Category Archives: About Me - Page 34

I Never Really Believed in Curses Until…

Posted by anachostic on February 6, 2010 No comments

…I started travelling. There’s some pretty bad mojo brewing up whenever I want to go back to my home state. Last time, I was delayed a day and it was because I took the last flight out and because of previous delays, it was impossible to make my connection. This time I scheduled the first flight out, meaning I got up at 2:45 in the morning to get ready. Despite the plan that I could be bumped to later flights and do to people what they did to me the first time, the flight was still a no-go. Thank you, blizzard.

And I thought I did everything I was supposed to. I checked the flight status before I went to bed and when I woke up – all good. When I checked in, I asked “any news?” – no, the flight is still active. I got to the gate and within 10 minutes I hear my name paged. Damn it, I know what this is about.

Similar to last time, I could make my first leg, but the second leg was cancelled. I had the option of going to the first airport and trying to get on the next flight at 5:30. That’s a 10-hour layover with a great chance of the flight either being overbooked or cancelled. No thanks. So after rescheduling for tomorrow, back home I went.

I call the car rental company and modify my reservation. Apparently, when you take one day off your reservation, you’re not in the “special rate” anymore and it suddenly costs you over $100 more. So a brief check on Yahoo and I’m now renting from another company. However, I’m still out $5 for my brief time of parking at the airport. And gas, and time. Luckily, no hotel reservations to change like last time, where they knocked me for $90. I swear, companies make the most money when their customers are miserable.

The Quickening II

Posted by anachostic on December 18, 2009 No comments

Like a bad sequel, I get to continue a story that should have ended. As I discover some things in Quicken I don’t like, I check the opinions of blogs and Quicken’s own support forums and I am saddened by what I learn. I guess none of my gripes are new, but they are mine.

I’m sure I’m going to have lots of fun matching transactions as time goes on. I’m convincing myself that the real numbers matter starting next month – a fresh month of a fresh year. But right now things are off. One of my accounts had to have an adjustment posted to make it match with the last bank statement. That worries me. As I cleaned up the categories for my transactions, I found that when I would categorize a transaction as a transfer, it would helpfully create the other side of the transfer for me, duplicating a previously-downloaded transaction in another account. So with all the credit card payments I categorized, I suddenly had a massively negative balance in my checking account. More cleanup…

As I worked through these various screens I found myself missing a Microsoft standard: the Back button. I remember years ago when I tried out the Zune at Staples, I thought to myself, “MS loves the Back button.” The Zune has one. And you know, it is the easiest concept for anyone to understand. I also was a little weirded out at how some screens are windows of their own and some are in the main window.

And continuing with UI issues, I found the little things to be the most annoying. Like being unable to resize columns. The text in a column is truncated, but you can’t expand the column to see it. You have to mouse over each row to see the tooltip. I’m slowly getting used to Quicken’s way of doing subcategories – using a colon. Money had that format as an option, but I turned it off. The UI, overall, is definitely from another line of thinking – and not very much in line with Microsoft’s design recommendations. I’ve had the argument before about how being consistent with Microsoft design helps a user understand your application quicker. The additional time it is taking me to understand how Quicken works is a fine example of this. Holy crap, I just discovered that some (4) popup windows I thought had closed actually didn’t. They’re in a pseudo-taskbar at the bottom of the main window. Good god.

Now the bigger issues. The biggest being that the filtered view in the register does not maintain the proper running balance. It shows a running balance of the transactions shown. This makes the filtered view useless, but Quicken users have been living with it since the feature was introduced. That’s nearly a deal-breaker, but I’m going to stick it out. The other big one is there is no transaction entry form (that I can find). You have to enter all your info directly in the register. This brought back a very distant memory of when I first used Quicken and I didn’t like that method of entry. Money provided a more presentable form for entry and it was a significant selling point. Money also allowed the option to enter transactions Quicken-style. Funny how Money tried to implement a more Quicken-esqe experience and ended up being the one that failed.

I feel a bit sad that Quicken is now the only major player in this software category. Mostly because I know they can never make the changes needed to satisfy the MS Money crowd without ruining the experience of legacy Quicken users.

The Quickening

Posted by anachostic on December 17, 2009 No comments

So I’m at the 7th and final stage of grieving: acceptance. I have accepted that Microsoft Money is gone and will not be coming back, so I must move to Quicken. It’s not without trepidation that I purchase Quicken and try to recapture the enjoyment of tracking my finances with a new program. I had used Quicken a long time ago and was not as pleased as I was with MS Money, which is probably why I’ve used Money for over 10 years.

