I just had this interaction with our IT department:

Me: “I can’t get to my email. Web, iPhone, client, nothing.”

IT: “Well there’s no maintenance going on right now.”

IT: “Oh yeah, there’s maintenance on those servers going on right now.”

Me: “When will it be done?”

IT: “Midnight tomorrow night.”

Me: “…! A day of no email?”

IT: “Maybe. Maybe they’re doing some maintenance in chunks. I don’t know.”

Me: “I really need some notification of email being down anytime for any amount of time. We all use that to communicate.”

IT: “Well, we sent out the notifications to those who subscribed.”

Me: “Does everyone subscribe to infrastructure notifications? And how would I retrieve it if the maintenance makes it unavailable?”

IT: “I’m not sure.”

I know some will defend IT. To them I say: IT owns their branding. And this is how I will remember them for the immediate future.

Sorry my two readers, I’ve been too busy with life recently to blog.

I’ve been working way too much. With the laptop plugged in and sitting at the kitchen table. Nights are the only time I get to catchup on actual work, since I’m in meetings almost all day. I’ll end up working till 11PM or midnight. And get up as early as possible to get to work early so I can get in some working time before the day begins.

To keep some level of sanity at home, I’ve decided that I’ll only work till my battery charge runs out – if it’s not fully charged when I get home, oh well. We’ll see how this works out. Maybe this’ll give me more time to play Rock Band.

Been really busy at work… oh well.

OK, so it’s not exactly what I was thinking, but it’s actually the best of all worlds. Let me explain.

Intuit (via Quicken) is the leader of personal finance software. There’s just no disputing that statement. I spent time evaluating other solutions, and nothing even came close to Quicken. There’s a reason Intuit rules every category they’re in: they know what features customers want. (Full disclosure: I currently work for Intuit, but it has nothing to do with what I’m writing, as you’ll see this is not a review of Quicken)

Anyways, I’ve been running Quicken on Windows XP in a VMWare environment since I migrated to Ubuntu Linux. Last I had looked, Quicken 2007 (which is the version I use) was not compatible with wine (a Windows Emulator for Linux). However, I was reading a Linux magazine last night and saw that Quicken 2007 was now supported via Crossover Linux. I looked up Quicken 2007 support on the Codeweavers page this morning, and lo-and-behold someone gave it Silver rating! There were a few known issues, but everything had a workaround, so I decided to give it a try.

I first tried Wine on its own, but it was clear that wasn’t going to work. Whatever hacks (Tips & Tricks) the Codeweavers guys had figured out wasn’t going to work on Wine alone. I installed the trial of Crossover Linux and followed the convoluted instructions to get Quicken running. And it works!!  (See my updated instructions to get Quicken running here)

I don’t need Windows anymore at all! So screw you even more, Micro$oft!

Actually, more than halfway, but who’s counting?

Tax season is over but, as you may have heard, Intuit had a rough end of season.  That’s why I dropped off the face of the earth for a while.  There were a lot of issues to be dealt with.

So I’ve been on vacation this week.  I ended up working pretty regularly.  I answered calls, returned emails, and thought about some work stuff that I need to deal with.  But I’ve had other things to do, too.

Toby had surgery this Monday to remove a cyst on his side.  It extended from the muscle to the rib.  He was in a lot of pain those first few days.  He’s doing much better now, and wants to run and play.  I’m taking him off pain killers so he’ll settle down a bit.

I made an action list of stuff I want to get done.  I finished 80% of it – the easy 80%.  I still want to scan all my bills/statements/receipts and go paperless.  I’ve found that scanning all the stuff is only part of the hard part.  Naming and filing everything logically takes a while, too.

Alright.  I’ll post more later.  Peace.

Tax season is a bitch.