Deducting Medical Expenses

When I was younger, I never thought about deducting medical expenses, as I didn't have any.  But now...

NOTE:  Consult your tax advisor for current tax law in your jurisdiction.  Your mileage may vary.

Mr.See has always had problems with teeth.  Mine are strong, but not particularly attractive.  But as I asked my Dentist, "Will they last another 20 years or so?" and he replied, "Yes, of course!"  I said, "Good, that's all I will need them for!"

Mark on the other hand, has had to go through several painful root canals, and when our old Dentist's newly minted Dentist son - fresh from dental school - offered to do them yet again, Mark said, "Let's GTFO!"

We found a new Dentist who referred us to a specialist (Endodontist) who in turn referred Mark to an oral surgeon.  Turns out, it is far easier to simply replace a tooth than to go through three root canals.  And the overall cost is competitive.  Three root canals > One tooth replacement.

Still,  you are looking at $5000 and up, per tooth, and Mark has three bad ones.  Medical expenses, including dental, are deductible to the extent they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.  For 2025, our income was high, because of the condo sale.  But for 2026, it will go down again.

That being said, our total medical expenses for 2025 do exceed 7.5% of AGI, when you factor in all the expenses.

We had to go to the Mayo clinic several times for early morning appointments, necessitating an overnight stay.  At 87 miles one-way, auto expenses are reimbursed at a special medical rate of 21 cents per mile.  It adds up, and once you are over that 7,5% hurdle, you might want to think about all the things you spend money on that fall under "medical" including insurance premiums.  Co-pays, prescription costs - it all adds up!

I calculated our total medical expenses for 2025 included:

MAS Expenses:  $7552.14

RPB Expenses:  $3936.92

Lodging:            $ 584.09

Mileage:             $  301.14

Premiums:          $4214.50

TOTAL:          $16,588.79

Ouch.  Didn't see that coming!  So many Seniors claim they "never get a bill!" with Medicare, but they pay monthly for a supplemental plan plus a drug plan, plus co-pays on drugs and doctor's visits and treatments (in some cases).  And getting dental covered is problematic - you can pay a LOT in premiums, and end up with only 50% coverage - at a dentist not of your choice.  And no doubt, the insurance company would say, "do another root canal!"  Bastards!

American medical billing!  Swell ain't it?  At least we don't have socialism! I can buy a go-fast boat with the money I save by letting others die in the street!  Survival of the fittest, baby!  Yee-Haw!  /s

This exercise illustrates why logging your expenses is important for tax purposes.  Quickbooks made generating these reports easy.   ClearCheckbook can log purchases and generate reports, but only if you pay $5 a month (discount for yearly payment) for the deluxe web package.  As I use the program more, I start to like it more.   The only sticking point is online storage.  We'll see.

CAVEAT:  Medical expenses are apparently only deductible if you itemize!  Again, consult your tax specialist for more details.  So the whole exercise may be for naught.  Schedule 1-A this year has some interesting gimmies - interest deduction for new car loans (through 2028), deduction for overtime pay, no tax on tips, and a special deduction for seniors (The Big Bad Bill).  How will Trump pay for his war?  Oh, right, by cutting medicare!  Oh shit.  Goodbye Mayo!

By the way, this year we are filing a 1040-SR - the tax return for Senior Citizens!

Gummies

Gummies are the next big thing, but are they really a good thing?

As you get older, you take a lot more pills, some prescription and some are supplements. Vitamins and such, for example.

The prices aren't cheap, at least at the retail store. Oftentimes, a small bottle of vitamins or supplements can cost $20 or more. If you shop online, you can find the cost a lot less, particularly if you buy in bulk.

Prices are all over the board, however. Some retailers are selling a small bottle of 100 vitamins for more than another retailer is selling a bottle of 500, with the same dosage and chemical content. You really have to look at the cost per pill when comparing these things. In most cases, Amazon shows this value, in other cases you have to get out your calculator.

But one thing is clear, vitamins and supplements presented as gummies are usually 5 to 10 times as expensive as pills. I'm not sure why we want our vitamins and other pills to be treated like candy. Not only is it far more costly, it seems to me to be rather dangerous.

For example, I acquired from a friend of mine a large bottle of vitamin C gummies. I also got a large bottle of vitamin C pills which has a lot more servings for a lot less money. But what concerns me is that the vitamin C gummies taste like and look like candy, down to the sugar crystals dotting the outsides.  A child could easily confuse these with actual candy and would be tempted to eat the entire bottle. I'm not sure what the results would be other than a lifelong immunization from scurvy.

It just strikes me as odd that we put child-proof caps on everything these days, even things that you don't think a child would want to consume. I have a child-proof cap on my mouthwash, but nobody at their right mind wants to drink  mouthwash. I'm sure a child trying to drink it would spit it out shortly.

But pills? We make them intentionally enticing by making them look like and taste like candy. It makes no sense to me.

Marijuana gummies - which is what most people think of, when you say, "Gummies" in the first place - merely compounds the problem.  Little Suzie goes to visit Hippie Grandma and ends up passed out on the floor after eating a whole box full.  Since it takes nearly an hour for the effects to be felt, it isn't hard for a child to wolf down a handful without feeling initial effects.  As an adult, even a whole one of these makes me fall asleep, or more precisely, pass out.  I can't imagine what a handful would do to a kid.  Why aren't these provided as pills?  Why are they not in childproof packages? (Many times they are not!).

I recently ordered some multivitamins for "Men over 50," and the cost per bill was about 4 cents each. The same multivitamin in gummy form was 15 cents each, and some places wanted as much as 29 cents apiece. I'm not sure paying several times the cost of something in order to have it as candy is really a cost-effective thing.

Of course, many question the efficacy of many of these vitamins and supplements. Many nutritionists point out that if you have a balanced diet you probably don't need a multivitamin. And in some cases vitamins and supplements can actually be harmful to you. The vitamin supplement industry is a little shady to say the least.

Making these things look like candy it's just icing on the cake, so to speak.

Non Compos Mentis

I had to cheat on my cognitive test!

Another trip to Mayo, and I am not sure any of it is useful.  To recap, after spending over $100,000 of your taxpayer money, they found my organs are all in remarkably healthy condition - except my brain.  And there is nothing they can do about that, other than to prescribe medication.  So here we are.

They wanted to do cognitive testing, which took three hours to complete.  It is far more difficult than the "Montreal Protocol" shown above (which I sent to Mr. See during a break, as a joke).  They give you a string of numbers - like seven of them - and you have to read them back, in reverse.  I didn't think I would do well at that, but the trick for me was to read back the numbers first in original order, quickly (like it was one word) and then reverse the order.

I did well with arranging the bi-colored blocks into patterns, which sounds like child's play (and it was at first) but when they keep adding blocks and putting the pattern on the diagonal, it does get tricky.  I can see some "normal" people struggling with this.

But the interesting part was word listing.  "Give me all the words you can think of starting with the letter F, you have one minute!"  My mind went blank - possibly because it reminded me of the scene from Sense and Sensibility where they try to guess the name of Elinor's new boyfriend:

"His name begins with F. F? A promising letter. Foster? Forrest? Fotheringay? Featherty? - Fortescue? - Fondant?"

I sort of stalled after that.

The point of the test is to establish a starting point to measure my mental decline.  They can re-test a year or two from now and chart where I am falling behind.  Again, the purpose of this is somewhat ambiguous to me - I already know how far I have fallen.  What's the point of drawing a graph?

All that being said, I have no doubt I did better on the test than Trump did!

New Scam: The "VIN Report" Scam

When someone demands you go to an unknown site, beware!

I got a late-night text from an Oregon phone number asking if the trailer we are selling is "still available."   They wanted to see it tomorrow - all the way from Oregon!  Two red flags right there.  The "Is the item still available?" is the other red flag.  The "item"?  ESL!

