A hodgepodge of trivia

Hodgepodge: Odds and ends - a motley assortment of things patchwork - a theory or argument made up of miscellaneous or incongruous ideas.

Writing an article: I see that Google now has a new "NoteBook" available. The idea sounded tempting because it lets one gather snippets of info from websites and paste them in the Notebook, as one might use for research in writing an article. I tried it but found it more cumbersome than my own method. The only redeeming feature was being able access the Notebook on the web from anywhere, which someone might useful to finish their article on company time. My preferred method is to simply put an icon on the desktop for MS WordPad and copy/paste snippets there in RTF format. If I want to work on it in my laptop, I transfer the file with my USB memory stick.

Income Tax: For many years I created my own 1040 forms on a spreadsheet every year using only lines and computations that pertained to me. Then it got complicated with all the extra worksheets so I finally gave up and started using a tax program (H&R Block TaxCut). It worked great and is faster than my old method but I miss not knowing what it's doing as I did with my spreadsheet. The first thing one has to do with TaxCut is go online and update it. The update was so humongous I couldn't help but wonder if anything actually came on the CD in the box. I suppose the program is worthless to someone not online.

Tracking stock investments: I track investments weekly on a spreadsheet I created. I began doing this years ago - all the way back to VisiCalc in the '80s. Every Saturday morning I download stock prices from http://finance.yahoo.com/?u into my Excel spreadsheet. There's not space here to describe computations but telling you what I learn might give you some thoughts about creating a spreadsheet. The first thing I see is how much we gained or lost for the week and the year, including how we're comparing with the Dow and Nasdaq. Then I look at individual stocks to see how they're doing in dollars and percent gain. Numbers of shares, including those from dividend reinvestment, are shown as well as dividend amounts and yields. There's lots of other stuff but the bottom line is that I can track net worth on a weekly basis. In addition, I have spreadsheets for each company to track cost basis. Perhaps other programs can now do the same but I'm too old to change.

Forwarding a message: This is old hat for most of you but we still see incoming mail on RBmail that shouldn't have been sent or needs editing. Check out hoaxes before forwarding mail by entering key words in the message in www.google.com. For example, if you received a tearjerker from a mother about her missing daughter named Ashley Flores, just google "ashley flores" you'll find it's a hoax. The other annoyance is when folks forward mail that's been repeatedly forwarded and contains long lists of addresses in the message. In Outlook Express you can delete all junk text in an incoming message by opening the message and selecting Reply or Forward (you can't edit a message before selecting Reply or Forward). Then hold down the left mouse key, scan and highlight the text you want to delete and either hit Edit/Cut or right-click and select Cut from the menu.

Tracking Medicare: Check claims and other good stuff at http://my.medicare.gov/. Get your Medicare card out and set up a secure account at this new Government website. Good information. If your supplementary medical insurance happens to be United HealthCare you can do the same thing for their company at https://www.myuhc.com/.