Author: hsoi

Mystery rocker found!

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Behold the power of the Internet!

The Mystery Rocker has been found!

See their Facebook page.

In a way, you wish it could have gone on longer and gotten bigger. But the bottom line is the guy was found, and that’s pretty cool. 🙂

Updated: and shortly after they found him and gave the update, they disabled and deleted everything. I have to respect that, because all they wanted to do was find the guy, not turn him into a meme (tho I’m sure he’ll be a minor one); nor viral marketing or anything like that. Just the power of the Internet. 🙂

Can I stick with it?

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If you know me, you know I’m into martial arts. Unfortunately, I’ve been out of martial arts for some time now. The problem is one of schedule. I had to stop studying with Ray Parra because his class times and my schedule just weren’t working out. I’ve been dying to start studying with Leslie Buck, and while the schedule Leslie now offers is a lot more conducive, he’s almost on the other side of town from me and so couple the drive time in and I could be looking at circa three hours per class. With my day job, my own company, some other side work, Wife, Kiddos, and numerous other things, every minute matters these days and I just can’t afford that time for Leslie. 😦

Unfortunately the lack of exercise is really catching up with me. Sure I was trying to lose weight, and that “up day down day” stuff was working quite well! But then some months ago I got a new job assignment at the day job, it’s been a lot of stress, I’ve eaten more and dropped off the wagon as a reaction to that stress… plus just the lack of physical activity is sad because well… I find myself getting a lot more winded at the simplest of things. That’s lame! 😦

I’m not sure why this is this way about me, but I’m coming to realize in some activities I do better when there are external forces in play. For instance, sure I could work on martial arts skills at home, but it’s a vacuum. I need an instructor to watch me, to correct me, to teach me things because that’s so much of what it’s about. Or at least, after a while you want a partner to work with, to spar with, to throw around, because fighting “air man” or the heavy bag all day long isn’t the same.

Oddly, a few weeks ago I started thinking about lifting weights again. I did that a lot in high school, and on and off throughout my adult life. But most of that was always done me, by myself, at home somehow. But in recent years if I thought about it I always said no I couldn’t do it because it cost money. I said if I could work out at home, have the discipline to do it at home, and then do things like push-ups, squats and lunges, etc. and show I could stick with that? Then I could see about spending money on it.

Trouble is?

I hate push ups. 🙂  Bodyweight exercises I think are very cool, and stuff like Beast Skills are VERY cool.

But get this. There’s a little mom&pop-style gym that opened up near my house. On a whim I stopped in there to check it out. I figured being in its location and the store-front looking small, it’d be unimpressive, it’d be something like a “Curves” with just machines. But actually, I was quite impressed. Full suite of things, yes there are machines but most of those then use free plates. Lots of free-standing benches, full rack of dumbbells. I was actually pretty impressed with the depth and breadth of the offering housewives could have their “toning” workouts, but a serious athlete or bodybuilder could do just fine there too. Plus the terms were very reasonable: no contract, no bullshit, no nothing. Just a simple monthly fee and you can stop any time by just sending a registered letter. I like that. The owner looks to be in his 30’s, very nice, seems to want to run a no-bs sort of place. I dug it.

I signed up.

I need some sort of physical exercise. For whatever reason, working at home doesn’t do it for me. I’ve never been a member of a gym like this, so this will be new for me, but I’m hoping the motivation of the monthly fee and having equipment access like I will motivate me. Plus the time sink is minimal. It’s very close to the house, close enough I could walk/jog to the place. Jog there, quick workout, jog home… could make for a good workout.

Of course, I need to start WAY slow. I haven’t dedicatedly lifted in a long time so I have no idea where my weight maxes are. I’m also somewhat out of shape so I need to slowly ease my body back into things… my doctor keeps reminding me I’m not 18 any more. I’m thinking my first few workouts might be very light, really underestimate the weights, and might be full-body compounds. For instance, jog there as a warm up, get in, 3×10 squats, 3×10 bench press, 3×10 rows, some crunches, then jog home. Uber light, uber simple, compound-only exercises, I have to ease myself back into it. If I can hit the gym 3x-week and do that for at least a week, then I can start to add a few more things in but still keep it a basic “whole body” workout until things are feeling a bit more up to it. And then after another week or two of that, depending how the body is adjusting, go on a split such as upper body minus abs one day and lower body plus abs the other day and try that perhaps 4x week.

