The Accidental Activist

So, I threw a tantrum this morning. Lots of crying, some screaming, fortunately no throwing of things since I already tore my rotator cuff that way back in 2016. (Yes, I threw a pizza box in absolute rage of waking up late, again, and tore my rotator cuff. For the rest of my life, I am lamed because of a tantrum.)

What caused this ruckus? My inability to do web development/advanced data work, again. I need to aggregate some numbers and calculate some rates in different groupings. I can do this manually, which will take probably 3-4 days, and then has to be done manually every fucking week. It will take hours and add hours of time to my days.

I tried bringing the data into airtable, I heard that was a useful program and it's something I could kind of handle. But the aggregate summary row adds my rates instead of re-calculating them. I can't adjust that summary cell into a formula — my options are limited to sum, average, median, standard deviation, others — so it's useless to me.

The only way to do it — and I consulted a developer — is to take the fields and display them with the calculated fields, using python or php or something. Keep in mind, I can't even do php. And don't give me some fucking shit about "just learn it on a tutorial site" because all those things fucking do is give you a little editor and say, "You can code php, do it in our helpful window!!!!!!!!!!!" That doesn't teach anyone SHIT how to load a php into a webpage, where to host it, or how to write it. It just gives you a little fucking box to type things in. That does not help.

Googling "php and airtable" brought me to some pages that have some kind of fucking program that fucking imports shit into some fucking thing that I couldn't even fucking read or parse. That didn't help either.

When I consulted the developer, and said, "Please, please help me," he at first tried to but then, he said, started to see where I was getting blocked — and that he couldn't help me. The things I need to do have "fairly complicated parts" and there isn't even a simple place for him to show where to start.

I quite seriously went into my bedroom to get dressed to go take a trip on the metro train without a mask so I maybe get covid and die. I am that frustrated, I have been that frustrated and upset about this for 20 years now. Fortunately, when I went in my room, there was my cat on my bed, and I was kind of like, oh, if I die then she doesn't have anyone.

But seriously, after my cat dies, all bets are off.