Things are buzzing over here…We’ve created a short screencast to show you the new features added in CheckBook 2.1 & CheckBook Pro 2.1

It’s great to see these smart, intuitive programs continue to get sharper and even easier to use. (I can say that about our products, without blushing, because I am neither the engineer nor the designer).

The majority of the features added were requested by users.

Thanks for the feedback! Enjoy!

“How do I delete entries from the To/From drop down list?”
“I recently switched from Microsoft Money to Quicken essentials. I am now looking for something else because QE does not allow me to know my true balance.Can I do this with CheckBook?”
“Hello, I am a new user with some basic questions.”
“I don’t know what to do with this folder. Am I on the right track?”

These are just a few (tiny fraction really) of the questions and comments posted on our forum.

If you’re not already using the forum, I highly recommend it

What shirt did you decide to wear today? Do you shower in the morning or at night? What radio station will you listen to in your car? Did you pack a lunch for work or will you go out and grab a bite?

Each day we are flooded with freedoms that seem insignificant.

Imagine how it would feel to have those choices taken away. Imagine you are almost ready to head out the door, wearing your favorite
t-shirt and you get stopped by a stranger, moving about your home…as if it were their own. The stranger tells you that you have to change, because your shirt doesn’t match. The stranger also tells you that you have to take a shower at night, even though you are always up early and would rather take one in the morning.

Sometimes there are two strangers, in your house, and they talk to each other (as though you weren’t even there). When your ride comes, to take you to work, the music seems to pulse inside your brain. Once you arrive, your supervisor tells you that there isn’t any work today. So, you put your head down and cry. Two of your other supervisors approach you, at the same time, and tell you to stop crying.

The meaning behind experiences sometimes gets clearer the farther away one gets. I find myself thinking, now, of the years I worked with adults with developmental disabilities. I am astounded by how kind the clients were to me despite the struggles they were facing (that I didn’t even know about or understand).

On a more work related note: Checkbook Pro was recently reviewed on Softpedia

Hope everyone is having a fantastic day! Terra

Watching, Sunday Morning, last week I found Ben Stein’s commentary amusing. Addressing high school seniors on the topic of college acceptance/rejection letters, he cited famous and influential people who didn’t graduate from ivy league schools. He made the case that getting into the “right” school wasn’t as big of a deal as it seemed.

Great advice. Not only for those just starting out in the world, but for all of us as we go through different stages of life.
Frequently, there are turning points when everything seems to hinge on this big decision or that great event. The job interview, the city to buy a house in, whether or not to have a family. Moments when we ponder, weigh the consequences, and obsess about the outcomes. Sometimes, even after a decision has long since come and gone, we continue to wonder “What if?”

In his commentary, Stein points out that although getting into a good college may help you get a leg up, “…it helps a lot more to have good work habits, make a minute-by-minute effort to get along with the people you work with, and (most of all) to harmonize your goals with your talents.”

Rather than worrying about long-term success, in your career or personal life, ask yourself what you did today, yesterday, this week that was in line with your values.

The truth is that the little things we do every day are what truly make us who we are.

According to The New York Times, Facebook’s privacy policy, now five times longer than its original 1,004 words, has surpassed the length of the U.S. Constitution. With more than 400 million users, who reportedly spend 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, one has to wonder how many people are sharing more than they realize.

The social networking phenomenon has grown exponentially in the past five years. Some might want to keep in touch with family members that have moved across the country. Others may want to look at wedding pictures of high school acquaintances and see how their own lives compare. Perhaps people are trying to reconnect with a sense of belonging. Maybe, we all hunger for community. Being from a small town, I can say that there are pros and cons related to communities in general. Gossip is inevitable when everyone knows everyone. But those spreading rumors are the same people who mow their neighbor’s lawn while he is in the hospital or show up with a casserole (or if you’re from the midwest a “hotdish”) after a family member has been lost.

Privacy, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “the quailty or state of being apart from company or observation.” or “freedom from unauthorized intrusion.” Rather than trying to decide if Facebook is friend or foe, think about how you personally feel about privacy. We all need some connection to others, but how much is too much? Also, when is “intrusion unauthorized”? If all the information is included in the privacy policy, then do we enter personal information at our own risk? Or should the settings be made more simple and straight forward, so the user can decide, with more ease, the amount of personal information he or she chooses to share?

