We just got back from San Diego late last night. Kyle had a conference at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort, and I had the privilege of a California vacation for a few days. Our meals were provided at the conference, and the food was excellent. While Kyle was in his sessions, I went swimming at the pool, walked on the beach, and took it easy. In the evenings, the conference planned a couple events for the group. One night, a professional theater group performed excerpts from several broadway shows, such as Lion King and Phantom of the Opera. Then Thursday night, we had supper aboard the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier, where Kyle and I flew a 360 degree flight simulator.
Here are a few pictures from the week. I’ll add more later.

I found this abandoned boat on the beach while I was walking. That same afternoon, I was watching the local news in our hotel room, and they were broadcasting live from this same beach, showing a picture of this same boat. Apparently, the boat was suspected to have been used to smuggle illegal immigrants into California.

At the Pacific coast

Friday morning, we participated in a 2 mile Fun run/walk. We ran part of the way, walked most of the way, and finished in the top half.

We spent Friday afternoon at the San Diego zoo. Here, Bai Yun appears to have had a rough night and is draped over her water dish.

Feeling better…

Ready for another go at the old bamboo.

The Coronado Bay Bridge, connecting Coronado island (where we stayed) to the mainland of San Diego.

Flickr is a well know site for sharing photos. For a number of months I have been using a little software tool to get a new wallpaper image for my PC every 10 or 20 minutes from flickr.

A flickr account is not needed. All that is needed is the software below and an internet connection. Once installed you can set how often a new picture is downloaded and the ‘tags’ for the type of picture you want. I suggest you try Oregon Coast for some beautiful pictures.

Flickr Wallpaper Rotator

If you want to try out a different tag combinations before you put them in the software just search using the tags on Flickr.

My experience with the software hasn’t been perfect. Sometimes the program will freeze when trying to download a picture. I have found I can wait for it to finish or just close it and re-open it. I also found that it stores the downloaded picture in the program’s installation folder. The pictures can take up significant space so I clean them out every now and then.
Even with some minor problems the program is worth trying and its fun to have ever changing wallpaper.

Today I went to a baby shower. Good group of people; adorable baby. Showers are awkward and weird to me nonetheless.

My friends Jeanette and Laura and I decided ahead of time that we would go be supportive and feel awkward together. We played a couple games. Apparently, I am very good at unscrambling baby words. Also when told that I cannot say the word “baby” lest I lose my clothes pins, I feel I must say the word “baby” uncontrollably. Baby. Jeanette won my clothes pins from me. Baby.

Another fun baby shower game is to keep a tally of the number of times people say, “It’s about time you had some babies” or “You’re so good at these baby games, maybe you should have a baby.” What? That one doesn’t even make sense.

I know that these comments come from a good place, with good intentions, but alas, too often it sounds like a very presumptuous place of very little sensitivity. I don’t really care to spend much time in that place with most people.

So instead I chuckle to myself and mark it down as another typical baby shower. The cake was good, I got to hold the baby, and I have good friends. Even if they do steal my clothes pins.

Baby.

I read that 2007 had an IFERROR function but I needed it now for 2003 so I did some searching around a found a solution!

I’m working with a complicated Excel workbook with multiple queries covering many worksheets. I’m currently using many VLookup functions to pull the data together on one main worksheet. The problem is that when a VLookup doesn’t return true data I end up with a ‘ #N/A ‘ entry. I needed to have a null value or a ‘ 0 ‘ when a false statement is produced. The first solution I found was to use a IF statement with an ISERROR funtion but that was a lot to type and caused the VLookup function to happen twice in many cases which seemed to increase the calculation time. I needed something better and that is when I read about the IFERROR function available in Excel 2007.

While I will have Excel 2007 in a week or two (I’m also looking forward to faster calculation because it will use both CPUs) I couldn’t delay this project. I searched around a little more and found a helpful Microsoft support article. It said that I could create my own user-defined IFERROR function for Excel 2003! I did and it seems to work well.

Here is the VB code from Microsfot’s site and a link to their page.

Basically you go to Tools -> Macro -> -> Visual Basic Editor (or hit ALT-F11)
Select Insert -> Module
Paste in this:

Function IfError(formula As Variant, show As String)

On Error GoTo ErrorHandler

If IsError(formula) Then
IfError = show
Else
IfError = formula
End If

Exit Function

ErrorHandler:
Resume Next

End Function

Then File -> Close and return to Excel.

IFERROR is basically used like this:
=IFERROR(Calulation or Function, alternate result)

If the Calculation or Function doesn’t return an error then the results are used. If it does return an error then the alternate result is used in the cell.

Support Article - Should work for older versions of Excel also!

In the end I can not guarantee that this is quicker to run but it is a lot quicker to type and cleaner to read.