Customers By Type, Quick Books Pro 2004

So I had to write up some instructions recently for Quick Books Pro 2004. Yeah I know, old application. Anyway, I'm posting them here. They may work on later versions, I don't know. I personally use open source software as much as possible and don't understand why we keep supporting and insisting on proprietary software. Still it's out there and critical to some... Anyway as long as I had to do it here they are. All directions I provide are "AS IS WITH NO INTENDED OR IMPLIED WARRANTY" (aka use at your own risk). Honestly if you are too dumb to know if you're destroying important data and also too dumb to have a backup you probably shouldn't be around a computer. There are plenty of safe environments you can train in before you destroy something important and blame your IT support person instead of yourself, because let's be honest, support positions are often scapegoat positions created so that people too lazy to learn about computers can blame someone else. This is not always true, but true too often to evade mentioning. (Professors and IT managers come to mind in general). Anyway, I don't mean for this to be totally negative. I hope this helps someone out.

These directions are intended to help users of Quickbooks Pro 2004 setup customers by type so that they can run reports by type. This is a compromise which is somewhere between the ideal solution of the software actually supporting real user groups and not. It is broken into 3 sections.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Section 1 deals with
assigning the users "types", in this case by month so that the data can be used in

Section 2
which deals with using reports to pull users by types (in this case months).

Section 3 deals with setting up recurring expenses for customers. Say monthly bills.

Note: If I do not give a specific direction, in general, leave those fields with their default settings. Obviously common sense applies, if you have a specific field to change you may need to change it even though it is not included in the directions. For example, if you wanted to use Accural instead of Cash, etc.


Section I (Assigning Types) - This section assumes that you have already performed the initial setup of
Quick Books Pro 2004 and have a company with at least 2 customers entered.

1. Open Quick Books Pro 2004.
2. If you have more than one company choose the one you want to work on, otherwise
your only company should open in the default Navigator.
3. Choose "Cust" from the top TOOL BAR.
4. Double click on the name of the first customer you want to modify.
5. Choose the "Additional Info" Tab.
6. You will see the "Type" drop down menu under the "Categorizing and Defaults" heading.
This is usually blank until you fill something in.
7. If there is any text in the "Type" field delte it and enter our first Month "January". (Obviously if the customer is a February customer enter February, etc.)
8. Choose Ok and move on to the next customer

Section 2 (Setting Up A Report To Pull Data By Type)

1. Choose "Reports" from the MENU bar, then "Custom Transaction Detail Report".
2. Choose "Custom" from the "Dates" drop down list under the "Display" tab.
3. Choose your date range. (In this case We'll fill in the "From" field for January 01/01/2009 to 01/31/2009 since we want to pull data for customers that have payments due in January).
4. Click on the "Filters" tab and Choose "Customer Type" as the filter then
choose "January" from the "Customer Type" drop down list and choose ok.
5. Click on memorize to save the report and name it January 09, then choose "ok".
Note: Repeate these steps for each month as needed.

Section 3 (Creating Invoices and Recurring Expenses) - This is necessary so that your
customers electronically owe you something every month. This is how the reports,
etc. have data to pull in the first place.

Note: You can skip this item section if you have already created items (aka services, etc. that you bill people for).
1. CLick on "Item" on the left hand side in your TOOL BAR.
2. Under Type choose service.
3. Name it whatever you need. In this case "Montly Monitoring Charge".
4. Set your rate. In this case $15.00.
5. Choose Account "Services".
6. Choose ok.

Now to setup an invoice that can be billed to the customer every month. You have to do
this for each customer with a recurring bill seperately.

1. Click on "Invoice"
2. Choose any one customer under "Bill To".
3. Choose an item to bill them for under "Item".
4. Right click on the calendar next to the date and choose "memorize transaction".
5. Choose "Remind Me", then "Montly" (from the drop down list) and enter an appropriate date for the next reminder.
6. Choose "Ok".

Section Etc. (Printing Address Labels By Customer Type) -- Obviously you need to load
your printer with labels to print lables. There are several default types preloaded as stated below.

