Quickbooks

I finally bought Quickbooks about a month ago and it's one of those things where you wish you had seen the light long ago. Since I started my business over two years ago, I have been using a combination of Quicken and a series of Excel spreadsheets that I had created to keep track of my projects. Quicken, I am discovering, is fine for keeping track of money coming in and going out but that's about it.

Quickbooks, however, allows me to keep track of my clients and projects and the money owed by each one; it notifies me when invoices are past due; and it looks like it will keep track of hours and reimbursable expenses. Most of this I was able to take care of with my spreadsheets, but it's tedious and I have to open and review various files to get the big picture. And to figure out who's past due, I have to remember to check my summary now and then. It works, but why bother when there's an easier way.

I'm still getting the hang of the program and since I only got it a month ago, I'm still in the process of transferring over all the information from the first of the year. It's a little time consuming at the moment but I can see the potential for time savings whenever I get everything up to date. And I'll still have to run both systems for a little while, but hopefully by the middle of the year I'll be a complete convert.

Aerial Acrobatics

My friend, Blake, was a Navy fighter pilot but has recently finished that career. Now that he's back in the Bay Area, he's going to start teaching airplane acrobatics down in Hayward. He's been putting some extra time in the plane so he'll be ready to start teaching and he took me up last Friday.



The plane was a two-seater and I sat in the front and Blake flew from the backseat. We each had a parachute we strapped on before getting in (just in case) and then cinched ourselves down with the seat and shoulder belts. It was a claustrophobic little aircraft and with the headphones on there really wasn't enough headroom. It is pretty nimble, though. As soon as we hit the runway, Blake accelerated and we were off the ground only a few seconds later and into a sharp banked turn to come around 270 degrees. From there we headed out towards Mt. Diablo to do the fun stuff over a golf course (you can't do acrobatics over a populated area...apparently golfers aren't people.)

Once we were over safe ground, the first thing Blake did was the loose coin test: flip the plane over to check for anything that might fly around in the cockpit. So flip the plane over he did and there we were flying upside down. I've never flown upside down and it was pretty surreal to be looking up and seeing the ground.

From there he went into a series of maneuvers. The first was an aileron roll, which was what we had just done but instead of stopping half way, we just went all the way around. The next was a loop, which may have been the most uncomfortable because of the increase in G's. Blake pulled the plane up and I started sinking into my seat as we went vertical, then upside down, and then facing straight down before returning to level.

The final move, which I think was the most fun, was the the hammer roll. For this one Blake pulled the plane straight up until we were completely vertical. The plane then slowed and came to a complete stop. As we started falling backwards towards the ground Blake rolled the plane to the side and pointed us directly towards the ground before coming back to level. We did that one a couple times.

Since they charge you by the minute we headed back, which was fine with me since I don't think my stomach could handle much more. I loved all the maneuvers but it messed with my equilibrium and made me pretty queasy, which stuck with me for most of th rest of the day. It probably just takes some getting used to.

In Case You Didn't Think It Would Happen

Wasn't it only a year ago we were balking at $3/gallon gas? What does that say for next year? $5/gallon maybe.