So I’ve gotten Quicken Deluxe 2010 installed and the first thing that pisses me off is that it has put icons on my desktop. Not just one icon, which is tolerable, but 4. One for the application and three sales pitches. This is a terrible first impression. One shortcut is to a co-branded version of FreeCreditReport dot COM – one of the biggest scams out there. One is for their BillPay service, at $10/mo. Even Wachovia, a premier bank, only charges $6/mo for integrated BillPay. Unless Quicken doesn’t have 2-way integration with Wachovia, which is practically a dealbreaker for me. MS Money had it. (Turns out, yes, Quicken does support online payments through Wachovia) The final offer is for a typical rewards credit card provided by Chase.

First Launch: I am prompted to “Get Started”. I have to enter my banks and their login info so Quicken can download transactions and whatnot. I’m mildly impressed. In MS Money, this was a separate step after setting up accounts. It picks up my Wachovia account without a problem. Then I do my Chase account. Oops, there was a problem. It says to try again later. So I think, “Maybe it should be entered as a WaMu account, since that’s where it was originally opened.” Nope. Not found there. It’s later now, so I try again under Chase. Quicken crashes. Ok, my impression of this program is sinking fast.

Second Launch: I get all of my accounts set up. And I am quite impressed with how well it handled ALL of my accounts. If I had a login for it, Quicken handled it. I got my loans entered and the wizard was pretty easy to work through. I browse through the preferences and set a few things to my liking, like two-line registers. Now, I am downloading transactions for an account that doesn’t have real-time transaction updates. And it’s frozen. However, I was able to close the window (X) and it seemed to be a successful update. We’ll see how that turns out on the others… ok, three of the four I had to close the window, but they seem current. Not sure of this is going to be an annoyance or it’s just a fluke.

I’m going to give it an honest try, since I have no other choice, really. I’ve tried GnuCash and that was definitely a step down. So we’ll see how quick things get.

Trip Log 11/26/09

Posted by anachostic on November 26, 2009 No comments

In a previous blog entry, I took a ride to a local beach, but at the time the beach was closed for renovation, to be reopened in the fall. Well, now it’s the fall and I headed back out to see all the new and great changes that I’d nothing to previously compare to. It was a little late in the day, partly cloudy and about 65 degrees. I got a few blocks and decided, no, I am not going to make this trip without insulation. So I turned around and got my riding jacket’s rain liner, which is a great wind breaker as well.

Back on track, I realized, it’s pretty cold. But I pressed onward and I made good time because of my comfort level at higher speeds. Maybe a little over halfway there and I noticed there were some actual clouds ahead. If it started raining, I would be in a huge amount of trouble in this temperature. I got under the clouds and the temp dropped even further. But, no rain.

I made it to that park again and as fate would have it, the beach is still under construction. So, a good 1 and a half hour ride in the cold and wind for nothing. I need something to cheer me up. Oh, you poor thing. Have a donut.

Thank you, I will. That will have to do for now. It’s now mostly cloudy and the temperature drop I had earlier under the clouds is the new normal. So I slipped on my 2nd pair of slightly warmer riding gloves and blasted back home. So cold. So tired. So disappointed.

Trip Log 11/22/09

Posted by anachostic on November 22, 2009 No comments

Today was a beach trip. To a different beach, on a different route. That meant (oh boy) Interstate travel: 60 minutes at 70+ mph in chaotic conditions with a good wind. I could see that there were storms to the north and south, but I seemed pretty safe in my path.

An uneventful trip to the beach and a fairly empty parking lot. I had just gotten off the bike and gotten to the walkway when the parking authority vehicle pulled in. I walk back to his truck and asked if he could break a $20 for the meters. He told me not to worry and kept right on going. Slow day, I guess.

So I got my pictures and took a leisurely ride up and down the local roads. Not much traffic and what was there was casual. Stopped at a local place to have a lunch. The sandwich was not as I would have expected. What is the deal with sticking a huge pile of meat between slices of bread? You can’t get your mouth around it and all you taste is meat. There’s a balance when making a sandwich: the meat-to-bread ratio (or meat-to-bun as I originally termed it for fast food). You don’t want the flavor of the meat to be lost in the bread, nor do you want excess in the other direction. Some places just don’t get it.

I did bring along the Zune HD, but I didn’t get to do any Internet surfing. All the available networks were secured, insulting, or both.