Anyway, I played along and the guy wanted something like the "AVR" report and gave a link to an unknown website that purportedly generates CarFax-like reports.  I did not click on it.  I searched online and (after bypassing Google AI) found several sites discussing the scam.  Google AI helpfully chimed on, saying the site link was trustworthy!  Google AI sucks.

Don't click on such links.  The "VIN Report" site is fake and they want $25 for a "VIN Report" and for some reason, the buyer will only accept this one type of report.  They basically steal your credit card number and whatever other information they can get.

Buying and selling a car or other big-ticket item by yourself can be stressful.  Con artists play on your fear (that it will never sell, because you overpriced it!) or your greed (that you are going to make a lot of money selling it to a guy who immediately agrees to pay asking price, sight unseen).  Or people think they are going to buy something for 1/10th its value.  So people fall for these traps.

It sounds like a lot of work to steal credit card numbers, but since the texts are automated, it isn't hard to set the hook initially, and the scammers are working dozens of cons at one time, and if one plays out, so much the better.

Of course, the big red flag for me is that, generally speaking, trailers don't have VIN reports, and indeed, Craigslist and eBay both point out that the VIN number has no data associated with it.  A Canadian VIN number, registered in the US, doubly so.  So when these Bozos contact me asking for a "VIN report" on a travel trailer, well, the game is up before they start.

Got another one this AM - again from Oregon (why?) wanting to see the trailer tomorrow.  When I asked them where they were located, they replied, "Jekyll Island)" including the half-parentheses they cut and pasted from the CL listing. Nice Try, I replied.

It is all part of the enshittification of the Internet.  Since it is a worldwide web and still largely anonymous, it is easy for those overseas (or even domestically) to start scams, often automated, with a yield rate of 1-2% at best.  But since you can send out texts to millions of people, the returns can be substantial.

Craigslist is pretty dead these days.  Around here, it is mostly rednecks selling broken trash. "Two rotted fenceposts - $20"  I kid you not.  I listed some items there (bike rack, roof rack, Yakima stuff) and got NO responses.  I tried Facebook Marketplace by re-enacting my old account (closed ages ago) and they let me put up ONE ad.  Then they suspended the account, I guess because it had been deleted previously.  They wanted an image of my driver's license, which I had sent before, and then a VIDEO of my face (so they can do a deepfake of me?) to restore the account.  I took a pass.

I listed the trailer on fiberglassrv.com and the Escape Trailer forum (both owned by the same online entity, I discovered).  But it is like advertising your BMW on a BMW forum.  Everybody on there already has one!  We paid $30,000 for the trailer, new (seven years ago), and people had theirs listed on the enthusiast sites for $40,000 to $50,000!  I mean, yea, inflation, but really?  You price yours realistically and you get shouted down because you are "destroying the resale value of their trailer!"

We ran into the same thing with my friend's C5 Corvette - the car no one buys, sells, or drives.  "It's worth more than that!  I'm not just giving it away!"  Your kids will, though.

The trailer is on eBay with a "buy it now" price of $30K and a starting bid of $15K and two bids so far.  I want  it sold, not sitting on my lawn while I mow around it for several seasons, like they do in Central New York.

This is not entirely by chance, either.  The car pricing guides (KBB, Edmunds, NADA, etc.) have changed or been sold and are now hard to use.  You go online to see what your car is worth and are bombarded with ads to sell you a new car.  Resale data is hard to find, if you can find it at all. And with all the scams and hassles of selling private party, companies like CARMAX and CARVANA make it sound appealing to just use their services instead.

Car dealers hate private party sales and no doubt would outlaw them if they could.  They kind of sorta already have.

Choke Points In The Economy

 If you could get every American to send you a dollar, you'd have about $330 million overnight.

I made the above quote a long time ago to illustrate how it is possible to get very rich by taking a little money from a lot of people, as opposed to taking a large sum from one person.  In those "caper" movies, the thieves meticulously plan a bank job or casino heist, to get away with millions.  But, as illustrated in the sequel to Ocean's 11, the people with large amounts of money have large amounts of power - and will track you down and punish you.

The Police will go after a bank robber who steals a large amount of money from a storied American institution.  They will laugh in your face when you tell them that a telcom swiped a buck from your account.  The best you can hope for is a class-action lawsuit, and we know who wins those.  The lawyers make millions, while the victims get pennies.

"So," you ask, "how do I go about stealing a buck from every American?"  Good Question.  And the answer is to find a choke-point in the economy and exploit it, before the great unwashed masses figure out what you are up to and get regulations passed limiting your fun.

What sort of choke points?  Well, let's look at the historical record.  Transportation is one of these choke points.  You may have a field full of crops, and in the city 100 miles away are hungry customers.  How do you connect the two?  Roads was one way - and back in the 1800's, there were "Corduroy" roads made of logs, which you could drive a wagon on, provided you paid a toll.   Over time, governments got into the business of road-building, and indeed, politicians ran on platforms of "good roads."

Roads became free for the public, although the toll road still remained in part - and is seeing a resurgence in the last 20 years or so.  We even have private toll roads again - the "free market" people have won again.  But nothing is free in the free market.

Cornelius Vanderbilt made his first fortune in shipping, controlling enough of the market to control shipping prices.  Of course, while you might be able to control the ships, local governments control the ports, and port fees, taxes, and duties can add to the cost of shipping.  "Smuggling" as it first emerged, meant simply bypassing official ports to avoid paying duties.  Small boats could row ashore to "Smuggler's Cove" and bring in the goods at a lower price (and higher profit) than by going through official channels, if you'll pardon the pun.

Vanderbilt famously sold off all his shipping interests to amass vast holdings in railroads.  Railroads were the "Next Big Thing!" and allowed freight to be move vast distances in a short period of time.  As America expanded, railroads were key to economic growth.  Railroads were granted vast tracts of land out west, which they sold to farmers, who in turn used the railroads to ship crops to city markets.

Farmers did well, initially, until the railroads raised rates to the point the farmers were losing money.  Vanderbilt and others found a choke-point and exploited it.  Eventually, the government stepped in and regulated rates through the Interstate Commerce Act, to make rates just and fair. Those damn regulations!  Spoiling all the fun for would-be Millionaires.  What's next?  An income tax?

Of course, over time, new forms of transportation emerged.  Young people today romanticize train travel and the old trolleys, but my parent's generation couldn't wait to get their hands on an automobile and be free of high fares and limited schedules.  My Dad learned to drive on a Model-T - it was not that long ago!  Roads, including the Interstate Highway System, were paid for with tax dollars, and America took to the car, by choice.  Gas was cheap and the highway beckoned.  Air travel was the final nail in the coffin.  Passenger train service was now unprofitable and by the 1970s, the major railroads gave up their passenger services to the government to form money-losing AMTRAK.

It is a trend that goes on worldwide, too.  While our overseas friends have far more (and better) train service than we do, they are building more and more highways and closing more and more train lines. We saw this in Japan three decades ago, as well as in Europe.  They still rely on public transportation a lot, but car travel, worldwide, has ratcheted up.  China is the best example - only a few decades ago, bicycles crowded the streets.  Now it is the largest market for cars in the world.

I digress, but lighting is another example of a choke point.  In the colonial era, candles were the thing, often home-made by settlers boiling down bear fat to make tallow or some such.  Whale oil emerged as a bright and clean alternative and was in such a demand that whalers could make a fortune overnight with just one voyage - and entire species of whales were driven to near-extinction.

Crude oil was discovered in Pennsylvania and it was found it could be distilled down to kerosene, with nuisance byproducts like gasoline simply thrown away.  Some tried to dilute their wares with junk gasoline, which could cause a Dietz lantern to explode.  A young John D. Rockefeller came up with his "Standard Oil" which was guaranteed to be free of contaminants.  He bought up competing oil companies and formed a monopoly - a choke-point - in the kerosene lighting business.

