Monday, January 19, 2009

Freeware: Table to Excel converter

Do you recognize this? Sometimes you spend hours copying a simple table from a WORD-document, Internet Page or PDF-file to your (Excel) spreadsheet.
What should take about two minutes work, ends in frustration. Finally you decide to fill your spreadsheet by hand.

These times are over. With the next simple javascript application, called


, you'll be able to copy most tables to your spreadsheet in minutes.

Success!

Friday, January 9, 2009

The price of knowledge

Sometimes difficult questions have easy answers, just like some complex problems have simple solutions.

Last night the TV-set got stuck. No signal, nothing. Self fixing failed.

Within 15 minutes 'TV Repair Services' knocked at my door. An old guy came in. After a short "Where?" I showed him my antique TV-set. For a moment he glanced at the dead set and after a simple "Ah.." he took a small hammer out of his bag and precisely tapped on the top left side of the set. Within a second the TV was back on.

"That'll be $ 25.25" he said dryly.



"$ 25,25 !", I stuttered back, "Just for tapping with this hammer? Can you specify that?"

"Yeh", he replied, "that's 25 cents for tapping with the hammer and 25 dollar for knowing where to tap".


As always in life: Knowledge has its price.

Next time you have a TV breakdown, don't mix things up by hammering yourself or hiring a next door 'hammer man'.
It's not about the hammer, it's about the knowledge and experience of people that help you.

So if you take advice for a complex (financial) matter, don't bother paying a substantial fee for a sound and simple advice. And never ever hire amateurs. Remember the old saying:


On the other hand, just paying respectable fees doesn't guarantee a sound advice at all. So always hire a real trusted professional and ask for credentials.

Sometimes even free advices raise our level of knowledge.....

Picture source: Arlington