ALERT - You should not be linked directly to this page.
That is if you are looking for the new week's page, that is.
Your pointer to Grafitti should aim at
http://www.OrbDesigns.com/bpages/current.html/,
as that is the redirection page that will always point to the current
week page. If you really want to skip the current page, then on
Monday mornings, pay attention to the Next Week above, when it
becomes a live link, then the new current week is up,
and you can move your direct link accordingly. YMMV.
G'day. (posted Monday 12/06/1999)
This is about computers, Linux, camping, games, fishing, software development, books and testing... the world around us. I have a weird viewpoint from a warped perspective. If you like that, cool.
And I thought I hated Monday's last week.<g> Monday following a 4 day weekend is something from one of the inner circles, I am sure. Other than recovering our health this weekend by (don't say it, Svenson) sleeping too much, I spent a fair amount of time playing with toys on the computer this weekend. The highlight was on Sunday, with the continued installation and testing of VMware, software that lets me set up virtual machines inside the computer. So right now I have Win95 running as a placeholder, until a copy of Win2K, RC3 shows up ... nudge, nudge. I also have part of a Debian GNU/Linux Potato installation in progress - that one has been entirely an internet install - no CDROMs involved. Tricky, that. But it boots, accesses the internet and should be kinda fun, eventually.
In other news, Jakob Neilsen has a new Alertbox out, here, entitled Usability as Barrier to Entry. Quote from the notifying email follows. Rather dramatic, methinks.
Increased user impatience will make new websites fail unless they are twice as usable as existing sites. Revolutionary Internet services must explain why users should care in no more than two lines.How to make users care in just one line... "You may already be a winner!" Now I am off to work... for the next five days. If anyone has a line on 6 good Lotto numbers, be sure to tell me. <g> Have a great day.
Lunch. One tenth of a work week done... Neilsen's premise is a little more believable than I suspected from the blurb. Being twice as good applies mostly in crowded segments of the market, and Jakob claims that it is easy to accomplish, since so many sites are so bad. In Daynotes news, Chris (Dr. Keyboard) has caught up again, and is in fine fettle. Also, Dave Farquhar is back with a vengeance.
In the interim, I am working on a little sheet metal and PCB design work for a pair of new products. The engineering samples were pleasing (functionally) to the customers, now it is time to make them (relatively) good-looking, repeatable, manufacturable and reliable. Sorry. I don't work for Maytag <g>, but I do my best. Also, I am given to understand that the "trail of breadcrumbs" navigation at the ETS site isn't quite as useful when only at the top of each page, and it has been suggested that I repeat it at intervals through each long page and/or (at the very least) repeat it at the bottom. Probably a key word, say 'navigation', or some such would also be useful in identifying the feature. Always more work than time to do it in. Later.
Over on Dan Seto's site, he laments, among other things, that if you want to create a persistent link to info on another daynoter's site, then you will have difficulty, since generally, we have created pages that are named 'current.html', so that you can have a bookmark to the newest material. Then, as the week ends, that file gets renamed as some week code (in my case 'zYYYYMMDD.html'), and if anyone linked to a specific point in my page, oh well. This is even tougher, of course, when done with dynamic content, as Shawn now does.
My answer is to create a 'current.html' that attempts to do an instant refresh to the correct current week file. It also contains a hardlink, in case the refresh fails for some reason. Here's the code that does the trick (you will be hard pressed to view source as it flashes by, as it is a 0-second refresh) The red text indicates items that change week-to-week. Please note that this method doesn't apply for Bo and Dr. Keyboard, both of whom use index link pages as their entry points...
