Hey ya'll -- I wanted to let you know that I'm a small business financial consultant, and while I specialize in non-profits I've worked with for-profits too. So if you have a quick ask, you're always welcome to ping me and ask for something specific! (Not as a paid consultant, just because I'm familiar with business practices and I love you people.)

You can ping me... hm. How can you ping me. I guess my profile addy is the best way, or skype or FB messenger. Anyway, always happy to help!

That's an excellent thing to know. As my business keeps growing I always seem to have more questions.

Pal, you will never, ever stop having questions. It's why I dig the work--there's always so much research. And I am a nerd.

Hey, everybody, I'm thinking of switching from Thunderbird as my email client on a Mac and am looking for recommendations.

I was looking at polymail but I see reports of 'down time' which gives me pause.

I don't use the cloud at all, so am looking for something non-net based.

Thoughts? Things to avoid?

Airmail is by far my favorite. I''ve tried every third party email app and it'/ consistently been by favorite of the last four years. Cloudmagic is also well received, started on mobile and only recentlycame to desktop.

I've been using Postbox on the Mac for the past few years. They just release version 5. I've been pretty happy with it. Lots of powerful filtering available and it deals with my somewhat crazy selection of incoming email account pretty well.

I've noticed some neat new features coming out of Postbox in the last week, it looks exciting. I like those integrations.

What works for me about Airmail is iCloud syncing -- I have approximately a dozen different email address for different purposes -- direct line, fandom, education, workplaces -- and Airmail stores all the sign-in details so that I can import them on whatever (apple) device I'm on. When I'm on a windows machine, I tend to just use web portals (with the necessary intervention of LastPass), but it's clean as hell moving from my iPhone to my iMac to the Mac Air to the iPad. That's my unbeatable feature, I think.

ION, I'm talking with a guy I met during my job interview flurry last week to talk about his accounting/bookkeeping freelance business, and at first blush we seem to be on the same page, to the point that there might be an opportunity for referrals from him. He's well established and has a full plate, and is interested in having someone trustworthy to send potential clients to.

I've been dicking around about setting up my consulting/service shingle for about four years, and have mostly elected to take word of mouth or referral opportunities rather than pony up and do the dance of the LLC. But I think it's timely now to put up my shingle, at least as a minor web presence, in advance of this meeting so that I'm not the proverbial Portland three-hatter.*

So. I have the name, but I don't want to stick "Bookkeeping" or "Consulting" or "Accounting" on the end of it, because I've consulting in a number of capacities and I don't want to limit my identification. "LLC" gives me the eye-rolls, and "Inc" makes me feel like I'm playing dress-up. Can ya'll think of any other descriptors that might work?

• In Portland we have a running gag/super sincere phrase that everyone in Portland wears three hats: elementary school teacher, kombucha brewer, roller derby jammer; zoocycler, lawyer, urban forest advocate; university librarian, community police liaison, local organic free-range hand-tended tofu purveyor. You get the picture.

Here's hoping on the feeder stream, esse! That would be terrific.

I'm really needing to come to grips with the many hats, many masters thing right now.

Technically, I now do 4 things, since I left the pet care company. Still, too many descriptors.

I don't yet have a good idea for a creative/effective/useful umbrella. I'll share if I do.

It seems tidier...maybe more professional...potentially less confusing for people, so it _seems_ like the right thing to do.

I haven't llc'ed either...just super ambivalent about it, along with not wanting to fork over the fees. But, I did finally pay for a totally superfluous business license and certificate of occupancy. So, that's adulting, I guess.

I can't seem to get Postbox to work. I downloaded the app just as my business drama started, so I'm going to get back to it this weekend.

xposting with Natter:

Do we have any wordpress gurus in the house?

I need to change my seven year old [myname].com template.

I love the current site, but I need so many changes I just don't think the old template can accommodate.

I found this one that I quite like.

Do you, or do you know someone who can, work with this kind of thing?

All I need is 1) an assessment of whether or not the theme is good and stable code, 2) a tutorial on how to back up the current site for safety and 3) the background set-up the new template.

I can do the migration of text with my minimal html skills, assuming the template permits that. I really want to be able to control future changes, including the graphics in the slider, etc.

My long-term web guy is nice, and quite reasonable, but not super responsive since I'm not a 'big fish.'

The 'reasonable' part is key too. My income has dipped precipitously and the image refresh is part of taking advantage of a GOOD thing coming up in a couple of weeks. I can, and will, pay what is needed but it will be a stretch.

All suggestions gratefully received!

If you are not available, or interested, do you have any trusted referrals I could explore?