We’ll see how it goes. I may stick with it, I may not. One fear is that lifting won’t be mentally stimulating enough for me, because that’s been one reason I haven’t stuck with it in my adult years. It’s one reason I like martial arts because it provided both physical and mental stimulation. But just being physical? will that be motivation enough for me? But on the flip side, my life’s been so mentally overstimulating lately that maybe something like this, where it’s just me and the iron — no wife, no kids, no work, no business, no stress — might actually be just what I need. Again, we’ll see. It’s just part of life’s journey. 🙂

I will say this tho… I won’t be starting until next week. First, I need to figure out a daily/weekly schedule and routine. Second tho… I’ll be helping out at KR Training in 2 days and if I worked out today, in 2 days I would be sooooo sore. 🙂

New Finance Software – part thrice

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve been trying some particular finance software packages and have a little more to report.

The iBank people did eventually get back to me, so turnaround time is reasonable. Speaking as a developer myself, if a customer asks how to or if you can do something and the software can’t, I’d put it down on the feature list for a future version. No promise it will happen, but it’s still valuable (potential) customer feedback towards improving your product. Hopefully they did that (no indication in their response that they did, but that’s not too surprising lest the person take it as a promise it will happen).

Trouble is, I’m finding that if iBank can’t handle my data import, I just don’t have the gumption to walk through 10 years of records to fix the problem. I don’t have that sort of time. One could argue that I should start fresh, but that’s easier said than done in terms of how I like keeping my data as well as having access to it. I mean, Quicken is dead to me so I need to get my data out of it and into a form I can easily manage and manipulate, not just some archived QIF that I can’t directly view.

So I’ve been spending a lot more time with Moneydance.

Damnit. I don’t want to like the app. It’s Java roots make it…. well… quirky. I can click to display a menu (or right-click for a contextual menu) then if I don’t select something from the menu it sticks around. Worse, it’s implemented as some sort of “floats above everything” hack and so I can switch to a whole other application and the menu sticks around! There’s so many other little interface quirks and strange behaviors, it’s driving me nuts.

But by the same token, there is a lot of stuff they do that’s right. For instance, I’m growing more fond of single-window type apps, and there’s no question Moneydance took a direct nod from Mac apps in how they approached and designed this, including using the “source list” on the left. So OK the interface itself is quirky, but the logic behind the interface is not. It’s actually pretty well thought out, in my book. It’s implemented as a “double-entry bookkeeping” which means things like categories are technically “accounts” and thus there’s a lot more interesting things you can do with them instead of just having a category be a simple label.

It seems to be doing everything right. It seems to provide almost all I want. OK, so no “envelope budgeting”, but it does do budgeting. There’s online support. It’s all there.

I’m still evaluating it, still going through docs, experimenting, exploring, but so far Moneydance appears to be the front-runner. The other thing? When I Google around for information, comparisons, reviews… no one is 100% awesome, but Moneydance gets a lot of love and not that much negative about it. Most of the negative I read deals with the GUI/Java-ness of it, and that it messed up their QIF import… but messing up QIF imports seems to be something that plagues everyone to some degree. Still, that bodes pretty well for Moneydance, to hear such generally positive things about it.

All this talk of accountancy. Makes me think of the Crimson Permanent Assurance

Find the Mystery Rocker

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Is it real? is it noble? is it viral marketing? Who cares. It seems like fun, and yeah, something about it seems legit (despite the slick editing).

Updated: They found the guy.

Elitist politicians aren’t our friends

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Texas HB 1463 – Relating to the application of certain concealed handgun license laws to statewide elected officials and certain current and former members of the legislature.

An attempt to exempt elected officials servants. Here’s what Rep. Tim Kleinschmidt, R-Lexington, author of the bill said:

“This is not intended to be any type of elitist bill,” Rep. Tim Kleinschmidt, R-Lexington, said Monday.

“We spend a disproportionate amount of our time with the public in these particular locations. And therefore it’s a safety factor,” said Kleinschmidt, the measure’s sponsor.