So, I guess I won’t be going back there. I should have had the burger.

Cooking

Posted by anachostic on November 15, 2009 No comments

Ahhh. I just had a great meal, and I cooked it myself.

I hear you now. “What? Mr. I-eat-fast-food-three-meals-a-day-and-somehow-keep-living… cooks?” That’s right. And on top of that, I’m good at it. No, I’m awesome at it. I know this because I eat what I cook, and I’m one picky bastard, so my cooking must be awesome in order to meet my standards. Tonight it was a simple, fairly healthy meal of steak and rice. Ok, chopped steak and rice. Ok, it was actually hamburger and rice, only it was made so awesome it could have been steak.

Some of you might be saying, “Rice? that’s so bland and boring.” or “I can’t eat rice, they look like maggots.” Well, if you were eating with me, you’d be eating it because I make it right. And I’m going to share the recipe. There’s a special ingredient you might need to go to the store to buy, but it’s worth it. Now, here’s the ingredient list:

2 cups Rice
1/4 stick of butter

Yeah, I know. It’s awesome. You people who think you have a bowl of maggots in front of you aren’t going to complain when that larvae is coated in a thick layer of butter. And rice is boring? Try eating my rice with chopsticks. That’ll keep you busy. And thanks to the wondrous power of butter, it’s awesome.

Now, the entrée: steak/burger/whatever. There is a special art to seasoning beef before cooking it. I’ve seen plenty of marinades, rubs, and spices, but I know what I like. After all, I eat at Outback and Longhorn enough to get a taste of good seasoning. So, here’s my custom seasoning blend for my burgers:

Salt

If I wasn’t already employed, I’d be opening my own restaurant. I’m saying, it’s that good.

I remember when I first moved out and had never cooked for myself before. It could be the reason why I eat out all the time. But anyway, I took the time and mastered the art of cooking. All you people who say “I’ve never cooked. I can’t even cook a burger. Fire scares me.” Here’s my step-by-step instructions to cooking a burger:

Shut up
Buy a George Foreman grill
Cook a burger

I was going to write a book on this special technique, but figured the information is better in the public domain. If you fail to cook your burger properly, simply follow the directions again. Pay close attention to the first step – it’s the most critical. If you can’t get a good burger after five attempts. Throw all your George Foreman grills away and just disregard steps 2 and 3.

I’ll have to take the time someday to explain the killer grilled cheese sandwiches I make, but I’ll close with a tip on making tea drinkable. If you don’t like tea, it’s because you don’t have enough sugar in it. It’s that simple. In fact, I’ll bet you can eat concrete if you have enough butter, salt and sugar available.

Ride to Eat, Eat to Ride

Posted by anachostic on October 4, 2009 No comments

Just a couple of random bike trips for food. The first was to a place I’d not heard of before, although there are a few locations around here: Village Inn. I hoped this would be like a King’s or Eat & Park from the northern area, but was a bit disappointed. I tried the staple meal – burger and fries – but the burger had some seasoning or spice that wasn’t suiting me very well at all. I could only eat a few bites of it.

It’s not all bad. I gave up on the entrée and went to dessert. The chocolate pie was excellent and made up for most of the meal’s failure.

Then I went out to tourist country and ate at a Ponderosa. It’s a location I’d been to before when I was not a local resident. Interesting how differently you act towards attractions when you could go there every day… Not that Ponderosa is an attraction, but Old Town is right there and it’s Halloween, which means they have a big push on the haunted house.

This meal I was treated to the excellent stories of a very special person behind me. My impression is that he sees himself as some sort of consumer superhero. As I understand the story, superboy was performing some bank transaction through the automated telephone service and answered some personal verification question wrong. This immediately locked his account. To resolve this, he called the bank directly. I have no idea why, but he felt it necessary to disguise his voice, taking on the tone of an agitated old man with respiratory issues. “Yes, this is so-an-so *cough cough hack snork* and you have locked my *cough COUGH* account with your damn computer *gag hack*.” During this trial to get him verified, he answered all the questions correctly. If he didn’t know one (and I’m not sure why he wouldn’t know his personal information), he would have a coughing fit to buy time. Using typical hyperbole, he said they asked him a hundred questions. Then using some sort of hybrid of hyperbole and stupidity, he said they asked him for his grandmother’s maiden name, but he answered using her married name. The only thing I can deduce from these facts is that he was faking access to his father’s account (which would be his father’s mother’s maiden name).