On the subject of GNU/Debian Linux, I include for your eddification and entertainment a chunk of an exchange between Rick Moen and myself. I hope that you can detect my foundering attempts to understand the cryptic-to-the-uninitiated vagaries of the (you choose) best / most difficult distribution.<html> <head> <TITLE>Orb Designs Graffiti - To Current Week Redirector Page</TITLE> <META NAME="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache"> <META NAME="Cache-Content" CONTENT="no-cache"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Cache-Content" CONTENT="no-cache"> <META http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL=z19991205.html"> </head> <body> <CENTER><H3>Orb Designs Graffiti - To Current Week Redirector Page</H3></CENTER> <p><H3>This goes to the Current Week's Page.</H3> <p>If for some reason NOT, then click <A HREF="z19991205.html">here</A>... </body> </html>
Rick Moen wrote: > > Quoting Brian Bilbrey ([email protected]): > > > Well, I first tried a 2.1 install from lsl disks, and I couldn't even > > get the profile thing in dselect to work... the potato dselect offers > > apt as an option, somehow... > > Hmm. slink's dselect _ought_ to offer that as an option, right at > the bottom of the list of "access methods": "APT - APT Acquisition > [file,http,ftp]". I'm reading this from the screen of my slink-based > laptop, so, if yours didn't offer that, I'm not sure why. Oh, it may have done, but I was fighting with VMware simultaneously, and hadn't made much progress with slink before I realized that the VMware tools wouldn't work under slink, anyway. However, given the answer to the next question, I probably should have completed a minimal slink installation anyway. > > Anyhow, I'm ever so mildly confused by what you say, above: To my > knowledge, the only way so far to get to potato is to install slink > first. That is, you have to install at least the slink Debian base > system, then you switch to track the potato or unstable path. But > you might have done something or other that didn't occur to me. Sort of meandering through bits of the unstable tree at debian.org, I found that I could get rescu1440.bin, root1440.bin, and 2.5 diskettes worth of drivers, + put base2_2.tgz on an accessible file system, and build a potato installation from scratch. Tricky, probably not recommended, and I *know* I went through needless contortions to make it work, but I think there are bits of VMware that like more recent kernels than slink offers - the base slink didn't appear to entirely like the virtual machine... AND I am not sure I could repeat the process, but it worked, it did. :) The trick to confusing people is to do the unexpected, entirely without instruction. When learning to fly aircraft, this is dangerous and usually fatal behaviour. Fortunately, Linux is more forgiving. By the way... "switch to track the potato or unstable path" is a phrase which I do not understand how to implement. (Guessing here, based on 24 hours of playing with Debian) I presume this would be done by changing the /etc/apt/sources.list to point to *unstable* instead of *stable*, then running an apt-get dist-upgrade? Thanks for the help and the feedback.
Then there was this exchange between Svenson and Bob Thompson... and Matt Beland.
All well reasoned, thoughtful points. None of them negated by the gentleman's insistence in his filenaming conventions (noted above) that there are now 35 days in December. <g>The problem with a redirector is that a single click on the back button of thebrowser doesn't work as expected anymore. You come from daynotes.com to the current.htm and get redirected to x19991235.htm (or something). From there you want to go back. The back button jumps you from x19991235.htm to current.htm which redirects you back to x19991235.htm. If your connection is faster than the delay pressing the back button twice will work. if your connection is slower than the page loading pressing twice doesn't help. I don't know of an easy solution that will work always. When I want to put up a link I copy the URL and change it to the correct name by hand. Most daynotes use a consistent naming so it is easy to find out how the 'current.htm' will be named in a week time. And most daynoters have the current.htm as a duplicate of the real weeknumber.htm so the guessed link works immediately. Maybe some scripting is a good solution. I am not sure we should force Chris to use the week page style. I am using both and updating the day page is actually faster than updating the week page. I like daily pages and we are Day-noters, not Week-noters. Currently I create my text in WordPro and copy it in the day page. The day page is quite simple. There I tweak the html code till it looks almost right and then I copy the text block to the week pages. Maybe I should update my picture , it is in black and white :-) At the moment it is the best I have though. Svenson
Good points. I increased the delay from 0 seconds to 2 seconds, which should
allow anyone to back out. I also added some HTML to prevent caching so that
the redirector page will actually be read each time and redirect the reader
to the correct weekly page.
Silly me. I didn't realize that that was your picture. I thought it was an
owl.
