QuickBooks... a lighthearted diversion...

[Fred]

All this talk about QuickBooks reminded me of some curious experiences
I'd had in the past.

I live in an area of Nashua that uses the 888 as an exchange. It also
turns out that 1-888-xxx-yyyy is the QuickBooks helpline phone number,
and my business phone was simply 888-xxxy. 

The upshot of all this?

Anytime someone in New Hampshire dialed for QuickBooks support and
forgot to dial the "1" in front of the number first -- you guessed it --
rang my phone! This happened so much it grew annoying. But then I
thought of having fun with it. Perhaps I could've pretended to be
QuickBooks tech support and give the dumb bastards wrong information
that would've resulted in the lost of all their data. Or worse, I could
"charge them" for tech support and get their credit card numbers...!

No, I did NOT do any of this -- just daydreaming, being annoyed with
these inane calls that disrupted my train of thought. 

Anyway, I no longer have that phone number, thankfully. 

I used to use Quicken (not QuickBooks) to handle my affairs, but I will
never return to that piece of garbage ever again, especially since I no
longer do Windows except to play an occasional game or two. And I'm
beginning to think that as long as I can get the data into a spreadsheet
anyway, who the hell needs either Quicken or QuickBooks? Sure, there's
no GUI to hold your hand, but then you'd be free of all the headaches as
well.

Or better yet, dump all the data into MySQL and just write a few scripts
to present the data anyway you like. Overkill? Perhaps. But then, you
get to do ANYTHING your wicked mind desires. 

-- 
Fred -- fred at lrc.puissante.com -- place "[hey]" in your subject.
The mass of humans on planet Earth -- regard them as the ebbing 
seas in the winds of change. They ebb, they flow, they know not 
where to go.