Quicken

Two traditions ended in last night's Class 1A-2A state title game at UMBC: A losing one for Centennial's boys lacrosse program, and a winning one for Towson's.The Eagles, who entered the game averaging 17 goals, broke open a tight battle with a 5-0 run second half run, solving Towson's slow-down offense for a 10-5 victory.For the Eagles (15-1), a state finalist in 1994 and a semifinalist in both '92 and '93, it was their 15th straight win since a season-opening loss to Annapolis. It yanked a huge monkey off the back of coach Mike Siegert, who won state-regional crowns in '80 and '81."

Keep reminding yourself that Oklahoma guard Hollis Price is tough and that he's a star, and you'll be OK. It saves the embarrassment of thinking otherwise after you check out the face that everyone talks about -- the one that earned the nickname "Webster," though it's more like Dudley from Different Strokes. It happens when you judge a book by its 405 area code and the seven national football titles that sit in Norman, Okla., and it happens when you decide to pay the most attention to teammate Aaron McGhee.

During the next few months, doctors at three U.S. hospitals are expected to begin giving breast cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy infusions of an experimental cell-based solution in the hope of restoring the vigor of the patients' bone marrow and immune systems.The new drug, Stromagen, made by Baltimore-based Osiris Therapeutics Inc., is an outgrowth of research efforts to regenerate diseased and damaged body parts using "master" cells, known as stem cells, which give rise to other more specialized cells in the body.

Pikesville had the right strategy to challenge No. 5 Century in last night's state Class 2A-1A girls lacrosse championship at UMBC Stadium, but not enough firepower to prevent the Knights from winning their second straight title. Jenny Steadman scored seven goals and Katie Schwarzmann added four as the Knights dominated the second half en route to a 15-5 victory and their third Class 2A-1A crown in four years Last year, the Panthers fell to the Knights, 16-6, in the championship and, last night, they planned to stifle Century's quick-strike attack.

ANDREW TOBIAS' MANAGING YOUR MONEY has long been one of the leading personal finance programs. Lately it's received some stiff competition from Quicken 4.0, a lower-priced ($59.95) program that also makes it easy to keep track of your finances.the L. Magid account on the MCI electronic mail system.8

USE THE RIGHT software, and your computer can do some banking tricks that most automated teller machines cannot. The latest versions of two popular personal finance packages have arrived: Quicken version 5 from Intuit Inc. and Microsoft Money for Windows 95 from the obvious suspect. When connected to a modem and a participating bank, the programs can capture banking and credit card statements, transfer funds between accounts, tell you which checks have cleared and pay bills automatically or on request.

You're always recommending that people track their expenses, but I never seem to be able to keep at it. Is there any software that would make this process less tedious and cumbersome? Either of the two leading personal finance programs, Quicken (www.quicken.com) or Microsoft Money (www.microsoft.com/money) will do the job. But before you rush out to buy either, you need to understand what will be required of you and why. You want to track your expenses so you know how much you're spending for what.

You answered a question about files of .xls and .pps extensions. Where do you obtain your knowledge of file extensions? You can point your browser to www.acronymfinder.com. There you will find that .ffl probably refers to fantasy football league files from a computer game and .jpg is a type of graphics file. Files ending .sit are archives, usually for Macintosh machines, while .cabs are Microsoft compressed files. Computer Currents magazine has posted a superb but more technical file-type dictionary at www.currents.

Four companies in the Baltimore area are among the best places to work in the nation, according to a list released Thursday. Edward Jones, FutureCare, Northwestern Mutual and the Community College of Baltimore County made the annual National Top Workplaces for 2012, a list of the top 150 compiled by WorkplaceDynamics, a Philadelphia-based employee survey provider and consulting firm. WorkplaceDynamics, which works with media partners, including The Baltimore Sun, to produce local top workplace lists, polled more than 1 million workers from 872 companies with 1,000 or more employees to create the national list.

Increased competition -- usually a good deal for consumers -- is in prospect for banking by personal computer, a field on the verge of explosive growth. With the collapse of Microsoft's $2.1 billion plan to acquire Intuit and its popular home-banking software system (Quicken), there could be a fierce scramble in a lucrative market.For the Justice Department's anti-trust division, Microsoft's uncharacteristic withdrawal from the field of battle is a doubly sweet victory. It helps division morale after being chastised by a federal judge for being too soft on Microsoft in an earlier unfair business practices case.