"YOU CAN DO IT!" - Reminiscing Oracle-d SteemAlliance Challenge

As the election for steem alliance structure proposal drew to a close yesterday, I couldn't help recalling what a tedious task it had been for us task hunters on @oracle-d blog. The nature of the task itself was quite daunting - reviewing fancy proposals for the alliance and piecing them together in a comparative table. Little wonder that participation in the task was pretty low. Few days to the closure of the task, I was still undecided which way to go. I felt like just groaning about it to someone, so I hollered on my buddy who introduced me to the oracle-d tasks.

"Boss, have you seen oracle-d latest task?"

And I went on to describe how intimidating it seemed and my fears that my head might explode, having to read and sum five winding proposals and construct a comparison table for them.


Boss has been rather occupied with school work. With just a little time to spare online, he couldn't partake in that demanding task. I just expected to hear from him something like

"Skip it if you find it too difficult"

I would have been much comfortable with that to be frank; and would probably have just skipped it. But the words that came from him got me a bit uneasy:

"You can do it."

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Such a reassuring response!

"Now is the time to get good upvotes" he added. And he thrilled me further how SBD rose to N400 the day before! Lol!

You see, this boss of mine would do anything to pull your legs and fix your unsettled mind for you if he knows you are capable.

Well, that seemed all that I needed: a pat on the back.

And I reminded him of that awesome stuff he's got within: a sweet tongue!


It was like a miracle the calmness that descended on me thereafter. I could focus on the task with unbelievably cool head and determination - to do my little bit as best as I could partly because I knew this boss believed in and counted on me to accomplish that task and I so didn't wanna let him down. Lol!

A bit into the task and I realized reviewing the proposals was no big deal in itself. What made it hitherto scary was my lack of focus and indecision. So in a day I was able to cover all five proposals and picked key points while the next day I drafted and edited my write-up. The main deal, however, was getting my table out and attaching it to my writeup. You see, when it comes to excel or working with tables generally, I'm a total novice. I just had to do it anyhow now for the sake of this assignment.

I went for spreadsheet using my WPS office app;

but in the preview I found that the data took more than one page and some of borders were missing when I zoomed out such that to screenshot and upload that would result in confusion as there appeared to be no clear demarcation between one column and another. It was a messy sight to behold!


Perhaps the outlook could improve if I passed it through some software online, I thought. So I practically ransacked the net for free software to convert my excel to pdf or some photo format. What I got from that stressful endeavour was some distorted piece of shit as pdf/image. Obviously something was amiss with my excel formatting, and i was just so lost on how to set it aright. My messaging app(whatsapp) coincidentally ran out of date the same day, so I couldn't reach out to my boss for the assistance I knew would be readily available there.


Next, I turned to Google spreadsheet. I've never used that before. It took hours on end to discover I had to first download the Googlesheet app before I could use it. And that just wasn't an option I could take immediately as my phone is really cramped to get new apps or even update existing ones anyhow. I had to seek out another similar software like zoho sheet only to find it absolutely confounding!


Suffice to say I spent an entire day burning my battery, data, and time in some stressful nothing. I had to submit my review initially without the table. Time was up! But I knew that wasn't the end. It wouldn't do to relent till I got that stuff right.


It was time to retire for the day after an exhaustive 'misadventure'. But just then, it hit me: did it have to be excel/spreadsheet? I could make tables with word, couldn't I? So why didn't I try that? The sleep I needed so badly eluded me as I put in the extra work. There were a couple of hours more before midnight. The table turned out to be much easy and fun. My WPS office app is like a mobile version of MS office.

It has word document, presentation(powerpoint), and spreadsheet(excel) all with features that enable you format your works to your taste. The word document has beautiful table templates from which I chose one for the assignment.

The rest of the task was a matter of copy and paste from the spreadsheet. Then I converted the finish table to a jpeg with this online converter I came across in my earlier search, and downloaded the file to my device in zipped format


Unfortunately, I couldn't find my files in my gallery at once and as I was 'over-exhausted' by now, sleep easily took me to the land of slumber and by the time I could focus on it the following day, of course it was too late. The task results were out!

But I was undaunted!

I eventually found where my downloaded zipped files were in a different folder. I quickly cropped them, attached them to my work as you can find here and offered some prayers.

To be honest, I expected nothing more than a little compensation (as I've come to observe is kind of customary with oracle-d. Lol!). It was a jaw-dropping surprise when some days later as I read my message updates from sweet @Ginabot, I learnt I had earned full oracle-d upvote (worth about 50 STU then) for my efforts!

It wasn't just the unexpectedness of such reward, but coupled with the fact that I had never earned so high an upvote here on steemit that made my head light on my shoulders all day long!

The stress was certainly worth it!!!

And to think I would have been spared much of that stress had my whatsapp not gone obsolete then, severing me at that needful point my helpful boss. And then again, the grace to pull through it all would be totally dead without that motivation and reassurance from this boss.

Now it might interest you to know who this boss really is. He is no other than @otemzi! He's such a great guy! (But he keeps telling me he's no boss yet; and I keep telling him to manage the title, it'd come to be...)

And tell you what? Everyone needs an otemzi in their lives. That pat on the back, those reassuring words - we need them daily in life to ride the extra miles...

My appreciations!!!

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