Photos from IDPA Match

Here’s a link to photos from the May 2008 IDPA Match at Yavapai Recreation League.

This is me shooting at the May IDPA Match in Prescott, AZ

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all!

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions. They are hard to stick with, especially those related to deep seated behaviors like “exercise more”, “eat less juk food”, “save more for retirement”, etc. New Year’s celebration strikes me as being arbitary, but I happily accept a paid day off!!

Last night we heard some fireworks at midnight. They woke us up, otherwise we would have happily slept through New Year’s Eve midnight. The dogs did not like the noise one bit! Our lab (75 pounds of dog) insisted on squeezing her way between us on the bed for protection from the fireworks noise. I’m happy to report that she survived.

On the subject of  New Year’s Eve I think a lot of people see sleeping though midnight and not partying as a marker of middle age. When people ask what Gary and I were doing New Year’s Eve and I said “staying home and going to bed around 9″, the middle aged and older folks smiled knowingly.

Quicken Windows to Mac. Major Pain!

Update 1/10:  I have decided that Quicken for Mac is junk and removed it from my system. I managed to get over $3k out of sync with my Bank of America checking account, and kept complaining that Discover was sending it invalid dates. Good riddance to  a crappy application!

So far I like Mint.com , though I’m not sure I am psychologically ready to have only an online checkbook. Must be the baby boomer in me talking. For now I still have my Quicken on my old XP laptop. One idea is to move this to Parallels (which I already have) on my Mac.

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As part of our family’s move from Windows XP to Mac OS X, we installed Quicken for Mac. Should be easy: just install the Mac app, copy the quicken files, load them into the new app. But nooo …. It was a major pain in the you-know-where. Firstly, the data files are so dissimilar that one has to export all to a set of .qif files which are then imported into the Mac version. There are many limitations and gotchas here. If you have a relatively simple and straightforward check register you are OK. If you have a complex financial life with multiple retirement and investment accounts, you are in for much trouble.

Gary’s set up was not too bad, he has a few accounts in his Quicken. It only took a couple of tries, less than 2 hours. My data was a different tale. I have investment history going back to the stone age. Plus lots of accounts. I spent much of the day fighting this monster. The import process randomly assigned transactions to what ever account it felt like - I found a $10K transfer from an IRA to a checking account which existed only in the mind(less) of Quicken. This will not do. I finally gave up trying to import transactions and just downloaded as much data as I could from various financial institutions. This was fine with credit cards, but the Bank of America web site only has 13 months of data per account. My E*Trade accounts are totally screwed up for cash balances - I had to make some bogus balancing entries and I am not sure how this will pan out going forward.

I’m seriously thinking of trying out Mint and junking Quicken. Anyone try this site? I have been using Quicken for a long time it’s become my way of doing personal finance. And I am not sure about putting all my financial info on a web site, though what I have read about Mint seems OK.

Parrot imitates smoke alarm, saves 2 from house fire

A parrot imitated the sound of a smoke alarm when a fire broke out in its home, saving 2 humans and itself. Another story of an animal companion aiding its people in a critical situation. I wonder if our grey cheeked parakeet Larry would be capable of such a feat? And I hope never to find out!?!

California Wildfires

Scary stuff. I remember the 2002 “Indian” fire (if you follow this link, go to the bottom of the linked article) here in Prescott, AZ. It got into the city limits, several homes burned, many were evacuated.  At the time my mother-in-law was living near the White Spar fire house, she and her neighbors were on standby to be evacuated. She saw glowing embers from the fire drifting in the wind.

This also reminds me of a California joke going around in the late 1990’s: Name the 4 seasons in California? Fire, Flood, Earthquake, and Riot. We in AZ have lots of things to say about CA and the waves of CA “refugees” who move here every year. When we meet someone who moved here from The Peoples Republic of California, we often greet them with “Welcome to America!”.