Excel-class II

And so another Excel-class (last night, May 3, 2007) drifts into the filmy past.
Rendering yet another opportunity for my bellicose brother-in-Boston to loudly boast his boring and utterly tiresome litany about his amazing ‘pyooter supremacy.
We find it rather ironical the almighty Bluster-King loudly bad-mouths Excel as old news, and yet everyone else in this here famblee grandly parades all the wonderful things they’re doing with Excel.
Elz is keeping track of condo expenses in an Excel spreadsheet; Vast manages a famblee budget in an Excel spreadsheet; Peggy’s Paul orders team T-shirts with an Excel spreadsheet (and is apparently driving Excel all-the-time at work); and Straight suggests his job has devolved mainly into manipulating and summarizing Excel spreadsheets.
In fact, the onliest one who doesn’t give an example of his supposedly incredible spreadsheet prowess is the almighty Bluster-King; although I think what’s happened is he loudly demanded poor Kristin move on to another option, and threatened her with a ballpeen hammer or flatulence.
—All so he can loudly assert that Excel is toast.
Last night’s class was delving into Excel functions I don’t use: namely making up pie-charts and bar-graphs.
But I’ve always been interested; mainly because a lady on the Boughton Park Board was doing them.
What she did were pie-charts of park income and expenses.
“How’d you do that?” I’d ask.
“Excel,” she’d say.
A while ago I tried the chart function on my Schedule-A spreadsheet, but what happened made no sense and was of no use.
Now I suppose I could play like Linda’s mother, and refuse interest in anything like this — or claim I’m mentally disabled.
But no; I’m interested.
It’s like Freehand and Photoshop and Quark — look at what you can do with Excel.
“You have to see this,” I said to my wife yesterday, dragging her in from vacuuming in the garage.
Excel would auto-fill following cells according to a pattern, both across and down.
And last night we changed a value in a spreadsheet cell; the chart changed too.
No torturous input from me. Excel was doing it. (Whoa; FABULOUS!)

“The almighty Bluster-King” is my younger brother Jack in Boston, who loudly bad-mouths everything I do or say.

“Elz” (my sister Betty; Elizabeth) is my sister in Fort Lauderdale, Floridy. She lives in a condo-building, and is condo treasurer.

“Vast” (Vast Right-Wing Conspirator) is my brother-in-Delaware’s wife.

“Peggy” is my baby-sister. She lives with her husband Paul in Lynchburg, Virginny; with three teenage sons.

“Straight” (Straight-Arrow) is my younger brother Bill in Delaware.

“Kristin” is (or was) my brother-in-Boston’s secretary — who did all the work, for which he could take credit as a manager.

“Boughton Park” is the nearby park where we walk our dog. I once was a volunteer board-member to administer the park.

RE: “mentally disabled......” I had a stroke 13 years ago.

“Linda” is my wife. Her 91-year-old mother lives in a retirement community in De Land, Floridy; and refuses to have anything to do with recent technology. She won’t even call a cellphone.