It is interesting to note that his real fortune was created almost by accident.  Just as some laud Bill Gates or Elon Musk as visionaries who saw the future and invested accordingly, the reality is, people can get lucky by making the right choices without even realizing it.  The invention of the automobile could not have been envisioned in the kerosene lamp era.  The rise of the automobile caused gasoline to go from a nuisance byproduct to a highly valuable commodity.

Once again, regulators stepped in, and Standard Oil was "broken up" (but later reformed as Exxon/Mobil only a few decades later).  Needless to say, however, our reliance on oil is the new choke point in our economy - one that has been around for a long, long time.

The automobile infrastructure is largely open-sourced.  Roads are largely funded by tax dollars, not tolls.  Cars are bought by individuals in an open market, where competition keeps prices down and profits at a minimum.  Tesla was valued more than Ford for the simple reason that Tesla made more money per car (and more money with emissions credits) that Ford did.  On a good day at General Motors, we would be ecstatic with a 5% profit margin.  GM went bankrupt since then, Chrysler did, twice, and Ford nearly went under.

No, the choke point in transportation today is in the fuel.  In 1973, we had our first oil shock as OPEC cut production.  We came to realize that we had become dependent on cheap oil, using it for everything, even power generation and home heating.  One of my professors at GMI pointed out that, at the time, it would take a half-a-cup of crude oil to produce a cup of milk.  Between the energy needed to run the farm (from a oil-fired power plant to a diesel-burning tractor) to the transportation costs (diesel fuel for trucks and trains) to refrigeration for storage and so on, a lot of energy is needed to make even one cup of milk appear at your grocery store.  And at the time, most of that energy came from oil.

Some things have changed since then, others have not.  We use a lot more natural gas these days - supplanting or converting coal or oil-fired electric plants.  Other, renewable energy sources have come online.  And today, our country produces more oil than it consumes - so we should be insulated from overseas disruptions in supply, right?

Well, not exactly.  The oil market is a world market, and when supplies are cut off, everyone bids up the price of oil, worldwide, to try to get a share.   American producers aren't going to sell to America for far less than what they could get overseas, so the price of oil in America goes up with the rest of the world.

More than a half-century since the Arab Oil Embargo, they still got us by the balls.  The Strait of Hormuz is the new choke-point, or should I say, has been a choke-point for a long time.  Periodic attacks on ships in this region have been going on for some time, now.  Maybe those were just test runs.   Attacks on Oil infrastructure in the Middle-East as well as in Russia (and sanctions) mean the supply of oil, worldwide, might be cut in half - or worse.

Meanwhile, Americans, once again, were lured into buying large, gas-hog vehicles, by the siren song of low gas prices.  To make things worse, the rest of the world is catching up with the American standard of living.  As I noted before, China is now the world's largest car market, and even  our European and Japanese friends are embracing the car.  Meanwhile, Germany is rethinking its decision to shut down all its nuclear plants.  Say, do you think they fell victim to a Russian disinformation campaign?

But I digress.

There are, of course, other choke-points in the economy, and the Internet has become one.  Early on, the Internet was a free-for-all, with no one group, company, or person really controlling the whole thing.  I remember when "browsers" became a thing - no more dialing up in "terminal mode" to type in ASCII characters on a CRT monochrome terminal.  It was an advance, yes, but I sensed we were losing something at the same time.

Today, Google controls a huge part of the Internet, and initially, it wasn't such a bad thing.  But then they decided to "enshittify" everything, by putting ads all over the place and making search results one big ad or AI-slop responses.  And there ain't much we can do about it, as we are pretty embedded at this point.  The Blogsite I am typing on is, of course, owned by Google.  Damn your eyes, Google!  I love you!  I hate you!

Our European friends are wisely looking for ways to "de-google" themselves, but it ain't easy.  I can understand their concerns - their entire communications network is dependent on companies headquartered in a country which has shown to be an erratic, untrustworthy ally.  Maybe it is time to move on - to Internet X.0

Speaking of silicon valley, that is nothing more than a host of choke-points today, or choke-point wanna-bes.  Want to take a taxi somewhere?  Uber has pretty much sewn up that market, and even taxi services in far-flung foreign countries, pay tithes to silicon valley firms.  But for how long?  Eventually, people go looking for lower-cost alternatives, and if you tighten the screws too much, people will jump ship eventually - or demand the government step in.

And the government has stepped in, time and time again.  We have regulated utilities today, simply because we realize that the anarchy of the "free market" isn't going to work for something that everyone relies upon, 24/7.   I noted how the ICC regulated railroads, but they also regulated trucking lines at one time.  And of course, during the glory days of airline regulation, you could pay as much for an airline ticket as you would for a good used car - and fly almost alone on a 727 jet from Syracuse to Hartford, as I did once as a teenager.

Deregulation of trucking and airlines changed all that.  Flying is more affordable today, of course, but a lot less pleasant, to be sure.  Truckers are no longer the "Knights of the Road" as Anne Landers once described them, but quite likely to be texting-while-driving or engaging in road-rage with a 50,000-lb battering ram.  There are pluses and minuses, here.

If it is any consolation, these choke-points don't exist for long, at least not on a cosmic scale.  "The Market Abhors a Monopoly" Economists chant, and to some extent, they are right.  Either the people get pissed-off and demand the government take action, or the price increases force people to seek out lower-cost alternatives.

Despite his bitter hatred of wind farms and solar cells, Trump's ill-advised war will raise oil prices - for some time - to the point where solar and wind and other alternatives (nuclear, hydro, gas) seem far more attractive.  Rather than stamping out alternative energy, Trump has supercharged it.

Of course, the war in Iran could go both ways.  After all, after 20 years, trillions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of deaths, we brought Democracy and Peace to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and finally eliminated the scourge of the Taliban, once and for all.

I am, of course, being sarcastic.  But the record of these interventionist wars - going back as far as Vietnam, is that after a couple of decades of insurgency, death, and debt, we declare victory and go home, with our tail between our legs.  And it ain't just us!  Afghanistan bankrupted the Soviet Union more than a decade before we stepped into that bear trap.

It's not that Iran is a bad actor on the world stage or that they treat their own people badly, but that the idea that we can defeat them easily might be flawed  - at least based on our own track record.

Recall that one reason we stopped going to the moon and scrapped billions of Apollo hardware was that the US Government was being bled to death by the costs of the Vietnam war.

I doubt that will be different this time around.

ClearCheckbook - A First Look (And a Last Look!) UPDATE!

If you want a basic program to balance your accounts and log purchases, well, it's free.

I have tried this "ClearCheckbook" app on my Chromebook for the last few days and it seems to work OK.  It is pretty basic, as in it looks like it was programmed in BASIC on an Altair 880 computer in 1978,  Not that there is anything wrong with that!

PLUSES:  It's free, in its basic form.  You can upgrade to "Premium" for a one-time fee of $4.99.  No monthly subscription required, no staggering costs.  It is simple and basic.  You can enter checks, payments, deposits, withdrawals, and transfers and then "clear" transactions to balance the account with your statement balance or even the running balance on your bank's website.  You can set up recurring bills, but have to manually click on them to enter them.  No ads - or promotions for credit card deals. No offers to check your credit score.  Just basic accounting.

MINUSES:  It's a little primitive and clunky to use.  Not a lot of pull-down menus in the traditional sense, but icons you click on.  It takes a while and some trial-and-error to figure out the best way to enter a transaction.  Then again, this is true for a lot of programs - I am still learning the nuances of Quickbooks 2002!  Memorized transactions include only bills, not deposits or transfers.  The latter can be set as "reminders" and entered with one click later on.  All data is stored on the web, so they see what your finances are like and if you have slow or no internet service, well, you are stuck.

I have not tried the "Premium" version yet, but will probably do so, once I am comfortable with the base version.  There is also apparently a full version that runs "on the web" which provides even more features.  The image above appears to be of that version.  So apparently, there are three versions: The app, the premium app, and the website versions.

Basic accounting software shouldn't need to change over time.  Basic checkbook balancing programs were some of the first software packages sold for nascent PCs - even before the IBM PC came out.  They have not changed much since then.

