Adventures in Spreadsheeting, Mac Style

 In a previous post from a few weeks ago, I mentioned how I was getting ready to do my annual tabulation of determining the year's top songs, using readily available data.  I then see how accurate my calculations are based on the official determination from Billboard magazine.  This year, I was planning on doing so in a different way.  Instead of using my usual pencil, paper, and calculator, I was going to make a spreadsheet.  This would be my first one ever.  I consider myself fortunate in never having to create a spreadsheet before now.  Since I might by making a major career change soon, I thought in would be prudent to learn.  Even after I got my computer, I never really bothered looking over the spreadsheet app.  It was just one of the extra apps I never thought I would use.  Well, it was time for a change.  I looked over the scant information I had to work in the Mac spreadsheet app, Numbers.  Apparently, many of the guides I have guess that people would already know much about such apps from work and such.  People just needed to learn a few tricks specific to Macs.  For the neophyte like me, this is a slight problem.  I  started a new document, and I quickly became lost.  Sure, it is easy enough to set up the fifty-four columns I would need, but the rows weren't so easy.  I started out with sixty, since that was about the minimum for the last few years of songs that made the top ten lists each week.  The first real problem was making the columns the correct width.  The title column needed to be wider, but the weekly point total columns could be narrower.  I don't think I made each one the exact same width, but they are close.  What surprised me was when my Mac suddenly filled in the columns headers with the correct information, including the weeks in numerical order.  I was doing it a column at a time, so I was surprised when it did it one its own. As I progressed through each week, I had a different problem--filling in all the extra zeroes for the songs the weren't in the top ten for each week.   I finally found out about the "Autofill" feature that made everything so much easier.  As long as I had the settings correct.  I sometimes had the wrong numbers keyed up and I would have to go back to correct things.  Still, I pushed through.  Normally, it only takes me about one-and-a-half hours or so to make out my list.  This time around, it took me over two hours, spread out over a day, to complete the thing.  The final hurdle was the final totals column.  It took me a few tries to figure out the best way to get the computer to add all of the pertinent columns together to get the final totals I needed to determine the best songs of the year.  Songs with short stays were easy.  I could do those without help.  Songs that stayed months in the top ten needed the automatic "Sum" feature.  I am not sure I did it right for each song.  On occasion, I would wind up changing one of the figures while highlighting the right columns to total.  Yes, I know that there are multiple ways to get the to work out, but I was most comfortable doing it by the way I found out.  Still, I finished.  By my interpretation of the date, The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights" would be the number one song of the year.  And I was right, but then I already knew that.  Billboard had already posted that info a few days before I started my own work.  They are early this year.  For some stupid reason, they decided to end the year after only fifty-one weeks of charts, instead of the more expected fifty-two.  I didn't know that fact when I made my list, so I had to go back and delete a column.  I think the "Sum" function was still working, so the totals will be correct, but that wasn't my last problem.  I had to delete on last title as well, as it technically didn't make the list.  Also, there might have been two songs with the same title that made the top ten.  Since I didn't include artists in my list, I had no way of knowing if the two songs were the same or not.  A song could have debuted in the top ten, drop out, and then come back.  To be fair, I combined the data for the two instances.  I don't remember a song with that title for this year, but then my favorite radio station, WQHY 95.5, doesn't always play hard rap/hip-hop songs, even when they are very popular.  I would only hear this if a tuned into one of the few local stations that would play those songs, or wait until a few Sirius satellite radio trial came around.  I would have included the spreadsheet here, but it would be all but impossible. For one, it is huge.  Over eighty rows by fifty-three columns.  (There were a lot of songs the barely spent any time in the top ten this year.  Way more than average.). I don't think the entire spreadsheet could fit all at once, even if I shrank it.  I could have taken a screen shot, but that would require at least four pics just to get it all in.  This post simply doesn't have the space.  Furthermore, Mac documents are notorious for not being easily transferred to other formats.  While I could export it, I am not sure which format would work best for here.  I would rather just say I made the spreadsheet, and have everyone just assume I did it, instead of messing up and showing something that was posted in error, with who knows how many mistakes in it.  So, just trust me in this.  I made my first spreadsheet.

