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why Excel tabs make for a poor interface
Friday, October 20 2017
Gretchen's parents ate a light breakfast, chatted some and checked the headlines, and then they packed their stuff into their rental Honda Fit and drove back to Albany to catch their short flight to Washington, DC. Gretchen was doing so well today that she was able to take the dogs on a walk by herself, though that did tax her enough that she felt the need to lie down for a time. Fortunately, it was yet another glorious day of clear blue skies and colorful leaves (though not anywhere near as colorful as they have been in most autumns).
During the biweekly all-hands meeting, I learned that the data-assembling project I'd done yesterday had a few fundamental flaws. One of these was the result of the Excel interface. The guy in fundraising had sent me a spreadsheet with three tabs in it, and I'd only included data from the first tab because I hadn't thought to look for other tabs. Most spreadsheets I work with are CSVs, and they don't have tabs. The tabs at the bottom of a proprietary Excel spreadsheet are just one more layer of complexity, providing additional places that need to be explored in a non-linear fashion. It makes far more sense to deal with simple spreadsheets without tabs; if they must be together, why not put them together in a .zip archive? Tabs add complexity and a single additional layer of hierarchy without providing any additional functionality. That level of hierarchy makes better sense being handled by the file system, which can have infinite levels of hierarchy.
This afternoon, I had a mild case of cabin fever, so I drove out to the new Hurley Ridge Hannaford mostly to get hundred-count boxes of Red Rose tea, though I also got some canned fruit and cartons of pulpy orange juice for Gretchen. One of the two antibiotics she has to take is Metronidazole, and she finds it so bitter that she cannot bear swallowing it without orange juice. As for the canned fruit, they help with the constipation.
While I was out, I learned from the colleague who needs working VPN that her laptop VPN setup wasn't working outside the office. It was looking like I was going to need to do experiments with my own Mac laptop (since nobody but me uses PCs in The Organization). So I had Cameron look around the office to see if there was a spare one he could ship me. He said he found one, though its battery couldn't hold a charge. I told him to "five finger" me some merch while he was putting the package together.
After finishing most of the work on the new mass-emailer user preferences system, I took a relaxing hot bath, continuing to read Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction from my plan-having Android-based phone (as opposed to the craptastic Windows phone I normally use when I am in the tub).
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