Thinking today about that old adage, “Teach What You Know.”

A solid piece of advice. Who hasn’t been subjected to the droning of someone claiming expertise in an area not yet mastered? Teach What You Know….and even then, leave room for new information. Still, to take it one step further, I think the best teachers are the ones who have not only mastered a subject, but have fought tooth and nail to gain that knowledge. Losers, who get up, again and again, failure after failure, and live to tell about it. We all have natural talents, but what comes easily is hard to explain to someone else.

Think of a lesson you learned only after extremely hard work (or that you learned the hard way).

This is the course you could teach

Comparing increased broadband use in households today to the normalization of electricity in households of the previous century, The Federal Communications Commission presented The National Broadband Plan.

Just beginning my exploration of this plan, I found it surprising that only 65% of Americans have broadband. This left me wondering about the remaining 35%. Are these families using dial-up or do they not have internet at all? I haven’t used a dial-up connection in well over a decade, but I remember the way it would unexpectedly cut out and how very slowly sites would load. Hard to imagine how frustrating that would be for someone attempting to job search or to upload a resumé.

The FCC identified six goals for broadband use in America. Goal six may be of interest to anyone that is careful with their money. It states that “every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real time energy consumption.”

Any thoughts on this?

As a runner, I’ve taken both first place and dead last. While it’s nice to get a ribbon, or a trophy, what’s most gratifying is running faster than I have ever before.

Runners call this a PR or Personal Record. But PRs are not just for running. This concept can be applied to many areas of life. With the key principle being that: You are always trying to beat You. Following this philosophy is both freeing and at the same time overwhelming. On the positive side, you will never again have to worry about what other people think of you. You can get last in a race. You can stutter through a speech. You can get up on stage and sing Karaoke. As long as you feel that what you’ve done is an honest effort, then it was good enough (and in the true spirit of PRs it is an effort that can be improved). The converse is that it’s hard to tell what your best actually is. Unlike running, which can be measured by a clock, other efforts are difficult to gauge. How can you tell if you are a good person? A patient listener? Contributing enough to your community?

There aren’t any easy answers to these types of questions, but it seems that truly successful people ride the line. The line that falls in-between too much and too little. For runners, this means pushing until it hurts but resting before getting injured.

Preparations have been intense, we want everything to be perfect for our new addition.

Reassuring iPhone that we will still love him once the little one gets here has been a full time job. We’ve been giving him lots of extra attention, looking at old photos from when he first arrived at Splasm, even telling him stories about how we stayed up all night admiring his touch screen and making calls to everyone we knew. Still, he is nervous and more than a little jealous that we are so eagerly expecting iPad. It doesn’t help that iPod has already been through this and is throughly enjoying torturing little iPhone.

In the middle of painting the nursery, iPhone came in crying, “iPod told me that,” sob, “when iPad gets here you won’t develop for me anymore! iPod says that you’ll be so busy creating games for iPad that you won’t even care about me at all!”
Setting down my paint brush, I pulled iPhone close and explained that iPod was just being mean,
“We’ll still have time for you,” I started, then considered the best way to proceed, “iPad won’t even be able to do much at first, but we’ll work with him, give him lots of love, and one day he’ll be just as useful as you.”

iPhone appeared visibly calmer and agreed to be kind to iPad when he gets here… on the condition that we get him that Checkbook application he’s been asking about.

Need a good audiobook to listen to on your commute? Tuesdays with Morrie will remind you to savor, rather than just get through, your day.

I stumbled upon this gem while working at a school in Florida. Tutoring students in a low income area coupled with the humidity, and not owning a vehicle soured my attitude more than a little. Each day, I’d walk the half mile from my apartment to the school. By the time I arrived, my face was all red and sweat soaked my back. Just remembering it makes me want to go take a shower. Anyway. Tuesdays with Morrie is about a sports writer who goes to visit his old professor.

Morrie presents  his former student with some great insights into how to live a happy life. My favorite part is when Morrie explains what he calls the tension of opposites, “Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do another. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted.” What a wise observation