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Or just odd. I am not quite interested enough to dig into the RFC's to see if there is mandated behaviour on this one that MS has embraced and extended (oh, sorry, enhanced). Maybe it is just a bug, and you've put it in a three piece suit for them :).I agree that the zero-length redirector causes problems in most browsers. But I just noticed something interesting; it doesn't affect IE5. If I click on Brian's site from my home page, I hit the redirect, see a flash of white and then I'm on his current page. What I would expect on hitting the "back" button would be to wind up back at the current page, because the back command will take me to the redirect, which will automagically push me back onto the current page. Instead, I click "back," and end up on my home page. I've tried it on several other sites; it only works with 0-time redirects. If there's any delay at all, it returns to that page. But if it's a 0-time redirect, IE5 skips it in the history list. Even clicking the down-arrow to bring up the full history list doesn't show a page between my home page and the current page of Brian's site. Now, that doesn't resolve the issue; there are plenty of Netscape users out there, and I'm fairly sure this feature doesn't work in Netscape. I don't recall it in Opera, either, although I haven't used Opera since 3.51. But it's still interesting. And oddly intelligent.
And lastly, Bo Leuf chimes in with the counter-point, I think. Not sure though, since I haven't done any caffeine yet...
Interesting. Way too long a delay from my perspective, and I don't understand why I shouldn't disallow caching (when Bob reminds me how to) on a mutable redirector page like the one under discussion.I agree with Jan, at least when redirection delay is set to "0". I use redirection for some legacy URL locations, but always set the delay to 8-10 seconds (and say so). The user then has time to read why the browser is being redirected, and also has time to back out and get past this cached page later. Although redirection should not occur on a cached page for normal browser settings (and you should not set the redirector page to diallow caching), the page author cannot assume that this is the case for all users. Anyone who does not care to wait the delay for redirection should, as mentioned, always have the explicit page link to click on. But equally important is I feel to have at least one link on the redirector page up in the site hierarchy, to the nearest parent contents page. / Bo
I post all of that, because the design by consensus model is one that is interesting, and related (perhaps) to the Bazaar model proposed by Eric Raymond, though I think that 'bizarre' might be more appropriate, since I am involved <g> I have bumped up the lag to 3 seconds, and we shall see how it goes. Any and all feedback welcomed. Wow. 100 emails (80 + from my mailing lists) later. I love learning stuff, but I get 40 mails from SVLUG between 11pm and 6am - these people *really* don't sleep. Off to work with me, now. Oh, and happy Tuesday.
Modifications to the code are made. I have borrowed back from the good Mr. Thompson his two-belts and two-suspenders method of cache prevention. The edits to the my redirector page have been reflected above, as well as on the redir page itself. Thanks, Bob.
You know, Bob ( and there *is* a 'Bob' behind this address, I presume ). Do you suppose that an email blitz is the polite or correct thing for a company to inflict on its paying customers? Especially when we had such difficulty with our online order last year, and ended up having to reverse charges and purchase Turbo Tax at a bricks&mortar store to get it. Don't get me wrong, I love your product. I just hate your marketing. Oh, and spell my last name correctly in the future. I have gotten and registered enough of your products over the years that I should be in at least one of your databases with my *correct* last name. For the interim, please remove me from your mailing lists, permanently. I know where to find you when I need you. Further email trying to sell me your products will be taken as a signal NOT to use them this year. I hope that I am perfectly clear.Subject: Time is running out to get TurboTax State FREE! Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 07:19:29 -0800 (PST) From: Bob M ... @info.turbotax.com *** changed to protect the peon *** To: [email protected] FREE Rewards for Valued Customers! ********************************************************************* Dear Brian Bilbre, Don't miss out on FREE rewards for valued customers! Order now to get: - FREE TurboTax State - FREE E-Filing* - FREE Double Bonus Don't miss out! Order online at: ....
Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter,
Do ya think I got my point across? The last time I had to send an email like this, a sales associate at Penney's got reorganized out of a job. And given how that individual treated Marcia, I felt glad. On the other hand, this 'Bob' person is just doing a job, and I have just made someone's job a little tougher - I hope.
