Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org

We have been debating whether or not to buy iPhone. For one, we are not on any cellular contract and free to go. But the sheer cost of $400 one time (one for my wife and one of me) and a monthly bill of ~ $150 is holding us back. Our current mobile bill is roughly $80 per month and when we choose to go back home we can just takeout the SIM Cards and thrash it without having to bother about paying any contract breakage (incidentally for iPhone this could be as much as $175 per line). On the other hand, the iPhone is excellent value for money for the awesome features it provides. Our current phones were bought at Rs. 10,000 a piece (roughly $250), even though they were world class when we bought them 2 years back and still work well, their features are no where comparable to that of iPhone’s. Hmm…

Here are few excellent excel links from the last week around the web:

• Learn about excel category axis, find out how to use dates, numbers, text etc. on category axis for charts. See how you can tweak the axis to get the outcome you want (for ex: How to show weekdays on a date axis, how to configure axis for stock ticker charts etc.)
• If you are the kind who would install lots of add-ins to do your work, then you may be wondering how to find out what are the add-ins you have in place. Find out all the COM add-ins you have installed in Excel from Daily dose of Excel
• Winners of 2008 Excel Dashboard competition, see the beautiful and informative dashboards here 1, 2 and 3. The winner got an iPhone, alas, if only I knew about this earlier, I would have wondered “how to dashboard” instead of “to iPhone or not to iPhone”.

Got a hot excel tip to share, drop me an email or leave a comment.

What does your sky look like?, originally uploaded by Chandoo.

We went to a near by amusement park for the July 4th weekend. Even though it was raining they had a decent turnout and we enjoyed alot going on the rides, playing with water, watching the parades and finally the fireworks. I tried capturing many pics, but I had no tripod and was too tired by then (it was almost 11 when these things went off), So only a few of them came out with any clarity, How do you like this one?

Also see the other ones on flickr:

same flower, another angle, originally uploaded by Chandoo.

We went to near by Scioto River park last weekend to spend some time without any noise. But we didnt know that there was a concert going on there. So we walked out of the park to surrounding Dublin residential area and I spotted few nice flowers en route. I am sucker for flowers, I cant control my finger when I see one, I had to click. May be because they are already beautiful, my shots are bound to be nice Whatever may be the reason, enjoy the shot.

The sunset was great today, what amazing idea / story / experience / thing you had today?

Here is an inspirational read on Richard Feynman. Have you ever noticed that almost all the great people are humble and fun loving. It just amazes me whenever I read or know about these great people who solved world problems with a smile on their face and yet remained so down to earth.

We are going to big apple on this weekend, its going to be a really long drive, almost 1000 miles both ways put together, I will see if I can post something while resting, but don’t hope to see anything here for the next 3 days. You have an excellent weekend, drive carefully - more so if you are going anywhere east, stop your car and run towards the closest rest area if you see a compact car (goddamn you rental car company for not telling what car I will be driving) that looks like its chased by grawp. If you are not the kind who uses their right leg and left hand during the weekends, then I am happy for you, do something fun (oh, I am sure you will, afterall you are reading Pointy Haired Dilbert ), be merry, just watch out if your house is anywhere east. Tada!

PS: photo from net_efekt

It has been a while since I wrote a welcome post to my readers, so here again.

Pointy Haired Dilbert - Chandoo.org is a blog about technology, business, data analytics, excel, photography, advertising and my life. I am Chandoo, an excellent donut eater, coffee drinker extraordinaire, blogger beyond reform, crappy coder, lousy manager, happy husband, lazy photographer, voracious Calvin and Hobbes reader, pathetic skier, sambhar lover, apple user and budding entrepreneur.

I have this site from 2004 July, when I got in to a b-school from busy coding job I had with Xinthe and I needed a way to fight the boredom of endless case studies and all the horror associated with MBA. Over the last 4 years, this blog grew to become something meaningful, large and searchworthy. Now, it has about 557 posts, 2 pages, 38 drafts, contained within 32 categories and 262 tags.

You can read interesting stuff about excel, data analytics, business, advertising, life in IIMs, photography or my personal life. Browse through other categories / tags to see what you can find.

Nowadays, I have been posting almost every working day (weekends are totally reserved for relentless dosa eating, restless world exploring, aimless reading, snoreless sleeping and hopeless flirting with my wife) and trying to keep up with comments. Click here to subscribe to this blog’s feed. You can subscribe to the blog content via e-mail also, just look to the side bar on the right, enter your email-id and click on the little “do me” button next to it.

Also, there are monthly archives from 2004 June. You can access them by clicking these links: May 2008 | April 2008 | March 2008 | February 2008 | January 2008 | December 2007 | November 2007 | October 2007 | August 2007 | July 2007 | June 2007 | May 2007 | April 2007 | March 2007 | February 2007 | January 2007 | December 2006 | November 2006 | October 2006 | September 2006 | August 2006 | July 2006 | June 2006 | May 2006 | April 2006 | March 2006 | February 2006 | January 2006 | December 2005 | November 2005 | October 2005 | September 2005 | August 2005 | July 2005 | June 2005 | May 2005 | April 2005 | March 2005 | February 2005 | January 2005 | December 2004 | November 2004 | October 2004 | September 2004 | August 2004 | July 2004

You can get in touch with me on my personal email id at chandoo dot d at gmail dot com. I am very happy to know that you have found my website took trouble reading this, I would be excited to hear from you, so drop in a note if you feel like. Happy browsing!