The last time I wrote about financial software was over 9 months ago. I was using jGnash2 at that point and grudgingly accepting. I soon lost interest in the manual pain it caused and got rid of it.

In my initial experiments, I had actually gone so far as to purchase Moneydance. I didn't like it initally, but most of that came from not being able to properly connect to my bank accounts due to some sort of certificate validation issue. Updates were issued, and I tried it again a few months ago.

As usual, connecting to financial institutions, getting everything categorized correctly, and dealing with different history lengths for each account was a pain. I spent a solid weekend working through all the backlog to get the accounts into some sort of understandable order.

The only problem I encountered when I started was that one of my credit cards was at FIA Card Services which did not provide any direct download options or any option to download anything but a completed statement. That credit card was sold to Bank of America, which delivers statements on stone tablets by carrier pigeon in Washington State. Since it was going through all these changes, I was going to be using it less, so I could stand a few transactions a week that were manually entered.

For investment accounts, it works pretty well. Even Quicken had problems with my 401k rounding the number of shares. Moneydance is about the same in that respect.

The other strange thing about Moneydance is that it will not do online accounts for loans. It's not a huge issue, but my mortgage took some tweaking to get it to the right place. Once it is set up correctly, it'll just keep scheduling payments and allocating interest/principal/escrow as expected.

I've been using this for about 3 months now without hating it, so that's something. Technically, the stock quotes are an extension, but that's not hard to install and use. They allowed 2010 users to upgrade to 2011 for free, others at a 50% discount. The license currently costs about $50. Hopefully, that's a one-time expense.

In the modern world of the Internet, we have all become too familiar with the "system errors" that plague our virtual existence. These are usually not a major issue, but I find our willingness to accept them a bit absurd at times. Sure, some of those issue have to do with scaling or minor bugs, but I often feel that they are used to cover up human error or just because no one is watching.

The story starts a few years ago when I signed up for a credit card from Schwab. Shortly after I got the credit card, they said they had some sort of major issue and had to reissue a lot of cards. I got a new card with a new number and had to move all my auto-payments over again. They were always vague about why they had to this, which didn't make me comfortable. Still, they detected and fixed it without any real effort on my part. I can live with that, even though I was a bit worried. Months later, they sold the entire card over to FIA Card Services, the transition was smooth, but FIA offered very poor online banking options.

In mid-2011, it was announced that another change was coming. I was not happy as the wonderful 2% card was becoming much worse, not to mention that it was going to Bank of America. I got another card to try to keep the bulk of my purchases at or above the 2% reward level and figured it was good enough. The transition was rocky and included me not having any online access to information about my account for 20 days. I suffered through that to find Bank of America had worse online banking options than FIA. Still, I was only going to use the new card for gas and groceries, so it wouldn't be that bad.

Today, I received another copy of my card in the mail. I opened it and immediately wondered why Bank of America was increasing the odds of my card getting stolen. I have a card. I didn't ask for another one. Since I have just gotten back from vacation, I think about how scary it would have been if it was put in another resident's mailbox (a common occurrence) and left out in the open in our entry-way (another common occurrence) for some random person to take. This was an ACTIVE card. It's exactly the same as the card I'm using now, so it is already active without any verification of identity.

I called Bank of America immediately. I was told by a nice recording that I would have to wait "over 5 minutes" to talk to a representative. Yes, I suppose 20 minutes is more than 5, but I still hadn't talked to anyone yet. I tried online and was met with a 32 minute wait for an online chat representative. I tried later and made it through to someone almost immediately. Upon asking why another card was sent, she simply replied that she had no clue. It doesn't instill confidence, but I appreciate her honesty. I asked if there was any way to find out. She dug for a while. Well, it was a "system error" that the new card was sent. Apparently, there was a problem with the Schwab card replacements. She was sorry, but the card was sent in error. I registered my complaint about the security of my account, she said she agreed and would pass it to her management, and I thanked her before hanging up.