Superboy goes off on a tangent. Now he’s pissed because everything’s a ripoff. Drinks are $2.50 (“that’s where they get ya”). The onion rings cost an extra dollar (“That’s a scam. They asked me if I wanted onion rings but never said it’d be an extra dollar.”). But like my Village Inn dessert, it wasn’t all bad (“The 10% coupon I used paid for the extra charge for onion rings”) , but at the same time, he wasn’t letting go. He somehow changes gears and relates a story about how he had to give a 7 cent refund to a customer because they felt they were incorrectly charged tax on a dollar item and how stupid and petty it was. He somehow fails to relate his current bitching about the dollar upcharge to this story.

Please let me out of here.

Trip Log 7/23/09

Posted by anachostic on July 23, 2009 No comments

This actually isn’t a motorcycle trip. It was a business trip. As such, a lot of the details are hush-hush, but the trip itself – travelling – is something I don’t do as much of as I used to.

To start the whole trip on a great note, I don’t even make it to the airport garage without incident. There are new traffic patterns I was unfamiliar with and when one sign says “Economy parking/post office next left” and a later temporary construction sign simply says “Post office”, I did not make the turn for economy parking. So one loop around the terminal so I can be logged into NSA’s database as suspicious, then back to economy parking from the other direction, which had no construction.

Step 1 complete; I’m parked. The shuttle bus is waiting and I hop on. The bus will stop at the Blue side first, then the Red side. Fine, I’m red. We arrive at the red side and I get off the bus. I’m the last one off because I’m not really in a hurry. The lone luggage bag left in front of the bus is not my bag. Suddenly, I feel I bit more in a hurry. I grab the bag and walk back onto the bus to explain what has happened. The driver was kind enough to drive back to the other side to see if there were some people freaking out that they had the wrong bag. There were no people like that there. I gave the driver my cell number and he said he would take the bag and my number to Lost and Found. Meanwhile, I had to get my boarding pass, with or without luggage.

The trip I was taking for business was at a resort literally in the middle of nowhere. 1.5 hour drive from any metro area. I was wondering if I could wear the same jeans for three days and maybe buy some souvenir shirts to wear the other days. I guess I could have shopped at the airport, too, but that thought wasn’t coming to me then. I walked down to baggage claim looking for Lost and Found. I found instead a security guard, who told me I needed to be back upstairs and across the road. Then he did something extra: he said he’d walk me there. That’s pretty important to my trip because the purpose of the business meeting was to extol the virtues of service, which the security guard had just demonstrated.

So we got to L&F and I fill out the contact form. The lady at the counter, again – pleasant, said that they already received the other person’s bag from the shuttle driver, they had contacted the owner, and that they would handle the exchange. Simple enough, as long as these people – who didn’t recognize their bag had a handle wrap on it and mine didn’t – show up before I have to run to my gate. As it turned out, it was only about 15 minutes that I had to wait and the crisis was averted.

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, but the business portion was very good. The accommodations were impressive.

Being a remote resort area, it had a lot of walking paths and lots of greenery. It would be a botanist’s dream.

The only critique I could make, and I regret thinking of it now because I should have filled out a comment card, is that the whole place needed more garbage cans. You walk around a lot and typically you’re drinking something, but then you have to carry your trash around looking for a place to throw it away. I remember only one public garbage can.

So early in the morning we all headed back to the airport. I made the wise decision to walk from the entrance to the terminal instead of talking the tram. It didn’t seem too bad, the map even said 1000 ft to next terminal. Something wasn’t quite right though, because it seemed like I walked through an extra terminal or two. All told (thanks to Bing’s unit conversion), it was well over a mile I walked. Before breakfast. I’m a bastard when I’m tired or hungry, so I had both going on when I got to the gate. Unsurprisingly, a kiosk was very willing to take 8 dollars from me in exchange for a bag of chips, a bottle of Coke, and a bag of candy.

Boarding time. Looks like we’re early. And the staff was giving out coupons for free Internet on the plane. I didn’t feel like Internetting, so I passed. All settled in and ready to go. And we’re not going. Still not. Half an hour later, I’ve worked through 75% of my bag of candy and getting restless. More waiting. Finally, the answer comes out. They were trying to fix the computers for the Internet, they couldn’t, and so we’re an hour late and the coupons can’t be used on that flight (save them for another flight).

We’re back now. I got the same shuttle driver and I’m the only one on the shuttle. Will I lose my bag again? We chatted about the luggage experience and service and other minor topics. I tipped him at the garage. It’s really something I don’t normally do, and really not sure he deserved it, but I intended it to be a nice gesture that showed I was satisfied with the service of everyone at the airport: him, the Lost and Found department, and the security guard that escorted me.