Quickbooks is a powerful tool - or can be - as you can create invoices, generate reports and charts, and do all sorts of fun things with it.  Over time, however, they keep adding functions to the program to the point where it is almost an e-commerce site, if in fact is already is.  But as a retiree, I have no need to generate invoices or reports.  I just need to make sure the payments I make don't bounce and the statement balance on my credit card is paid off before the due date.

ClearCheckbook, in all three forms, has a "Budget" feature, but I am not sure budgets are of much use.  Our government has a budget office and they set up budgets for every department of government.  In most cases, departments go over budgets, as things happen that can't be anticipated.  For example, starting a war.

Recently, I had to pay our homeowner's/hurricane insurance bill, which was $4000 this year, up over $500 from last year, and another $500 from the year before.  15 years ago, the bill was a little over $1000 and stayed pretty flat for a decade.  Not now.

Then there are medical expenses.  Mine are small, but Mark has had three teeth implants this year, and each costs a few thousand dollars.  Hard to budget for that.  Plus, since we are retired, we basically spend what we need, and if we don't need, we don't spend.

For working people, who can accurately predict their income on a monthly basis, I guess a budget is a good thing and a good way to think about money.  Myself, I found them maddeningly difficult to set up and nearly impossible to follow.

But maybe it is time to start thinking about it again.

UPDATE:  While the program is easy to use (almost two simple) there are three major flaws:

1.  Data is kept on their servers, which means if they decide to pull the plug, you lose everything.

2.  The "description" field erases itself when you save, unless the transaction is a recurring one.  This is frustrating, as all you see is dates and amounts, with no description or payee.

I tried the one-time $4.99 "upgrade" which supposedly adds payee lines, but it didn't seem to change anything other than to put "premium member" in the upper lefthand corner.

Verdict: Not a realistic solution to anything!

UPDATE:  Once you "upgrade" you have to go into settings and enable fields like payee and description.  This allows you to enter data in these fields, but the data evaporates as soon as you hit "save."

The fields automatically erase contents unless you enter them in order, too.  Makes no difference, as the data evaporates once you hit "save".  So all you have is a list of amounts and dates, nothing more.

Poor coding.  And getting an item to save or clear takes a LONG time, which tells me they have limited server capacity.

No reason to make this a cloud program when the data could be saved locally.  Then again, this illustrates the folly of the chromebook.

UPDATE:  There are FOUR versoins of ClearCheckbook, the free "app," the $4.99 "premium" app, a free web-based version (clearcheckbook.com) and a premium web-based version, which has a monthly fee (boo! hiss!) starting at $5 a month.  The web-based version has far more features including generating reports and such.  Once nice thing, is that if you start with the free app, you can also run the free web-based version.

All you data is still in the cloud, though.  Remember Webshots!  Remember Ring thermostats!

UPDATE:  OK, the "app" even in premium mode, is useless!  It takes forever to save and retrieve data.  It looks like an abandoned app, although the app store shows it as updated as of March 2026.

But why bother?  The web version is 1000% better and much clearer.  It doesn't erase description fields like the app did,  The only defect I can see is that your data is on the cloud.

But, then again, if they shut down the server,  you can just start over with some other site, program, or app - as I did when trying out ClearCheckbook.

So maybe we'll give it a try.  At least for a while.

SIMPlifi is worse than worthless!

This "app" is useless!  They got the SIMP part right!

I realized, years ago, that I needed to start treating my personal financial life like my business life.  And getting my business life in order was a real daunting challenge.  Engineers and Lawyers are not taught about accounting methods, and Calculus students in high school don't learn "business math" that the vocational students get to study.  Guess which is more useful in running a business?

So, years (decades!) ago, I bought my first copy of Quickbooks and took an "Adult Education" class in Arlington on how to use the program.  I learned about accounts payable and accounts receivable and how to log charges and checks and create invoices.  Since I had an old tractor-feed dot-matrix printer (Panasonic KXP-1184!) and tractor-feed check stock, every check I mailed out was automatically logged in Quickbooks and every invoice accounted for. I quickly realized I had one client who was seriously past due.  I also never had an overdraft, ever again, for the rest of my life.

Of course, today, everything is online and I rarely ever write a check anymore.  But I still log everything in Quickbooks, so I know not just what my bank balance is, but what my real available balance is, at all times.  It does no good to log onto your bank's website or app and see that your balance is $250 if you just wrote a check for $300 or have a car payment or utility bill set to auto-debit in two days for over that amount.  You are overdrawn but just don't know it yet.

Yes, the bank website or app (and e-mail and text messages) are very helpful in keeping track of things, but unless you have an independent accounting of your own, you have no real idea of what is going on.  It is akin to judging the speed of your car by waiting to pass one of those radar speed signs to tell you.  Sure, you know you are going 55 MPH when you pass that sign (because it flashes your speed) but what about the rest of the time?

In the mid-2000's, some "financial" apps came out, such as MINT, which claimed to help people manage their finances.  I looked into it and realized it was junk.  They asked you for usernames and passwords for your bank accounts so they could report your data "all in one place!" for convenience.  Then, they would generate gibberish pie charts based on the credit card spending codes (which are rarely accurate) so you could see "where all your money goes!"  And of course, they would pepper you with ads for credit card deals and loans and the like.

At best, it provided a rear-view mirror of where you went.  But again, using the driving a car analogy, it helps to be able to see where you are going, rather than what happened in the past.  In finances, money spent is water over-the-dam, and there is little to be gained naval-gazing about things that can't be undone.  Meanwhile, it might help to see the truck you are about to rear-end so you can take action.

Quickbooks 2002 is almost 25 years old, but it still works and is paid-for.  And quite frankly, the later versions provide little improvement, but of course, they changed the file formatting, so your accountant needs you to upgrade to the latest version, so you can download your data to them.  I upgraded three times, stopping at 2002, simply because they would not covert my 2002 data file to a version that was more than two upgrades later.  So Quickbooks talked themselves out of a sale.  Also, it turns out, my accountant really didn't need access to ALL of my data, just the income and expenses, which Quickbooks 2002 can generate easily with its report feature.

But as a full-blown accounting software, it is clunky to use and requires a Windows platform - and it will be a cold day in hell before I "upgrade" to an AI-assisted ad-laden Windows 11, thank you very much.   So I thought, since our life is simplifying, that maybe I could dust off my rarely used chromebook and run some sort of accounting "app" that would let me balance my checkbook and credit card accounts.  I don't need to create invoices or log expenses for tax reasons anymore, just a simple account balancing program.

Well, Google suggested Quicken Simplifi, which sounded appealing and runs as an app on a phone or tablet - or Chromebook.  And that's all a Chromebook is, a tablet with a keyboard.  And all a tablet is, is a phone with a big screen.  They offered a 50% off deal (first year only) for $35.99 so I thought I would give it a try.

Big mistake.  It is just MINT under a different name.  They ask to link to your bank accounts, which takes a leap of faith.  Then, if the linking works, they will display your balances and charges (and checks) which is just what you can get from your bank's own website or app.  That is, provided the linking works, which over a period of several days, never did.  Google "Simplifi won't link with my bank" and  you'll see a plethora of hits.  The app is flaky to say the least.

But even the parts that work are worthless.  Your home page is a number of "cards" with lots of spending graphs, "savings goals", your credit score, and worst of all, "medals" you can earn as you achieve different goals - as if your finances were some sort of video game or your karma score on Reddit.

Banking information?  Just your overall balance from all of your accounts.  No way to reconcile accounts or enter pending charges or checks.  Well, you can, sort of do the latter, if you want to set up a manual account (which I had to do, since the sync feature simply didn't work) but it was clunky.   You enter the charges or checks and then..... see them nowhere.  No line-item listing with a running balance like in Quickbooks.  It is dumbed-down for the debt-ridden 20-something who thinks of finances in terms of their almighty credit score and how much available credit they have.

