Even with my time being very constrained, I still try to find time to learn new skills or freshen up existing skills. I thought I would list what I’m currently studying and what I’ve completed. I don’t endorse any specific courses unless specifically stated. The same goes for any platform. I have a lot of courses on Udemy.com but it’s just coincidence since I got a great deal on a bunch of courses when I first started, near Black Friday several years ago. I also use sites like StackSkills, Codecademy, and Adobe. I’m considering putting together some courses of my own since I enjoy sharing and teaching others. Note that none of these courses are accredited, and are only good for a coffee when presented with $5 at a Starbucks location. 🙂

I am currently studying or reviewing Java, Python, Laravel, JavaScript, Business Plan Writing, and other subjects.

Occasionally I get a spreadsheet with numbers that are presented as characters in a column. You can tell because the numbers will be left-justified in the cells. This can wreak havoc and waste time when trying to filter and sort data. There are several solutions. You can do a find-and-replace, use the VALUE function, or use a plug-in. The one I found is called CT2N. Once installed, it puts an icon on a tool bar. I had mixed results with it so far.

Select the data you want to modify.

For find and replace, key in ^[0-9\-] into the “Search For” box.

In the “Replace With” box, key in a single ampersand, &.

I usually click on “Replace All” since I have selected the exact I want to modify.

Now you can proceed to filter and sort your data to meet your needs.

This link was helpful for using the find-and-replace and VALUE function techniques.

https://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Converting_a_Text_String_to_a_Number_in_Calc

This link instructs you on installing and using the CT2N plug-in.

https://extensions.libreoffice.org/extensions/ct2n-convert-text-to-number-and-dates

Hope this helps and good luck!

Tonight I was determined to take time to find out why I was having some strange behavior on my Firefox web browser on my MacBook Air. I’ve been doing some contract programming in Hawaii and finally got settled down enough to get a handle on some things like this. I’d also like to find some time to actually enjoy some of the nice things about Oahu instead of worrying about where I’m going to stay and how I’m going to pay for it. It’s crazy expensive here and like a whole different country. But I digress…

The browser behavior that I noticed initially was that certain web URLs would be redirected to what looked like a Yahoo search page. Is Yahoo getting that slimey? It was one of those sorts of things where if you tried to go back a page it would just redirect you again, ad infinitum. I remember going through and removing Yahoo from the search engine choices in the browser preferences a while back, but now those few site URLs give me a 404 – page not found kind of error. When I flip over to Chromium (not Chrome) the same site would load fine. So tonight I did some searching and found that some people have been having similar things happen to them. There were also the comparisons to the bad old days of Windows XP where malware was everywhere all the time. They recommended looking for plug-ins related to Yahoo and removing them. I didn’t find anything with Yahoo on it, so I started the browser up in safe mode, and sure enough the sites would load normally. So I restarted Firefox again and then started disabling plug-ins one by one, starting at the top of the list since those were the newest. After a few disablings and a few restarts, something further down the list jumped out at me — SearchMe. What the heck? I never installed such a beast. It had apparently snuck in with something else that had been installed or did some sort of cross-execution thing and downloaded itself. Anyway, I disabled it and the sites now load fine. I still have no idea how it suddenly appeared as one of my add-ons, but it did. Firefox is promising a new, safer add-ons model soon. Let’s hope it helps and doesn’t ruin many other good add-ons that we like to use.

Update: The Yahoo search reappeared in my browser and in my browser settings. I followed this guide to remove other traces of the vermin:

Adware Removal Guide : Spigot