"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
06/10/2019 at 15:34 • Filed to: None
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"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
06/10/2019 at 15:34 • Filed to: None | 0
| 12 |
About 20 years ago, when I was working at the computer lab in the music school, I helped a friend with her dissertation. I did formatting, created musical examples, all of it. Fast forward 20 years, and she wants to turn her document into a book. Amazingly, I had kept all of the work I did for her 20 years ago.
The latest thing she sent me was 8 chapters that she wanted combined into a single document. Easy, right? Just copy and paste. Clippy, however, had other ideas. Apparently, each chapter was formatted to look right on the page, but each was a mishmash of different styles. So copy/paste made a disaster out of the formatting. I had to create a unified style for each part of the document (body text, block quotes, footnotes, etc) and then go through and assign each style a section at a time. I had to edit all 160 footnotes one at a time, because Word decided to do this, and changing the whole footnote style would eliminate italicized titles in the citations.
What could have and should have taken about 15 minutes turned into a four hour project. I then standardized all formatting for chapter headings, spacing, etc.
Once I was done, I called her and explained what I had done. Great! She was having the same problems, which is why she sent it to me. But then she said, “Okay, now that you have made the master document, can you make me a separate file for each chapter? But with all the formatting.”
Why?
For reasons, she says.
I will now wait for the email about how she spent all her time editing the separate chapters and now wants me to put them into the master document, rather than doing all the editing in the master. This is a recipe for disaster. On the bright side, I’m leaving for CA on Saturday for two weeks, and she is leaving for Germany for two months while I’m gone. She’s going to have to find somebody else to bail her out when it gets hosed.
And yes, she’s paying me for my time, but it’s time I’d rather be spending on other things.
/rant over
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> ttyymmnn
06/10/2019 at 15:37 |
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$40/hr, cash.
user314
> ttyymmnn
06/10/2019 at 15:56 |
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Yup, that’s Word. Love it though I do, sometimes the simplest task turns into hours of me shouting “Why the fuck did you do that?!” at my PC.
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ttyymmnn
> user314
06/10/2019 at 15:58 |
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It’s a classic example of something that should have been set up right at the beginning. Whether it’s Word or any other project, it’s easier to do it right from the start than fix it later.
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> ttyymmnn
06/10/2019 at 16:00 |
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Looks like in places stuff got superscripted twice, and then stepped back down one of two steps. I... uh... HOW
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ttyymmnn
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
06/10/2019 at 16:07 |
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Yeah, and I couldn’t select all the footnotes and fix the formatting because then it un-superscripted the footnote reference numbers. I had to to it one. note. at. a. time.
And when I pasted the text in, it changed everything from TNR 12 to Calibri. Because of course it did. I think that was due to a mishmash of fonts in the separate files. Who knows? Clippy ain’t telling.
t0ast
> ttyymmnn
06/10/2019 at 16:21 |
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If you can handle composing a document in plaintext w/ markup, it might be worth learning something like LaTeX if you anticipate having to do something like that again. It’s primarily meant for more science-y
academic papers but I’d wager there are some music-focused plugins out there that could make things a whole lot easier.
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ttyymmnn
> t0ast
06/10/2019 at 16:26 |
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Thanks, but I’m hoping that I never have to do this again. Ever. Although, despite the hassle of this particular job, I don’t mind this sort of work.
Tekamul
> t0ast
06/10/2019 at 16:45 |
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Starred for LaTeX. That shit is so much easier.
TheRealBicycleBuck
> ttyymmnn
06/10/2019 at 18:34 |
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Since we’re sharing, perhaps you’ll get a kick out of my current project. So far, we have 80 projects which need schedules in Project. Every one of them has a different start date, different resource needs, different budgets, etc. We’ve been telling the client that we need to get started on them.
So, on Friday, the primary contact comes to us after getting his ass chewed because he doesn’t have schedules on hand. He asks us to bail him out by generating 80 draft project schedules before Wednesday of this week. On my wife’s birthday weekend. W hen I’m traveling home. When I’m supposed to be preparing for my check ride.
I put together the source spreadsheet on Friday and started coding on Sunday. It took me most of the day yesterday and today to get it ready, but my computer is cranking out the schedules as I’m surfing Oppo right now. It should be done in the next 10 minutes or so.
We brought over a planner with a ton of experience in Project, but her primary task will be reviewing all of the schedules to see if there are any major glitches.
The next phase will be to load them all in a master project and see where things stand from a resource loading perspective. The client has ideas about finishing all of the projects within 5 years, so we have to see how many people we’ll have to hire, how much money that will cost, and whether or not it’s even feasible.
Fun times.
FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com
> TheRealBicycleBuck
06/10/2019 at 21:37 |
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It seems like you’ve kind of outgrown Project. Is there a reason for sticking with it instead of something like Primavera P6?
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com
06/10/2019 at 23:59 |
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Client requirement.
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FTTOHG Has Moved to https://opposite-lock.com
> TheRealBicycleBuck
06/11/2019 at 15:08 |
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:-/ Been there. Client requirements for tools/processes that aren’t optimal or efficient are always tons of fun.