But I could find no way to reconcile accounts with the bank statements (or even running balances) so even the manual account entry was sort of useless.  It was just another useless MINT app for people who want to think they are being financially savvy by buying their shoes on sale - when they don't need a new pair of shoes and have a closet full.

So, I'll keep looking.  And I'll keep looking for a real use for the Chromebook - other than playing Youtube videos in the camper I guess.

What it reminded me of, was, that the powers-that-be don't want you to be financially literate.  You go on Reddit and see the 20-something generation-Z complaining that the banks are ripping them off with overdraft charges.  When I was that age, so did I.  After all, I just wrote $50 in checks over the weekend to buy beer and score some pot and my bank balance was only $30.  Mean old banks!  It took me a long time to literally "sober up" and realize the problem wasn't the banks, but my inability to say "No" to wants that were not needs, particularly when I could not afford them.

It wasn't a matter of "making more money" - indeed, at the time, I was delivering pizzas while going to night school.  It was more a matter of taking money more seriously and keeping track of bank balances.  Years later, when I was indeed "making more money" I lost that financial discipline and once again overdrafted my accounts - a pretty stupid thing to do.  But I realized then, it wasn't the bank's fault, but mine, and as I noted, got religion and Quickbooks and the rest is history.

The 20-somethings (of all eras) are indeed right that the system is stacked against them, but not in the way they think.  The evil is not the bank bounce charge, but the blaring ads on the television enticing them to buy a new car, obsess about their credit score, apply for loan after loan, and live in debt for the rest of their lives.  Their demon isn't Sallie Mae demanding repayment of their student loans, but the sweet lies told to them that a degree in communications will make them the next Dan Rather - or whatever.

I see it online all the time today. On Youtube or whatever ad-based streaming service, the ads are all for sports betting, online casinos, or for-profit online colleges.  Do people really still fall for this crap?  The for-profit college scam has been known about for decades - does no one listen?  And so many of these ads seemed to be aimed at minorities, much as the ads for various fragrances, whether they be air fresheners, body sprays, or detergents.  Do minorities obsess more than others about being stank?

I digress, but that is the real evil in the world - and people swallow those pitches hook, line, and sinker.  Brand-name soaps sell more to the poor than to the middle-class.  The poor obsess about the appearance of wealth, whether it is in hairstyles. clothing, accessories, or the car they drive.  It is a trap, plain and simple.  And once trapped, the television offers a way out - through the online casino or the worthless online degree.

Or by "getting your finances in order" by paying money for a worthless "app" that tells you nothing.

I cancelled the subscription on "Google Play" (itself a scam, which promotes pointless online games and casinos) and requested a refund of my $35.99.  We'll see where that goes.  In the meantime, I guess I am stuck with Quickbooks 2002 for another decade or so....  We'll see.

UPDATE:  Clear Checkbook seems promising.  It started as a register type app for balancing accounts (which is what I wanted) but has added MINT-type features over time.   I'll look into it.  They offer a free version which is pretty basic, but allows you to try out the app before spending money.

Parkinsons is Annoying, at First

"I'm Still Here"

(Video link here, if it doesn't load)

The fun never stops, but I have no reason to complain.  Parkinson's, so far, is just annoying.   I noticed it early on when my gait changed - usually the first symptom that people bother seeing a doctor about.  But other things happened before - and since.

I wrote before about Seborrhoeic Dermititis.  It is not painful, just annoying.  The "oil-producing regions" of your skin produce more oil, because the dopamine shortage means your brain's autonomous functions are no longer controlling the body properly.  So you get this Frank Zappa Beard-like oily spots on your face, which then turn into dry skin which flakes off.  You may get it on your scalp as well.

Oil-producing regions!  My skin can now join OPEC.  Great.  Now Trump will invade my skin.

It goes on.  Hair follicles get clogged with this oil and yeast can form - or a streptococcal bacterial infection.  It itches like poison ivy.  Annoying as fuck.  But at the same time, not enough to complain about.   Washing with Hibiclens surgical soap, twice a day, with super-hot water, seems to keep it in check.  I was never one for hot, hot showers or scrub brushes, but now, twice a day, I have to abrade my dermis with a scrub brush in scalding water.  Amazon sells quart bottles of the surgical soap in bulk.

The nose runs.  The articles I read online say this is not a real problem, other than "social embarrassment."  I have tissues in my pocket like an old lady, constantly dabbing at my nose as it waters.  Parkinson's just wants to slowly annoy you to death.

Again, these seem like trivial matters, particularly compared to the later symptoms, such as dementia.  Then again, once you are in dementia, do you really notice it, or just annoy everyone else?

But speaking of social embarrassment, what is really fascinating is how other people interact with you.  It feels like they project a kind of hostility sometimes, as if you are the enemy - or is this just paranoia?  Others, meaning well, treat you like you are already dead, or a retarded teenager.  "I'm still here" is the rallying cry.  Sure, my short-term memory is shot and I have no business climbing ladders anymore (but I still do).  Things are getting harder to do, and I am trying to simplify my life as much as possible.

Dramatic constipation was another side-effect, this time of the medication.  It seems to have tapered off, after a few months, as my body adjusted to this new normal.  Sadly, none of the doctors I talked to mentioned that Carbidopa can cause this.  I had to find out myself by searching online.

Doctors cheerfully tell me I could live with this for 20 years or more.  That's the good news?

On another note, I notice that medicine today has changed since I was a youth.  Back then, a checkup involved the doctor grabbing your nuts and saying, "look to the left and cough!" to check you for hernia.  Then, they would stick their finger up your ass to check for prostate problems.  Well, the "hands-on" approach is long gone, replaced by blood tests.

I recounted before how I went to a "doc-in-a-box" for a checkup and he printed out the results of the blood test and read them to me, noting which numbers were high or low.  I read along with him, and it was almost comical.

I think doctors are obsessed with these numbers and getting you into a "perfect score" so to speak.  So, if your cholesterol is a little high, they put you on a statin to lower it.  The problem for me is that statins cause shooting leg pains at night which stop only when I stop taking the statin.  My cholesterol numbers are only a few points over the suggested "good" range, so I don't see the point.  It is like getting a speeding ticket for going 57 in a 55 zone.

Just my gut interpretation, but I think people vary (hence the range of numbers) and being a little over the line isn't a serious issue, particularly when someone might have more serious issues - like Parkinson's, for example.  I have finally completed all these tests at the Mayo clinic - CAT scans, MRIs, stress test, etc.  The good news is, all my organs are in excellent shape, except one.  And sadly, brain transplants aren't a thing just yet.  I would make a good organ donor, though.

My heart has been tested twice now and found to be in good shape for a man my age.  Despite my best efforts, my body has held up well.  The liver news was surprising - I could have been drinking a whole lot more!  As one wag noted, "you've found the perfect balance between fatty liver disease and cirrosis!"  Or something like that.

The cost of all this is staggering.  Mayo charges $14,000 just for a colonoscopy.  Other tests run into the thousands.  Easily, we've run up a bill of fifty to a hundred grand so far - of which I was on the hook for less than a thousand dollars.  The billing is a mystery - massive amounts are shown as being written-off, while insurance and medicare covers other parts. It makes no sense.

But as I noted before, if you can live to 65, they will rebuild you, piece by piece, so you can live another 20-30 years.   And they will find something wrong with you.  Can't make money fixing a car, unless it is broken.

Speaking of which, we are taking "Aunt Helga" our 2015 Mercedes Sprinter 3500 extended wheelbase to the Mercedes dealer in Jacksonville at the end of the month.  They sent me a coupon for the "Service A" which includes an oil change and "injector cleaning" for "only" $399 (A $550 value!).  I have been warned by other Sprinter owners of the "$900 oil change" so we'll see how it goes.  The van was serviced by Mercedes every year since new, so I thought at least initially, to take it in.  It takes 11 quarts of prescription motor oil (Mercedes brand, or Mobil-1) and they recommend changes every 10,000 to 20,000 miles.

