Some of you know that I have a full time job as a business analyst with one of the largest IT companies in the world. I help insurance companies do their IT better in that job. Almost a week ago, I have resigned from my day time job.
Back story:
As far back as I can remember, I have always wanted to run my own company. It is one of the reasons why I pursued MBA. But over the course of years, the part in me that is curious, risk taking and stubborn has vanished and was replaced by cautious, calculated and flexible self. May be it is all the education and social set up, or may be it is just me. The change has been subtle but very powerful. So much that when I finished MBA in 2006, I did not consider setting up my own company, even for a second. I was bending backwards to impress the recruiters and get a steady 9 to 5 job.
Year 2007 – the year of change:
The transformation from cautious to curious has been gradual and began in 2007. I went to USA for the first time in my life and met several interesting and enterprising people. I also realized the potential of web based startups. They are low cost, easy to setup and run and can be managed on part-time basis. Around the same time , my crush with Excel happened. So I started writing about it on my personal blog (yes, PHD used to be a personal blog before 2007. Dig deep in to archives and you will find a lot stories, experiences and trivia). But I also started a small website in the movie domain. The movie site didnt go that well, but PHD kept on rocking.
In the meanwhile, my day job kept me busy and gave me lots of challenging assignments. So I pushed PHD to the side track and worked on it in the nights and weekends. But somewhere in my heart I knew that I would have to quit my job and pursue PHD as a full time venture. But the cautious side of me never let it happen.
Years 2008 and 2009 – Foundation years:
Along the years (in 2008 and 2009) I cleared my student loans and most of the mortgage (house loan). I also made some buffer money by working in foreign locations and monetizing PHD’s traffic thru ads. All this was poured in to our bank accounts to create little cushion for us. Even then I wasnt thinking about quitting my job and starting a company.
Then I became dad in late 2009. Simultaneously I launched excel project management templates for sale. As my kids grew, the sales of PM Templates also went up. This was encouraging.
Year 2010 – Finally,
So in year 2010 I took some of the money made from PM Templates and invested in the Excel School program. Again many of you have welcomed the program with both hands and I saw a generous boost in part time business. But even then I wasn’t quite sure if working on PHD alone is a good idea.
Then something strange happened. Between day job, work on PHD I was spending very little time my family. My work demanded that I be in Denmark for extended time and I could hardly find any time to be with Jo and the kids. I was being a bad dad and husband. And that feeling was killing me inside.
So in March 2010 I came back to India on vacation. My initial plan was to take a 6 month sabbatical from day job and spend that time with my wife and kids. But after spending a month with them I couldn’t imagine going back to work. So I sent in my resignation last week.
What next?
I jokingly tell my wife that instead of working for one boss, I have now 9500 bosses. Each with different and very high expectations. 🙂
- Well, I will devote more time to PHD and update it regularly. I will strive to maintain the quality of posts and interaction here.
- I will also launch few new products (may be one product every 2 months) to keep the income stream trickling.
- I will be running Excel School on regular basis (or make it as an on-demand product).
- I will be doing more Excel Consulting work (Do you need a dashboard or report to be done? Drop me an email to get a quote).
- I will be able to conduct on-site training sessions any where in India.
- But most importantly I will be there to smile when Jo, Nishanth and Nakshatra wake up from sleep, and when they go to bed. every day. And that makes me happy 🙂
PS: I am planning to chronicle my journey as an entrepreneur at startup desi. Follow me there if you like to know how to run a one man shop online.
6 Responses to “Make VBA String Comparisons Case In-sensitive [Quick Tip]”
Another way to test if Target.Value equal a string constant without regard to letter casing is to use the StrCmp function...
If StrComp("yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
' Do something
End If
That's a cool way to compare. i just converted my values to strings and used the above code to compare. worked nicely
Thanks!
In case that option just needs to be used for a single comparison, you could use
If InStr(1, "yes", Target.Value, vbTextCompare) Then
'do something
End If
as well.
Nice tip, thanks! I never even thought to think there might be an easier way.
Regarding Chronology of VB in general, the Option Compare pragma appears at the very beginning of VB, way before classes and objects arrive (with VB6 - around 2000).
Today StrComp() and InStr() function offers a more local way to compare, fully object, thus more consistent with object programming (even if VB is still interpreted).
My only question here is : "what if you want to binary compare locally with re-entering functions or concurrency (with events) ?". This will lead to a real nightmare and probably a big nasty mess to debug.
By the way, congrats for you Millions/month visits 🙂
This is nice article.
I used these examples to help my understanding. Even Instr is similar to Find but it can be case sensitive and also case insensitive.
Hope the examples below help.
Public Sub CaseSensitive2()
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbBinaryCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub CaseSensitive()
If InStr("Look in this string", "look") = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub
Public Sub NotCaseSensitive()
'doing alot of case insensitive searching and whatnot, you can put Option Compare Text
If InStr(1, "Look in this string", "look", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then
MsgBox "woops, no match"
Else
MsgBox "at least one match"
End If
End Sub