Well, while I am doing this, and giggling myself into serious stomach upset with email antics of some other daynoters, I have a VM running, doing an online install of Netscape 4.7, so that I can get some zip tools (couldn't get there anymore with IE2.0... eeeeeeeK). And last night I completed phase one of installing the unstable branch of Debian GNU/Linux - Unstable apparently at this point means polishing the brass just before a new release, because this is quite clean. Still a lot more difficult than the mainstream distributions, but then, this isn't your grandmother's linux, and probably won't be. It will, however, be the Linux distibuted by VA, O'Reilly and the Debian Project, with documentation from O'Reilly, released under the Open Content license. If they got a slick installer in front of it, this could be really cool.
Linux security tip... The linux.davecentral.com site, run by Andover, is/was featuring PortSentry today. This is part of a suite of GPL'd packages to assist in securing Linux. The toplevel directory for the Abacus site is here. I have heard chatter about these tools previously, and I think it is probably an interesting thing to do a little more research into, since we have a persistent connection here. More as I know more.
![[205k] - Click thumbnail for full size](orbimages/vmw95.jpg)
Here's another shot of VMware running - THIS IS BIG, 205K - you have
been warned. The reason for showing this, is that last week's
tour showed installation modes, where
the virtual video card was only capable of 640x480 and SLOW under the
X-Windows driver. Once the Guest OS is installed, one fetches the VMtools,
which, among other things gives one sane resolutions. Shown to the left
is a window running Win95 1024x786 in my 1152x864 Linux KDE desktop.
You will note that the very top bar in the screen shot is my open applications
in Linux, including a couple of consoles, Klicq (the Linux ICQ client), Netscape,
bluefish (this editor) and VMware. Within the virtual machine, under Windows, I
have a folder window, Netscape 4.7 and Word 97 open. From a cold start in the
Windows desktop, with Netscape running, it take Word 97 between 3 and 4 seconds
to load to ready to type in a blank document. This isn't a slouch. We are
pleased (I use the schizophrenic 'we'). Not a bad deal for $99.
Signature of the moment time again, then good night.
"They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan
Morning. Well, November is over, and these pages were graced with 5150 page views, in 2105 visits, from 801 unique URL's. Thanks to ALL of you out there. I am flattered. Now some of the URL's, perhaps many, are actually same person(s), using the dynamic IP magic of dialup. It appears that the number one visitor was here over 100 times last month. Really bored, huh? <g> Some of the counts are down, compared to last month, but this is unsurprising, since I started logging Marcia's site separately in the last week of October. Still, I am having fun, Tom.
That's it for now - I said it was a quickie. Have a great day and I will catch up with y'all later on, as time and inspiration permit.
Virus/Worm Alert. I should have said time, inspiration or necessity. I think I saw something about this yesterday, but confirmed the information today. Update your virus definitions from whichever vendor you use... I quote from the Symantec site regarding the Worm.ExploreZip(pack)...
So be warned. There be tygers here. Sigh.Symptoms and Payload The behavior of the worm is identical to Worm.ExploreZip. It can propagate itself very quickly through email automatically and also via the network. When the email is sent, it will have the following email content. I received your email and I shall send you a reply ASAP. Till then, take a look at the attached zipped docs. It will also contain a worm attachment named zipped_files.exe. The worm has a very destructive payload and will destroy any file with a filename extension of: h, c, cpp, asm, doc, ppt, or xls.
Well, having issued the warning, I would have been remiss in my duties if I did not then proceed to upgrade all of the corporate virus protection services here and about. Of course there are several different versions and publishers and rev. levels extant in our little network, so it took me the better part of the morning top complete that, including upgrading two machines that only have the mutant virus checker that is incorporated into Norton System Doctor... That was too much load for a 32Meg system to handle, which drove RAM upgrades. I quiver in fear at Win2K for the office. Done-ish, and home now, though.