Oh, brave new world.

Anyway, after dropping off the van, I have one more appointment at Mayo - with a Psychiatrist.  I suspect he'll want to put me on anti-depressants.  Gotta stay within the numbers!

The Russian Pivot - Inflaming the Left This Time!

Radicalization comes in all forms - Left and Right.

Over the last few years, we have seen a concerted effort online to influence public opinion, worldwide, through social media postings.  And it has been working.  Given the anonymous nature of the online experience, it isn't hard to set up numerous fake accounts and post opinions and make it seem like what you are saying resonates with a lot of people.  With bot accounts and now AI, this will only get worse - and a lot of people are talking about (but not actually doing) going offline.

Our European friends are scrambling to find more Euro-centric alternatives to American "tech" (that is not really tech per se, but more of a psy-ops operation) and I don't blame them.  I noted before that when I used to fly out to Silicon Valley every month for Patent work, we actually made silicon, hence the name.  Then, it was realized that software, particularly operating systems, was where the real money was, and silicon became a commodity item.  Computers got cheap, operating systems stayed the same price or got even more expensive.

Operating systems became commodity items as well, and Silicon Valley made its last transformation into Bullshit Valley.  It became a big advertising and propaganda agency - buying and selling eyeballs by tracking people through their web browsers and social media sites (now called "apps") and the smart phone made sure we were plugged-in 24/7.  Back in the 1970s, people wasted 4.6 hours a day watching television, today they waste more than that on their smart phones.  It is the new television.

The real money isn't in selling computers or operating systems or software, but in accumulating data about people and manipulating people into doing things.  More than one person has noted how it seems the smart phone "listens" to what we are saying and then promotes products in response.  Maybe this is not literally true, but I suspect they do read your e-mails and texts and of course try to track what sites you visit and then sell this information to retailers.

So Amazon sells you a widget after you texted Grandma about it.  What's the harm in that?  Maybe you even got a good price on it - or maybe not, as it seems flexible pricing is now the norm online (looking at you, Wayfair!).  But early on, some bad actors on the world stage realized that public opinion could be altered through social media and individuals could be targeted for radicalization.

We're not just talking ISIS here, either.  Remember the whole Qanon conspiracy?  It seems quaint now, in retrospect, but it was supplanted or perhaps morphed into Pizzagate, Gamergate, and eventually the J6 insurrection (ahem! I meant to say, guided tour of the Capitol Building).

We watched in horror as Russian trolls and their paid allies trolled America with a lot of nonsense.  The CoVid epidemic added to the pile - convincing Americans of government over-reach and vast conspiracies at work.   That sort of thinking still goes on today.

Of course, not everyone was convinced.  People on the left dismissed Qanon et al as utter nonsense and put up signs saying (unironically) "We believe the science."

But it seems lately, the online troll army has pivoted.  Having driven Republicans clinically insane, they now turn their efforts to Democrats.  Why not?  After all, the GOP is firmly in power and firmly under the influence of Putin, whose portrait adorns the Oval Office today.  Why propagandize them further?  It is a self-sustaining ecosystem at this point.

Before the 2016 and 2020 elections, if you logged onto Reddit r/all, you would be bombarded with messages from r/conservative or r/the_donald (the latter started as a parody site lampooning Trump before morphing into a cheerleading section).  You might come away with the impression that the entire world was enamored of Trump, even though he was elected twice by a minority of the population (and in one instance, a minority of the voters).

Today, well, Reddit has flipped.  Conspiracy theories like Qanon are banned and r/the_donald is gone as well.  In its place are just as radical left-wing discussion groups promoting everything from "guaranteed annual income" to communism, etc.  The drumbeat is that America is rotten, we need to tax billionaires, we need free healthcare, free college, free money, and free jobs.  Not all of these ideas are without any merit - the tax system is skewed to favor the wealthy of course.  And our healthcare system is a weird patchwork of Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, private (unaffordable) insurance, and no insurance - and a billing system that makes no sense whatsoever.

My latest "bill" from Medicare is a case in point. An "office visit" is billed at $743 for a half-hour consultation,  "Patient Savings" (a discount) is listed at $606.21.  The balance is divided to $109.13 paid by Medicare and $27.66 by my supplemental insurance.   I owe nothing.  But an uninsured patient would owe $743!  It makes no sense whatsoever.  And talk about paperwork!

But I digress.  We can have rational discussions about these things, but not online, of course.

Enter the Epstein files.  The whole Epstein thing has been floating around for literally decades.   Like any clickbait news article about Trump, we are told that "soon" there will be damning revelations and people will go to jail!  But days pass and either the "startling revelations" fail to materialize or fail to be startling.  Or maybe nothing ends up happening because the news media has the attention span of a toddler.

Heard any news about Gaza lately?  Yea, me neither.  Glad that is all wrapped up!  /s

What is annoying to me is that there is some meat in those files.   For example, the whole Bill Gates thing is very embarrassing to him and explains why he and his wife inexplicably divorced a few years back.  Melinda Gates has very carefully commented while not confirming, saying only that it brings up painful memories about her divorce and she is concerned for trafficked girls.  She confirmed without confirming.

But other stuff online puts Qanon to shame.  Posters on Reddit claim that people on Epstein island were eating babies based on some very weird notebook entries in the files apparently from a young woman or girl who had (one might infer) a late-term abortion.  She does not come right out and say this, but instead wrote poems about a lost infant, in between pages of obscure codes and pasted-in excerpts from newspaper articles.  I had a girlfriend who went to Smith College back in the day who kept a similar notebook - she was batshit crazy, schizophrenic.  These meandering writings are hardly proof of anything, much less a smoking gun.   And she never said anything about anyone eating babies.

On Reddit, though, some posters - no doubt agents of the Russian Internet Research Agency, treat this as gospel, along with a host of other crimes that are at best, hinted at in the documents, but for the most part seem to be fabricated from whole cloth.  I get the impression that we are being trolled here.  Tired of toying with the emotions of Republicans, these bad actors are trying their games on Democrats - trying to get people riled up to the point where they can't think straight.

There may be another explanation as well.  You can discredit damning evidence by lumping it in with stupidly fake "evidence" and then saying, "Well, this part is obviously false, so the rest must be false as well!"  The GOP did this with the Bush "National Guard" controversy.  There was some real question as to whether Bush Jr. ducked out of service in Vietnam by joining the National Guard and then maybe not showing up consistently.  There was also the issue of his opponent, John Kerry, had actually served in Vietnam.  How do you defuse such a situation?

Well, just prior to the election, a "document" surfaced which appeared to implicate Bush.  But it was such a laughably poor forgery (clearly drafted in MS-WORD, which did not exist at the time the document was purported to have been written) that it was easy to use this to discredit any critique of Bush's "war record."  Meanwhile, Kerry was roasted over the coals by the "Swiftboat Controversy" which was a Carl Rove operation and basically fabricated from whole cloth.

Maybe the same thing is happening here - by making extreme accusations, such as baby cannibalism - one can discredit the entire Epstein scandal as overstated.

Perhaps.

But I think it is also being used to further radicalize the far-Left and influence elections.  Another drum beat you hear on Reddit is that "centrist" Democrats are no good and unless a far-left radical candidate is on the ballot, one shouldn't vote.  It is the same argument made in 2020 about "Killer Kamala" that convinced many young people to not vote at all, and hand the election to Trump.

Which is why I am not out on the streets protesting ICE as they round-up illegals who are often Trump supporters.  The people protesting are often the same ones who sat out the last election or chanted "Killer Kamala" or whatever.  Like the soon-to-be deported Trumper, they got what they wanted, only it turned  out to be a horrible mistake.

And yes, some on the far-Left actually wanted Trump to win, hoping that everything would go to hell in a handbasket and usher in a new era of Communist paradise.

You know what? Fuck radicals on both sides.

Why Linux Hasn't Supplanted Windows (Win11 Sucks!)

M'Lady!

