Final Day of the Decade

I went to the fire station and met with Brenda about the reserve timesheets. I also met up with Ryan about the map tests and the upcoming fire academy. I am going to be making the timesheets for the reserves this year. I also was integrating the timelog into the timesheet Excel workbook. But more importantly something I have been working on is the ability to fill out the timelog and have it automatically fill in the timesheet. That is now completed. I also let Ryan know about some of the things I didn’t like about the academy in the past. I also let him know the map tests are worthless for proving guys know the roads. So often they pass the test with one-hundred percent, but still are clueless when they get on the street.

I went home and started to work on the new spreadsheet. I had the basic stuff done for the timecard. I just did some tweaking on it to make it closer to the ones we currently use. The timelog has some updates to it. Then I started to put the two together.

I was trying to create a master workbook that would have every one’s name and employee number. It would also include the pay. Then if information needed to be updated on any reserve it would only have to be updated in one spot and the workbooks would get that information by linking to the master. But I was running into problems. That is because I didn’t want to hard code each firefighters workbook, I wanted to be able to have one spot where I put the firefighter number in their workbook and Excel would then take that number and concatenate it with the column number in order to get the correct data. But that is not nearly as easy as it sounds. I found a function called INDIRECT, but it only works when the master spreadsheet is also open. That is not going to work for what I want to do.

Finally I had to give up on that idea for this year. I just made a master in the workbook and the data would be updated there. So it is still only one place to update the pay information for people. But if four people need their pay information updated it will require opening up four spreadsheets rather than one. But I got the whole set done. I hope the guys like it. I know several thought it was cool with mine, because I was testing out the process. Now that I know it works I asked Heston about doing it for everyone. He said go ahead. Several of the guys who saw me using it this last year wanted me to do that for them. So I am sure for the most part guys will like it. But as with all change there are some guys who hate change and will complain about it no matter what.

I went to the Deuce and met up with Suggy for working the WSU Men’s Basketball game. They were playing Oregon in the Pac-Ten opener. The first half was not very solid for the Cougs. But in the second half they started to come alive. They had an eight-zero and a ten-zero run. Soon it was tied up. With about thirty seconds to go the Cougs had the ball. But they ended up wasting too much time on the clock. That caused them to have to take a poor shot and it was missed. That put the game into OT. In the first OT the Cougs had a five point lead, but it came down to a dunk by Casto in the final second of the game. The Cougs were up by two and the crowd went crazy. There was three-tenths of a second left on the clock. But the Cougs were assessed a technical foul for celebration. They gave the Ducks to free-throws. The guy made both and they tied it up and went to a second OT. The second one was closer. But the game ended when the Cougs had the ball with less than ten seconds to go. It was tied. The Cougs missed the shot. The Ducks got it and drove hard to the bucket. They made it and got fouled. They celebrated without penalty. They made the freethrow going up by three with, again, three-tenths of a second. But the Cougs couldn’t come back and lost. I was so mad. It was crushed. It felt the highest of highs only to be crushed.

During the game I talked to Kuhrt and he was seeing what I was doing for New Years. I told him that I had no plans. He said I should come over. He said he would get in touch with me after the game. I went home and completed my project to work on the timesheets. I got a text from Kuhrt to come over. I headed that way. When I got to his place we watched some TV and talked shop. I asked him questions about the way he learns and remembers traffic laws. We had a couple drinks. At midnight we toasted the new year. It was a nice evening with the Kuhrt’s and their pets.