Tonight I am going to the SVLUG meeting, where Peter Anvin is speaking about the next generation of Linux boot loaders. Sounds riviting, doesn't it... But if you have ever used Lilo, and then found yourself at boot time staring at a system stuck at 'LI', wondering what to do next and did it involve a baseball bat - then this is your guy. Also there is a photo-filled Comdex report posted by Marc Merlin - SVLUG VP and worker bee at VA Linux Systems. His report can be found here. Needless to say, there is a heavy Linux slant to his coverage, but WTH, eh?
![[51k] - Click thumbnail for full size](orbimages/w95y2k.jpg)
On the Y2K front, we have a little windows trick which I have known
about since July 2nd, when our fiscal year became 2000, and the financial software
ground to a halt, even though it was Y2K compliant. Turns out that if the
Regional Settings date format is set to a '...yy' format then Windows is
not compliant, all other things being equal. So, Windows users,
go to Control Panel | Regional Settings --> Date tab,
and set the date format to something that has 'yyyy' in it. Do that now,
will you, before you forget. It won't take but a minute, really. Maybe a
later report on the meeting... Have a nice evening.
There certainly is more to bootloaders than meets the eye. There are horrid non-standards in the legacy PC BIOS that make bootloaders very tricky. Especially since most bios builders are happy once an MS product boots. This says that each and every hardware specific bios flashed has been tested to MS functionality and probably not more. That makes abstracting the hardware a LOT more difficult than I would have guessed. That said, 3/4 of what Peter was saying went right over my head. And unfortunately, he isn't a riveting speaker. He is very bright though, and fielded all sorts of awkward questions about his new Genesis boot loader (awkward questions for a coder usually start with "Why...").
Meantime, the honorable mention I received on Bob Thompson's
site
today have driven a lot of traffic my way. Hat's off to you, Mr. RBT, and
thanks to all the new visitors for taking the time to drop by. The only
other thing I can feel good about right now, of course, is that
Dan Seto has to go to meetings
to learn how to "facilitate meetings" (snicker, snicker). First off, yes,
it is a Daynoter's job to harass the others. Second, the day I say that
"I want to facilitate a meeting." someone needs to drag me off behind the
barn, and put a slug between the eyes, please. <g> Good night, all,
and enjoy your meetings, Dan ;>.
Orb Home / Top
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There must be WinRoaches in the wiring, or WinMice in the woodwork or something. Last night, I was up and online until about 11 something, and had just been communicating with Syroid. I get up this morning, and all the lights are green, but there's no connection. To bring things back to life I have to power cycle the... DSL router from Alcatel. Don't much care for that, actually. I might have to go find a more reliable piece of equipment, rather than something that behaves like a Microsoft product (needs rebooting to work properly <g>).
A quiet night on the mails, and sort of a calm morning - the last couple of days the weather has been politely raining at night, only, with clearing at morning. This day looks to be dawning cloudy and threatening... But the Yahoo weather thingy only says partly cloudy through the next four days, no rain indicated. We shall see. Have a nice day. Later.
Breaktime, and a little VMware updating... Bob had inquired why he would NOT have a grab button on his VMware, where I did in the Linux version of the VMware package...
Oh, right, the grab button. I think that the linux version has a grab button because of the configurability of mouse focus in X-Windows systems. MSWindows says "Thou shalt do it this way!", X-windows says, effectively, "Whatever, eh?", so VMware provides an explicit "now capture keyboard and mouse input to me" button. That's my best guess...
And coming to my site direct from their place, and from Bob Thompson's link to my VMware installation is VMware itself. This coincides with the email I just sent them -
Thank you! Kudo's all 'round, as I am sure you hear from customer after customer. Personally, I did not even try the evaluation version. Everything I ever heard about your product on my mailing lists said it simply worked, and it did.
I have even successfully installed Debian 2.2 (Potato) under VMware 1.1 for Linux, and am going to be attempting Win2K, RC3 in the next few days. I have posted a couple of glowing lines of praise for you and your product on my website. If I manage to make use of VMware in a commercial sense, trust that I shall upgrade to commercial use from the current hobbyist license I am using...
I know you've found me, since I see <ukiah.vmware.com> and <atlanta.vmware.com> tromping all through my log files. Welcome. The pages are persistent, and you may link to them for testimonial purposes if you wish...