People are freaking out about Windows 11.  It has ads in it and is clunky and slow, particularly when you try to "upgrade" an older computer to that operating system.  People have complained that it is too cloud-oriented, for example, default searching online, when you want to search your hard drive.  Others claim it is too invasive - tracking your usage and online movements in a similar manner to your smart phone.

All I can say is, "Ha-ha! I'm still using Windows 7 Ultimate, thank you! Bought and paid for!"  Of course, it is no longer supported, but "support" with software these days usually means invasive updates (at a time not of your choosing) that install bloatware and spyware and disable your adblocker.

I am still using an older version of Chrome, too, which gleefully reminds me it is outdated, every time I start it.  Of course, the new version of Chrome won't install on my ancient Toshiba laptops, which is fine, as I disabled updates ages ago when Chrome decided to block adblock plus (itself outdated) so I still can surf the Internet, largely ad-free.  Microsoft hates this one simple trick!

But what about malware and spyware and hacker attacks?  The software companies implore us to enable automatic updates on the basis that they will protect us from evildoers.  I still have an old copy (which no longer updates) of Microsoft Security Essentials and it seems to work OK.   If some new "bug" should appear, I guess I would just toss the computer in the trash or just reformat the hard drive and re-install Windows.  Oh, how I love having install discs for all my software which I own - bought and paid for - some of it over 25+ years old!

But of course, I realize this will not go on forever.  You can drive your old 1960's car on the road, but unleaded gasoline will eventually erode the valve seats and an engine rebuild is in order - at which time, you'll probably upgrade to Holly fuel injection or maybe just park the damn thing as a garage queen and 4,000lb paperweight and buy a new Honda to drive around.  Upgrades are inevitable, it seems.  I no longer write BASIC code on a PDP-8 or an Apple ][ computer.  Times do change.

But with any luck, maybe I will be dead before I am finally forced to upgrade from my ancient software suite.  We did buy a "Chromebook" on the advice of a reader.  It is OK, I guess - more of an elaborate smart phone than a laptop.  You don't run programs, you run "apps" - and many of these require payment on a monthly basis or have intrusive advertisements.  Everything is in the cloud - you will own nothing and you will be happy - and the powers-that-be will track every damn thing you do, too!

Sometimes, the tracking is off and often in hilarious ways.  We have gone entirely wireless, using our smart phones as hotspots for our lone television or our hoary old laptops. Since the AT&T hub is in Atlanta, we get lots of ads for businesses in Atlanta, and our phones seem to believe we live there.  YouTube, last night, had ads for Canadian companies and US companies, showing ".ca" website domains!  The man has no idea where we live - and I like it that way.

Other than that, it works as well as the wired solution - perhaps not suited for gaming or 4K resolution, but it gets the job done and is entirely portable, too.  It is also cheaper than having a cell plan AND a DSL or cable modem or fiber optic or whatever hardwire solution people use these days.  A lot less hassle, too!

Speaking of which - I am off-topic here - my neighbor told me that AT&T notified him that they are pulling the plug on his landline this year.  He either needs to migrate to all-cellular or to a VoIP solution via his internet connection (the latter I did long ago, before we went all-wireless).  The "twisted pair" copper line analog switched system of Great-Grandpa Alex is going away, in favor of packets of digital data batting about the ether.  What took so long?  It is the end of an era but will go by unnoticed.

People today - particularly young people - don't even make phone calls, which is one reason I think we are all estranged from one another these days.  They never experienced sitting in the kitchen talking on THE phone (which had a 10ft cord on the handset and a dial) talking for hours (it seemed).  It's after 5! The long-distance rates go down!  The irony of that era was that it was often cheaper to call cross-country than to the next county!  60 cents a minute - sometimes a buck or more!  Boy was Dad pissed when he got the phone bill!

But then again, Dad was pissed about a lot of things.

It is sad, to me, that "kids these days" will never experience the bittersweet experience of talking on the phone with your high school girlfriend for an hour or more, sometimes saying nothing at all, for minutes at a time.  Phone calls were intimate which might be one reason why our ADHD Aspergers PTSD generation is so afraid of them.  It is, in a way, the same when Grandma got her first cassette tape answering machine and was too nervous to record a greeting message.  That would be too prideful!  Announcing yourself like you were the Queen of Romania!   Even worse, she was scared to leave a message as well. "Hello!  Is this thing recording?"  Young people today are the same (even older people) - refusing to leave a message and just assuming you'll call back using caller ID.  I guess the generations are not so much different after all.

But I digress...

I decided to order a copy of LINUX - the Red Hat version, which came in a collection of seven DVDs with little or no instructions.  I have one laptop that I bought cheap for parts but was able to get to work with Windows 7.  It runs OK, but I can't install my ancient version of Chrome on it, as only the latest version is available online.  I tried Opera, but it seems even clunkier than Explorer.  So I thought it was a good candidate for some experimentation with UNIX.

Well, the experiment hasn't gone well so far.  LINUX might be a swell operating system for industry or for banks of servers, but it isn't ready for retail prime time.  The install procedure scans the computer and them bombs out, claiming the PCI interface is whacked as the BIOS is saying one thing and the hardware another ("Expecting 16" it says). I searched online and the only two options are to update the BIOS (good luck with that) or "press e" and change the boot instructions to disregard the issue (warning: may be unstable).  Problem is, I cannot find the place where I am supposed to press "e",

Obviously, I will have to research more.   Or maybe this computer is just too old.

What is clear to me is that, despite what online LINUX fans claim, it is hardly a ready-for-primetime operating system for retail users.  I mean, I've used UNIX before - at the Patent Office back in 1987 (yes, it is that old!) and I am somewhat adept at assembling computers and playing with software.  It still is a pain-in-the-ass to convert a computer to LINUX.  I am sure that once it is installed it works great, but it is not a mere matter of slapping in the install disc and hitting ENTER.

Why, for example, do they not sell LINUX computers with the operating system pre-installed?  I mean, if LINUX is so great and Windows sucks so badly (and it does) why don't they have laptops and PCs for sale at Walmart with LINUX pre-installed, right next to the Chromebooks and Windows 11 systems?  Seems like a no-brainer to me.  If everything the LINUX mavens claim is true, then some entrepreneur out there would put together such a system and sell it.  And since LINUX runs faster on less hardware, you could undercut the competition on price.

Alas, it seems that even LINUX fans and tinkerers install the O/S on a partition on their existing Windows PC - and switch between the two, or operate one or the other as a virtual machine - or have one machine running LINUX while another runs Windows or Mac.  It seems that at the retail user level, LINUX is limited to hobbyists and tinkerers.

Which might be the appeal.  In the early days of the PC, it was only hobbyists and tinkerers.  And I say this going back to the days of CP/M systems and mini-mainframes.  I programmed quite a few of those, including a weird Olivetti machine that had a two-line red LED dot matrix and a built-in thermal printer.  Those were weird times.  Anyone else out there who wrote code for a TEKTRONIX graphics computer?  It had a phosphorous screen that kept everything on it until you "wiped" it for a fresh screen, It was an oscilloscope with a PC built-in.  We stored programs and data on large tape cartridges that had a thick aluminum backing plate.

Back then, the pain of experimenting and learning the arcane features of each machine was a way of gatekeeping.  I made friends with my bosses when they discovered I actually knew how to use that new machine they bought, but never got around to programming.  In the IBM-PC era, it was much the same early on - we built our machines from parts and installed DOS on our 20 Meg hard drives.  It was a small club of nerds and no one else was allowed in.

Sadly, I think the same is true of LINUX.  There is a core base of fanboys who preach the religion, but don't want anyone else to actually join.  The Holy Mass shall be said only in Latin!  Lay people may watch, but not understand or participate.

And if I was a younger man, I suppose I would invest the time and energy in learning all of this stuff.  But frankly, I don't have the time and energy left - and my personal processor and short-term memory are somewhat on the fritz as well.  I'll keep playing with LINUX, but I suspect I won't get far with it, nor will Mr. See find it of much use.

