Random MomBlog

Well, I’m not alone in waking up all night every night. Lately, I sleep about two hours at a time. I feel fine, though; so it could be worse.

Personal, Pregnancy

I’m sick of snow. It was pretty when it fell on Saturday. The toddler had a great time sledding with Daddy on Sunday. I was happy to see some melting on Monday. But now it’s Tuesday, and I still see snow (with a fresh layer of freezing rain on top). I mean, it was only one inch of snow, and snow in Central NC always melts after a day unless we really got a blizzard. This dinky stuff … and still here … well, I’m sick of this layer of snow.

The freezing rain this morning doesn’t help how I feel about the ground cover either. When I headed out for work, the first car I saw was an SUV driving very slowly, and it looked very unusual since the SUVs I see on the road don’t drive like that. The brakes felt really funny when I slowed down for the first turn without a stop sign (a grab-slip cycle that I’m hoping was the anti-lock kicking in, except that the yellow warning triangle on my dashboard didn’t turn on … so I started to worry that my brakes weren’t perfect post-accident). The second and third cars I saw were on the shoulders because they had crashed into each other. I took the very next wide turn around to come home. I saw the yellow warning triangle on my dashboard for about 1/3 of the return trip, so the roads must’ve been worse than I was picking up through my wagon’s road feel. NHM: No Heroic Measures for getting to work on time.

Personal

My laptop keyboard’s been out most of the past month. It was never right after it got doused in water, even though I replaced. There’s a fuzz connector under the T, G, and Y keys that connects the keyboard to the motherboard. Ever since I replaced the keyboard, I’ve occasionally had to press down on those three keys very firmly in order to regain keyboard and trackpad. Well, one day last month that trick stopped working. (Luckily I have an external USB keyboard and mouse so I can keep working.)

The ambient light sensor for the backlit keyboard always works, so there’s power to the keyboard. However, none of the keys work (not even the CAPS LOCK light).

This failure is different, though. I have keyboard right after the laptop boots, but after a while, it goes out (and no amount of pressing on TGY brings it back). For instance, one time I lost keyboard in the middle of typing 11 minutes after a reboot (I was on AC). The next time I was on battery, and it took two hours to go out. That would indicate a heat problem, and fuzz connectors aren’t the most solid connection under the best circumstances. However, I think it’s load-related (keyboard goes away when I see the CPU head up) more than power-related. So still a heat issue, but more about CPU than AC versus battery.

However, I collected a list of suggestions from the Internet on what to try for PowerBook G4 keyboard problems.

1. Disk Utility’s Repair Permissions
2. Zap RPAM by pressing COMMAND-OPTION-P-R immediately after the startup chime. (This was tough, until I let the laptop cool off for a couple hours so that the internal keyboard worked because the external keyboard isn’t loaded in time.) I also tried the Open Firmware zap by pressing COMMAND-OPTION-O-F immediately after the startup chime and then running these commands: reset-NVRAM, set-defaults, and reset-all which made it reboot normally.
3. Reset PMU by pressing and holding the power button for 5 seconds when the laptop has no AC and no battery.
4. Try safe boot by pressing the SHIFT key after the startup chime.
5. sudo rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.BezelServices.plist /Library/Preferences/com.apple.BezelServices.plist
6. Reapply last combo update.

Yes, these are predominantly software fixes for what appears to be a hardware problem, but it doesn’t cost anything to try. It does make the new MacBook Air very tempting, but I don’t want onboard Intel graphics.

1. Update 1/19/2008: Repair Permissions didn’t fix the keyboard.
2. Update 1/21/2008: Neither form of zapping the PRAM fixed it.
3. Update 1/27/2008: No luck resetting the PMU. Twice.
4. Update 1/29/2008: Safe boot didn’t fix it.
5. Update 1/31/2008: Removing BezelServices didn’t change anything keyboard.
6. Update 2/12/2008: Combo updater was not the ticket either.