They make an excellent product and if you need anything like it, then you need it badly - Strongly Recommended.
"Well, most of us, anyway." Hey, hi there Earthlings! I was just noting that many of the daynotes gangsters are now using some form of current (persistently linkable) page to link to the permanent content page for any given time frame, thus yielding persistently linkable sites. I, personally, regard this as a good thing, especially since I was the plagarized source on this one, at least one has publicly 'blamed' me for the forwarding page phenomenon - I could pass the buck to Dan Seto, whose lament (see the Noon Update) really started all of this. I am not sure about the delay though - I think I am going to drop it to 1 second, which is enough time to click the back button a second time for those backing out. personally, I either traverse my bookmark list (at work) or I open daynotes.com, then use the middle button to open link in new window, and just close each window as I am done.
Sorry, I was woolgathering there for a moment. What prompted this was my visit to Maximum Tech, the high-tech palace maintained by Shawn Wallbridge. He has done some pretty cool things. All of his daynotes are going to be served up realtime to the page you see... But I don't think you can bookmark anything. I ought to ask Shawn about that, because I am sure he will say something that I want to point people to, someday <g>.
Meantime I tried SnagIt/32 on the recommendation of the
good Mr. Syroid (no, not a pointer
to the recommendation - that was in another communication medium, just a link
to his top-level site). It is fun, it works, and it does some very nice things
to help automate screen capture, etc. If you document program behaviour in
Windows, you need this product yesterday. Look for it at your nearest
download site... like
here. Maybe more later. Have a nice evening - I am going three rounds with
updating Quicken on the other machine right now, who survives, we will
know later. Ta-ta.
Orb Home / Top
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TGIF, indeed. I went into the ring with Quicken last night, trying to upgrade the software as requested by emails from our bank and Intuit online... We got this computer with this version of quicken on it earlier this year - It is Quicken 99. There have been four revisions of this product, and ours is Rev 1. Their upgrade software doesn't like our version, and says to call. It doesn't say that their lines aren't 24x7 though, so you have to spend a couple-o-minutes navigating the voice mail maze to determine what to do. Call tomorrow. So I have an unexpected, pre-commute chore here, so this is going to be short. I did, however, receive the following from Svenson :
We *know* what a caf� is, over here in the colonies... but then, we regard the java bean as rather a religion, doncha know... However, I understand your usage of meeting, back in the bad old days, we used to tell our bosses we were going to an offsite meeting, and spend the next several hours pouring various kinds of antifreeze down our gullets. Sheesh. Also on the MS thing - off is often the best choice.> Second, the day I say that "I want to facilitate a meeting." > someone needs to drag me off behind the barn, and put a slug > between the eyes, please. <g> Eekes, slugs! I hate slugs. Now snails, that is something different, with a good garlic or wine sauce, ... But I don't see what you have against meetings. Most depends on the topic of course. here in Belgium, we talk about a 'meeting' when you get together with some friends in a caf� (pub, saloon or howd you call it over there). > something that behaves like a Microsoft product > (needs rebooting to work properly <g>) Since when do Microsoft products work properly after rebooting? Here they only work as expected after I switch the computer ... off. Svenson
Enjoy your Friday (or Saturday, as the world turns, especially your Saturday - I feel good that some of you are already one day closer to Monday than I am - sort of a safety net or buffer if you will). I will do my best, and see y'all later on.
Quicken wins round 2... Not a real surprise, I guess. At 6:45 I call Intuit tech support, just the way the dialog box said. Said tech hemmed and hawed, then claimed that I needed to purchase an unlock code to upgrade the product from the OEM version shipped by HP with the machine. So I called the Sales number the Tech gave me... They politely listen'd to my problem, consulted someone, came back for a couple of questions, put me on hold again, and then, miracle of miracles, blind transferred me over to the online banking division of my bank. The poor woman over there had no idea why I had been transferred, but wanted to go through the whole rigamarole of proving my identity to her so that she could note the whole problem... Hmm - I don't think so. This simple problem has already cost me a half hour last night, and so far an hour this morning, with the added benefit of putting me right into the teeth of commute traffic, since I am leaving so late. I note to the bank person that indeed she can't help me upgrade my software. She agrees. So clearly continuing that conversation would be a waste of time, we end the call.