1. Choose "Cust" from the TOOL BAR
2. Then "File", then "Print Forms", then "Labels", choose the name of the label you've loaded
into your printer under "Label Format". Avery #5261 is usually a good one to buy. Sometimes they update their label numbers but they usually indicate on the packaging what labels they are backward compatible with.
3. Choose Customer Type then your month, in this case January.

The Economic Crisis and At Will Employment

I've had 2 people that I know, that are among the 1 Million people that have lost their jobs in the last 2 months, lose their jobs recently. Like many of the stories that are coming out of this time period, they have been let go without real remediation offered, and on ridiculous accusations or loosely trumped up stories where they were not allowed to even file their side of the story. One person was accused of hanging out too much when he took too long to use the restroom, supposedly on multiple occasions. Another was let go after completing all of the tasks that his supervisor had put on a task list for him, but complaining to another employee that he was concerned because the type of computer he likes to support is being removed from the lab that he likes to support the most. This was seen as a "bad attitude." I'm sorry, but he completed the work right?! Shouldn't you only be able to be fired from a job when you become a danger or don't do your work consistently and after being given a chance to improve yourself with charted results? Isn't telling people how to act, think, walk, talk, and dress fascism?
It got me to thinking. Yes the at-will contract allows either party to terminate the contract at any point for any reason, but is that what workers really want? It seems very heavily biased to protect the employer. Even though these contracts are legal in different ways in different states, doesn't that obviously look better for the employer than the employee, and can't anyone reasonable see the potential for the out of control abuse of the 1st Amendment here? Let's take the scenario where a company's higher up(s), the person(s) that would re-mediate a dispute, has a policy that they will not keep contact from a lower level employee confidential. This is a common policy that many higher ups use, especially those with prior military experience. This is often not written down anywhere so employees may not even know about it. Once a lower level employee complains, the supervisor of that employee receives a folder with all of the e-mails, etc. from the lower level employee in them. Now in a structure like the military, someone can simply be reassigned and prove that they were not guilty of what they were accused of, but in the real world, especially at a large company, school, etc., this gives the supervisor the chance to bully the employee in private, force them to resign, threaten them with termination, or even terminate them, because let's face it the employee doesn't have any rights. This means that the supervisor can easily stop an employee from causing them any trouble by talking to others, going to their boss, etc. unless the place itself has policies that stop this which most don't think are worth their time to create or vary widely from place to place. Sure we want to be free, but in the modern world people need their jobs. It's not like the old days when the government was giving away land and people could live on it, work it, build a home on it, and not have to have a job if something went wrong. Some people end up with their lives ruined when they lose their job. Sure some people do need to be fired, but don't all employees in the US deserve re-mediation through an independent third party before they are? I will close by mentioning an awful story that I read about a sick man who went into work to say goodbye to his friends, his boss then called him into his office and let him go, citing something about job performance. Well people that are very ill often work a little bit slower than most. It should be obvious that what happened here is that he was going to cost the company a lot of money because he was sick. So they cooked up a story to get rid of him. Remember they don't have to have a good reason, just a reason. In the end we need unions again, but we also need the government to protect workers. Look at what IBM did, or just outsourcing in general. I know it's scary. People think that they can't have rights because that will mean no jobs at all, but there are alternative to letting the very wealthy screw everyone. Employee owned companies are a great one, unions are good too. We have been scared into thinking that we can't ask for rights because that will lead to no jobs, but by not having rights we are losing jobs anyway, and no one can really plan their futures. It is not socialist or undemocratic to want basic worker protections. It is just fair and will lead to a more productive America. The last note I want to make is that in some states if the work is part-time, at-will, and the contract is written up as temporary it can be terminated for any reason. Meaning the only right that the employee gets is that they can say that they quit, they should be smart enough to put it in writing, but they may not even receive unemployment benefits. Some states do not require such contacts, when they are terminated, to end in a pink slip. So the person, no matter how we may personally feel about the matter, now has no job, and no income. Again, is this really what we want in America? Educated people on the streets? This is a bad economy. Companies want to cut costs and employees that have a sense of individualism will probably be some of the first to go for taking to long to take a dump, which translates to loafing in corporate terms. I'll leave you to imagine how all other kinds of simple things can be translated into offenses by corporations. Think about it you only have to be late once to get written up for it. Guess you'll have to get axed for that.

