Archive for November, 2006

Quicken 2007 Deluxe

Posted by Rob in Computers on Tue Nov 28, 2006

After three years of using Quicken 2004 Premier for Windows, I decided to upgrade to a more recent version. I had been underwhelmed with the “Premier” version (it promises extra bells whistles for tracking investments, but I didn’t really see any value-add over my Quicken 2003 Deluxe), so I went back to the Deluxe version.

I did a few things differently this time:

  • I skipped retail and bought it on eBay last week ($49.99 retail, $20.50 for me on eBay).
  • I had it shipped to my office address instead of my apartment complex. For the past few years, I’ve been spoiled by managed complexes with offices that receive all your packages. We’ll be moving into a house next month with no such luxuries, so I wanted to give the office shipping department a test run before I ordered anything more serious.

A retail CD with no box arrived in the office mail today, in a plain padded envelope. With some small amount of trepidation (What if it’s a fake? What if the CD has viruses on it?), I backed up my Quicken files, opened the CD, scanned it for viruses, and installed it onto my computer.

It was a very anti-climactic experience. Both the Quicken software itself and my data file were upgraded in-place without a hitch.

What differences did I notice from Quicken 2004 Premier?

  • The online one-step update now runs in the background when launched, instead of completely taking over your Quicken session and preventing you from doing something else. This is nice. You can click “One-Step Update”, then go back to reconciling your bank and credit-card statements while other transactions are downloaded in the background.
  • I can download transactions directly from within Quicken from more of my institutions.
  • The color scheme is different, and you get to choose from a few different color schemes (green, blue, etc.).
  • Following a disturbing trend, the UI features bigger fonts and bigger buttons, resulting in an effective loss of screen real estate. I understand that there is a legitimate need to increase font and icon sizes to compensate for the ever-increasing resolution of modern LCD screens, but I wish for once that software writers would cater to geeks like me who actually want to get work done on their computers.
  • A few things here and there seemed a little slicker, like navigating between different areas of Quicken. Nothing astonishing, and nothing I can quite explicitly identify, but something noticeable. Or maybe I just wanted to justify the $20.50 as something not ill-spent.

What remained the same from my old copy of Quicken 2004 Premier?

  • Initial installation is easy. It also leaves a smattering of cross-promoted products all over your Windows desktop. Enough already, I already paid you for the software, do you now have to sell me some extras? I wonder how much money Intuit actually makes from installing icons for MasterCard and CitiBank on the desktop after installation.
  • Pretty much everything else.

In summary:

  • My office appears to be fine for receiving packages.
  • eBay appears to be fine for buying software.
  • I will be sticking with Deluxe from here on out. Premier doesn’t offer me anything useful. It does offer more investment-related “advice,” but it’s not that useful.
  • The upgrade from 2004 to 2007 might be worth the $20 purchase price, for increased compatibility with financial institutions’ online operations. For example, with Quicken 2007, I can download my Bank of America and Wells Fargo transactions directly from within Quicken. With Quicken 2004, I had to go to the respective websites and download my transactions myself. It’s admittedly just a small plus, but a plus nevertheless.

All in all, not bad for $20.50 for a three-year upgrade. It’s definitely not worth $49.99 for a yearly upgrade. It’s probably not even worth $20.50 for a yearly upgrade.

Edit: Actually, it turns out I have to upgrade, because Quicken only provides online services for products up to three years old. See their sunset policy for details.

1 Comment

Thanksgiving in Monterey

Posted by Rob in Photos on Sun Nov 26, 2006

We made our second trip to Monterey, CA for the Thanksgiving break. Our first trip was back in 2000 over Labor Day weekend.

We spent Thursday by ourselves, having a small Thanksgiving dinner for two (turkey, stuffing, and carrots). On Friday we drove down to the John Steinbeck Center in Salinas. It is a nice little museum; I found the Salinas exhibit more interesting than the Steinbeck stuff itself. The Salinas exhibit describes much of the migrant-worker agricultural society and business that John Steinbeck wrote about.

[Photo]

Then we went to visit our friends for the weekend, exploring Monterey and Carmel-by-the-Sea:

[Photo]

No Comments

Settlers of Catan

Posted by Rob in Rants & Raves on Sat Nov 25, 2006

I had an opportunity to play a game I’d been reading a lot about: Settlers of Catan. It is a 4-player board game, combining enjoyable elements of many other popular games. The notable thing about Catan is that gameplay is very balanced, even with a combination of beginners and experienced players (I won our first game :D), such that the outcome of the game can be completely up for grabs until the very end. Catan has elements of:

  • Fantasy Football. The first two rounds involve something like a draft, where each player selects locations for their initial cities. Initial location is almost critically important.
  • Sid Meier’s Civilization. Players may win via a variety of strategies, such as economic development, or military conflict (economic sabotage, really, but the game portrays it as a military action).
  • Scrabble. Real estate is important throughout the whole game. Certain plays will open up or close off possibilities to other players.
  • Craps. Knowing the probabilities of rolling 2-12 are important, and rolling a 7 is generally bad for those playing with you :).