[…]

Under the state concealed-weapons law, citizens who take a course and pass a background check may carry concealed handguns in public but not in bars, schools, sporting events, hospitals, amusement parks and churches.

Kleinschmidt said those restrictions make it dangerous for politicians. He cited the shooting three months ago in Arizona in which a federal judge was killed and Giffords was severely wounded.

“There are so many places I’m scheduled to go where we don’t know the circumstances, but you’ve got to be there,” he said. “In some instances, you really don’t know what type of neighborhood, what type of risks you may be exposed to.”

We mere plebeians spend a lot of time with the public in these particular locations.

Those same restrictions make it dangerous for us lesser people too.

There are so many places that I have to go where I don’t know the circumstances, but I’ve got to be there. And in some of those instances, I don’t really know what type of neighborhood, what types of risks I may be exposed to.

So what makes you more important than me, Rep. Kleinschmidt? other than your perception of yourself and your importance, of course.

Bad? You keep using that word….

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

…. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Apparently an Apple Store in Chula Vista, California was being broken into. The mall security guard noticed (it was 7 AM, before the mall opened), gunfire was exchanged. Apparently one criminal is dead, two others in custody, one of them also wounded.

And this “journalist” says the holdup went bad?

Uh… no. I think the holdup went pretty good. And actually, this sounds like burglary, not robbery. Furthermore, how do you hold-up a store with no people in it? And to have the crime foiled… to prevent bad people from doing bad things… that’s… “going bad”? that’s “going sour”? Whose side are you on?

In other news…. since when did mall security carry guns?

Another article:

Despite some media reports, there were no AK-47s involved in the incident, police said.

Ah, the media and their love of those Glock ultra-automagic AK-47 semi-assault revolvers with extended high-capacity dethklok clips.

“That’s crazy. That’s so scary. This is supposed to be a really upscale, comfortable neighborhood and for stuff like this to happen is just scary,” said resident Janae Sergio.

Bad things can and do happen anywhere and everywhere. Upscale, comfortable neighborhoods full of rich white people aren’t immune from anything. Welcome to the real world where there aren’t protective bubbles or… since we’re talking Apple here…. reality distortion fields to protect you.

New Finance Software – part 2

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In my quest for new finance software I figure I just have to dive in.

iBank

I started by downloading iBank. I want to like this app. I want to like it for it’s Mac-ness. I want to like it because it looks slick. In playing around with it for a bit, it does seem to be alright. I really like all the tutorial videos on their website, as that helps you get started.

I can’t figure out how to fully import Categories. That is, if you create a new data file, you’re asked if you want to start off with a set of Home and Business accounts. I tried that, and got a fantastic starting list. When I tried exporting my old Quicken 2005 data to a QIF then importing that, I only was given my categories. I didn’t see any way to get their categories. That sucks.

As well, Quicken’s notion of “Classes” doesn’t exist. I don’t mind if someone isn’t a Quicken clone — they should be better! But that way of being able to arbitrarily group things together is so useful. For instance, I could group all the “Christmas 2010” expenses together. iBank does have a notion of “smart accounts”, and it’s possible something like that could fill the bill. But you know… if there’s some way to make it work, some way to replicate it, couldn’t their QIF importer help out with that? I mean, I imagine a Class is well defined (due to the slash character in the Category string being a delimiter).

That’s another thing on the import. It just assumes the Class is part of the category. So now I have a ton of ugly-ass category names. Ugh.

Then a strange thing. I tried playing around with the budget feature. The wizard/assistant walks you through. Oddly, the screen that lets you select the accounts to budget, when I went to the next screen it selected the inverse! For instance, if I selected checking and deselected savings, then on the next screen it assumed I wanted savings! As well, it failed to put all the categories into the list. It was just strange.

Granted, the import didn’t go all that smoothly. Most of my accounts went OK, but my main checking account, with some almost 10 years of data in it, was all messed up. I don’t know where to begin trying to fix it. I just remembered something about how there can be confusion if there are same names, like a category “cash” and an account “cash”, so I may need to do some renaming and try again.

I think what may happen here is I may have to decide if historical data is something I need to keep. I really want to keep it. It wouldn’t be horrible if I lost it, but from time to time I do like going back and being able to review charts and reports to see how things have been over the years.