Robotech By Warner Brothers.... Will probably suck.

http://www.movieweb.com/news/NE5Fq875B8XR88 -- I didn't want to sign up for yet another account just to comment on the idea of a Robotech, probably live action, movie at the link above, but here is my commentary as a big fan of the series. Overall I have to say, why can't hollywood leave old franchises alone and just be creative for once. Robotech The Shadow Chronicles came out just a couple of years ago, and Harmony Gold was sure to release follow ups now and again....

-- I had high hopes for adaptations at first, but they almost always end up sucking. Hollywood just won't use a good story, even when one is already written for them, they just love to rewrite even when totally inappropriate. Take Transformers, and most of the comic book stories that were poorly adapted like X-Men 3, sure if you didn't follow the series they were probably good, but Hollywood loves to spit in the face of true fans. I'm very pessimistic about their ability to wrap up such an expansive series to anything watchable, without tons of rewriting and ignoring of the original story line, in 3 hours. I have to agree with the quote about Genesis. They should pick a Robotech novel, or do this in many small parts which is not cost effective, so they won't. I also have to agree that Tolkein is probably rolling over in his grave.... Michael Bay basically said in Wired that he was going to do Transformers his way, and he did, and aside from CGI it sucked. A big heads up to hollywood, EFFECTS ARE NOT THE ONLY THING YOU NEED TO MAKE A GOOD MOVIE! Again I am pessimistic about this project to say the least. I hope I'm pleasantly surprised.

Why Newspapers Shouldn't Endorse Candidates

So today I found out that both the Anchorage Daily News and Hartford Courant have announced that they are endorsing Obama. I just wanted to say that although I understand that people want to take a stance against the bullshit we've seen from the White House for the last 8 years, well 60 if you ask me, it is totally inappropriate for a newspaper or any other major news source to throw their objectivity out of the window. This is why CNN and Fox news may be entertaining, but are considered so biased that they are unreliable. It is time for our journalists to be objective again. It is the mark of a good journalist, news source, etc. to be objective. I have my own opinions, everyone does, but that's not why I read news articles. The article is supposed to present us with both sides of the story as accurately as possible and allow us to draw our own conclusions.

Cloverfield (AKA How To Make A Multi-Million Dollar Movie For 13 Bucks)

