Sunday, July 13, 2025
Karen drives a Ford
Friday, July 11, 2025
Power BI Snacks Intermission
In case you missed it, we have been walking through how to get yourself going with Power BI Online through little snack size posts over on Viva Engage and Teams.
We learned some terms, grabbed some data, imported it, and created our first simple visual.
There are definitely more exciting things to come!
It seems everyone was out for a super-fabulous holiday weekend, so I thought I might just do a quick recap this week. Use this opportunity to explore what we have done already, simply catch up, work on your tan, or all of the above.
Below are links to what has been covered so far, to help you in those efforts ... sunscreen not included.
- Power BI DIY Snacks! Starting off with Power BI Online - Snack 1
- Power BI Terms - Snack 2
- Power BI Side Bar - Snack 3
- Power BI Report Data Import - Snack 4
- Power BI Report Simple Table Visual - Snack 5
See you for the next round?
As an interesting side note, I only just now discovered Mina Saad over on LinkedIn wrote along similar lines about a year ago. Super informative posts on the topic and even tinier bites. That's where I hijacked this week's image.
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Another Fourth of Arkansas
It probably comes as no surprise that we again returned to Arkansas for this fourth of July. It is becoming quite habitual in nature. The crew of a few grew to a crew of seven on this particular expedition south in the north central area of the state.The journey offered up a few new intrigues by way of Boliver, Springfield, and the Peel Ferry. Our ongoing investigation into the location included visits to the usual haunts along the Mossy Bluff and the Sugar Loaf.
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Friday, June 27, 2025
Power BI Report Data Display - Snack 5
Slightly funny story. Someone contacted me last week and said they can't see anything in their report.
We only imported the data last time.
Now, we will visualize it and this won't take any time at all.
Head back over to the Power BI service online and let us see what we can see.
- Click "Workspaces"
- Click "My workspace"
- At least two things are listed and for me, those are:
- Financial%20Sample
- Type = Semantic Model
- This is the data!
- FinancialSample
- Type = Report
- This is the report you created based on that data.
- Open the one where Type = Report
- A blank screen appears!!
- Click "Edit"
- In the right sidebar is the imported dataset
- For me, it is simply named "financials"
- Yours might be "Report-Result1" or "Worksheet" or "Sheet1" or whatever the Excel worksheet was named.
- Click the little " > " next to the dataset name
- A list of all the columns that were in the spreadsheet appear.
- Under "Visualizations" in the right sidebar,
- Click the little button that looks like a table.
- That is the one that has a white grid, not the one that is partially blue.
- See the attached screenshot that has a little red box around this feature.
- On the left of the screen, a box appears that says "Select or drag fields ..."
- Under "Data" in the right sidebar, quite literally do what that box says to do.
- Use the check boxes that appear there or click on those column names and drag them over into the box on the left of the screen.
- Make absolutely certain one of the columns is a date.
- Add them all if you like, or just the ones you have a greater appreciation for.
- If another box appeared when you went through this, that is ok.
- For the empty one you would like to get rid of ...
- Hover over the box and a little menu will appear above it.
- Click the " . . . "
- Choose "Remove"
- File > Save
Friday, June 20, 2025
Power BI Report Data Import - Snack 4
Enough fooling around, let's get down to making a basic Power BI Report.
The Instructions Below (using that sample file)
In OneDrive
- Create a New Folder
- I called mine "Power BI Data"
- You will use this to store all of your data for Power BI there.
- Copy your Excel file in that folder
- Click "New Report"
- Choose "Excel"
- Window appears -> Connect to data source
- In some instances, you may need to "Create a new connection"
- Do that now, if you are unable to access your OneDrive.
- Browse to your Excel file
- Select your Excel file
- Click "Next"
- Window Appears -> Choose Data
- Select the worksheet that has the data you want
- If the data is in two sheets, you will need to merge it into one.
- Click "Create"
- Window Appears > Loading your data
- After it is done processing ...
- If your screen looks like the screenshot below, you win this round!
- Note: The Data sidebar in the right panel must display the name of your data to win (in this case, financials - highlighted).
- Yours will not be highlighted.
- Last Step - Save your work!
- At the top left of the screen, choose File > Save
- In the screen presented after that, click "My Workspace"
- At the bottom "Enter a name for your r..."
- Click Save
- Build visuals with your data
- This is where the report building will happen.
- Filters Panel
- Filters applied to your data.
- Visualizations Panel (there are 2 hidden beneath icons)
- Choose which visualizations to use and customize them.
- Data Panel
- The data associated with this particular report.
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Copilot, the Artificial Idiot
I remain unconvinced of the usefulness of AI at this time. It is the equivalent of attempting to hike with a car. While it may work, it is a bit of overkill.
Multiple model collapse situations reinforced this belief. Building a little app in Power Platform, I asked Copilot to import all rows from my spreadsheet. It imported 20 and not the 78 requested. I asked that it import the remainder of the rows, so it made stuff up, 5 at a time. Then, when asked to list the rows for me to review, Copilot insisted that it had, when it had not.
This is not the first time either.