I’ve sent some support email to IGG Software. We’ll see.

Moneydance

OK. I’m immediately hating Moneydance. It’s a Java app.

Granted, it actually blends into the OS fairly well, but there are still things that don’t quite work right. But well… if it has all the features and power and so on, I could deal with it. Still tho, it won’t win any awards for aesthetics.

I see it doesn’t do Envelope budgeting. There’s a way you can kinda finagle it, but man…. well, it’s not a deal-breaker, but I really wanted to try to start using this form of budgeting.

I used the same QIF file and imported it into Moneydance. First, it was MUCH faster than iBank. I don’t have numbers but I’d say Moneydance took a matter of seconds, iBank a matter of minutes. I need to look deeper to see if the import actually went smoothly, but at least I can tell the balances all look correct, so that is a good sign.

But here’s one difference. iBank doesn’t assume the QIF format is the be-all-end-all. For instance, it asked me to confirm that each account was the type it said it was and allow me to correct it. Moneydance just accepted it all as-is, and I can’t find any way to change them after the fact… but then, maybe there’s no need and I’m just being nit-picky about how I want to do things.

Hrm…. one thing I need to evaluate in all of them. How they handle loans. For instance, when I pay my mortgage, Quicken remembered it as a special transaction, so when I wrote the check it knew how to track the loan, which portion went to principal and which to interest. I wonder if these will be able to handle that. I should HOPE so, but might I have to go back and make a new account “x” transactions into it so it tracks it all correctly? not sure if that’s all in the QIF.

Moneydance seems to have something called “Tags”, which seems to equate to Quicken’s “Classes”. That’s good.

I like how with all these different groupings it totals up things with those categories/tags. That’s nice. You can just see at an easy glance how much you spent on something.

But man… the interface bugs me. Maybe it’s because I spend so much of my day writing software….

Help. Moneydance sends you online to load up a PDF. Simple enough, and looks to cover all you need. iBank’s is integrated, very Mac-like. One thing I like is that well… the general way to do Mac help is to ask questions and get specific answers. But for something as complex and feature-laden as an app like this, you really need to read. I’ll give the iBank guys some credit here for doing something very Mac-like but also very readable. I am curious why Moneydance couldn’t include the PDF as a resource within the app distribution itself and just load it up locally.

Geez. It’s really crazy that the fact Moneydance handled the import, didn’t have glaring strange bugs, and has tags/classes support… that makes me want to use it over iBank. But the fact it looks so damn ugly… I want to not use it. *sigh*  Function or form, I’m torn. 🙂

Moneywell

And so, let’s try Moneywell.

It is great all these apps provide free demos!

My initial impression? This is not an app about allowing you to manage your finances how you want to. This is an app that is geared towards personal finance that uses a budget, and specifically the envelope (bucket, in their terms) method. I think there’s nothing wrong with this, if this is what you want to do. But I don’t ONLY want to function in this rigid way of doing things, mostly because while I like the concept of envelope budgets, I don’t want to be forced into it.

Well, I think it’s slick looking and it looks like they do a very good job of managing finances using this particular approach.

But it’s not for me.

Plus I’m not sure how well it’ll cover everything that I need. But I just don’t feel much gumption to dive further into the app because of the aforementioned “mode” that it works in. Again don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great what they’re doing, it’s just not for me.

SEE Finance

And so, let’s try SEE Finance.

You know, everyone offers free downloads and demos. Everyone deals with it differently, from transaction limitations to timing out. SEE’s approach seems to be that you’re full-featured, you just get nagged for a few seconds every launch. Whatever the limitation is, I think everyone provides a reasonable way to use and evaluate the software… at least a cursory look. I have wondered if 30-days of iBank would be enough time for me to adequately evaluate it, being able to go through all my monthly bills and so on. We’ll see.

Looks like a Mac app… tho, some interface bits seem off. Again, the developer in me.

OH! I love this! I started it up, OK let’s start by importing the QIF. It says “Here’s all the categories we found” and lets me do some editing of them. The best part? I can choose to “Import and delete existing” or I can “Import and merge with existing”. NICE! I chose to merge.

