After a long hiatus I’ve decided to start tracking my income and expenses again. A recent review of iBank caused me to download and demo it. Liking what I saw in the demo I made the purchase and downloaded all my transactions from December on and set up my accounts. Once I had the import rules and categories tweaked to suit me I ran a ‘bank statement reconciliation."
Part way through the process it occurred to me how absurd this activity was. I was taking a bank generated statement of transactions from the mail and comparing it to a bank generated list of transactions in iBank. Hmm. Of course it’s going to reconcile. How utterly silly.
Still it gave me a better feel for the transactions cleared in the last sixty days or so, and I was able to clean up some of the categories. Oddly enough “computer” and its sub-categories “software”, “hardware”, and “supplies” is one of the large expenses on my budget. Imagine.
As for iBank… I give it a 7 out of 10. Developed exclusively for Mac OS X it looks, feels, and behaves like a Mac application should. At release 2 in its life-cycle it is mature enough to offer most features I wanted for basic money management. The only item missing is direct downloading of transactions from the bank. The provided import function does work very smoothly once you have the data file downloaded manually.
One of the technical books in my current reading rotation is Prefactoring: Extreme Abstraction - Extreme Separation - Extreme Readability by Ken Pugh. Whereas refactoring pertains to improving code, Prefactoring deals with bettering design. I’ve always been fascinated by the processes that develop in and around software development, formal or informal, and this book is giving me new insights about the process of design.
Rating: Required reading if you use the words software and design in a sentience
For whatever reason this evening, my mood is up for a change. I’m not really sure why tonight should be any different than any other night, but it is; not that I am complaining. When my mood is upbeat I feel lighter and better.
My awareness of the reality of my situation hasn’t diminished, I’m just not in a place where it is totally figure. I think our minds periodically take a break from huge amounts of stress as a self preservation tactic. It almost as if we disassociate from reality just for while to protect the fabric of our sanity from ripping. I’m making good use of my mood, doing some chores that I’ve been putting off for a while. Little things that actually take good care of me but that I’ve been neglecting out of ennui.
Part of it, I think, is not looking too far ahead. Most days it is enough to just see the day and no more. When I start to think about the future is when I start to get really down. Tomorrow is an unobtainable fantasy. Always looking towards the next day, whether you think it will be better or worse than today, is not living. It’s waiting. For now I need to live, and live in the moment. I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.
I recently added Secondhand Lions to my collection of DVDs. Michele and I first saw this gem in the theater and I have wanted a copy ever since. While it doesn’t add anything to the boy coming of age story, it is beautifully acted and staged. We could all do with uncles like Garth and Hub.
Rating: Fun for everyone
Three days at home by myself is driving me nuts. And like a fool I agreed to be here today so that the idiot water delivery guy could come and get my empties - so I can’t leave and escape my cabin fever.
I used to look forward to every minute at home, I relished having long unbroken stretched of time away from work. Now I spend my weekend looking forward to Monday morning and the return to work. I miss the socialization of being around people. Being here by myself is awful. My frustration builds and builds until it bubbles out in the form of anger - usually at one of the cats. Which isn’t fair to them and always leaves me feeling like a heel.
For years I used to think that working from home would be great. And it might have been if I was here with Michele. Now, you couldn’t pay me to work from home. I’d go mad in a week.
I may blow off the water guy and go window shopping this afternoon. I need to get out of here.
Ok.
So once again I’m behind the curve on automating some part of my webblog. After allowing link rot to infest my links page for far too long I’ve upgraded it to use del.icio.us. I’m sure I’ll be tweaking the list for some time but at least all the links work again, and they are all site I visit on a daily (if not more frequent) basis.
The Network Solutions domain record for zanshin.net shows that it was originally registered on February 20, 1996 - ten years ago. Here’s a list of things from the last ten years in honor of the occasion.
Another late 1980s drama, this time about spies and secret agents. No Way Out has a nice twist to it. I also thought Kevin Costner did a better job of acting in this than in many of his later roles.
Rating: Dated now that the Cold War is over
One of my Netflix picks this weekend was The Presidio, a late 1980s crime drama with Sean Connery and Mark Harmon. Although a little predictable it’s an enjoyable hour and a half.
Rating: Worth renting but not owning
A sexy precursor to the style of Ocean’s Eleven in that the crime committed is merely the backdrop for the story. Details you’d like to have answered are omitted, and maybe that’s why the movie is fun.
Rating: How does he fold the Monet into a briefcase?