Clear Message Badge on OSX Yosemite

With OSX Yosemite and IOS 8.x, I ran into a situation where the Dock icon for Messages was showing me that I had one unread message, but I could not access the conversation in order to clear the flag.  I killed and restarted Messages on all my devices hoping that this would clear the flag, but without success.  I couldn't get to the conversation because it was a notification from Facebook with some numeric ID that was not recoverable.  I tried sending a message to that ID in the hopes that the stale conversation would re-open and I could kill the flag.

Here is what worked:

1. Quit Messages
2. Open Activity Monitor (Command-Spacebar "Activity Monitor")
3. In the search field in the top right, type "dock"
4. Select the row with "Dock" and click on the "X" in the top left and then click on "Quit"

This will kill the Dock application, which will restart right away and will clear the notification badge for the Messages application.

Polar H7 won't pair with iPhone App

I have an iPhone that I was using with the Polar H7 Bluetooth Heart Rate Monitor (HRM).  I use RunKeeper to track my workouts and find it to be highly reliable.  After only a few months of use, I was heartbroken to find that my Heart Monitor wouldn't pair to the application any more, even after putting a new battery into the H7.

Here's how I made it work:

• Take the battery out of the HRM
• Use a small screw driver to touch the two battery contacts at the same time.  
• This shorts out the power and drains any remaining charge in the unit
• Insert battery back into the unit and attempt to pair with your application
• Note that the H6 and H7 won't pair with the iPhone directly; they need to be paired from within the application that will read their signals.

Happy workouts!