News

Quickbooks really?

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I just wasted another hour trying to figure out how to print a liability check for a wage garnishment, really quickbooks?

Here’s how you do it:

  • QuickBooks 2014 and higher:  Choose Employees > Payroll Center. Click thePay Liabilities tab.  Towards the bottom, under Other Activities click Create Custom Payments.
  • Once you get in there set the date to pay the liabilities up to the date you withheld the garnishment
  • Then select the liability and create….
  • Now it will create a check with the right information on it.

I am not covering how you create the liability here as that is a whole other bunch of hunt and peck.

Hobbies News Technology

Roku and Sling

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Well cord cutting can be painful. Part of the attempt at reducing my ever growing cable bill was to cut back to the basic cable package. That worked but we lost ESPN and with it, access to Monday Night Football. – That bites so we came up with a solution, sling tv. Sling is an all streaming offering by Dish TV that provides a handful of channels. It cost $20/month so it’s quite expensive unless it hits the mark on several channels you want/don’t have. So we tried to watch Monday night football on Sling (a channel on the Roku) – Man that sucked, it was choppy and went blank many times. It was basically unwatchable. This was a free trial so we expected that was the end of that story however, after calling them it appears you can access the Watch ESPN channel on the Roku as part of the subscription to Sling Tv. So we watched last nights MNF and sure enough that was a sweet experience. I think the ability to stream channels will only grow and that will become the delivery vehicle of choice.

Technology

Howdy El Capitan

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I am in process upgrading my old Macbook Pro to El Capitan. Everything I have read says it should be faster even on my old machine. I am excited to see how it works and what benefit it provides. Of course, I will post something about it if it’s good or bad. I know there are a bunch of new features but I am not as interested in the features as the performance. I just want it to start apps quicker than it has been.

I was quite impressed with Yosemite and how much faster that was. If this is as incrementally faster as that was, we should be in great shape with life in the old dog yet. – Did I mention, I love my Mac!

OK, so not off to a great start. Downloaded the new OS then started the installer, it proceeded then the screen went blank and I got a spinning cursor on a black screen (not the beach ball). That just sat there for ages with no apparent progress. I waited (like you do) and nothing happened, a little research and seems this is not unheard of. I restarted in “safe mode” except the computer wouldn’t restart it just kept shutting down. So, I tried a restart not in safe mode, it started and brought up the installer. Now I am sitting here with the installer screen showing 23 minutes to go. We’ll see if it completes, I can tell you that 5-7 mins later there is 23 mins to go but the progress bar has moved a little bit.

Still going, it says 9 mins now (their ability to predict the time it will take is not very good).

 

 

Hobbies News

Brilliant Gun Sites

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I just found a craigslist for guns it allows you to browse guns in your neighborhood and it allows you to post your own listings.

gunlistings.org

It looks pretty cool not sure how well it works.

There’s another one called

Armslist.com

That’s brilliant too.

———–Update————

These worked very well. I was able to sell two of my guns quite quickly. I  was very impressed. I will certainly look here if I want to buy more guns.

News Technology

Long live the Proscan

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So the Vizio is completely dead, I received a new 39″ Proscan as a gift from my wonderful girl friend. We are back in business. I notice that the Proscan starts much quicker than the Vizio. It’s a nice TV with a mimimalistic surround. It looks good and sounds good too. – I am very happy with it.

I hooked up my old Roku 1 box to it and now I can watch Netflix and Plex with no issues.

News Technology

RIP the Vizio TV

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So today the Vizio TV has died. I think it’s a power supply issue. The clue was that the white light is not coming on anymore. It appears that the on/off button is no longer working. I saw a YouTube video that showed someone replacing the power supply but I am not sure that’s something I can do economically. I can get a new smart telly for $200 or a power supply for $35 then it may not work… I  may take the telly apart and see if I can test it with my meter to make sure it’s the power supply. It will be interesting to see what’s broken.

News Technology

Linux Stuff

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I have been a proponent of Linux for a long time. I love that the distros have become so complete and easy to use. It amazes me that the Linux desktop hasn’t penetrated the business world any further than it has. It is such an easy to use and stress free product.

1000px-NewTux.svg

When it was first around, Linux was a difficult platform because many things just didn’t work, you had to tinker with it to make it work in a way that you wanted then the dreaded update would come and break everything. Those days are long gone. Now, my Plex server is an Ubuntu LTS version. It sits there happily doing its thing and updates can be applied remotely.

I also run my MythTv on the same Linux box, it runs flawlessly and is easy to maintain. I can also access my Linux machine through SSL remotely from anywhere. This means if I want to make an update I can.

There is a webserver running on that server, I just use it to provide a place to launch everything else. It makes remembering what’s where much easier.

News Technology

Vizio TV update

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So today the TV seems to be getting worse, now not only does the remote not work but I couldn’t switch the TV off, I had to unplug it from the power. – I am not sure what could be causing it. I am wondering if its worth putting any time and money into this TV (it’s about 7 years old) or if I should just bite the bullet and get a new smart TV. That would give me a better TV with Netflix and Plex built in. I have looked at the Roku TV too, that would be interesting.

 

I don’t use anything but streaming on that TV so there is no worry about connecting cable or satellite to it. I am working really hard on ditching cable. I am keeping a close eye on SlingTV if they would just add Nicktoons I would be on it like white on rice!

TV

Hobbies Technology

I have a drone

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I have a cool little drone, it’s a Parrot Rolling Spider. It is fun to fly, there’s an app that you run on your phone to control it.

The only problem I have with most of the drones out there today is their batteries only last for 8-10 minutes, that is about just enough time to get the controls down.

My little guy is really an indoor drone, I took it out in the wind once and it was blown out of the sky in seconds. You can take pictures from above with it. The camera is not very good but works. I am currently trying to get it to upgrade but it keeps yelling at me. I will figure it out and put some details on here so I can remember how I did it for next time.

Parrot

That’s my little guy right there. You can remove the wheels but if it crashes and you don’t have the wheels on it’s likely you will break the propellers.

 

Hobbies Rocksmith

Connecting my Rocksmith to my guitar amp

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When I first got Rocksmith (RS) I was trying to figure out the best way to hear me playing along with the backing track. I started out just listening the PC speakers but to be honest, they were lack luster. I then switched to headphones, they protect everyone else from my noise and they all me hear everything but, they were literally making me deaf. After playing my ears would be ringing (I know I could turn it down but then you don’t get the same feeling). So, eventually I got my VOX guitar amp out and set up my computer output to go straight into my amp.

The VOX amp has all kinds of built in effects but RS has the effects built in so I just wanted to amplify the output clean. I set the VOX up to do that and now when I play I hear my guitar with the RS effects and the backing music and lyrics all through my amp. Of course with my amp, I can make it much louder than I need it so I try to manage that carefully so as not to shake everything off the shelves!

The setup is pretty simple, I connect the RS realtone cable from my guitar and into the computer as normal. I have a cable that runs from the computers headphone jack to the guitar amp input (1/8 to 1/4). I bought a cable to do this that is long enough to reach between the two without issues. – I know this is just using the amp as a glorified PC speaker but it works for me. I also have a cable splitter that will allow me to cable to the computer and separately to the guitar amp. This gives me the guitar sound coming from the amp and the RS sound coming from the computer. The problem for me is then I have to create effects to make my guitar sound the way it should for each song. Although that sounds like fun, it will take way more time than if I just work the way I have it now.