Budget/Budget Touch

For the past few years I've held out on my PDA, a Sharp Zaraus SL5500, using it for basically two applications: Car Milage Calculator and Qashmoney.  In that time I have kept my eye on the iPhone and the App Store looking for replacments for these two. The Car Milage Calculator was pretty simple, and actually many options out there both free and paid (I chose to go with one of the free which contains adds but takes care of the basics of tracking for me with graphs etc, but that isn't the subject of this posting).  The replacement for Qashmoney on the other hand was harder to find. Yes, there were plenty of "Budget" software packages available, but they all took too much control from me, and I didn't want a lot of the fluff features they had.

I don't recall what caused me to search differently, but one day I did a search for budget envelope, or something along those lines. It was the results of that search that brought Budget Touch to my attention. After looking at the screen shots it looked like it had what I was looking for. Basically a way to have a "Parent" account that contained "Child" accounts where the "Child" accounts aren't really accounts as such, just symbolic accounts. Along with that it had the ability to transfer money from one envelope to another, which would work with my budgeting workflow of putting all my deposit into a main envelope, then divide it out bit by bit to the other envelopes.  Liking what I saw so far I also noticed they had a sync with Desktop feature. This led me to their web page where I found that they have desktop versions of their Budget app for both PC and Mac, and they offered demo versions.

Wonderful!

So, I downloaded the demo of the Mac software (I was working on my Mac at the time). In the software I was quickly able to set up my accounts, and envelopes. And then did an initial input of all of the balance data from my Zaraus. Over the next couple of weeks I actually was doing a triple entry on all of my spending, pay, and transfers. First in my Zaraus in Qashmoney, then in Microsoft Money (which I keep as more of a checkbook register than a budget tool), then also in Budget on the Mac.

In playing with the software I found their "Pay Rules" feature which basically can be used to enter your pay amount, then it will automatically assign the different values to each envelope as set up in the rules.  This feature basically automates what I was doing manually in Qashmoney from a spreadsheet I had created in Google Docs that did the breakdown of the pay to envelopes. Bonus!! This saves a good 10-15 minutes of entering/dividing the money up, though at first it seemed like it was better suited to someone on a salary with a set income, where with my hourly income the deposit amount could change from pay to pay. Then I noticed a field that could be used to enter a difference amount, so basically I set up a base pay setting, then subtract that amount from what is actually being deposited, and enter that difference into that field and it will calculate based on the total of the two.  Anything left over after meeting all the budget items then is filtered into what I call my "Buffer Zone" which is basically an envelope that is used to cover if any of the other envelopes needs to temporarily go negative.

I was really starting to like using Budget on the Mac, and the trial was running out, so I checked pricing, which seemed pretty reasonable, and when I added it to the cart on their site, they were offering a discount on the PC version if purchased at the same time. Bonus, maybe I can switch my wife to using this rather than the spreadsheet I set up for her (which is kind of cumbersome admittedly) or at least get a synced copy on desktop software at home and at work.  So, all of that coupled with having nearly saved enough to upgrade to an iPhone I decided to purchase the software.

After purchasing the software I realized that the sync with the PC version wasn't working yet (but did find in their forums that it is planned for release by the end of the year). That bummed me out as far as getting my wife switched to using it, and the Budget Touch on her iPod touch that I had bought for her birthday.

So, then I went to get my iPhone, which in the end ended up not happening (due to contract lengths/upgrade eligibility on the number I wanted to take with me.) This really had me down since I was looking forward to the iPhone as well as moving toward using the Budget Touch software (which had pretty good reviews and really was what drove my purchase of the desktop software).  So, in the next few days after that I went to Craigslist and started searching for an iPod touch of my own to hold me over till I could upgrade to an iPhone. Found a good deal on one and purchased. After a couple days settling into use I used some of the iTunes credit I had been gifted a year or so ago and purchased the Budget Touch application.

Then I got to see just how it works. But first, I had to sync with the desktop software, which was up to date as I had been using it along side Qashmoney. The sync went smoothly, and in no time I had data on the iPod to play with and see if this would really work as a replacement for Qashmoney.

