Made in China, the ultimate warning label

Yesterday I took Marley (our dog) to the vet because of some redness on his belly (yes, I realize we keep taking Marley to the vet, but he's our first "child"). As I was talking to the vet, I mentioned we just bought him some Kingdom Pets chicken jerky treats at Costco. The vet said that they were made in China and he stopped giving his own dogs anything made in China. When I got home, I looked at the package and sure enough, it is made in China. Looks like the treats go back to Costco (luckily they take just about anything back; I just have to pull up the receipt from ReceiptWallet and print it). Looks like it is back to Trader Joe's peanut butter treats (as long as they aren't made in China).To top off my day with Chinese made products, I was grilling dinner and ran out of propane. Why is this a Chinese product issue? I had purchased an electronic gas gauge that shows me if my propane tank is full or needs refilling. As I was grilling, I ran out of gas despite the gauge saying that the tank was full. Yes, the gauge was made in China. That goes back to Costco, as well.

iPhone not syncing on dock (Solution)

I noticed that my iPhone didn't launch iTunes when I dropped it in the dock even though I specified automatic sync. It dawned on me that in the past I saw an iTunes Helper app as a Login Item. Sure enough, this wasn't in my Login Items. I dug into iTunes.app/Resources, launched iTunes Helper and also dragged it to Login Items. Now when I dock my iPhone, it syncs automatically. You'd think that Apple would make sure that the iTunes helper is always running, say on each launch of iTunes. Anyway, I have a solution to my problem.

6 weeks with a VPS

It's now been six weeks since I moved all of my web sites to a VPS (virtual private server) on vpslink.com. So far, things have been smooth sailing. They have had 100% uptime, good performance, and nothing to complain about. They did get hit with a DOS attack which made things slow, but they quickly resolved that. In addition, I have 3 IP addresses on my account which made it quite convenient for me to host a client's wiki as well as some work I'm doing for them.

I still run the server in my house for email, but I consider email less critical as SMTP has built in re-try mechanisms so if the server goes offline, it isn't the end of the world.

Overall, I'm glad I decided to get a VPS; hopefully my enthusiasm for it continues.

Buggy QuickBooks

You'd think that an accounting package would be 100% reliable or as close as possible to that as people rely on them all the time. I just happened to be looking at some reports in QuickBooks for Mac and noticed a $4000 difference in a particular section (expenses) and checked the filters; they were identical. I unchecked some fields in one and rechecked them and presto, the difference went away. It's a good thing I noticed it otherwise I would have paid myself more than I deserved which would have made a royal mess out of the accounting.

While I realize it is software and there are always bugs, it seems that the software costs so much that Intuit could afford a few more QA folks to bang on every aspect of the program.

I read the other day that QuickBooks for Mac 2008 would be coming next year. I always have to question, what more can be added? I don't use the integrated online banking and my needs are simple. The only thing I want is a stable product; features don't mean much for me. This is apparent as I still use Quicken 2005; all I want for that program is an Intel native version...that I'd pay for as I don't like running PPC binaries on my MacBook Pro.