My question is this: who on Earth is QA-ing this crap? Heck, who's managing the project? I've charged over $600 to my new card in the past 2 months. It's pretty obvious that I got the original. I think they should learn from this and use it as an interview question. The people who don't say a word about checking for customers who have activated and used their card will not get a job. Just send them home right away. Banking software is complex with its security rules, pains of government regulation (people who've moved accounts to Washington State know what I mean), and strict need for complete accuracy. If someone can't come up with something as basic as "only send new cards to people who might actually need them" doesn't come up, I don't trust anything else they've done. I am not going to stand for yet another "system error" in my credit card account.

In conclusion, it was a fun 2 months with Bank of America. I will be paying off my card and closing the account as quickly as I can.

Recently, several pieces of electronic equipment have met their demise in my home. It started with my HTPC about a month ago. I went on vacation and came back to find it making strange noises and not producing a display signal. Last week, I ended up having to convert my linux box to fulfill the task by installing Windows 7 Ultimate. Finally, my receiver blew up (almost literally) the next night.

Now that I have nothing connected to my TV except my HTPC and my Wii (which I barely use), I really don't have a need for more than one remote to turn the TV on and adjust volume. I've been using my old Logitech wireless desktop, but the keyboard and mouse really get in the way.

I decided to look around a bit over the weekend and found a gem. I picked up a Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard. This thing is pretty cool so far. It's better than the full wireless keyboard and mouse in a few ways. First, it works across the room. Don't laugh. My Logitech products can't work half way across the room. Second, it's smaller than a remote. Third, it's got a laser pointer!

Ok, that last one isn't really all that cool anymore. I'm not going to be typing any essays on this thing (people with shorter fingers may not be able to type as well). The touchpad is responsive and handles taps pretty well.

I do have two minor complaints. The first one isn't a surprise since the pictures are clear, and the reviews mentioned it. The keyboard is in columns, unlike a regular keyboard. I have this problem on my Kindle, as well. I keep hitting "m" instead of "n" because of the column placement. The other complaint is that (unlike most thumb-oriented keyboards), the shift, ctrl, and alt keys have to be held down. This is completely normal for a keyboard, but it can be a bit difficult when you're using your thumbs.

Finally, I'll leave you with a few fun things. The USB receiver is stored in a small compartment in the keyboard itself. There is a backlight that you can turn on, that is very nice and bright. Last, but not least, Fn + Enter does a ctrl+alt+del. They certainly know who's going to be using their keyboard!

I was recently on vacation and checked into a hotel that did not have free wifi. At this point, I am basically enough of an internet addict to pay the absurd amounts of money for the wifi. I can usually mitigate some of this cost by just using my Motorola Atrix to access the internet over the cell network when I didn't need the full functionality of my netbook.

However, my strategy was foiled this time. I have had an almost complete cell phone blackout in my hotel. I'm not talking about my room here. I'm talking about the entire building. Granted, I don't have a great signal when I walk outside, but I have only looked at my phone a few times to see a single bar on it.

Well, this isn't really too bad. I mean, I have my netbook, and I can pay to get on the wifi. Of course, that's per client. I guess my phone is just an expensive little brick. There are things I want to do on my phone, though. It's a source of entertainment as well as a device for calling people and looking up restaurants.

I did a little searching around. I found several forums about how to get an android phone to connect to the internet through a computer. I was pretty happy with that since most people want to do it the other way. I finally found a forum that gave me what I needed.

The software that has saved a bit of my sanity (if there is actually any left) is called Connectify. It's pretty simple to set up. I only needed the free version. It will actually let you use the wireless interface to act as an access point as well as the way the laptop gets on the internet. I was able to set it up in a few minutes and get my phone on the internet through my laptop.

I honestly wonder if I could get rid of my wireless access point and just use Connectify...

If I give that a try, I will post the results.

