Week 10: Clear

Week 10 brought with it some topics that were very challenging. The most challenging topic or concept for me was of wireless security. I now know that there is basically no way that I will ever get my wireless network fully secure, but I also realized that I don't need to worry since I don't live anywhere near populated areas or a road or anything that might pose a threat to my internet security.

I found a relatively helpful site that further explained some of the steps required to secure the wireless networks.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/support/wireless_secure.htm

I think that I understand some of the steps that are needed to help secure the networks, and I plan to look at my parents network next time I see them, because they are constantly complaining about problems with it.

Excel Project

This week has been particularly demanding with the excel project. I considered myself to have been of moderate abilities with excel and now my skills have been tested to the highest degree. I have developed a much greater understanding of the us of pivot tables and how they are useful for the presentation of data in a much more user friendly format. I used to argue with my sister that has an MBA about the usefulness of Pivot tables, but I really see how they make the presentation of findings that much stronger.

The "IF" function is something that I never used before this class and I feel that it also greatly enhances that power of the findings in a data set. The ability to categorize data quickly into a "Pass/Fail" or any other group using the "IF" function makes the data set much easier to navigate and efficient at presenting information to a user.

The final hitch in this project was getting the page layout set to take up the entire landscape legal size page. I had to revert back to my excel scavenger hunt assignment to figure that one out. I tried to fit the document another way, and managed to get it to work, but I knew it wasn't how the teacher had suggested. I adjusted it to take 1page wide and 2pages long and it fixed the document.

Week 9: Muddy

Pivot tables are the least user friendly gadgets ever invented. It is absolutely incredible to me how useful and powerful this excel program is. This week I found the topic of pivot tables to be extraordinarily difficult and I am surprised that I have come to understand them as well as I do now.

I found a lot of very useful information on pivot tables on the Microsoft website and I felt that it helped to clear up some of the very basic conceptual problems that I had with the application of the pivot table.

The pivot table is a very powerful tool that can be used to extract meaningful data from a spreadsheet quickly and effectively. The only problem that I still have with the program is that it feels like steering the Titanic when it starts to misbehave, and I feel that you have to become a master with the program before it will treat you kindly.