Then it import does a bunch of stuff to help me try to reconcile the import and set everything as I want.

I can see they put a LOT of effort into the import process, more so than anyone. Kudos to them there.

But the kicker is, you import once. How does everything else work out?

OK… I’m looking at the GUI a bit more. Wow, they do do some stranger stuff. cmd-N for “New” is in the Edit menu. Looks like that means “New Transaction” but gee… that’s not the best way to do it. View menu isn’t standard. Transactions menu is really overloaded.

Man, I wish I could put my checking account at the top of the source list… it’s what I use the most, so having to hunt through everything in the source list isn’t fun.

Geez… no way to sort by my check number? Oh wait, there is it… I see the gear button so I can add it. I do like being able to customize the columns. But the table feels really cluttered and overloaded. 2-levels isn’t a bad thing… or maybe just a little more whitespace for the cells.

It’s not bad… but it still seems well… like it’s developing. They even version it at 0.9.12.9, so it’s not even a 1.0. Still, it looks to have great promise. If everyone could handle imports like they do, that’d be awesome. That is a gem of this app, no question. But again, you import once… and while making the switch is a very important thing, it’s all that comes after it that matters more.

What now?

I don’t know.

Moneywell is out of the running.

SEE Finance well… while it’s more Mac than Moneydance, it actually doesn’t feel as right. Moneydance doesn’t feel very Mac, but it does feel better thought out in the user interface. Moneydance also seems like it’s got a lot of power. iBank is slick, but running into bugs and being the only app that couldn’t handle the QIF import…. well, let’s say it’s a mixed first impression.

I’ll see how the IGG guys reply to things. Customer Support matters.

I’ll probably continue to evaluate Moneydance and iBank and see how it goes.

I love using a butcher

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We used to buy all our meat at the grocery store. It’s not bad, but, I’ve found there’s better. 🙂

I guess I started using Johnny G’s Butcher Block for deer/hog processing. I started trying them for other things.

They’re really good.

I do love the fact that everything is a “whatever you want”. They can do whatever, however. I like that. It’s never a problem.

Their bacon? Some of the best I’ve had. It’s well seasoned and cut thick, great for using in cooking (e.g. wrapping stuff).

Their beef jerky? One of the better ones. A wonderful meaty, salty, smoky flavor. Good texture. Heck… one thing I guess that’s cool about becoming a regular is when I went in to pick up the hog meat, I went in there with Oldest and Youngest. The owner, Grover, was there and apparently just pulled a bunch of their jerky out of the smokehouse. He gave each of us a big strip of it, no charge. Just because. That was cool. Try getting that at some big-box store. 🙂  I know it’s a little thing, I know it’s just good for business, but that’s what I like about it.

They do great processing work. Turnaround times are reasonable. Prices are acceptable. The seasonings they use in making their pan and smoked sausages is really good. I also love how they smoke stuff… turns out with a great flavor.

I’ve bought a hindquarter of cow from them before, which turned out really well. I just filled the freezer with all that hog meat (and it already had deer meat and other things), but as soon as we make more room I’m going to buy probably a half a cow from them. I do love that they’ll do it exactly how I want. Local beef, grass-fed, cut and prepped as I want, aged a couple of weeks. And the kicker is? The price really isn’t much different from buying at the grocery store. Oh sure, it’s a much larger up-front cost, but over time it all evens out. Even if it is slightly more, the service, the quality… it’s fantastic.

Another thing I just discovered? They can do things for my dog. 🙂  I can order say 40 lbs of chicken backs and necks for not a lot of money. I’ve been thinking about doing the raw thing with puppy, once all the water buffalo meat runs out. That would be a good deal.When I picked up all the hog meat, I also bought a big beef bone for doggie. Oh my… I think I gave her the best treat in the world. Usually she stays outside for no more than 20 minutes at a time then wants in. She’s been outside for 2 hours just working that bone… no signs of wanting to come in. Daddy did good, I reckon. 🙂

I’ll still shop at the H.E.B. for most of our groceries. But meat? Can’t recall the last time we bought any there (other than hot dogs). Either I’ve killed it myself and had Johnny G’s process it, or I’ve bought it from Johnny G’s. I really like this butcher thing.