I feel sort of foolish right now.

I couldn't get my computer to boot up properly this morning. It would go through the POST, get to the password login, and then when I put in the password and hit the Enter key, it went into routine shutdown mode and turned off.

I went through this process a couple of times, wondering how I was going to debug the problem when I couldn't even log in, and then it dawned on me...

I have a macro-programmable keyboard, and last night I had re-programmed it so that in an Excel spreadsheet when I put data into a selected cell, the Enter key would make the text bold, change it to 14-pt, change the color to red then save the changes and proceed to the next cell. Apparently something in the macro (you try coming up with a keyboard-only routine that will do that reliably )* also doubled as a computer shut-down command when I was at the password login screen.

Oops...

It is an interesting spreadsheet... just one of the 9546 different formulas in it goes like this:

=IF(RIGHT(G4,2)="ar",LEFT(G4,LEN(G4)-2)&"áramos", IF(RIGHT(G4,2)="er",LEFT(G4,LEN(G4)-2)&"iéremos", IF(RIGHT(G4,2)="ir",LEFT(G4,LEN(G4)-2)&"iéremos","~")))

If for some inexplicable reason you are interested you can test it and see what it does by starting an Excel spreadsheet and putting a word whose last two letters are either "ar", "er", or "ir" into cell G4. Paste the above formula into some other cell in the vicinity and watch what happens. Try a word that doesn't end in "ar", "er", or "ir".

I say 9546 "different" formulas, but there are really only 43 formulas that are truly different, the others are all just cell reference changes, i.e., instead of "G4" it might be "B60" or "G1530" etc., and they were generated by cut-and-paste. As you've probably guessed, this spreadsheet generates Spanish verb conjugations. This formula generates (just for you, Bitt! ) the first person plural imperfect subjunctive. I am using the spreadsheet to make up a set of flash cards, and the purpose of the keyboard macro is to change irregular verbs to be bold-14pt-red after I type them in manually. Lots of fun...

tanstaafl.

*Shift-Home
Ctrl-1
Tab
Tab
Down-arrow
Down-arrow
Tab
14
Tab
Tab
Tab
Tab
Tab
Down-arrow
Tab
Down-arrow
Down-arrow
Down-arrow
Enter
Tab
Tab
Enter
Down-arrow