One extended commute later, I call Intuit sales again, and ask why oh why did they forward me to the bank, and why can't they help me - it takes about 15 minutes for them to reach the conclusion that I should upgrade to Quicken 99 Deluxe, at a cost of $44 and change (not including tax). I counter with the notion that I could buy Quicken Basic 2000 (which is compliant and compatible) for about $20 online, so why in the world would I do what was being suggested. Oh, good point. After further extended consultations and periods of muzak torture, it is determined that I never should have been sent to the sales people, it is a tech support problem, and I will have to call them tonight when I get home to get this problem resolved.
I know, I know. But to not use this software anymore would be to cut off the nose to spite the face - a bad move if your name isn't Cyranno or Tycho. I like the software a lot, and had someone told me, "Look, you're going to hate this answer, but just buy the Quicken 2K product and you'll suffer much less mental stress and aggravation." Well, I probably wouldn't have listened, being a stubborn cuss, but you should. I am bound and determined to make an upgrade work, or know why - but if you need to make Quicken work properly, just upgrade to the 2K product and you will be much happier than I am right now. Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!
And again... the following is a response to the above email to Intuit of a couple of days ago, on an unrelated topic...
I guess that I will have to take advantage of the last link they offered, eh? Then visitor Tim Werth chimes in with the following, regarding today's plight -Subject: Thanks for contacting Intuit Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 08:48:08 -0800 (PST) From: [email protected] To: [email protected] To ensure the highest level of customer service possible, Intuit provides customer service resources on the World Wide Web. If your e-mail software supports hyperlinks, simply click on the links below to take advantage of any of these responsive customer service options. For questions about the status of an existing order, go to: http://orderstatus.intuit.com/status/ordentry.asp For questions prior to ordering, go to: https://orderupdate.intuit.com/record.asp?topic=ttx3 If you do not wish to receive informative Intuit e-mail announcements in the future, go to: http://privacy.intuit.com/email * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This is an automated response. Replies to this e-mail cannot be answered. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thanks for taking the time to read, and to comment. I simply can't force myself into the MS camp on this one - besides, I *really* do like their products. I also find myself waiting for an OS or at least Linux-based product. I would imagine that Intuit will actually be first out of the gate with that one, unless they are total boneheads, and while I have a less-than-stellar opinion of their marketing, sales and tech support types, I have to grant them some good product and usability engineers, probably some of whom are doing a subversive port as we speak... <g>I agree with you that Quicken is a good product BUT. Intuit torqued me off so much a couple of years ago that I switched to MS Money and Kiplinger Taxcut. Since then I haven't spent a penny on any Intuit product and don't have any plans to ever touch their software again. Hopefully an opensource product will emerge on the Linux platform that can take the place of both Quicken and Money. L8r, Tim
Quicken, the final chapter... After all of this, the version that we have currently in system is not, I repeat NOT upgradeable. After explaining in a reasonably calm voice my day on the phone to the most recent Jason at Intuit, with just a hint of chainsaws way down in the rumble, I was escalated to the supervisor, Adam, who quickly told me that they would send me an upgraded and upgradeable version of Quicken 99 Basic on CD via USPS, and it should arrive next week. Sigh. Now where did I put that prozac... Just kidding - I don't play that no more. From Tom on the topic...
******************On Quicken. I loath their marketing skills. I detest the fact they force me to upgrade too often (like it or not sometimes, as you've found out yourself). And it *really* pisses me off that I have to register their product *every time I reinstall it* (and doing what I do for a living, that's too often). You can't tell me they don't have my name on file multiple times over (and several times with *creative* names and comments embedded in the registration form) or the technology to query their database. Their interface is usable; their technology leaves much to be desired at times. Leah and I have used Quicken for five years now. We continue to use it. But like Outlook, only until we can find a suitable replacement...
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