I should not have to argue with the Artificial Idiot.
"We're in the midst of the AI Slop, where the internet feeds itself."
Sunday, June 15, 2025
What happened to the Mall?
St Joseph, MO
Craig Realty Group
Friday, June 13, 2025
Teams Storyline
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image borrowed form Thurrott.com |
A few weeks ago, Microsoft introduced a cool new feature to Teams called "Storyline."
It looks as though it could be quite a little game changer for keeping up with colleagues, customers, and friends, as well as enabling them to keep up with what is going on in your world.
Microsoft explains it as "a feature that enhances team communication by allowing users to share updates, experiences, and milestones in a social media-like format within Teams and Viva Engage."
This feature has always been over on Engage and is now integrated with Teams!
So how did I get there?!?!
- Go to Teams
- Go to Chat
- Choose yourself, as if you might chat with yourself!
At the top, you will see ...
- Your Name (You)
- Chat
- Yes, you can actually talk to yourself here, if you are so inclined
- ... or just make notes to yourself for later.
- Shared
- Send a file or link to yourself in Chat and it will show up here.
- Viewing someone else, these are files and links you shared with them.
- Storyline
- This is what I am talking about ... click it!
Note: That will activate notifications for their Storyline. To adjust the how and when ...
- Go to your Storyline
- Choose Following
- Choose an Individual
- Look for the little bell next to "Following" and Click It!
Friday, June 6, 2025
Power BI Side Bar - Snack 3

Today's snack is brought to you by the Side Bar (boxed in a red rectangle in the screenshot). No, it is not cocktail hour. I am talking about the navigation options available to you in the ever-present left side bar. Let's take a look.
Home - This goes without saying, "There's no place like home." The button will always take you back to the main Power BI screen.
Create - Go here to begin your journey in creating a new report, semantic model aka data model, and other options available with your current subscription.
Browse - This is where you can look at all of reports you have created, your favorite reports from others, and all of the other reports that have been shared with you.
OneLake - View and manage all of your data models, access to your data, as well as its integration with other semantic models
Apps - All of the apps that have been installed for you, that you have access to, or that you have created.
Metrics - A superfabulous feature enabling you to build, manage and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) that you define. This is better than the spreadsheet you are using because you can connect it directly to your reports in Power BI and the data comes in automagically. I did already do a little demo on this last fall, if you want to jump in now.
Monitor - Mostly for us Admins, so we can keep track of data refreshes, performance, and other key metrics related to reports and datasets.
Learn - You can actually go wandering off on your own and learn all about everything Power BI in a more Microsoft-structured format.
Real-Time - Used to manage and visualize real-time data streams through APIs and other Fabric integrated data sources.
Workloads - This is for managing and configuration of various workloads such as AI, Dataflows, and Paginated Reports within the Power BI Premium licensing capacity.
Workspaces - These are the workspace options available to you, where reports live that you have created or that have been created with you. "My Workspace" will always appear here. It is yours and only accessible to you, unless you share something from there to someone else. They will still only have access to what you have shared with them though.
More aka ". . ." - More options are available through here, such as Deployment Piplelines and the Functions Hub. These options are really only available with a higher-level Premium subscription
. . .
Below these tiles, items that you open will appear for you to quickly access again, if you should jump over to another report, and want to quickly jump back to the one you were just in.
At the very bottom, is the Power BI logo. Clicking that offers access to a relatively new view, which is only relevant to those with a Fabric subscription, or Premium users. We are still just Pro here, so you can pretty much disregard this button.
Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Our Future President
This is likely the funniest thing I have read in awhile. It is from Volume 1 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain, related to him speaking about General Grant in 1881.
"I had been picturing the America of fifty years hence, with a population of two hundred million souls, and was saying that the future President, Admirals and so forth of that great coming time were now lying in their various cradles, scattered abroad over the vast expanse of this country, and then said 'And now in his cradle somewhere under the flag the future illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeur and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth - something, meaning no disrespect to the illustrious guest of this evening, which he turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago.'"
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Friday, May 30, 2025
Power BI Terms - Snack 2
Did you get your homework done? When you accessed Power BI last time, I asked you to poke around. Did you discover anything interesting?
Before we really dive in, there are a couple of high-level terms you should be familiar with, as they relate to Power BI.
Report - An interactive collection of visualizations enabling analysis and insights, based on a Semantic Model.
Dashboard - A single-page, interactive canvas enabling a high-level overview of your data through single visualizations that live in a Report, or even an entire Report page.
App - A collection of dashboards, reports, datasets, and other Power BI content created and shared through a single access point.
Semantic Model - the logical layer that represents the structure and meaning of the data within a specific context. It captures the relationships, transformations, and calculations needed to create reports and dashboards.Workspace - A collaborative space where a group of folks can work together on dashboards, reports, datasets, and other content.
Essentially, a Semantic Model defines a Report, whose visualizations may live in a Dashboard, a collection of all may reside within an App. These reports and models may also live in a collaborative workspace or only in your own individual workspace.
Your homework. Remember this forever.
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Celery Salad Base
Found this base somewhere and modified it slightly. Turned out rather nicely.
