A rather short post by the Captain of the USS Clueless on the drop in French wine sales to the U.S.
My opinion…sales of French Wine are down in the U.S. due to the competition from the massive amounts of Whine which is the French are simply giving away.
Comments Off on French WineI was on jury duty yesterday, in the LA Criminal Court System. It was the first time I had been called since 2001, and there were a few differences. The courthouse where I served has moved to the “1 day/1 jury” system, so if you don’t get put on a jury the first day, your service is over. That was a vast improvement over the last time I was there. In 2001, you kept coming back for 10 days if you didn’t get on a jury or if the jury was dismissed prior to deliberating.
I didn’t serve on a jury, but I noticed a couple of interesting things about the process:
I definitely have mixed feelings about the system. While I feel it is definitely less of a time burden than before, I definitely think it should pay a fair amount more than it does, at least minimum wage.
I know that due to challenges for cause and preemptory challenges it is impossible to estimate precisely what the need for jurors will be, but they can do better than they did yesterday. The system is very inefficient and more effort needs to be put in to accurately gauging the real need for jurors and calling up the correct amount.
Comments Off on Jury Duty… as if thousands of bloggers cried out and then were silenced.
Turns out that bloggers who had their websites hosted on weblogs.com for free (about 3000 total) had them shut down today without any notice.
I know very little about Dave “Darth” Winer, apart from his associaton with Radio Userland. I have been to his website on occasion. I do understand that he was providing the service for free and feel that he is completely within his rights legally and morally to stop doing so. I just think his decison to pull the plug without any notice was wrong. I thought of this analogy:
You are looking for a place to store some of your belongings. A fairly well-know person in the neighborhood says that you can store them for free at his place and get them at any time. He does this for quite a few other people. Then one day, you go over to his place to pick up some of your possessions and find out the door is barricaded shut. There is a sign saying that the host has decided not to offer storage anymore. The sign says that you can get your stuff if you leave a note saying you still want your stuff, but you will have to come back in two weeks for them.
While no analogy is perfect, I think this one is pretty close. While the owner is certainly within his rights to ask you to remove your belongings, locking you out from them without any notice is wrong.
Hat Tips:
Jeneane Sessum at Allied
I love Google. Not just because of its usefulness as a search engine. What I really like is their new G-Mail Service. Mind you, I don’t use it or plan to, but I really love it.
Why? Because I have a paid account at Yahoo! Mail and today I got an e-mail from them telling me the following:
I know Yahoo didn’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts (though I presume their hearts are in the right place)… they did this in order to compete effectively against Google’s new E-mail service.
Which is why I love Google.
Comments Off on I Love Google!Wrote some one-shot VBA code to move stuff around between a couple of Excel worksheets:
Public Function CompareTT(T_Div As String, T_ST As String, T_Add As String, _
S_Div As String, S_ST As String, S_Add As String) As Integer
'Returns -1 for "<", 0 for "=", 1 for ">" .
Dim Temp As Integer<br>
T_Div = Trim(LCase(T_Div)): T_ST = Trim(LCase(T_ST)): T_Add = Trim(LCase(T_Add))
S_Div = Trim(LCase(S_Div)): S_ST = Trim(LCase(S_ST)): S_Add = Trim(LCase(S_Add))
Temp = StrComp(T_Div, S_Div, vbTextCompare)
If Temp <> 0 Then
CompareTT = Temp
Exit Function
End If
Temp = StrComp(T_ST, S_ST, vbTextCompare)
If Temp <> 0 Then
CompareTT = Temp
Exit Function
End If
CompareTT = StrComp(T_Add, S_Add, vbTextCompare)
End Function
Public Sub CopyTT()
Dim Source As Range, Target As Range
Dim SourceRow As Integer, TargetRow As Integer
Dim CompareValue As Integer
Dim TempFormula As String
Dim SFormulaReplace As String
Dim TFormulaReplace As String
Const cDIV As Integer = 1
Const cST As Integer = 5
Const cAddress As Integer = 2
Const cHardWare As Integer = 13
Const cYearBuilt As Integer = 17
Const cSqFt As Integer = 19
Const cOccupancy As Integer = 21
Set Source = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Source").Cells
Set Target = ThisWorkbook.Worksheets("Target").Cells
SourceRow = 4: TargetRow = 4
Do While Source(SourceRow, cDIV) <> ""
CompareValue = CompareTT(Target(TargetRow, cDIV), _
Target(TargetRow, cST), _
Target(TargetRow, cAddress), _
Source(SourceRow, cDIV), _
Source(SourceRow, cST), _
Source(SourceRow, cAddress))
Select Case CompareValue
Case -1
TargetRow = TargetRow + 1
Case 0
'Calculate new formula
TempFormula = Source(SourceRow, cHardWare).Formula
SFormulaReplace = "Y" & SourceRow
TFormulaReplace = "Y" & TargetRow
TempFormula = Replace(TempFormula, SFormulaReplace, TFormulaReplace)
Target(TargetRow, cHardWare).Formula = TempFormula
Target(TargetRow, cYearBuilt) = Source(SourceRow, cYearBuilt)
Target(TargetRow, cSqFt) = Source(SourceRow, cHardWare)
Target(TargetRow, cOccupancy) = Source(SourceRow, cOccupancy)
TargetRow = TargetRow + 1
SourceRow = SourceRow + 1
Case 1
SourceRow = SourceRow + 1
End Select
Loop
Set Source = Nothing: Set Target = Nothing
End Sub
Sure it’s a hack, but it worked. It certainly beat looking through 500 rows of excel that span 30 columns and manually copying everything over.
Comments Off on What I Did At Work TodayGot this info off of the DNDContact Yahoo Group. Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin on Babylon 5, died Saturday morning.
There is a condolence notice on Bruce Boxleitner’s and Melissa Gilbert’s website.
Memorial service information may be found on Richard Biggs official website .
Sad to see him go…he was only 43, with a one month old baby.
Comments Off on Death of Richard Biggs from Babylon 5