Week 11: Clear

I wish I was as familiar with Access as I am with Excel. After this weeks lectures I will be a little more knowledgable on the program. It appears that Access can be very useful for business applications. If you go to Microsofts website, this one shows the Access templates, you can browse all the templates that have been submitted to see what you can use them for. After just about completing the project, I think I will try and use Access more often in my business. We just recently made a list for mailings, I think I will import it into Access to make a database of potential customers. We just recieved our first phone call from the mailings, and using Access I can use the form to put in all the homeowners information in.

Again, I wish we would spend more time in the class on these kinds of programs than on networks. I can see the importance of understanding networks, but not a whole weeks of lectures on them. The business student will spend more time on running Excel spreadsheets and Access databases than they will trying to repair a network. I think we need to know enough, so we are not dangerous in the IT realm.

Week 10: Muddy

This weeks material was a little tricky for me. Where I had the most trouble was grasping the WAN and LAN portion of the material. Understanding how the computers communicate with each other is going to take a little longer than a week, at least for me. I am glad that computers are able to do all these wonderful things, because without them I would not be taking this class in the format it is offered.

Google is a great source to help you find whatever you are looking for, normally. When trying to find another source for understanding networks, you are bombarded with a million different sites to choose from. After reading many different sites and what they have to say, I think this one, is the most beneficial. For me it was easier to read and follow, not a lot of computer "jargon" and well laid out. I will be spending some time reading all the articles that come with the site, to help me study for the test.

One last note. I thought the Marine Corps had a lot of acronyms, I think the computer world is giving it a run for its money.

Excel Project

I thought this was a great project to do. I enjoyed working on it. I find excel worksheets easy to use and manipulate, so this project only took me one day to complete. I was not familiar with Pivot Tables, but as with everything else in Excel it did not take long to learn about it. I have "Excel 2007: The Missing Manual" as my trusty side kick, and not to mention you can find just about any "how to" video on youtube, this one is from the author of my book.

I wish the project dived more into formulas than the basic layout of spreadsheet. Just recently I learned how to use a new formula. For my business we just mailed out nearly 600 mailings and we wrote all the addresses in Excel and submitted it to the mailing company in that format. They came back and told me the street number and name needed to be combined into one cell. I didn't know how to combine the two without retyping all 580 addresses, so I pulled out my handy sidekicked and I learned about the function "Concatenate", this allowed me to combine the two texts into one cell. I had the file back to them in five minutes. There are so many functions to use in Excel, I wish we would have explored more of them.

I think the course needs to have more Excel projects. Excel plays a vital role in the business environment. I enjoy the lectures on networks, but covering more in Excel may be more beneficial for Business students.

Week 9: Clear

Is there anything Excel cannot do? Really, Excel is such a vital tool to have in the business world. My father and I own our company and we use Excel spreadsheets for just about everything. We use Excel for our estimating. Instead of buying software, we created an elaborate workbook which does 90% of the calculations for us. We just have to enter the measurements and the type of product, Excel will spit out a price for us. We use it to track time of our employees, estimate taxes due to the payroll company. I used it to do a linear regression of the permits pulled over the last year in Duval County to see if there was a relation to price to squares (the quantity we sell in roofing).

Excel is a magnificent tool to have for your business, but if you do not understand Excel it goes to waste. It is easy to jump on Excel and do simple functions and create simple tables. To get the full use of the program you need to understand Pivot Tables, how to use all the functions, absolute cell referencing, changing the theme of you worksheet and all the other options to make the worksheet jump out.