Par-Due.com

Alright, now that you have gotten your Tiny Tim fix, I’ll post again. Me and Diana have been pretty busy the last few days with dinner parties and the olympics which in turn, must’ve distracted us from posting this week. I’m starting to hit the MCSE studying hard again and I really want to get the first book done sometime soon! It seems like the end is not near.

Regardless, life is good and God is blessing the Par-Dues. As always, thanks for reading our blog and we love hearing from all of you! Have a good day or two..

Posted on August 20th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | No Comments »

Alright, this is the funniest video I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve never heard of this guy until today and I wanted to share this with you. He went by Tiny Tim and you might recognize the song from a Spongebob Squarepants episode.

Posted on August 13th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | 7 Comments »

I’m usually not incredibly into sports but when it comes to the olympics  I can get into pretty much anything.  I watched rowing yesterday……and was happy.

As you may already know I’m very much into competitive swimming since I participated in it during highschool and one of my favorite Olympic events is swimming.  Last night Micheal Phelps made a new WR on the 400 IM cutting the time to beat down to 4 min and 3 secs.  I think my 200 IM time was barely less than that.  I had pretty good time too…..at least for our region.  But he’s a beast out there, genetically perfect for the sport.

I’m looking forward for the ladies gymnastics and of course all the track and field as well.  The Olympics give me a patriotic feeling that can’t be beat and when in need of a conversation starter it’s a no brainer.  So indulge in your faith of American Athletes and hope that we beat China!!!!!

Posted on August 10th, 2008 by diana
Filed under: Diana's Virtuous Vernacular | 4 Comments »

Okay, the things I’m going to record on here really quick are just some things I’ve learned over the course of this year and I want to not only remember them but I want to see how far I’ve come when I look back…

Basic formulas:

Addition:

=A1+A2

Subtraction:

=A1-A2

Division:

=A1/A2

Multiplication:

=A1*A2

Percents

=1-A2/A1

Useful Functions:

Applying one formula to an entire column:

Put desired formula in the first cell of the column.  Place your mouse on the bottom right corner of the cell until it becomes a + sign.  Click and drag down until you reach the bottom row.

Finding the Summation of an entire column:

Select the entire column and press the summation button on your tool bar.

Finding the average/sum/sin/if/count etc. value of numbers in a spreadsheet:

go to Insert>functions and select the option you desire.  Press OK on the bottom right of the window. Select data in spreadsheet you want the formula to apply to and click okay.

How to get “date last udated” in spreadsheet (this one is really hard to find)

Right click on the little excel emblem on the left of ‘file’ and go to the bottom option which is “view code”.  When you click on it a new window pops up over your spreadsheet.  On the left in a small window called “Project” there are the file names and sheet names.  Select the sheet or workbook you want to have the “last updated” date show up on.  Then in the small window that is in the center of you screen copy and paste this code;

Private Sub Workbook_BeforeSave(ByVal SaveAsUI As Boolean, Cancel As Boolean)
Range(”A1″).Value = Now
End Sub

and press save and then close the entire window.  You’ll be back in your spreadsheet with the date and time of the last update.  If you don’t want the date to be in the cell A1, simply change the “range” in the formula to whatever cell it is that you want it.  Remember, the time and date will update anytime you save the workbook whether you have made changes or not.

There are many options for many different functions using the code page.  I haven’t had to use many of them but they can be extremely useful.

Other things I’ve learned are, how to insert a graph into a workbook or spreadsheet to represent data, view data using a pivot table, how to link a excel spreadsheet to an access table,  etc.

As I learn different things I’ll share them on here for my benefit and for anyone else who can get something out of it.

Posted on August 7th, 2008 by diana
Filed under: Diana's Virtuous Vernacular | 2 Comments »

Subscribe to me at identi.ca. My username is HeadlessHorseman.

If you haven’t heard of microblogging identi.ca is a good place to start. Twitter was the most popular network, but it’s now spam-ridden and still has frequent outages.

Posted on August 6th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | No Comments »

I really like the new Firefox, but the one thing that bothered me was the slow scrolling with the mousewheel. Well, I believe I found the fix and it’s rather simple.