I recently found out that Philip K. Dick wrote a trilogy of books centered around God and various interpretations and concepts around it. I realized that I actually own the middle book of the trilogy in real, physical form. Realizing that the first and third books were available on my Kindle, I snatched them up. I was ready to start the trilogy from the beginning.

I read Valis, which is the first book in the trilogy. For a while, I thought I was about to set a record, and ended up posting 8 snippets. Many of those came the first night. Honestly, I decided to hold myself back. As I got further into the book, the quotes would have been lost on anyone without the complete context. The book is about a guy named Horselover Fat. Early on, the narrator slips from third person into first person when referring to Fat (as his name is often shortened in the book). The narrator is forced to admit that he and Fat are the same person. Much of the book makes you wonder if PKD actually remembers that the narrator is also Fat. He even gives the narrator a name about halfway through the book. Knowing that, some of my friends might have found my confused journey through the book amusing.

Here's the problem, though. I finished Valis. I'm moving on to The Divine Invasion now. It's a real book. I'm only a few chapters in, and I swear I wanted to highlight and comment on a segment last night. I guess I have to learn to deal with this dead tree technology for a little while. I can't even find my bookmark, it's been so long. The really daunting part is that I have Heidegger's Being and Time in my night stand that I've been putting off for a couple years. That might be really difficult now.

The last book, is The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, which I have waiting on my Kindle for when I'm done with the real book.

I've had a couple people ask me about my logic in deciding to move this site. I guess I can provide a little more insight into what I was thinking. The best way to do this is probably with pros and cons for each option.

First, we should consider where I was running before, a rented server from esecuredata.

Pros:

• Complete control - I mean complete control. I could log in and do anything I wanted on this server. I could install anything and run anything. This is why I got this server in the first place for hosting the price tracker.
• Reasonable price for a dedicated server
• Minimal interference from the "hosting" company

Cons:

• Paying for a full server when hosting a low-traffic blog
• All migrations had to be handled by me
• No redundancy when there was a scheduled outage
• Backups had to be manual or self-scripted
• Upgrading the OS costs money

Clearly, there are cons for my use case that were mostly financial. If the host had been free (or considerably cheaper), I probably would have sucked it up and continued to pay.

The next option I considered was a static blog generator. There are literally dozens out there. They provide a piece of software you run on your computer. You manage the blog on your computer and publish it to a hosting system. I was considering doing this with some sort of cloud-based storage.

Pros:

• Seemingly simple - see cons
• Cheap

Cons:

• Not actually simple - It turns out that most of these static blog generators are commandline tools. The one GUI-based tool that I found (thingamablog) was not very good.
• Apex domain issues - Using cloud-based storage is great for www.webgadgets.ws, but I typically don't have an IP address for webgadgets.ws. I would need to find a service that would redirect to www.webgadgets.ws or I would have to have a host somewhere providing that functionality or proxying the site. Considering I always publicize this site as webgadgets.ws, this is a pretty major issue.
• Limited editability - I would not really be able to edit my blog from anywhere. I could use source control to save the raw files, but I'd still have to make sure the software is installed everywhere I wanted to edit.

Finally, we get to something familiar with Wordpress.

Pros:

• Popular
• Full-featured
• Free
• Apex domain mapping

Cons:

• Lost SEO - Pebble (my former blog software) provided permalinks in the form of "/<something made from the post title>". Wordpress does something like "/<year>/<month>/<something made from the post title>". This is clearly incompatible.
• Lost control of subdomains - Wordpress needs to be your name server if you map an existing domain to it. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to create and maintain foo.webgadgets.ws if I wanted to.

The last one on the list is Posterous.

Pros:

• Free
• Complete DNS control
• Apex domain mapping
• SEO preserved

Cons:

• No support for StatCounter - StatCounter is my analytics and traffic monitoring system. I like it better than Google Analytics because it is simpler and more direct. Unfortunately, I cannot use it to its full capability because I cannot put JavaScript in my site template.
• No ad support - I did manage to get an Amazon ad on here (as you can see), but that's in an iframe with no javascript needed on my site to render it. Of course, with the traffic I get on this site, I don't really need ad support anyhow. It doesn't do anything for me.

