To Calc or Not to Calc?

(the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Attitude)

Not much has been written about ADAMcalc lately. I only know a 
handful of people who would admit to knowing anything about it, 
or even using it. There's Frances Clee - who cannot understand 
why I am not more enthusiastic about spreadsheets in general and 
ADAMcalc in particular. There's Nich Lukach up in Rouyn Noranda 
who did his level best to show us all how useful ADAMcalc can be. 
And there's my mentor, Guy Cousineau, who also tried to teach me 
a thing or two about ADAMcalc. 

Honest, I've tried. There are numerous and assorted 'calcs' right 
here at my fingertips, clamoring to be used. Let's see: we have 
Visicalc (on the Apple II+ and Hewlett Packard 150), GeoCalc on 
the C64, ADAMcalc on the ADAM. There's Microsoft Multiplan and 
Lotus 1-2-3 for those nasty DOS boxes. 

With all of this calculating power, I ought to be rich, well 
organized and prosperous. But no. 

My head turns to mush each time I load one, and this has been 
going on for years.  About the best I can manage is to record a 
list of expenses, products, or whatever, along with the value in 
a neighbouring column, and - if I'm lucky - remember a formula 
for adding the total of a column figures where required.  That 
much I can usually remember.

This is truly one of those instances where perception and 
attitude clash with reality. It's the setup. Doing a spreadsheet 
requires you to know in advance  what kind of work you want to 
produce and how it will be laid out. You have to determine column 
width, column format, cell relationships, and various other 
aspects of your work before you enter a single value or see a 
single result. It's easy to make difficult, given half a chance.

All of this is meant to provide a lead-in to a pair of ADAMcalc 
files on this particular ANN disk. ANN Treasurer Robert Bair 
provided some time back a number of examples of how an average 
'Joe' could use both Smartwriter and ADAMcalc for useful work 
without knowing anything about programming. Here, we have two 
spreadsheets without as much as a single number between them. I 
must confess it was one of these "oh-why-didn't-I-think-of-that" 
kind of experiencs. Both spreadsheets are simple, and you can 
change them to suit your purposes.

The first is a genealogical record. This is the "Matthew" file, 
and it sets out a family tree. That's it, that's all. It may not 
seem like much, but when you look at it you realize that this is 
the kind of thing that an average family might want to do, even 
if it's only to keep track of birthdays and Christmas gifts. 
ADAMcalc provides just the environment. 

The second spreadsheet is a shopping list, appropriately entitled 
"Shoplist". If you use this one for nothing else, you can print 
it out each time you go shopping, and thereby provide yourself 
with an extensive yet generic list of items that you might want 
to shop for. There may be items there that you don't use, but the 
beauty of this particular spreadsheet is that changing it is not 
rocket science. (even I can do it!)

Check out both of these files. In themselves, they'll give you 
a pair of useful applications for ADAMcalc. Used as examples, 
they may even suggest other similar tasks that could be  with a 
spreadsheet program. 

Perhaps you (and I) will benefit from a little more use of our 
ADAMcalc software. And wouldn't that be something!

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