Shaving Takes Me to All My Worries

 Last month, November, was a time for many men to stop shaving in support of many men's health issues. I did not participate.  For one, I look horrible after a few days of not shaving.  I have a few bare spots, while small, that would ruin the overall bearded look.  Also, wearing a face mask with a fairly full beard just doesn't look all that good.  As well, I am not sure it would offer as full protection with such gaps that a beard provides.  So, I just kept my regular look for the month.  My mother gave me my first electric razor for my sixteenth birthday, even though I barely had a few whiskers yet.  I had been using manicure scissors to trim those few hairs, usually once a week, to take care of what needed to be done.  By my senior year, I just barely had enough hair to grow a mustache, although I still didn't need to shave on a daily basis yet.  As a side note, I can't remember, but I'm sure many of my male classmates were shaving more regularly.  Some already had chest hair before high school, for goodness sakes.  They had to be shaving by then.  In contrast, my chest hair didn't come fully in until I was twenty or so.  In college, I could shave daily, but I didn't.  I only had classes every other day, so I only shaved on those days.  Besides, I like the two day "dirty" scruff look.  Also, I was prone to ingrown hairs, due to their curliness as as well as my total lack of knowledge of shaving.  Trust me, it was sometimes bad.  Still is.  Once I had daily classes, I had to shave daily too.  That's when my old razor started to fail, so I had to get a new one.  Or at least my mother did.  The morning I tried to open the packaging, I was running late, so I couldn't finish the task.  When I went to look at it again that night, I noticed that it was only an electric razor, not a rechargeable one like my old one.  This meant that I could not use it in a room without an outlet, like my bathroom.  This led to many awkward moments, as there weren't many mirrors with outlets near enough for me to shave.  Like many young men of the time, I grew a goatee.  It was popular everywhere for some reason, so I went along.  I helped to make my chin stand out, giving me a "manly" appearance, or whatever.   Still, I didn't feel man enough.  So, during my four year's of hiatus, I made a change to cartridge razors.  The first time I tried it, after consulting a few men's magazines for tips, I developed horrible ingrown hairs within the next day.  This could have also been due to shaving with my electric razor barely a day later.  For the next few years, I would alternate which to use.  Sometime around 2005, I began to use my two-blade cartridge razor exclusively.  I guess I just forgot to switch it out.  Anyway, a few years ago, the only store that still sold the replacement cartridges for my razor went out of business.  Other place may have still carried them, but they weren't as easy to get to.  Strangely enough, the same store may have been selling the replacement heads for my electric razor too.  I thought I was gong to go back to my electric model, until I realized how long it had been since I had used it.  It was no longer in a state where I would use it anywhere near my face.  Or anywhere else on my body.  So, I bought a new electric razor, and I made sure this one was rechargeable.  Unfortunately, while it has such features as being able to be cleaned in water, it is not an electric model.  See, it cannot be used while it is recharging, only when it is not plugged in.  That its not too big a deal, unless the battery loses power while you shave, like it did to me last week.  I was just starting out, when the low power light came on.  I had to wash off the pre-shave fluid, and apply shaving gel so I could use my backup cartridge razor.  That's right.  Although my two-bladed model no longer had easily replaced bladed, I picked up a three-bladed model for such emergencies.  I had a free sample one time, and I ultimately picked up the full razor about the same time as the rechargeable.  In all honestly, I don't like the three blades as well as my old two-bladed model, but at least it still was easily available.  At the moment.  I been noticing the influx of five-bladed models over the last year or so, and less space to my current replacement cartridges. My skin can barely take the three blades when I switch out.  I don't know if it can take a higher blade count.  Not to mention the cost.  My current replacement has one less cartridge for the same price as my old two-blade model did.  How many would there be in a new model?  To add insult to all of this, I am almost out of my favorite aftershave lotion.  Trust me, I need the help in caring after I shave.  No local store can get it.  Since travel is currently a no-go, and I can't/won't/don't shop online, this means I will have to get a substitute, just so that my face and neck doesn't feel like it is burning on the days I shave.  Very sensitive skin you know.  Helps somewhat with ingrown hairs, too.  I would just stop shaving, but you already read my problems with that.