Over all, I like the functionality, it is really the best replacement I could find for the iPod/iPhone. There are some things I would change, but I can live with them. (The main one being that every main account when you are in the account shows all envelopes from all accounts)  The ability to on the go have a view of what my balances in each envelope is, and add debits as well is great. Add to that easy sync with the desktop when I get to the desktop rather than manually entering (which I did with Qashmoney to Microsoft Money and still have to do between Budget and Money for now at least) and I have a solution that saves me time and enables me to keep on budget.

So, I haven't picked up my Zaraus in quite a while, and really don't see me doing so, as the iPod touch has replaced it and soo much more. Especially with the addition of Budget Touch and the Budget desktop software.   Now if they can hurry up and get syncing with Windows working I might be able to help my wife streamline her budget process.

Come on people, reboot/reload

This post is more of a rant.

I can't count the number of times someone has come up to me saying their computer is doing something weird, and a reboot has brought it back to working normally.  PC, MAC, Linux, you name it I've seen reboots or reloads take care of it.

Case in point. Had a user come up to me saying that Word was giving them a date in it's auto-complete feature that was off from time to time. Sometimes as much as a couple of days. I looked at the computer (a MAC btw) and sure enough Word was putting in a date from several days ago (specifically about 4). So, I thought lets see what happens with a reboot, but before that, lets just try completely exiting out of Word and re-opening it. Sure enough, that brought the date current. So, my guess is that when Word starts it pulls some of those variables from the system and caches them for use while it is open. And exiting out of just the document doesn't actually exit out of Word on a MAC. So, this user needs to get in the practice (if they want to continue using this feature and it remain accurate) of at least exiting out of Word at the end of every day to re-open fresh the next day.

Synergy+

In one of my readings on Slashdot I read about a solution posed for an issue using a free software package called Synergy.

The concept intrigued me in that at work my main computer is a MacBook Pro, but I still have a PC under my desk that I access either through RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) or via the KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch at my desk. In looking at this software it appeared I could control either without having to use the special KVM command or RDP connection. The downside (if you want to call it that) is that the PC would need it's own dedicated monitor for this to work.

So, I had a monitor under my desk that was sitting idle, and since it was a smaller/older model nobody was seeking to use it anywhere else, I decided to use it to try the software out.  Took some time and organizing cables but I managed. Then installed the software on the PC. Since this would be a secondary system it would be set up as a "Client" in the software, and the MacBook Pro would act as the "Server."  I didn't realize at first when I downloaded the OS X I didn't realize it only installs scripts that need called from the terminal. This would have been ok for me long term I guess, but at the time I didn't feel like messing with it, or spending a lot of time trying to figure out the syntax for the scripts. This in turn lead me to their Frequently Asked Questions page, which lead to their Related Products page, which linked to QSynergy which adds a unified graphical interface to the software that is available on OS X, Linux and Windows.

I chose to only use QSynergy on the MacBook and use Synergy's software on the PC since I already had it installed there. After installing QSynergy on the Mac, I went through the configuration, and set up the PC desktop to be to the Left of the Mac, then started the server. I already had configured the PC to connect to the Mac as the server and the link came up. Unfortunately, I had been connected to the PC via RDP, which had the screen locked and Synergy was actually connecting to the RDP session, even after disconnecting RDP, the display was black and I was unable to control. This puzzled me for a little while and I tried various settings in the server software to try to resolve it. In the end to resolve this I had to use the KVM to recontrol the PC and get the system out of the "locked" state. After that, I switched back to the Mac and moving the mouse to the left is just like having another display connected in a multi display configuration, except it is connected to a completely different computer.

Right off I did have some issue with my Spaces when switching between them the Keyboard didn't always follow, but after removing some settings I had put in place (when the screen stayed black) everything behaved as expected.

Overall, so far I'm really enjoying using this software to keep a windows desktop just a short mouse movement away for administrative stuff, as well as working with software that works best on PC.  I've shown the software to a couple of co-workers and they commented on how responsive it was, it's hare to really even notice that the mouse and keyboard aren't physically connected to the "Client" machine. There are some things to keep in mind that I have noticed.

• The Windows keys don't function over the connection
• (Alt)+(Tab) doesn't work over the connection 
• Copy/Paste doesn't work across the connection
• Qsynergy doesn't run as a background service (ie if you exit the application window, it closes the connection so Minimize is your friend here)
• Each machine requires its own physical display