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  • 1.  The weirdest spreadsheet you've ever made?

    Posted 4 days ago

    A friend recently told me he might need to start a list of... all the dead people he knows.
    Dark? Yes.
    Organized? Also yes.

    That got me thinking about some of the more fun spreadsheets I've made over the years.

    One of my personal favorites:
    I ranked the food I ordered through the Too Good To Go food waste app. (If you don't use this app yet, consider checking it out.)

    Since you never really know what you're going to get, I started tracking the following stats from each food place I'd use the app at:

    • What I paid

    • What I received

    • My perceived value of the haul

    • Whether I'd order from that place again

    After a few orders, I basically had a data-driven leaderboard of surprise leftovers.

    What's the weirdest, funniest, or most unexpected spreadsheet you've ever made?



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    Christopher Seigel P.E., M.ASCE
    Civil Engineer
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  • 2.  RE: The weirdest spreadsheet you've ever made?

    Posted 3 days ago

    Every year, I have an ice fishing spreadsheet that gets reused to estimate ice thickness based on a two-week lookahead weather forecast.  

    Starting around Thanksgiving (and earlier, if the evidence supports it), there's a high-low forecast entry for weather, and columns for notes on the local lakes (they freeze in a sequential order).  Once a lake is noted as partially frozen over, the forecast is used to estimate when there will be walkable ice (4" thick), ATV-supporting ice (6-8" thick), or truck-supporting ice (12"+).  Once a week, the update includes a review of the actual high-low temperatures from the week prior and any updates to the future forecast.  

    Haven't gone through the ice yet from it.  

    Some years, I've been out fishing as soon as November 10, and one year had only 10 days of walkable ice all winter.  



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    Joseph M. Rozmiarek, P. E., M.ASCE
    President and Chief Engineer
    Marine on Saint Croix, MN
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: The weirdest spreadsheet you've ever made?

    Posted 2 days ago

    Wonderful question, Chris. May I offer two?

    My first (pre-software) was hand-written on a columnar pad listing the pros and cons of marrying my fiancé soon or after college. Ranking weighted priorities provided the push we needed to marry soon. Sixty years later, we suspect the spreadsheet gave us good advice.

    A more recent attempt listed my favorite tunes/songs. Striving for a top 10, the spreadsheet quickly grew to 268 items. Sigh. Considering only candidates for a top 10 provided a top 58. Ranked choice voting narrowed it to these 22:

    Time and Tide Basia
    8 o'Clock Rock Bill Haley & Comets
    Aint No Sunshine When She's Gone Bill Withers
    Dancing with Myself Billy Idol
    Love will keep us together Captain and Tennile
    Roll Over Bethoven Chuck Berry
    Smoke on the water Deep Purple
    Truth #2 Dixie Chicks
    Don't Stop Fleetwood Mac
    Even it Up Heart
    Nutbush Ike & Tina Turner
    White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane
    Do You Wanna Touch Joan Jett
    Rhapsody in Blue Leonard Bernstein and Columbia
    Blue Bayou Linda Ronstadt
    Let 'em In Paul McCartney
    Twilight Time Platters
    Misty Ray Stephens
    Little Latin Lupe Lou Righteous Brothers
    Brown Sugar Rolling Stones
    Life During Wartime Talking Heads
    She's Not There Zombies


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    William McAnally Ph.D., P.E., BC.CE, BC.NE, F.ASCE
    ENGINEER
    Columbus MS
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: The weirdest spreadsheet you've ever made?

    Posted 15 hours ago

    Not a spreadsheet of mine but one my CE father made. He was working for a railroad that consistently had discussions with locals and environmental groups about vegetation removal efforts. One day reading our local paper, he read an article about goats being used to clear vegetation. It has enough data points in the article about herd size, duration of vegetation removal, and area completed that he could try to estimate the number of "goat days" to clear the entire railroad RoW. Given the cold climate where we lived, there were not enough "goat days" to make it a viable option for them and he had the numbers to back it up. 

    Still makes me laugh. 



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    Heather Brooks Ph.D., P.E., P.Eng, M.ASCE
    Senior Geotechnical Engineer
    BGC Engineering Inc.
    Calgary AB
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    Original Message


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