Annoying Microsoft Excel Problem

I created a new workbook and merged a bunch of worksheets into a single one. The worksheets came from several different documents and to the eye they appeared to have the same number of columns. However when I tried to sort the newly merged data I kept receiving this error message:

"This operation requires the merged cells to be identically sized."

I messed around with the alignment options under Format/Cels. Nothing seemed to work. I searched for a better answer and found Microsofts mumbo-jumbo work-around at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/813974.

I read it and immediately said 'forget about it' and decided to do a more common sense thing. I saved the merged document as a tab delimited doc. I then opened that tab-delimited doc in Excel. When the formatting was lost I could see there was an "invisible" column in there. I removed that column since it was extraneous. Reformatted the doc so it was easy for me to read again and then did the sort.

The old export-it-out-as-text-an-import-it-back-in trick did it again. It's like re-booting Windows 95. Magic.

An Appreciation for Messiness

Someone I know (She will remain nameless.) pointed me to this article after our talk about being ok with our messiness. Other may not understand, but others are just like us.

So I am "Saying Yes to Mess" as the NY Times suggests.

"It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands."

A Walking Table

Since I'm short and hate the idea of scraping the tile in my kitchen, I *LOVE* this table.

This sucks

A friend sent me this. It was published by sfgate.com.

'La Bamba' Star Arrested

Actor Lou Diamond Phillips has pleaded no contest to charges that he beat his girlfriend up during an altercation in August.

Police went to the actor's Northridge, Calif., home following reports Phillips was attacking his girlfriend Yvonne Boismer. The authorities found the couple in the middle of a heated argument.

Following the actor's arrest, his spokesperson insisted the whole matter was "a misunderstanding," but now Phillips has accepted he was hitting his live-in lover.

He has been sentenced to a year of domestic violence counseling and 200 hours of community service. He was also placed on probation for three years.

Pies Descalzos

Huanani-Kay Trask, poet

My friend Dylan introduced me to Trask when I was an undergraduate at Davis. He was kind enough to give me Light in the Crevice Never Seen, a book of Trask's poetry. Some of her words...

Sons

Your grandmother said
about your grandfather
"I gave him three sons."

Yesterday, a man told me
to give him trust.

Is trust like a son?
Or less, not being generative
phallic, or immortal.

Did she tell me about
her giving
in pride or warning?

But I have no sons
to give, no line of
immortality.

I am slyly
reproductive: ideas
books, history
politics, reproducing