Hot air ballooning in Seattle

This birthday I did hot air ballooning 3000 ft above Snohomish County of Seattle. The clear sky enhanced the pleasure.



Hot air balloon works on a simple principle that hot air is lighter than surrounding cold air. This difference causes balloon to rise. First manned hot air balloon was invented by the French and in their honor, the organizers always celebrate success of a flight with Champagne.


Here is the link to the ballooning website - http://www.airialballoon.com/

Labor of Love

June 29, 2008. I ran my first ever half marathon!

Well I did not just run but walked, dragged and cribbed. 13 miles did not seem easier when I registered for the run and boy! were they any easier.

My friend and I planned to train for several months in advance and started just in time a week before the run. Training made us confident of running at least 3 miles which is just enough to cross Seattle's 520 bridge (2.3 miles long) on foot. It was the first time ever the bridge was being opened to pedestrians.

But when we had crossed the bridge and taken a piece of rubber tire as memento, we decided to try finishing the run.

Volunteers after every mile greeted and cheered us. There were high school children offering water and glucose, people watering plants giving free shower and another group of people applauding our efforts.

5 1/2 hours of continuous and painstaking walking got me two nice event Tees and the above medal. Later I received bruised toes and strained shin too but I was told those were exclusives :)



A portion of each registration fee went to the Floyd and Dolores Jones Cancer Institute at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

related: http://theruchi.blogspot.com/2008/05/half-marathon.html

Get Last Used Row

Sub get_last_used_row()
' to get the last non-blank row

LastRow1 = Cells(Cells.Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row
'this is the keyboard equivalent of selecting a range using shift and down arrow
'   Exercise What does "A" signify??

LastRow2 = UsedRange.Rows.Count

MsgBox "LastRow1 " & LastRow1
MsgBox "LastRow2 " & LastRow2

End Sub

Exercise - What is the difference between LastRow1 and LastRow2. Though they might give same results occasionally, the approach to get the last row is different. Find it out!

selcells

Sub selcells()
' this sub shows how to get a cell value
ActiveSheet.Select
cellval = Cells(1, "A")
MsgBox cellval
End Sub

Try writing a sub that copies value of A1 into B1 without use of an intermediate variable.

Msgbox Inputbox

Open excel
Do Alt F11
Paste -

Sub pgmhello()

MsgBox "Hello"
' accept name from user
name1 = InputBox("Name Please")

' concatenate hello and user name
MsgBox "Hello" & name1

End Sub

Click green triangular button or PF5

Try it!

PDF Converter, Split n Merge

I shy away from cumbersome WORD documents due to poor navigation between pages and delay in loading images and prefer to use PDFs. Google Documents is good but for files under size of mere 500 KB but beyond that it gives up.

I recently discovered an efficient and fast way of converting a file using services of Free PDF Converter. It is a 3 step process - Upload, Press Convert Button, Download. You have the option of uploading multiple files (maximum 5) in zipped format and you can also provide your email id to have the PDF emailed to you. A copy of the PDF is saved on the server which either you can delete immediately after downloading/ receiving the document or will be automatically deleted within 24 hours.



It helped me convert a 5 MB WORD document to a 2 MB PDF in less than 5 minutes. Pretty neat and quick!

PDFs too can be a hassle when it comes to split and merge. And for this exact purpose I dug up a software called PDF SAM. The basic version is free to download and is pretty sleek to use. It has a very simple user interface and a number of split options. Only the file order matters for merging. See the screen shots below.

Half Marathon

My take away from the big climb was information on marathon. My friend and I chose to enrol for 13 miles long half marathon scheduled for 29th June 2008. It provides the unprecedented opportunity to cross the 520 Bridge, the longest floating bridge in the world, on foot.

Am all excited and plan to train for the event. That reminds me that I need to buy new running shoes.