All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

My parents & I got into a discussion during dinner...

Today I went over to Kelly Services & updated a bunch of information as well as taking several tests - typing & application knowledge stuff. The application tests included knowledge of MS Word, MS Excel, & MS Access - <sarc> man where they tough </sarc>.

The typing tests on the other hand were the most annoying typing tests I've ever taken. For the average person that doesn't know much about computers they're probably fairly standard. However, with my <sarc> vast amounts of knowledge </sarc> my brain wouldn't stop...

• Why the hell would an application force you to type in "0.00"?
• Who's idiotic idea was it to force a person to add ".00" to a dollar amount with no cents (& no sense? i.e. "$5" couldn't be typed as "5", but had to be typed as "5.00")?
• Why in hell would you have "5 sets" in a quantity field? A quantity field should be an absolute integer in most situations... How many times do you order 5.25 sets of shoes, 1.5 pairs of jeans, or -10 magazines? Granted there are times where this is possible - keeping track of 10.35 shares of a stock, returning bad items (therefore a non-absolute value, but this should really be handled differently), etc
• ...

My mom of course pointed out the fact that this is what makes my skill set so useful - I can point this sort of stuff out in a heartbeat. My point was that my brain wouldn't stop heading down this path when I was supposed to be typing & not only that, but typing fast.

Considering all of this & the really loud "clacky" keyboard, I thought I did really badly. The last typing test I remember the scores from had me at a little over 11,000 kph and I was afraid I would have dropped under that. I was pleasantly surprised at my 15,000 kph & 16,000 kph scores.

Anywho, back to my brain wandering along the path of programming knowledge... When I pointed out the fact that it seems like the majority of people don't realize a lot of the computer shortcuts they are not able to increase their productivity by that little bit. I was frustrated at being forced to type the ".00" onto dollar items missing the decimal places because this is 1 of those great computer "shortcuts" that I use to increase my productivity.

A currency variable is typically a float or a double. Depending upon the programming language or spreadsheet used, that can mean accuracy to a lot of decimal places. I believe that MS Excel has an accuracy to 9 digits after the decimal. "What the hell does that have to do with anything," you might ask? It means I can type "543" & MS Excel can automagically keep track of the number as "543.000000000" - so why the hell do I have to type the decimal places again?

I love my dad, he's an engineer. He actually stated my motto - "I'm lazy." And he qualified it - "basically I don't like doing useless things." His example is the fact that people will stand there & push a blue button, wait 3 minutes, push the blue button again, wait 3 minutes... If you ask them why they're waiting 3 minutes before they push the button again they typically have the most brilliant of answers - "I don't know."

I thought this was just 1 of my issues :) Am I the only engineer's kid (ek? why the hell not, preacher's kids have pk) that has this problem with (ir)relevance?