Relief from the plague of fleas

Our cockapoo Myla summer 2016 brought home a bunch of fleas:

(one of Myla's cousins from the Internet)

(not actual size)

My fault completely; when I noticed her scratching early on and I said "fleas!!" my wife said no, she just has dry skin. So I filed her under "dry skin" and forgot about it.

Summer 2016: the "dry skin" took over our house ... first I spoke with our vet and asked for a solution ... "Internal or external?" he asked. I said "what's faster?"

He asked how much the dog weighed and then prescribed this:

This worked immediately and (after we bombed the house) we haven't seen a flea since. We just give the little dog one of these (pseudo?) meaty treats every 12 weeks. I can do that for the rest of her doggy life ...

Dog owners: do yourself a favor and get this for your dog!

First experience with Zelle, "fast bank transfer" app, not inspiring!

I've been reading about Zelle, this new app that's supposed to be a "new way to send money to almost anyone, on your phone, in minutes."  There's a footnote: it's "in minutes" only if your recipient is enrolled, 1-3 business days the first time. Well, OK.

I used the Capital One app on my phone to try and send money to my wife. She got a text message asking her to register for Zelle, which she left for me to do.

First, it offers to take a picture of the debit card to be used with your account. Cool! So I tried this, first with my wife's Aspiration card:

It seemed to work after jiggling the phone camera for a few minutes. I then put in the CVV number, checked the box "I approve the terms and conditions" ... and got a wait wheel and then:

Actually just "error 101" with no explanation: not "we don't recognize your bank", which I thought was a possibility.

So then I tried my wife's BECU debit card, my second choice because I don't want apps having access to any main bank account. But I tried it and first:

The glare from the finish seemed to keep the app from reading the numbers ... or something. It didn't work on this one. I messed around with this for a while and was just finished typing in the numbers and other information and hit continue and then:

I had been messing with the app for at least 1/2 hour!

Goodbye Zelle ... I may try this again in a few months, but sheesh.

A free alternative to Quickbooks, at least for techies

I have been neglecting accounting for quite a while now. My wife and I have recently started two new businesses that will need two new accounting setups ... this was going to be too expensive with Quickbooks, which was charging us $80+ per month for two companies.

I tried Zoho, an Indian alternative that's listed at $9 per company per month ... but it seemed clunky and I wanted to find something else.

I wound up with LedgerSMB:

After using it for a day, I can see it as something I can make work for my businesses ... and my non-tech-capable wife. But do keep in mind:

1. It's a Linux thing; some of the documents say "If you get this working on Windows please let us know how you did it." It's supposed to work on Mac too, but I didn't try that. I installed it on a little Mint Linux machine I've had on my home network since last year, and that worked (mostly) fine.
2. There is a partial Docker setup which for those who are more Docker-capable than I am currently might be just the ticket. But for some reason they don't include Postgres in their Docker setup but require you to do that separately.
3. So I used the "quick install guide" ... which took most of an entire day. The programming language is Perl and there are a lot of Perl modules to install. The two Dumb Problems I had to overcome were:

• They recommend the "fast Perl web" thing Starman ... but the configuration file that runs it specified /usr/bin/starman when it was really /usr/local/bin/starman.
• They have a suggested setup with Starman reverse proxying to a web server: Apache or Nginx.
• I picked Nginx ... then they have this suggestion for Let's Encrypt, a free SSL cert setup from eff.org ... I tried that and used the "automatic Nginx" option that seemed to work. But when I tried to connect to the server via https, it didn't work. On investigation I found that the Let's Encrypt certbot does not work on a private IP address (as I use on my home network) ... and there is no error message saying that ... I eventually realized I just needed to do the self-signed certificate trick, and that was the last step getting it to work.

Usage requires more accounting knowledge than does Quickbooks; you need to know what account to debit and what to credit, for example. But there is a templating system to set up common transactions to be reused.

More details as I know more, but so far so good!

Peoples' Pharmacy quotes Lancet Study: Saturated fat is OK!

I recently came across some prime beef at Costco:

It was completely delicious, as I expected ... and a new study confirms accumulating evidence that it's better for my health than carbs!

Put down that Twinkie, soldier, and grab a burger (skipping the bun)!

Bon apetit ...

Why I started wearing a wristwatch again after years of not doing this

I was visiting my sister-in-law and her husband in Michigan last month. My father-in-law died in 2014 and my mother-in-law earlier this year, and my wife and my sister were going through some of their effects. This included a Timex Indiglo, which had belonged to my father-in-law:

It was still running ... and keeping nearly perfect time!

And ... I had just missed an Amtrak train from not having the time easily glanceable on my wrist, so ... I"m getting used to this again.

It "takes a licking and keeps on ticking" indeed ...

The 21st Century Bank Robbery: how to keep your Bitcoin stash from being part of it

Some friends and family have been accumulating various amounts of Bitcoin recently:

I just read a disturbing article on how easy it is to drain a bitcoin account that's set up with 2-factor authentication via text message.

One part of the solution: use other 2-factor authentication ... for example, Google Authenticator, which I already had set up on my phone for another site and which I easily added (just by scanning a barcode) to Gmail. I then removed the text-message authentication step.

Now all I need is a bunch of bitcoin! :-)

If you are keeping bitcoins, best not to let Coinbase or another exchange keep the keys for you. Keep the keys yourself ... I know this is all confusing, but a good book on the details is:

New bank refunds ATM fees ... and expects a tip!

I heard an advertisement for Aspiration on a podcast and wanted to try it:

They claim to refund all ATM fees worldwide, and in return they try to get you to give them a tip!

Sorry, bank, no can do ... Tips are going away even in restaurants so your timing in this is hilariously bad ...

But! Thanks for the ATM rebates as long as they last ...