So it looked like a hardware problem, and sure enough, I think this proves it. The fuzz connector between keyboard and motherboard can only be reset so few times, and I went over the limit. This laptop will just have to stay docked …

Macintosh, Troubleshooting

Certain foods can cause nighttime heartburn, including: soda pop or beverages with caffeine (which you shouldn’t be drinking before bed anyway!), alcohol, garlic, chocolate (sorry!), citrus fruits, tomatoes and tomato-based products.

Guess why I’m awake? I had a tasty Penne Julia italian dinner with a clementine (citrus) for dessert tonight. I like the banana-a-day approach, though; I could see eating that most days.

Heartburn (Health), Personal, Pregnancy

I was annoyed that I still used Quicken. (Intuit has a poor track record for Mac support, a bad reputation for customer support in general that just bit my husband using QuickBooks for his small business, and charges a lot for annual program updates that don’t add a lot.) So I made a list of all the financial programs I could find that didn’t look like abandonware that would run on my Mac that cost less than $50. Because, let’s get real, Quicken was working for me so there’s no point to spending more than a Quicken upgrade.

I keep checking for an update from Musings from Mars on Alternative Personal Finance Apps for Mac OS X but none so far. I also don’t care about some of his requirements, so we might go different directions. In fact, other than data entry, mainly what I do with Quicken is reconcile what I’ve entered against my monthly statements.

As it turns out, there are at least four approaches to reconciliation (not counting “don’t do it” as an approach since I’m not willing to use that approach). You can have the Quicken-style two-level (cleared and reconciled) reconcile process, a single-level (reconciled only) process with a running total, cleared and reconciled checkboxes but no reconcile screens or process, or just a reconciled checkbox (hopefully with a running total!).

1. 2-stage process: MoneyWell, Moneydance, iBank, Jumsoft Money
2. 1-stage process: Cashbox, Economix, CheckBook, Accounts
3. C/R: SpendThrift, Buddi, Registry
4. R: iCompta, mini$, iFinance, Personal Finance, Fortora Fresh Finance, Budget, iCash, Cha-Ching

Balancing application price (extra points for free) with how well I liked it in testing, I came up with this short list that support enough reconcile for me:

1. Cashbox
2. SpendThrift
3. Buddi
4. Economix
5. Moneydance
6. iBank

Then I made a list of the features I use in Quicken:

• runs on my OS X 10.4 Mac, prefer Aqua and Cocoa to Java, prefer to avoid X11
• prefer document-based (I like knowing which file to backup)
• different accounts in one file
• most important: a “reconcile” process that makes it easy to check against my statement (like Quicken)
• important: proper double entry to transfer between accounts (doesn’t require *me* entering the transaction twice)
• QIF import (to get me out of Quicken-land; tested with a QIF file downloaded from my credit union) would help
• export (no Intuit-style data format lock-in!)
• prefer bill scheduling, but I could use iCal instead
• applications that over $50 or that haven’t been updated since 2005 (3 years) not considered; last update in 2006 only considered if it’s popular or free

Putting those short-listed applications through their paces:

1. Cashbox 0.50 ($0) reconcile process just shows final balance, not starting balance (maybe I really want a two-level reconcile like Quicken?), weak I/O
2. Spendthrift 3.0 1031c ($0) the bad news: reconcile is just a checkbox, and you don’t get a reconciled total. Other than that, it’s a nice Aqua, Spotlight integration (mentioned not tested), QIF import works very well, multiple accounts, and bill schedule.
3. Buddi 3.0.0.5 ($0) good news: check boxes for cleared and for reconcile; bad news: utterly no reconcile process (although you can look at cleared and reconciled totals, so if you’re never off, it’s ok), Java not Aqua
4. Economix 2.6.1 ($0) reconcile is a checkbox (but it will total just the checked items so you can check with bank … but no process with start and end balance to catch errors per-month)
5. Moneydance 2007R5 ($30) (4 stars in 31 reviews) Hey this works!!! It didn’t let me set the starting balance in testing, but it did have it as a box to fill in, so I’m hopeful … also has two-stage (cleared and reconciled) that I prefer; also Java not Aqua but reasonable fake
6. iBank 2.3.11 ($50) (4 stars in 62 reviews) has the right sort of reconcile and bill scheduling, and I like having Automator actions, but it’s the top end of my price range (although to a local company that has gotten good support reviews).

