Tuesday, October 26, 2004
10/26/2004 7:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 

Well, that's not an easy question to answer.  First of all, I am really swamped at work getting ready for this little trade show we have every year right after Thanksgiving.  Secondly, my wife and I have finally decided to enter the ranks of home ownership.  We're still in the early stages of the process, but are fairly certain that we want to build rather than buy.  Talking to builders is completely consuming us.

Oh, if you're scoring at home... This makes one of my “Before 30” items a lay-up, but definitely puts another out of reach for good since I will be staying in the Cleveland area for the forseable future.  Screw it... why be cryptic?  I applied for a job (several actually) at Microsoft.  I never got called.  I'm moving on.

10/26/2004 6:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 

My friend and colleague, Rob, is on a trip to visit his family in the Dominican Republic.  He's blogging about it over here.  Very interesting stuff.

10/26/2004 5:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, October 03, 2004

Back on Thursday.

10/3/2004 11:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, September 27, 2004

 Just days after product's official release, customers who purchased copies of Microsoft Money 2005 are alleging that they were short changed. Microsoft support newsgroups are rife with displays of cognitive dissonance and customer dissatisfaction over what are alleged to be serious quality control issues - primarily concerning online bill paying features.

 [BetaNews.Com]

I was a Microsoft Money user for several years through 2003.  About a year ago I undertook what will be forever known in my home as the “Great Failed Quicken Experiment”.  I hated Quicken 2004.  The only reason that I switched was that my bank supported direct connection with Quicken so that I could get online updates.  Unfortunately, thing that I had come to rely on in Money were simply busted in Quicken.  Most notably for me was the debt reduction planner.  Quicken’s planner just didn’t work.  The “planner” was a one-shot thing that created a bunch of scheduled bills in your calendar.  Unfortunately, if you ever wanted to run it again, you would have to manually delete all of the scheduled bills before running the planner or you would end up with duplicates.  I guess it works for people who can cut up their credit cards and go cold turkey, but for the rest of us, it just wasn’t practical.  Finally, a few months ago the annoyance got to be too much and I resolved to return to Money as soon as 2005 was released.

Last week I started the process of converting to Money 2005.  So far, it has not been very smooth.

The Quicken converter doesn’t work for employee stock option accounts.  WTF?!?  It has enough awareness to show you a message that it couldn’t convert the stock option account, but not enough to convert it?  Aren’t stock option accounts just another investment account with a few additional transaction types such as GRANT, VEST, EXPIRE?  It’s not that Money doesn’t support stock options.  It just won’t pull them from Quicken.

The next hurdle was using the new online banking support for new institutions.  Money 2005 makes use of technology from Yodlee to allow it to sync with a vast number of institutions which it previously couldn’t sync with.  Unfortunately this is broken as well.  I have three accounts which use this technology.  I have yet to get a “clean” sync that reports no errors on all three accounts.  The transactions that are pulled down from the site are usually not matched with the manual transactions I have entered in the registry, and there is no way to force Money to associate them.  The newsgroups are loaded with complains like this, so it’s not just a PEBCAK thing.

Finally, Money no longer works with Ameritrade.  At all.  Even 2004 according to newsgroup accounts.  How is this not caught during beta?

Taking a deep breath now… The software has only been out for a couple of weeks.  Problems are bound to happen.  I just hope that I will come home in the next couple of days and see Money dutifully downloading a critical update that will resolve some of these issues.

9/27/2004 7:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, September 25, 2004

Tonight is likely to be a sleepless night for me.  My wife is on a trip to Walt Disney World, which is right in the path of Jeanne.  My thoughts and prayers are with everyone impacted by this force of nature.

Update:  Everyone is OK.

9/25/2004 7:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, September 21, 2004

My good friend and colleague, Michael Hawkins, has started blogging.  I expect big things in the future.  No pressure.

Michael is single and looking if there are any ladies reading.

9/21/2004 7:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 

Last night, my wife and I decided to switch to Sprint PCS.  Its not very often that I have a positive customer service experience, let alone one good enough to blog about.  The last time I was blown away by good service was with Mimeo nearly two years ago.

The guys at the sprint store were extremely friendly and helpful.  In about 15 minutes we were all signed up with two brand new phones.  I splurged a little on the Sanyo RL-7300.  Nice Phone!  Much better than the freebies I have traditionally gone with.

The best part of the evening was the activation process.  My wife and I wanted to “port” our phone numbers from our old provider.  The first guy told us the official line that it could take up to 14 days to complete the transition.  This was not unexpected.  I didn't know anyone who had ported their numbers, but I did remember times of over a week when the portability law was enacted.  The second guy told us that many customers find that their conversion takes much less time, especially when they come prepared with their current provider account numbers, which we had fortunately thought to bring along.

Less than 6 hours later, the new phone sprang to life.  I struggled for nearly three years with my previous provider and still couldn't get them to turn on basic features that I was paying for, like text messaging.  Sprint nailed everything on the first try.  Thank you Sprint!

9/21/2004 7:09 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, September 18, 2004

I ordered my starter kit yesterday.  I should be online this week.

Update: my gamer tag is: notyourboss

9/18/2004 7:53 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [3]  | 
 Wednesday, September 01, 2004

My wife an I just got back from our 2nd trip to Walt Disney World this summer.  By far the coolest thing we did this time was taking the Around the World at Epcot tour.  It's a two hour experience which gives you an opportunity to experience the World Showcase before it opens to the public.  Oh, and it takes place entirely on Segway's.  Too Cool!

The tour starts out with a 45 minute training session which covers the basics of Segway riding that you will need in the park.  After that, you quickly ride through Future World and into the World Showcase.  From there on, you get to ride around all of the countries.  There is even an opportunity for photographs and videotaping outside of the Italy pavilion.  Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed the experience of riding the Segway for an extended period of time.  By the end of the tour, I was really getting the hang of it and was doing fairly complicated manuvers.  It took a surprising amount of time to get proficiant with turning and going up and down inclines.  I wish I had a reason to justify buying one.  Do I think it will change the world?  Probably not, but it was fun.

9/1/2004 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [1]  | 

I have 65464 6 to give away.

9/1/2004 2:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  |