1/4 Cup of Sweet Onion
1/8 Cup of Lemon Juice
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of pepper
1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan
A bunch of celery
- Mince the onion.
- Slice celery 1/4 inch.
- Except for the celery, mix it all together.
- Toss the celery in the mixture.
Add other veggies for fun. This time, I added a small zucchini.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Bad Luck Hills Fort
Among the more remarkable snapshots-in-time sits high on a bluff along the Missouri River on the eastern outskirts of Kansas City in the small town of Sibley. A good portion of the backstory associated with this site is familiar to nearly everyone, while other parts of its history remain obscured.
These "Bad Luck Hills," as they were once known, look out across the Missouri River valley just above the confluence of Beasley Creek and the Missouri River. It is a uniquely defensible, yet accessible position offering opportunities in overland and water-born trade from a secure location.
One of the leading explorers associated with The Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery, otherwise known as the Lewis & Clark Expedition, landed upon this spot in June of 1804. William Clark and the band of explorers spent the weekend here plagued by gnats, ticks and mosquitos, as well as being mired in mud a good portion of that time. It is surprising he held any inclination to return.
Clark held onto memory of the distinctly favorable location more so than the aggravations encountered there, returned to the site with other government appointees, and set about establishing Fort Osage in 1808. The military garrison and successful government factory served the region for another 20 years before private fur traders finally demanded closure of this competition.
Local settlers salvaged lumber and other parts from the shuttered fort to develop the surrounding community, nearly erasing it from history. Oral tradition, research, and persistent documentation kept the memory alive though, and the 1940's brought it back to life through a massive restoration effort.
The sixties opened the door to a more detailed history of the area that included recognition of those that had come before. Excavations uncovered evidence of human habitation by the Osage tribe, as well as the Hopewell culture that populated the region from around 200 BCE to 500 CE.
As more is learned about the site, it continues to demonstrate an interesting display of relatively consistent land use in one location, though by distinctly different cultures. Thoughtfully arranged specimens and memoirs on display lead one through the time before man into that of the "Sky People," through westward expansion, and into the modern day. It is a undoubtedly a unique National Historic Landmark worthy of an afternoon of exploration.
National Park Service
Friday, May 23, 2025
Starting off with Power BI Online - Snack 1
If access is enabled to Power BI, you have a relatively simple and powerful data tool at your disposal.
Indeed personally, I have found it to be more intuitive and flexible than Excel, enabling a variety of automation possibilities, pairing of data, as well as distribution of data and reports from the simplest variety to the most complex.
Over the course of however long it takes, I hope to offer up some snack-size pieces that walk through getting started in Power BI. This will be within the scope of using the Power BI service, also known as Power BI Online.
A license is needed, or access through a trial version, which costs nothing to sign up. It will likely prove insufficient for this series though. Lacking that essential piece, the free desktop version is available, to which these instructions can easily be adapted.
Today's snack-size piece is simply about the platform we will use for this.
- Visit the following link and login > https://app.powerbi.com
- It should look similar to the screenshot below.
- Not exactly.
- Similar. Microsoft changes things all the time, but the general screen layout has not change significantly in the last couple of years.
- Poke around in there.
- See what there is to see.
- You cannot break anything.
- Do not be afraid to push buttons. It is, after all, kind of what Power BI reports are all about, bringing a level of interactivity to otherwise boring, two-dimensional reports, enabling consumers to more quickly understand their data.
That is all I have for now; we can connect again later. Go play! See if you can break it!
Lake Morning Platte Hikes
Friday, May 16, 2025
Second Grade Zoo Field Trip
An invitation to join in a field trip to the zoo, only charged with leading a couple around the massive complete, led to capturing a few new aspects of this particular location. The new aquarium is an intriguing new addition and left my second-grade troupe amazed. It was definitely their top pick for the day.
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Mother's Day Unity
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Sunday, April 20, 2025
My Easter Prayer
Saturday, April 19, 2025
Dog Wheat Play Box
2001 Kawasaki Vulcan for Sale
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Strong Strawberry Bloom
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Ragged Old Patio Table
Friday, April 4, 2025
The Great Ocean of Truth
Occasionally, we stumble upon quotes that resonates. I ran across this one today, so snatched it up and planted it on top of one my own photos taken on the shores of Lake Superior.
Wednesday, April 2, 2025
Fruit Tree Bloom 2025
Tuesday, April 1, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Scenic Overlook for Sale
Friday, March 28, 2025
Wet Hiking, Dry Racing
Thursday, March 27, 2025
Mossy Bluff to Locust Grove
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Paige and the Hammerschmidt
Popular Variations
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Enough fooling around, let's get down to making a basic Power BI Report. You will need a properly formatted Excel file of your data. If ...
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Another addition to the 500px collection shows off storms rolling in across the west Kansas prairie around harvest time.
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Olean, the brand name for Olestra, a fat-substitute produced by Proctor & Gamble, which is apparently fat, calorie, and cholesterol free...
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Trying a new version of the Sunflower this year. This one promises to reach 16 ft. It is planted now. We shall see.