The not-entering-twice for transfer between accounts turned out to be a real kicker; it kicked out SpendThrift, MoneyDance (ideal reconcile, QIF import works), and iBank. The QIF import was the next challenge; Economix couldn’t do it, and Cashbox required “massaging” the QIF before import (changing the line endings and I can’t remember if I had to change the date format). Cashbox also lacked export, although its plist format wasn’t opaque.

So the really short list to take on Quicken is Buddi (but it’s Java) and Cashbox (no export, no scheduling).

I really wanted to pick an Aqua application; I was trying to avoid Java. But I couldn’t miss that Buddi met my actual needs with double entry, import, and export. That’s the heartless thing about a feature checklist, especially when I make the checklist before I start evaluating: it doesn’t always pick the prettiest one. So here’s to Buddi! Let’s see how I like now that I’m going to start using it …

I hope we’ll be better at sign language the second time around, instead of so intermittent.

Some online ASL resources where you can see the signs: Signing Baby Dictionary, 100 Basic ASL Signs, and the ASL Dictionary.

But I think the real winner is the Born 2 Sign cheat sheet to put on your frig. If we see a reminder all the time …

Baby Sign Language, Child

Ah, I finally figured out why I couldn’t close windows (just tabs) in Safari! I still had the Taboo 0.3 bundle loaded. Remove it (Safari now warns you when you’re quitting with multiple tabs or windows open), and I can close Safari windows again. Whew. It’s pretty annoying when you can’t close Safari windows!

Macintosh, Safari, Tips, Troubleshooting

Our Roomba Discovery hasn’t been right for a couple months. First there was the lightning storm, and Kurtis decided that Roomba needed another battery after that (wasn’t charging). So I got a new battery for it. Now it runs in small backward circles for a minute or two, stops for a minute to beep, and then repeats the cycle until we turn it off.

So I thought we should look at Roomba Diagnostics. Other sites also cover the Roomba Diagnostic mode. Most of it comes down to a serious cleaning.

The result of the diagnostics is that the right wheel motors has a problem. Not sure what we’ll do next, but the kitchen is getting crunchy, and the toddler is saying “Robot broken.”

House, Personal, Roomba

Lisa from Performance just called. She says she just got the pick-it-up call from Mercedes, that they checked out the steering (Performance was worried about getting it just right), checked fluids, checked alignment, and reset the airbag light. She is going to send a driver out to fetch it. She also needs to total up the final bill ($7865.79, less than we had expected), and then get confirmation that insurance is going to pay it. As soon as those steps are done, she’ll call me to pick it up!!! Yay! Of course, we don’t want to inspect a paint job on a rainy, overcast day like today, but tomorrow will be soon enough! … As long as there’s nothing screwy with insurance. Can’t wait to get rid of the gangsta rental car!

UPDATE 2:52 PM: My wagon’s ready to come home! I’ll pick it up tomorrow. Happy, happy!

Car, Personal

Lisa from Performance called me this morning about my wagon. The body shop is done, but they’re waiting on a washer fluid cap and transmission fluid (it’s not standard ATF but Dexron Mercron III). As soon as it’s drive-able, they’ll drive to the Mercedes dealership (hmm, I should have asked which one; Leith in Raleigh has never impressed me with service) to take care of the alignment and of turning off the airbag warning light (as a result of replacing the door). Lisa said Mercedes is pretty good about a one-day turn-around (for them!), so she’ll probably call tomorrow … either to give me an update, or to schedule a pick-up! Hurrah!!! So that was very nice to hear: my wagon is on the finishing up stage and I might see it soon. It has been over a month now, and that Dodge Magnum is not an impressive replacement (in comparison to my Mercedes, this Magnum has poor suspension, a loud engine, bald tires, and cigarette stink that’s getting stronger and older with time; only those last two are cure-able relative to what I’m used to driving).

Car, Personal