Jason Pearce

Co-workers Otten, Lodolo, and I just finished a 24-hour expansion visit to Duke University. I don’t normally make visits like this, but we though having a native along would help. I hope it did, for Lambda Chi Alpha hasn’t been on Duke’s campus since 1969.

Today I was given a 150-page MS Word document and was asked to pull out all of the email address within the document and place them into a MS Excel file.

Since the email addresses were imbedded throughout the document’s text, I couldn’t just sort, cut, and paste them. I needed to find a way to pull them from the text. Here’s how I did it.

• In MS Word, use Find and Replace to find every “space” and replace it with a new line break “^”. Since email addresses don’t have spaces, they will all appear on a new line.
• Copy the extremely long document into MS Excel. All copy will appear in a single column.
• Highlight that column and choose Text to Columns within MS Excel’s Data menu.
• For the Delimiter, input the AT symbol “@”. This will spilt all email address into the second column, all other content will remain in the first column.
• Highlight both columns and sort the content by Column B. Now all of the email address are in the top rows.
• Copy all of the rows that have content in two rows and paste it back into a new MS Word file. Make sure you paste as plain text.
• All that’s left is for you to Find and Replace every Tab “^t” with the at symbol “@”

Last week was spent in training: learning Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge. Lambda Chi has been using RE for about 10 years now. We’re getting ready to upgrade from version 6 to version 7. Sadly, I’m not very impressed with the upgrade. But we will put to use some of the new features.

Last Monday, my date took me to a Clay Akin concert at the Indianapolis State Fair. No, my date is not 14; she just love’s Clay. Though I wouldn’t choose to listen to him, it was a fun evening.

This weekend, I went to the national wakeboarding tournament, hosted right here in Indianapolis. The pros were very impressive, catching big air and peforming multiple stunts. It was a good time.

Lambda Chi Alpha’s 50th General Assembly was a success. It wore out me and the rest of the staff, but it was a success. Our 550 members had a great time, learned a lot, and debated a good deal of legislation.

The best description of my, and the rest of the staff’s, involvement would be that of a duck. We looked calm and graceful on the surface, but underneath, we were paddling like crazy.

My chapter, Elon’s Delta-Pi Zeta, sent two delegates: Craig Whitham and Daniel Hanson. Craig is the chapter president and Dan is the secretary.

I was impressed with them both. They were professional, involved, participated in programming, made efforts to visit with me, and seemed on top of their game. It was comforting to learn that my chapter is being managed by these two men. Elon was well represented.

After unloading the truck Sunday afternoon, I think every member of staff returned home and slept for 12 or more hours. The office was closed both Monday and Tuesday to give us a chance to relax. Tomorrow, we’ll all attend a baseball game in the afternoon as a reward for our efforts last week.

Hard work, however, lies ahead. I have a website to build, our staff soon hits the road, and we all have to improve recruitment numbers. At least we will have plenty to do.

Lately, I’ve had an unusual attraction to birds. Rather, they’ve had an unusual attraction to me.

In the past two weeks, five birds have miscalculated their flight patterns and have flown directly into either my office window or one of the windows in my home. A I write this, there is a robin perched just outside of my window, watching me. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that he’d fly into my window before I’m done writing this post.

I have learned two things regarding all of this.

One: I am much jumpier than I ever thought I was. I like to think I’m laid back, but when a bird comes crashing into your window, you can’t help but to jump. It startles me every time. Of course, I’m sure the bird is the one who is startled the most. Imagine flying along and suddenly finding a solid pane of air (e.g. glass).

Two: For all five instances, the bird hit with such force that it literally knocked the crap out of it. If you have ever wondered how bird crap gets on your vertically-standing windows, it’s because one flew into it. I’d like to think they crap-on-impact on purpose as a way of letting other birds know that glass is nearby (e.g. if a bird sees suspended bird crap it means fly far away from here.)

On one occasion, the one that made me jump the highest of them all, the bird hit my window with such force that I thought it died on impact. It lay motionless for about 30 seconds on the ground before it finally moved to sit up.

It then sat for at least five minutes, just trying to catch its breath. Then my neighbor’s cat appeared, in full stalking fashion. I thought to myself, “It’s just not this bird’s lucky day.” The bird saw the cat. The cat saw the bird. But nothing happened. They just stared at each other.

Eventually, the cat walked away — to my surprise. The bird, still recovering from its collision, finally got the break he needed. Five minutes later, he managed to fly away.

Maybe it’s birds who have nine lives and not the other way around.