Cleaning Up

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Jayson has gone back to New Orleans. I cleaned up my place a bit Saturday. It is still a mess, but it is better than before. It wasn’t that he makes a mess, but I am not used to having others staying for a week. The air mattress in the living room was difficult enough to navigate around.

I need to find time to do my laundry now. Hopefully I will do it during the week.

Now that Jay is gone I need to figure out when I can actually go visit him and Gretchen. February is almost over and March is looking busy.

Quicken

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I am a long time quicken user. I have been using it since at least 1995. I have almost every version since then. I have also used Turbo Tax like 3 times. I am a huge fan. The problem I am running into is that I now have Mac’s. I used to only have a PC, so moving my quicken data from one PC to another was as simple as copying the files. Now if I want to use Quicken on my Mac I have to convert it. As simple as Intuit claims it is, it is not so simple.

Back in Oct/Nov 2002 I converted my quicken data to run on my Powerbook. Once converted it was not simple to continue using my PC files. So I just left a copy on my PC and used my Powerbook. In AuGust of 2003 I decided I wanted to have both a PC and a Mac copy of my files. I like having options. I converted everything back to PC format. It takes several hours because out of thousands of transactions at least a few don’t convert. Then you have to spend time figuring out what one didn’t. Once done converting I never did keep updating my Mac version.

Since AuGust I have been running Quicken only on my thinkpad. Now I decided I want it back on my Powerbook. Once again I have to go through the whole conversion process. This time it wasn’t as bad as before, but I still had some problems. Most related to how the two different quicken programs keep investment information. Intuit should get their act together and keep the feature set’s of both products the same. On the plus side I found an error in how I recorded some stock information. That I guess is the silver lining in my whole ordeal.

My last gripe with Quicken for the Mac is that sometimes it has problems moving the file from one machine to another. When I migrated to a new computer last year I couldn’t open my old data file. I had to export the data and create a new file and import the old data. it was a stupid waste of time. Hopefully they fixed the problem in the 2004 version that came pre-installed on my newest Mac.

The Game Place

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Rich, Amanda and I went to Jillian’s. it is a game complex out on the island near Roosevelt Field Mall. It is cool. you can do arcade games, play pool, bowling, skeet ball and other stuff. They are on a budget, and I should be so for $20 we got an evening of fun and entertainment. We didn’t realize how late it was when we wanted to go bowling. We decided to put that off for another time.

Jillian’s is not as good as Dave n buster’s, but it is allot closer to everyone. I went to a Dave n buster’s in Chicago. it is really cool. Same concept but I think they do it better. It is just expensive.

We went to a decent Mediterranean restaurant in the source mall for dinner. I still have to get used to getting my meat on a stick!

We grabbed cheese cake from the Cheese Cake Factory for take home desert. it was awsome as always. I had the special edition godiva chocolate cheese cake. I still have half of it left. I am saving it:)

Gadget Update

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My PalmOne Treo 600 is on preorder. I hope to get it by mid march. Right around my birthday. Sooner would be nice, but I don’t have any faith in PalmOne since I have been waiting since October for this device.

Palm also announced they will not support OS X in the new version of the Palm OS. That pisses me off since they are compeeting with microsoft but only make software that works on Windows. Me having 2 Mac’s now doesn’t help matters either. I finally started using iCal & Address book. They are not so bad. I like that I can change the font and color of notes in outlook, but that is the only difference between the software that I don’t like. Thankfully a third party company says they will make sync software that will work with isync. I am going to try them out when I get the Treo 600. The software is supposed to sync with avantgo, a function Palm’s current software does not do. Unfortunatly the software from Mark / Space does not work with my current Treo 270, so I will wait a few weeks.

I am about to cancel my Verizon Wireless phone. I haven’t needed to use since December, except once. That constitutes a reason to cancel a $40 a month charge. I will take the hit on early termination fee. This will be the first time I have ever paid that fee, but I don’t want to wait until augist to cancel the phone. That will cost too much. Once done, I will have just my T-Mobile phone. Now I have to figure out how to use the Treo 600 with T-Mobile while connecting to my Powerbook so I have a dial up connection for it. No Bluetooth yet for the Treo so I will need a USB cable to do this. I am not sure if software exists to do what I want, but I will look.

Busy, Busy, Busy

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Yesterday was very busy. it was one of those days that you don’t remember where I spent most of my time, but I looked up at it was 3:30PM already.

Today and tomorrow will probibly be just as busy. Stuff is going on I cannot really discuss just yet, but the work will keep Keith and I busy for a while.

Jayson went to Dave’s again last night. His mom was cooking dinner. I declined to go. I was tired and had things to do around the house. I got some stuff done, but ended up watching some stuff I had on Tivo. I have not had a chance to watch much TV since last week, so I have allot of stuff on the tivo I have to see or take the chance that it will be overwritten soon.

Tonight Jay and I may goto Angilo & Maxie’s. it is a really good steakhouse right by my office. I need to talk with him later about it to see if he is still up for it.

Blogging On The Train

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With the Powerbook back, this is my first blogging session on the LIRR since I sold my old Powerbook in November. Jayson took an early train. I had stuff to do and I also wanted to get a quick hair cut, so I took a later train. With no one to talk to, I get to do some blogging. I haven’t done allot recently.

I still have a stuffy nose and a dry throat today. I think it is because of the dry heat in my apartment. I left my heat on high 2 nights in a row and I was bad ever since. I thought it was a cold last week, but I was fine Saturday and Sunday. It has to be an alergy or the heat. Of course I am not a doctor so what do I know?

Train Delays

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It seems like at least once a week this winter the LIRR has a major delay. I don’t remember it every being this bad before. I have been using the rail road on and off for 5 years and this winter is the worst.

Last night Jayson and I got stuck for almost 40 minutes due to a disabled train. When we did start moving we crawled the entire trip home because of train’s in front of us. The time does go by a bit faster if you do get a seat!!!

Once we got home, we decided to do a low key dinner. We went to my favorite pizza place. VI Pizza. Jayson hadn’t had good NYC pizza in a while.

Dave came by and picked jay up. He wanted to go see Dave’s family. I had some work I had to catch up on, so I stayed home. I still didn’t get to bed till midnight. The lack of sleep is quickly catching up on me. All in all it was a good day, even with the train confusion.

Boulder Creek

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Jayson, Dave and I went to Boulder Creek last night. it is a place like the outback. We stuffed ourselves. Whenever Jayson and I get together we always eat way too much really good food that is really bad for you. So far this visit is just like always.

Afterwards we went to Circuit City looking for the Family Guy DVD box set volume 1. We couldn’t find it. I told dave to look at amazon for it. We also drooled at all the high definition TV’s. We had a good night.

Powerbook Is Back

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I got my Powerbook back today from apple. not sure what they did to fix it, but it seems to close ok now. It is not as snug as my old powerbook when it closes but I am dealing with it.

The new 1GHZ 12″ Powerbook runs allot cooler than the other one I had. Other than that I cannot tell much difference from the old one. I haven’t done much intensive work on it yet so I cannot tell how much faster it is. The keyboard is still decent. It is a major improvement from my T-40 from work.

Now all I have to do is finish installing all my software on the powerbook. Of course that is an every changing task!!!

Halo

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So I played Halo for the first time ever Sunday night. it was fun, but I can see myself loosing tons of time playing that game. It reminds me of all the time I played half life back in 99 – 2000. John, Jayson, David, Cindy, and some others played at John’s. he hooked up 2 xbox’s and we had 8 people playing. it was fun.

I got to see Cindy and Dave for the first time in like 2 years. it was good to catch up.