Loving a good spreadsheet

Even since microsoft decided so badly f*** up the usability of build-it Windows calculator I've found myself using "excel" more and more for all kinds of simple calculations. Excel in quotes, because I don't really use Excel but LibreOffice's equivalent, Calc, but "Excel" is essentially synonymous to spreadsheet today.

Need to quickly calculate some VATs? Calc.
Check current and voltage of resistor divider? Calc.
Track my daily spending? Calc. (Well, at least that is one thing spreadsheet is actually intended for).
Calculate 10+20+30? ... Well, if I am submitting those figures to customers, I might do the math in my head, and double-check with Calc. Just in case.

In the end, I may have few different sheets open at the end of the day, often each just containing few cells' worth of numbers and quick calculations. These I often discard when they're not needed any more.

But not always. Sometimes a sheet might contain something I may need to look up again. Conversion tables (like resistances to voltages to matching temperatures, or relative humidity to absolute, or whatever)  and I save it for next time.

Invariably, when the "next time" comes I open a sheet, hoping to find beautifully formatted table, ready to calculate all my figures, but it seems it never is. It's a mess of figures and formulae, thrown together on a single page, possibly even without any notation anywhere (except maybe units somewhere.)  And it takes almost longer to figure out how the sheet actually works than it were to write all of it again.

Of course, when a sheet gets used often enough, I do at some point seem to remember to add some notes and formatting to it. But it tends to take a few iterations.

Nevertheless, all hail Calc, one of the most useful multi-purpose tools in engineers' arsenal!