December 2009

Update: deQuickening

December 12, 2009

Just updated the post on shifting financial records from Quicken to Excel, by way of making it worthy of submission to the Carnival of Personal Finance. So if you’re interested in the English-major approach to tracking income and expenses in Excel and to making the program do a rudimentary tax report, you might want to [...]

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Moments of Fame

December 12, 2009

Good grief! I’ve let these acknowledgments slip way too long.  Funny did pretty well in the moments of fame department this week! At the Best of Money Carnival, third place with Seven Painless Ways to Save! Just getting into this carnival is an honor. Only ten entries are selected, and each of the ten is [...]

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A visit to Richistan

December 11, 2009

So La Maya calls at 7:15 and announces that instead of our daily constitutional she wants to make a run on an estate sale advertised to be full of Native American crafts and Southwestern artwork. It’s in a ritzy part of town, a detail that makes the ad highly enticing. We journey east into the [...]

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Quicken: Jumping ship

December 11, 2009

In another two weeks, I’m jumping Intuit’s ship, diving off the side of the SS Quicken into the cool waters of Excel. Over the past five years as a program administrator, I’ve learned just enough about how Excel works to set up a spreadsheet to operate as a checkbook. Using very basic skills (indeed), I’ve [...]

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Macquisition

December 10, 2009

So! Yesterday I scored a new 15-inch MacBook from the Apple store, at an educator’s discount slightly lower than the one offered at GDU’s computer store. Not only that, but they threw in a wireless Epson printer, free! Actually, I upgraded the freebie to a printer/scanner. I’m interested to see how the Epson does: it [...]

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Trees

December 9, 2009

How does the Devil-Pod Tree add work to my life? Let me count the hours… The late great shamal made a fine mess of the pool. Yesterday I spent several hours shoveling out leaves, pods, pollen, and dirt, another hour running to the pool store and dropping $30 on shock treatment and a new skimmer [...]

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