Monday, September 06, 2021

Oh no!!!!! BUBBLEGUM!!!

Chucks and a red dress? Yup. Sounds about right.

When I fell into The Deep Dark Place, in that lovely Before Time, you know, the one where I got fired for being sick?

Yeah… Anyhoo. Plenty of warning signs.

Warning signs that have come back.

History. Repeating itself. Something something something.

I can’t remember right now, and I’m too damn lazy to go into the archives, but I think I’ve talked about my new re-addiction to the Sims, yes?

Yeah. I did. Mods and stuff.

OK.

So, I’ve become addicted to not only playing the Sims, but building in the Sims, downloading custom content and mods, and watching Simmers stream on YouTube and Twitch.

I can’t believe people make money playing video games… and that, by watching them play, I’m essentially contributing to their income. (But, seriously, if I ever get to a point where going on Disability becomes a reality? Hook me up.)

Christ. I went totally off the rails, didn’t I?

Before, when I fell into The Deep Dark Place, I’d become addicted to playing LEGO XBox games until I fell asleep on the daybed. Sometimes, I’d get up and go to the bedroom. Sometimes, I wouldn’t.

The same pattern is repeating itself. Except. Sims and a laptop and a desk with two monitors.

It hurts to slam your face into a monitor, btw. I have no idea how I managed that. No seriously. The monitor is waaaay over there! But, I did. And I had the bruise to show it.

What’s that on my face? Oh, I managed to nod off in my office and slam my face into a monitor that is at least four inches away from the nodding off zone.

ANYWAY…

(I would have thought I was too depressed to get manic. Huh. It’s been twenty years since my bipolar diagnosis and I’m still learning how fucked up my head is. Thanks for taking this ride with me. Might want to buckle up. I hear there’s some emotional whiplash coming!)

Um, where was I?

Twitchy YouTubers.

I’m addicted to one (lilsimsie) and for whatever reason I can’t get enough of her streams. She’s playing several legacy challenges - one on YouTube and one on Twitch - and I am so invested in the Nightmare Legacy Challenge she’s playing on YouTube that I should probably up my meds. In my defence, it’s Laugh Out Loud hysterical. The joy of playing a legacy challenge on a short lifespan is that it moves QUICKLY. Her’s is moving super quickly and every twenty minute clip can bring me to tears. Today, two of her Sims aged up and Bubblegum, the cat, died. To hear her shock at forgetting birthdays and the cat dying… Yeah. I was giggling.

And, of course, now I have a Sim who streams on Twitch while he’s getting a degree in Computer Science. Not nearly as much fun as the bipolar judge who grew weed and was a prostitute, though. (Yeah. I gave in and played with some of the naughty mods. Don’t judge. I’m older than 21 and they’re making life interesting.)

 

- - - - - - - - - -

We use QuickBooks at work - plain, old, boring, dysfunctional QuickBooks. Not even the less crappy, but still phenomenally bad, Enterprise version. Premier. Which is a joke and a half.

I hate that to create my WIP report, I need to run at least TWO different reports in QB, export them to Excel, bring in a different report from a different piece of software, and then beg the software to do the thing… and because the report is heavily reliant on VLOOKUPs and pivot tables and all kinds of crap, moving ONE CELL borks the entire thing and then it takes HOURS to fix. I wish I were exaggerating.

So. My answer to that? Because I’m absolutely brilliant?

Microsoft Access.

No. That’s a real program. Honest. It’s their shitty database program, which is of course, WINDOWS ONLY. (Damn, I miss FileMaker Pro!)

But any ways, I did a whole lot of forcing things into QuickBooks in places things were never meant to be forced into. I mean, there is so much customisation that it almost acts like a real piece of software.

So, now I’m down to two reports. One bit of data I’ll need to work around and probably enter by hand since the way to export that particular report will bork everything to such an epic degree that I have nightmares just thinking about it.

Import the Excel into Access. Hit a button. Run a report. BAM! Done.

We won’t talk about how much effort it will take to finish getting the data in QuickBooks to where I actually want it. (Especially after Ida just dumped 600+ new Emergency Service Claims on us.)

The fact is, that once it’s done, and kept up with, this won’t ever be so bad.

Resume Building At Its Finest:
Took absolutely shitty accounting software and developed an Access database query / report to summarise multiple QB exports into one quick, easy to tweak, dashboard.

I am Angry Accountant.

Hear me roar!

roar