Maybe I will dust off that Chromebook and break down and pay $5.99 a month for Quickbooks online.

Ugh!

UPDATE:  Thanks to all the readers who wrote with suggestions on how to install LINUX.  Yes, I tried the download version before and that didn't work, hence my attempt via the DVD install (and many versions are available on eBay and Amazon with DVDs!).  Sadly, the convoluted suggestions provided only reinforce my conclusion that LINUX is well-suited for the computer hobbyist (something I used to be before the 1990s) but not ready for prime time.

Tellingly, more than one reader suggested partitioning the hard drive so the computer can be booted either in Windows or LIINUX.  And yes, I tried this, a few years ago.  Didn't work.  But it illustrates that LINUX isn't a replacement for Windows or other operating systems - a tacit admission that in a Windows world, we still need to interface with the vast majority of the planet.  LINUX isn't ready for prime time.

If I was younger and had more time on my hands and was still a computer hobbyist, I would tinker with it some more.  But for now, I think my computer years are waning anyway, so it isn't worth the effort.

Why did I give up tinkering with computers?  I used to pride myself on building my own PCs, perusing the pages (physical pages!) of computer catalogs and going on message boards to score cheap RAM or cast-off parts and interacting with other nerds as to how to troubleshoot various problems.

Then, one day, I realized I could order all new DELL computers for my office for $499 each (with 18" CRT monitors!) and just plug them in and be done with it.  I needed the time to work on Patents, not assemble computers. My hobby days ended abruptly and with it a lot of frustration dealing with various computer compatibility issues and whatnot.

It was fun, but like so much else in life, a real time-bandit.  Computers became a tool to do things with, not an end in of themselves, which they were, back in the early days of the hobbyist "home computer."

History Doesn't Repeat - It Rhymes

Somehow, this video seems even more relevant today.

I had a conversation with a couple of people who work at our local "Federal Law Enforcement Training Center" which is arguably the largest local employer and a source of pride locally.  Funny thing, but when we cross the border from Canada, they see our passports and say, "Gee, I know where you live!  I've been to Jekyll Island!"  And we reply, "FLETC, right?" and they nod and wave us through, forgetting to search our camper - not that we have any contraband, other than perhaps a can of Canadian Maple Syrup.

Anyway, I was chatting with these folks at a bar and I asked them if they had any ICE trainees there and they rolled their eyes.  "They are not sending their best," they replied, "or screening them very well."

"We screen them," he continued, "and more than a few had outstanding warrants!"

"So what did you do?"

"Oh, we called Glynn County PD and they picked them up, slapping the cuffs on them, right in the middle of class!"

If it wasn't so sad, it might even be funny.  But I was not surprised at all.  After all, the Nazi Brownshirts were formed from a collection of thugs and criminals, and allowed to run rampant on minorities and political enemies.  People were detained and put in extra-judicial concentration camps for weeks or months at a time, before being let go.  Yes, it was only until later that these camps became slave-labor and extermination camps.  In the beginning, they were political detainee prisons.

History repeats itself, or as one wag once put it, it rhymes.

Of course, like clockwork, those on the far-right, the wanna-be fascists and neo-nazis will cry, "everythng is Hitler with you people!  Give it a rest!"  Irony is lost on them.  They admire present-day dictators and fascists, from Russia to Europe and beyond, and even apologize for Hitler or claim the Holocaust was a hoax.  But if you point out the parallels between their thinking and Nazism, well, you're the bad guy.

It's called arguing in bad faith and much of these online "arguments" are from overseas bot farms, either in Rusia itself (the infamous Russian Internet Research Agency) or paid bot-farms in third world countries, such as this one in Pakistan:

I saw him down at the Mall!   I swear!  /s

Well, at least our Russian friends have moved beyond cheap click-bait videos selling bottle cutters.  I guess in Mother Russia, recycling old vodka bottles as drinking glasses is a thing.   In America, we have Dollar Tree - a lot easier way to get cheap glassware!

It is no joke that we are descending into fascism - if in fact, we are not already there.  The Hitler playbook is being followed word for word.  This time around, instead of German industrialists backing Nazism, we have billionaire "tech bros" backing MAGA-ism.  And instead of "Lebensraum" we talk of invading Greenland, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and most of the Caribbean.

The parallels go even further.  Hitler had his ill-fated "Beer Hall Putsch" and he and his cronies were prosecuted and jailed for it.  Trump had his "J6" insurrection which jailed many of the perpetrators - except Trump of course.  He was too much of a coward to show up in person, anyway.

The question remains, however, how much further we are prepared to take this historical re-enactment.  The Communists in Germany in the 1930s got into street brawls with the Nazis, which created discontent among the rest of the population.  Many Germans who were not Nazi supporters were willing to "go along" with Hitler being made supreme leader, if it meant peace and prosperity.

Of course, it did not.  It lead to utter ruin and defeat within a few years.

Many are arguing that Trump is using ICE to provoke some sort of incident or series of incidents in order to justify martial law and cancelling of the 2026 and 2028 elections.  And if they can't provoke an incident, they will fabricate one.  Why ICE is in Minnesota, which has a small immigrant population and not in Texas or Florida - which have huge immigrant populations - is a good question. Oh, right.  The latter are red States.

This is another aspect of fascism - and Republicans are quite open about this. The legal system and Presidential decrees are being used to "punish" blue States by denying TANF assistance and other forms of funding, for no other reason than retribution.  All that talk of Biden "weaponizing" the DOJ turned out to be merely projection.  Every accusation is a confession.

Perhaps we will pull back from the brink and moderate Republicans will team up with Democrats to rein in Presidential power and return much of it to Congress where it originated - back in the days when Congress governed instead of merely giving up and telling the President, "do whatever."

But even if we pull back from the brink, the damage has been done and it won't change back for decades, if ever. Our former allies in Europe are waking up to the realization that they may have to go it alone, in terms of national defense, as the US can no longer be counted on as a trusted ally, if an ally at all.  Ironically, this may address one of the sticking points recent administrations have had with NATO - that the US is funding the bulk of European defense and NATO countries are not living up to their pledge of 2% of GDP for defense funding.

This also spells good news for India and China, as our former allies in Europe and elsewhere - and I think we can safely say they are now former - make trade deals with those countries, now that they are freed from the fetters of American dictates.  America may go from being the world's largest trading partner to one of the least, much as we did when the Smoot-Hawley tariff act was enacted back in 1930.  History is rhyming, once again.

Which brings us to recession - or even depression.  It is no secret that the job market right now is in the tank.  Company after company is announcing massive layoffs, claiming that "AI" will replace employees.  Car sales are sagging and fast-food restaurants are offering dollar menu items, this time in the form of $5 meals, as consumers cut back on discretionary spending.   With wages low, inflation high, and the cost of housing staggering, the average worker is feeling the squeeze.  How much longer can this go on?  Are we going to "rhyme" 2008 all over again?

Like I said, it rhymes, not repeats.  Hitler came to power at the end of a major depression.  A major depression may be the end of Trump, even if he is able to prop up the economy for a few more quarters by slashing interest rates with a new Fed chair.   Low interest rates will lead to higher inflation, raising housing costs (a goal Trump has stated explicitly) which in turn will put the squeeze on the middle-class.  Who will buy the $100,000 pickup trucks then?

I guess to me, what is so sad is that here in 2026 we are still dealing with holocaust deniers, fascist admirers, moon-landing deniers, flat-earthers, born-again Christians who don't follow Christ, and other forms of wishful thinking and personal delusion.   Will human beings always be in this struggle?  Will rational thinking always take a back seat to jingoism and too-good-to-be-true come-ons?

It is depressing, to me, that so many people have fought and died, over the Centuries, to get us where we are now - and all for nothing.  We are still dumb as rocks and willing to follow the first snake-oil salesman to come down the pike.

Depressing thoughts, I know.  But there you have it.