Catan is a “first to finish” kind of game, and not a “last man standing” kind of game; players are never eliminated from play. Everyone may participate up until the end (indeed, the balanced gameplay is usually such that it can be anyone’s game at any time). An interesting element of Catan gameplay is that developments such as cities and roads, once placed, are never removed, nor do they ever change hands. This may dissatisfy poker players and other schadenfreude junkies. In particular, Catan is not like:

  • Risk. How many times has a game stalled because of Kamchatka continuously changing hands between the player controlling Australia and the player taking over Asia? The immutability of cities and roads in Catan guarantees forward progress of the game, so that games will only take up a rather deterministic amount of time.
  • Monopoly. Both Catan and Monopoly are about controlling real estate. However, Monopoly is a “last man standing” kind of game, whereas Catan is a “first to finish” game. Development of property is a goal in itself, rather than simply a means to eliminate other players.

However, the game does have a winner, so it is of course not without competition (and therefore not without schadenfreude), for people who need that kind of fix. The dice and other mechanics of gameplay allow players to benefit at the direct expense of other players.

Like any good board game, there are numerous expansion packs available, mostly to either affect the economy of the game or to expand the game to accommodate up to 5-6 players. And like any really good board game, there is an unofficial free version of the game that allows you to play online against other players: visit games.AsoBrain.com.

2 Comments

Casino Royale

Posted by Rob in Movies on Fri Nov 24, 2006

Meh.

Not a bad movie by itself:

  • High-stakes gambling. Favorite line: Bond: This is for you. (Throws $1M chip as tip to dealer.) Dealer: Thank you very much, sir.
  • Assassin who needs two more hits to get promoted. Hit men have corporate ladders, too.
  • Fewer in-your-face blatantly-obvious advertisements for Smirnoff, Heineken, BMW, Omega, etc. Or maybe I just didn’t notice this time around. Or maybe sponsors weren’t sure about Daniel Craig.
  • Car chases, hand-to-hand, gun-to-gun, and nailgun-to-gun combat are all there and all good, but nothing we haven’t already seen in ten years of Rambo and Lethal Weapon.

But, not a great James Bond movie:

  • No gadgets. I understand that this movie is a prequel of sorts, but the gadget-guy does make an appearance, so therefore should have bestowed gadgets.
  • Not a full harem of Bond girls. There’s supposed to be a “good” Bond girl and a “bad” Bond girl. We only get a single tragically flawed villainness who might actually be good deep deep down inside.
  • No absurd “wow” intro scene. Yes, Bond is not yet a 00 agent, but it doesn’t mean he can’t engage in some fancy spywork. I’m thinking Pierce Brosnan at the beginning of Goldeneye, shooting up some terrorist location, then riding a motorcycle off a cliff sans parachute to dive after and pilot away the only plane out of Dodge. There is a nice parkour chase scene, but it’s more an example of the movie simply following a trend than it is of the movie breaking any kind of new cinematic ground.
  • No diabolical villain with dreams of world domination and a grandiose plan-revealing monologue. Just some math geek who likes to play poker and play the stock market. He has some kind of messed-up nasty-looking eye, but that doesn’t quite cut it for “diabolical villain”. Crispin Glover looked more sinister in Charlie’s Angels.
  • Daniel Craig doesn’t really strike me as a suave James Bond spy. International hard-core hitman? Definitely. Spy who finesses the wetwork and doesn’t wrinkle his tie? No. This movie could have very easily been retitled as The Transporter 4.

Honestly, if you saw this photo, would you think this was a James Bond movie, let alone a shot of James Bond himself?

[Photo]

1 Comment

San Mateo County Parks

Posted by Rob in Photos on Sun Nov 19, 2006

There is nothing like an impending move to stimulate the urge to go out and take pictures of all the nice stuff less than 10 miles away, before that ready access is forever gone. In four weeks we move to Outer Sunset in San Francisco (another rental, more on that later). Today we went to Seal Point Park and Coyote Point, both parks in San Mateo County that border the Bay and afford some pretty good views of airplanes landing at nearby San Francisco Airport.

[Photo]

At Coyote Point I practiced taking pictures of sea gulls in flight. At first I tried leading the flight trajectory and hitting the shutter just as the bird passed through. That didn’t work because by the time my old camera was able to snap a picture, the bird was already gone. What I ended up having to do was to actually track the bird with the camera (as if I were a sniper or something) and hit the shutter. The speed setting on the camera was fast enough to deal with the moving camera and moving bird, so all I had to do was keep my eye on the bird.

No Comments

The Departed

Posted by Rob in Movies on Sun Nov 5, 2006

This movie (I haven’t seen Infernal Affairs yet) brings me back to Boston.

Authentic Boston:

  • Matt Damon and Marky Mark Wahlberg dropping their R’s for that Beantown accent.
  • China Pearl.
  • Massachusetts State House. I couldn’t figure out exactly where Matt Damon’s apartment was supposed to be. Beacon Hill?
  • Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge.

Not Authentic Boston:

  • Leonardo DiCaprio not holding his Boston accent through the whole movie.

[Photo]

No Comments