Thank god. I can head home and eat. Oh wait, there’s new traffic patterns at the airport. This new road is nice. There’s my exit up ahead…. but this road doesn’t connect to that exit. Now I’m going off the opposite direction. Damn it. Another 20 minutes of time lost. Finally, the drama ends and I’m in familiar territory and here I am recounting it to the best person in the world.

What Is This? A New Post?

Posted by anachostic on July 19, 2009 No comments

You’ve got to be kidding me. What’s the occasion for this? Which freaking song are you still working on?

Well, the impetus for the post is the simplicity of Windows Live Writer. Having a nice WYSIWYG editor makes for less resistance to creating a new entry. But there’s other minor things that happened in the last year and a half that might be mentionable as well.

Currently the recording system is running Vista x64. This was a trial run on 64-bit to see if I could still get by, which I certainly can. Well, except that the CME UF6 doesn’t have a USB driver for Vista (except through a user patch), and no 64-bit driver at all. So, although I never used the USB functions of the controller, it seems I never will, either.

I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of Windows 7, at which time I’ll rebuild the system for recording again. The system has no music software on it yet. I’ll also invest in a nice hard drive or two for performance and volume, although I don’t expect to do much physical recording, instead sticking to MIDI and VST, having the HD space is never a bad thing.

So, you know I have been working on this song… as the joke goes, “When’s your album coming out?” I’ve been playing the same songs for over a year. They haven’t been completed, but I expect when I get the new recording setup, I’ll be ready to put some tracks down and get some momentum. The plan is still the same, to do another CDD-type release – that is, non-sequence-based, more live-oriented.

Otherwise, musically, there’s not much to say. Well, my Mackie mixer has been powered on and running 24×7 for at least 5 years and my Event monitors have been doing the same for at least 2. That makes these devices a great testament to longevity , durability, and ecological irresponsibility.

Back for the Attack, or My Back’s Second Attack

Posted by anachostic on July 14, 2009 No comments

Somewhere around 10 years ago, I had a back “issue”. I wasn’t doing anything crazy, all I did was plug my laptop in to a power strip on the floor and stand up. Well, I didn’t get all the way up, because I was frozen in pain. The pale white, cold sweat kind of pain. Off to the hospital and then home for bed rest. If I remember correctly, it took at least a week to recover.

10 years later, I get an anniversary visit. Again, not doing anything stressful, but maybe I can identify a little more that contributed to it this time. The memories are not so pleasant as each one comes back to me. This time around I don’t have the luxury of higher medication, so I’m getting by on heat, cold, and Advil. I have a business trip next Wednesday; not sure how that’s going to go. But I’ve had a couple observations as I attempt to remain as still as humanly possible to reduce the likelihood of pain.

This is more of a restatement of a fact I learned 10 years ago. Once you have a back failure, you will never be the same. And that was true. Every once in a while I’d get a warning that I was doing something wrong or overdoing something else. I was always careful to take it easy after that. This time, I think I got the warnings too late.

Next, recovering from a failure is like playing Operation. You move slowly, carefully, trying to remain as steady and still as possible, then BZZZZT! – you get zapped. You freak out, nearly collapse from the stabbing pain (or just freeze solid), and you lose the round. You have to start over.

Typical things become scary as hell. Coughing, sneezing, going to the bathroom, all might trigger a slight pain or a massive wave of pain. I am sure it is just like having any abdominal surgery except on the opposite side of the body. Something simple like getting up to get a drink is not so simple.

Time seems to shift around. This morning when I sat on the edge of the bed and had a total seize, when I finally got myself lying down again, I looked at the clock. It was 9:00. The next time I was able to look at the clock it was 9:12. I must have passed out from the pain or something, because it only felt like a minute.

I’m not spouting these observations as complaining or whining. I kind of find them amusing. It’s like I was one kind of person – healthy, active (both overstatements, BTW) – and now I’m a disabled person. To me it feels like a test, like “let’s see how you handle this.” And for the most part, I think I’m doing ok. I’m still as productive at work as I was when I was at my desk. I am getting by with lunch delivered to me. If things get really bad, I might have to have food delivered or drive to a drive-through. I can’t walk for extended periods right now.

But being in this condition makes one wonder, what if I was like this for the rest of my life? That’s an answer I’ll not share.

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