensable before I find a new job.

Sure hope I can pull this off. Do any of you know Perl? Any helpful advice?

Good call choosing Perl over VBA. It's a good, versatile tool. I have not written Perl myself, but I've worked on teams in a few places where little automation tasks such as you're envisioning have morphed into full-blown apps that become vital to the business or IT operation. In addition to adding a new skill as you've noted, it also gives you a good weapon in your ongoing "WWWD" guerilla warfare with PHB. This will improve your productivity, but that doesn't mean you need to give it away for free to PHB.

Your PHB has expectations that the grunt work will continue to take a lot of time as in the past, and as you shorten the actual time needed with your Perl scripts, you can now do what you want during your workday with all the new free time, like look for a new job or add other industry-related skills to your already formidable arsenal. My recommendation is to don't forget you're a short-timer not long for their world. Why bust a kidney for PHB? Do what you're told in the time it usually takes, and save the good stuff for your next job.

[YmoBeThere]

I have a strong desire to pull weeds in my yard right now.

[bjornolf]

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

PHB has relegated me to doing lots of tedious, mindless tasks. They take a ridiculous amount of time, and they could be automated by a knowledgable person. So, this weekend, when I'm not at choir retreat, I'm teaching myself Perl by working through Robert's Perl Tutorial. I've also tried a little bit of VBA programming in Excel, but I think I might be able to do what needs to be done a bit better using Perl. My plan is to build (and troubleshoot) the Perl script and present it to him when I'm absolutely positive it works. I've chosen to start with automating a fairly simple task; I'll increase the degree of difficulty with future scripts.

It's win-win: knowing this type of programming improves my marketability. It also gives me the capability to automate menial tasks that take hours, thereby improving productivility. And, finally, it improves my odds of making myself indispensable before I find a new job.

Sure hope I can pull this off. Do any of you know Perl? Any helpful advice?

Good call choosing Perl over VBA. It's a good, versatile tool. I have not written Perl myself, but I've worked on teams in a few places where little automation tasks such as you're envisioning have morphed into full-blown apps that become vital to the business or IT operation. In addition to adding a new skill as you've noted, it also gives you a good weapon in your ongoing "WWWD" guerilla warfare with PHB. This will improve your productivity, but that doesn't mean you need to give it away for free to PHB.

Your PHB has expectations that the grunt work will continue to take a lot of time as in the past, and as you shorten the actual time needed with your Perl scripts, you can now do what you want during your workday with all the new free time, like look for a new job or add other industry-related skills to your already formidable arsenal. My recommendation is to don't forget you're a short-timer not long for their world. Why bust a kidney for PHB? Do what you're told in the time it usually takes, and save the good stuff for your next job.

Man, I've been out of the industry too long. I don't know what either of those are. You mentioned Excel programming, though. I helped my wife develop several spreadsheets at work where she can enter a couple values, and it will figure out all kinds of fun things for her. She has leave calculator spreadsheets that figure out how much leave she's earning throughout the year so she can see if she'll have enough leave for our vacations if she takes a day here or a day there. She has spreadsheets that help her calculate her production goals (they have quotas they have to meet per time worked) for any time period from a bi-week to a quarter to her yearly bonuses. She has spreadsheets to help keep track of her "other" time (time spent doing work related tasks that don't count towards her quotas). She even has personal spreadsheets on our home computer that she's used to do our weekly and monthly budgets, as well as figure out grocery lists (usually when she's baking for the holidays and needs large amounts of basics like eggs, sugar, flour, etc... she can just put in the recipes' ingredient lists and it adds them to the columns of items needed) and income and calculating our monthly payments/closing costs when we've purchased new homes to make sure we could afford them. My wife is an Excel demon. There's nothing she can't use Excel for.

[ArkieDukie]

I'm pretty good with Excel, too, which is why I started with VBA. One of the things I do pretty regularly is pull key words (gene symbol) out of a string of text (protein description), group the items in the spreadsheet by gene symbol, and then look up the gene symbols in instances where it wasn't given in the protein name. This can take hours. As it turns out, there's a downloadable database of protein accession numbers and gene symbols. I'm attempting to write a Perl script that will look at the appropriate column (accession number) on the spreadsheet that I get from my boss and pull in the gene symbols from the database.