Reluctantly Upgraded

After a few years of delaying upgrading Quicken 2005 to Quicken 2007, I finally had to do it. I've been using Quicken since 1991 and have skipped a number of updates because I didn't need the new features which probably didn't help Intuit's on and off again relationship with the Macintosh (my father used to upgrade Quicken every year on Windows whether he needed it or not; I suspect this is the thinking of many Windows users).

Unfortunately, Quicken 2005 has some problems with Leopard and I couldn't edit some categories. In addition, an engineer that works on Quicken told me last year that I should upgrade because there were some potential data losses with Quicken 2005. Quicken 2007 still isn't Intel native and will require me to install Rosetta when I get Snow Leopard. The next version of Quicken for Mac won't have investment tracking, so I'll have to run Quicken 2007 for a bit longer. If I didn't almost 20 years of data in it and there was something that could reasonably replace Quicken, I'd jump on it.

Forecasting the weather in San Diego

Last night, we were watching the news and the weather forecaster said that there was going to be drizzle today. I thought I was going to have to bring a rain coat as I knew I was going to be walking a bit today. I completely forgot about it when I left the house and was quite happy that I did. It was a beautiful day in San Diego! If you want to forecast the weather in San Diego, just say that tomorrow will be like today. Not very scientific, but more accurate than the computer models.

Doing my civic duty

Today, I honored my summons to goto jury duty. I've been called maybe 4 or 5 times in the past and have only come close to serving on a jury once (I was an alternate and the case was pleaded out after opening arguments). Now that San Diego uses the 1 day or 1 trial system, a lot less of my time is wasted. (OK, I say wasted, but others would say it is an honor and privilege to server.) For the 5.5 years prior to my current job, I just filled out the form saying it would be an extreme financial hardship as I was self employed. Fortunately for me, I have an EVDO modem, so waiting in the jury room simply meant that I didn't have the comforts of my home office, but I was still able to work.

Luckily I wasn't called to serve on a jury, so I'm excused for another year. It was a nice day downtown and I managed to spend a bit of it walking during our lunch break (they gave us 2 hours for lunch, that IS a waste).

Hopefully I won't be called again anytime soon.

More on Registration Schemes

Today I saw an update to Multiplex that I bought as part of the MacUpdate Promo bundle. I went into it, did the update (it uses Sparkle) and found that it was no longer registered. I went back to the original download link and downloaded the new version all registered. It looks like the developers embedded the license info in the Resources directory of the app bundle; so when it gets updated using Sparkle, the license gets wiped out. Wow, brilliant. Stop being clever and just have a reg file or a reg code; it is easier to maintain and it won't do stupid things like this (yes, if you move it to another machine you have to copy the reg info, but that's a minor price to pay).