Saturday, November 20, 2004

My old boss, Gabriel Torok, is staring in a video on Channel 9.  Check it out.

11/20/2004 12:53 PM Eastern Standard Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, November 02, 2004

This is exciting!  Polls are closed in Ohio, but no projection yet.

7:46 - CNN reporting that there are still huge lines in Cleveland.  I believe it.  Hopefully everyone who was in line at 7:30 will be allowed to vote.  Unfortunately, that may mean we won't know which way Ohio will go for a while.

7:50 - 51% Bush to 49% Kerry with less than 1% reporting.

7:52 - I wonder what is going on in Virginia.  With 11% reporting Bush is ahead 58-42.  I'm no statistician, but that seems like it's not even close.  Why hasn't it been called?

7:56 - CNN reporting that NAACP is suing to keep polls in Toledo open.  Cuyahoga County still has large lines in predominantly African American precints.  At this point, it's believe that they will all be allowed to vote.

7:59 - Ashland and Hancock counties are showing up RED (GOP) on the Ohio map.

8:01 - Kerry jumps ahead in the Electoral Vote count at the most recent poll closing mark.  77-66

8:09 - Early results show Ohio Issue 1 as passing.  This is the amendment that would prohibit same-sex marriage.

8:10 - Even though Dan Rather has said several times that CBS would rather be last than wrong, they have called more races than CNN at this point.  They have Bush ahead 80-77 in electoral votes.

8:12 - Barack Obama wins a senate seat in Illinois.

8:14 - CBS calls North Carolina for Bush.  I'm leaning towards sticking with CBS tonight since they're being a bit more agressive. I know.  2000.  Florida.  I get it.  Caution.  Whatever.  Lightning can't strike twice right?

8:18 - CBS calls Virginia for Bush.  Florida, Ohio and Penn. still up for grabs.  95-77 Bush.

8:20 - CBS reporting that Ohio Issue #1 has passed.

8:21 - Cuyahoga county becomes the first BLUE county on the CNN Ohio map.

8:26 - Local news reporting that in Summit county (where I live), someone was calling voters telling them that their precint was moved.  They're calling it dirty politics and that there will be an investigation.

9:04 - NBC calling Ohio a “Dead Heat”.

12:04 - Still a Dead Heat.

12:36 - Everyone keeps saying that Ohio is the new Florida.  It's ironic when you consider just how many Ohioans are also part time Floridians.  Let's just call this the snowbird election.

6:10 - Here we go again.

1:23 - Kerry has conceded.

11/2/2004 8:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 

It's election day here in the battleground state of Ohio.  I didn't make up my mind until I had the punch card stylus in my hand.  I don't care who you vote for, just vote if you have the right.

At my polling location, we had to stand out in the rain for over an hour this morning before we could get inside where it was dry.  Of course, my precinct was the only one with ANY line.  The other two that shared the same building had no line at all.  I think some redistricting is in order.  The most interesting thing was the signs in each of the voting booths warning about “Hanging Chads“.  Four years ago nobody would have known what that meant.  This year, they didn't need an illustration to explain.  Wow.

I just hope we actually know who won the election by the end of the week.  Four years ago was hell, but it definitely seems to have increased voter turnout this time.

11/2/2004 10:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, October 30, 2004

My wife and I are on our way to put the earnest money down on the house we're going to build.

10/30/2004 10:22 AM Eastern Daylight Time  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [0]  | 
 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]  |