Ok, so it took me a while to see this one and I know that this post is way overdue. As Jason of jasonwatchesmovies.blogspot.com and I agree this movie sucked. Still making a movie, as those of us who do and who have tried know, is a lot of work so I always try to find something worthwhile to take away from any movie. My film teacher used to say that you should be able to learn something from any movie that you watch and so I will say that I learned how to make a popular movie for about 13 dollars from this one. I can't figure out why it's popular, but I think I've figured out the formula to do so.
First, you make the movie about an hour and a half long, set it in a location that you can reuse sets and props for and spend about 20 minutes on a cheap party scene or other inexpensive bullshit scene that can be filled up with free or underpaid extras. Cloverfield accomplishes this by having an 85 minute movie and spending 18 minutes and 19 seconds on the party scene and things leading up to it. This scene was important to establish the relationships between the 5 main characters, but could have easily started right before Rob opens the door to his surprise party. We would have gotten the point and about 9 minutes of this scene could have been shaved off and used later for more interesting content. I'm all for letting the director shoot a scene for as long as they feel is necessary to set up the rest of the movie, but come on, it's not like they even explained what the hell was going on at any point. This can be easily explained away by saying that the movie is from the characters' point of view, but in this case that is just a cheap cop out. This is of course the second thing you need to do. You need to claim that you are shooting from the point of view of characters that are too dumb to know what or be able to figure out what is going on. That gives you a defense for any criticism your plot may endure later. Just for shits and giggles let's talk about what could have been done with the other 9 minutes. The characters meet experts on the situation about half way through the movie, meaning the Marines, but instead of getting any explanation on anything we get a quick cop out where the marines basically say "If they they know what it is they're no telling us." So we're supposed to believe that after 5 hours of fighting the monster with the most advanced army on the planet no one has any idea what the monster is? As a big Godzilla fan I was really annoyed by this. More on that later. The third thing to do is to kill all of the characters off so you can't start asking question of them at a later point. We all know that Cloverfield accomplishes this by everyone getting killed by the end after tons of really bad camera work.
Let's talk about this concept for a minute. The whole Blair Witch camera work idea. It was a bad idea remember, Blair Withc sucked hard. Still they wanted to establish that the movie was being shot by amateurs. Guess what after 10 minutes of bad camera work I got it, it's supposed to look like an amateur camera man, too bad the fidelity is too high, etc. but I think 10 minutes was enough of that kind of camera work. No one wants to feel like they're going to throw up from simply watching your shots when they're probably going to throw up from the content or lack of content, plot, etc. in your movie anyway.
So how did we end up with such shit? At first I thought it was just a bunch of rich kid writers who had their daddies and mommies use their connections to get them a part writing a bad movie, but I decided to look into it a bit before writing this commentary. It turns out that this movie is very loosely based on some awesome manga with a very in-depth story that the rights may not have been secured to. So now, just like with Michael Bay's Transformers, we have a very rich story line to work from but no one working on the movie uses it. Here is where Cloverfield still could have saved itself. Very few people knew about the Manga and were just in the mood for some awesome monster action, which of course we get about 4 minutes of in this whole pile of shit. Godzilla movies are basically structured in the following way which is good, if not perfect, for monster movies. There is an A,B,C format.
1. Basically there are scientists, space men, astronauts, etc. working on something. 2. It pisses off some huge monster, it is being used to fight a huge monster, or in some way the monsters become involved. 3. This effects regular people too. We end up, at the very least, with a good Sci-Fi story, and usually at least 20 minutes, often more, of monster action which is why we went in the first place. This is why people will watch Godzilla movies, not the 1998 one of course cause that just sucked, but the Toho ones for many years to come but will wipe their asses with Cloverfield cases in the near future when TP runs out at a party.
In then end I would say that the visual effects were good, but nothing we haven't seen before and certainly nothing original. We had mostly no name actors basically playing people from NYC. So basically show up, put these clothes on, say this stuff. So we can't really say we saw any acting here.
So let's recap. The writing was awful and ignored the manga, the actors didn't have to act, the scenes are done in the most popular location for movies to be done making it very cost effective, we see very little of the monster that headlines the movie. Still this movie currently receives about 4 stars on Netflix and 7 on IMDB. So I guess people really are easier to entertain than we used to be. It won't be too much longer before Ass is the most popular movie in America, as Mike Judge has already predicted in Idiocracy. I give this 1 out of 5 stars because the monster kills everyone in the end and therefore helps conserve resources in the long run and get rid of stupid people.

Another Blog Done Stole My Name

So I was bored and typing stuff into search engines to test our new fiber and to make a long story short I found that another blogger, on blogger.com no less, registered the url theministerofcommonsense.blogspot.com and named his site such. Now I know that my URL is baceman007.blogspot.com but the page has been called Minister Of Common Sense for years. So that's lame.

Beast With A Billion Backs

My overall rating for this movie on a scale of 1 to 10 is an 8. Part of this probably has to do with the fact that I'm a huge Futurama fan. The only criticism I have about it is also a strength. It can be enjoyed on its own. Meaning that I would have liked a more direct historical tie-in with the last feature length film, almost like a previously on Futurama section or something of that nature. Still the episodes don't usually tie together in this way and this allows the movie to be enjoyed without knowledge of the previous film which isn't necessary to enjoy BWABB. I am a huge Bender fan so the fact that Bender sacrifices his first born son to lead a robot army of the damned is probably the funniest thing in this movie to me. As always the classic science fights and math problems in the series do not fall short here. The animation is excellent, well for this series anyway, and we get to see some really cool new Futurama weapons, like the UUM and the planetary annihilators. The game of death ball is introduced and we find out that love with a giant tentacle monster is actually the true path to happiness, well until Bender gives us the end of the movie love speech. Oh yeah one other thing. Leela is a jerk to Fry at the end of the movie, and I was hoping that they would start at least dating at some point.