There you have it. That basically covers my decision. I did also toy around with other pieces of software running on cheaper (virtual) hardware. Nothing really beats 80% of what you want for free, though.

For several years, webgadgets.ws has been hosted on a rented server from esecuredata. When the price tracker was running, this was great. I had a complete dual core host with 2 GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive. Seriously, that was awesome 4 years ago. I got it all for $79/month.

Years have passed, and the price tracker is long gone. I really had no need for a full host to run my blog and little else. With the difficulty of moving a blog from a non-standard platform (Apache Roller and then Pebble), I never set aside the time to actually migrate.

Today, I finally decided to find an alternative. I won't go into all the reasons why I decided to use Posterous instead of WordPress (both were options). The prime reason is that Posterous uses the same permalink format as Pebble, so I keep my SEO. I'm going to stick with it for a while. I'll see if I want to change something in a few months.

Anyhow, this should be fun! I'll play around with the theme a bit more as time goes by. It looks like I have a lot of leeway in the layout. Look for more changes.

A friend of mine launched a cool plugin for Microsoft Project. It's called Tap on the Shoulder. The idea behind it is that you can integrate MS Project with any email system to send out notifications to your team when tasks start and end. It's a really cool idea and helps Project get closer to the feature sets of some other tools. There's a free trial, so you should be able to give it a try before deciding to spend $49 to get a license.

If you use Project to track your team's progress, this should help keep you on track.

The conference is ending as I type. It was a lot of fun, and I learned plenty about tools that I never knew about. I have a better insight into HTML5, CSS3, the future of JavaScript performance, and so much more. The organizers and support staff did an incredible job on this conference, and I cannot wait to come back again (hopefully next year). I even have ideas about something I may be able to present in 2 years, if I am allowed.

I was honestly hoping to write more, but time and a bit of self-consciousness did not permit it. Please feel free to comment or ask any questions, and I can try to answer them. I look forward to going back to my job and showing some of these videos to my team.

Now, I'm just kicking back and waiting for the flight home tomorrow. Good bye, Velocity!

The last really interesting talk I attended was about YouTube's use of Flash and HTML5. They had some really interesting issues that they have had to deal with. Plus, there are some really odd side effects that they both observed and intentionally caused.

First, they are at the point where the two versions are functionally similar. The HTML5 version of the player does not have quite as many features, but you can try it out by going here. The biggest feature gap is in rights management. Currently, Flash has a proprietary rights management system to protect the content. HTML5 lacks that sort of protection now. Otherwise, there is no reason why the two versions should be different for very long.

The most interesting part of the talk was around the performance differences. HTML5 generally outperforms the Flash version of the player in actually getting loaded and up on the screen. They were saying that the difference was about 200ms. However, once the play button was pushed or there was a seek, the Flash player usually started playing about 2 seconds faster. This isn't really because Flash is better, though. It's because the edge cache doesn't have as many of the HTML5 versions of the videos because it is nowhere near as popular.

The problem remains, though, that Flash was slower on the uptake. They dealt with this by doing some strange hacks here and there. The most clever (and scary) of which was creating an image in a script block in the head tag that points to the CDN that holds the video. That way, the connection was already open by the time the page got to rendering the Flash widget. It's really clever, but I'd hate to see this be necessary for long.

There were a couple other cool things out there. HTML5 can actually do more exact seeking since it does not need to seek to a key frame. There was some tweaking on the API for controlling an embedded player since the HTML5 player has to be in an iframe. This tweak uses the postMessage method on the window, which I have never heard about. I want to look into that and its support. That could solve some of the issues we've had previously with communicating between a parent and an iframe on different domains.

All said, there was some interesting, funny, and scary stuff here.