Type about:config to enter the firefox backend configuration. Say you’ll be careful when Mozilla plays a joke on you to get in. Now, you’ll look for mousewheel.withnokey.numlines. I changed this value to 3 and noticed a big difference. Maybe this doesn’t bother you, but for me it was just too slow and laggy before. This seems to have resolved the issue for me.

In other news, Molly Mahoney left this world..if you could pray for me, my friends, and her family while we mourn her passing we would really appreciate it.

Posted on August 5th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | No Comments »

Since the first couple days of this week we were off canoeing I happened to miss part of an excruciatingly important week.  Month End.  So in order to be able to catch up a bit I decided to pull 10ers for the rest of the week.  They started out lovely.  But by yesterday it was a bit exhausting.  Now, I know many people work ten hour shifts regularly and even longer and I’m probably just a wimp but I really don’t think they’re natural in the office world.  It doesn’t seem right to sit in a tiny office and stare at a computer screen that long.

So when Shane said “wanna go to Jerusalem Cafe?” I gratefully accepted since I was starving and felt like having a good time.  I’m a raw vegan as you all know but I have a date exception.  I have to be careful since cooked food can really have a bad effect on me and Jerusalem Cafe is the perfect place to indulge because the food is healthy and there are a ton of vegan and vegetarian options.  I enjoyed hummus and baba ghanoush as well as a falafel pita wrap.  So tasty and I even felt alright after eating there.  Then we got some tea at tea drops and walked the streets of Westport.  It was lovely.

I then went home and finished my unabridged “Count of Monte Cristo” and sat enthralled by the magnificent ending for about sixteen minutes and promptly wrote in my diary where I fell sound asleep after waaaay to much work.

Posted on August 2nd, 2008 by diana
Filed under: Diana's Virtuous Vernacular | 2 Comments »

So, we’re back from outer space…..

Today meant adjusting to our realities as me and Diana went back to work after a fun-filled vacation. I’m not very good at those kind of things. For some reason, I have a really hard time getting back into the routine after an action-packed vacation. But anyway, we had a great vacation nonetheless!

Other than two snake attacks on our little ones, the vacation was perfect! Ben Thiel and Christina Naverat both were bitten by Copperheads causing quite a scare, but both of them came out of it just fine. We canoed down a slow river for well over 15 miles. No amount of sunscreen could prevent some of us from being converted to lobsters (bad sunburns).

It was such a great time and I soooo can’t wait until my next vacation. Now, I just gotta get my mind wrapped around the monotony of regular life! Oh ok, it’s not so bad, it’s just not worry-free vacation!

Posted on July 30th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | 1 Comment »

Okay, here’s my dilemma.  I’m raw now and even though in my exceptions I mention vacations I can’t seem to eat cooked food, sugar, or processed food without feeling really sick and headachy.    So I have to think of raw alternatives so I can have fun while canoeing.  That shouldn’t be hard at all since I totally enjoy my food and canoeing but I”m afraid I’ll cave and eat some crap and have a splitting headache for the rest of the trip.  You’d think that would be enough motivation but sometimes it’s not.  Definitely didn’t keep me from drinking that darned fresca last Sunday.  Two days of pain made the thought of fresca nauseating though so that’s not a problem anymore. haha.

I know I’ll be tempted but I hope that in writing this I’ll be able to hold myself accountable.  Who knows, maybe I’ll be tempted less than I think!

I just got to keep riding high

Posted on July 25th, 2008 by diana
Filed under: Diana's Virtuous Vernacular | No Comments »

This weekend will feature the long-awaited Sullivan Canoe Trip which means an extra long vacation for the Par-Due’s (minus Ashley). Also, since I won’t be here on Sunday, I don’t have to go to band practice tonight so this makes for a very long and responsibilityless weekend. I can’t remember the last time I had one of those!!

I’m sure we’ll be taking a bunch of photos and maybe I’ll set up a Picasa Web Album so you guys can see how much fun we had and be jealous. Of course, by that time, we’ll be back in the middle of the workweek next week, but let’s not look that far ahead into the future!

As for now, I gotta finish off the last half of MY Friday…PEACE OUT!

Posted on July 24th, 2008 by shane
Filed under: Shane's Words of Wisdom | 12 Comments »