Don't Back Down

A client recently asked if I could install FCKeditor into Movable Type. Thanks to some detailed instructions, it was surprisingly easy.

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For the masses of services, that is. AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo! Can the list get any longer? Don't answer that.

While I don't necessarily mind having accounts on multiple services, I do find it a bit of a pain to keep up with all of them individually. So I've dropped a few over the years (accounts are still there, I just never receive anything since I don't turn them on). Mostly because installing software for each just pushes me over the edge. I'm not the only one.

I've used Trillian. I like Trillian okay, and I even registered the software at some point. It's worth $30, if for nothing else than the option it gives you. But just like all the individual applications, I find it getting too big for my needs. I only need the messaging, thank you very much. Everything else? Pretty much useless to me.

So I've been using Gaim for a while. Gaim isn't pretty (though some themes are prettier than others). But it does what I need. It connects to every network I need to use. It allows me to group contacts, in case you also have multiple accounts spread across multiple contacts. And perahps most importantly, it's fast. Even on my 2Ghz laptop with plenty of memory, Trillian is slow. It's slow to load. It's slow to respond. It crashes with some regularity. Gaim is speedy and it doesn't crash. It also doesn't have all the bloat of other apps.

For functionality, Gaim's the winner in this contest hands-down.

In 1961 (I hear), President John F. Kennedy said he wanted to put men on the moon. Something around 8 years later, in July of 1969, men landed on the moon for the first time. Now, President George W. Bush has said he wants men on the moon. Of course, he said it in 2004, and that he wanted it to happen by 2020. Now we see that it's apparently scheduled for 2018.

Let me get this straight. In the 1960s, we could do it in 8 years, but now it takes 13? What sort of sense does that make?

A couple of days ago, the alternator in our car died. Simply died. We could jump the battery, but it would run for varying times - perhaps a few minutes, perhaps a few seconds. So we tried to make it across town to the shop. The first jump was less than a mile from the hosue. Then we made it a couple of miles and had to jump it again. As soon as the cables were disconnected and the hood shut, the car died again.

At precisely this moment, a gentleman on a bike came by and asked if I needed a hand, offering to help push the car out of the way. Well, we were just uphill from an on-ramp to the shop, so I told him I realy needed to get it just a bit further down the road and should be able to coast in. So he jumped off his bike and helped me push. One time he even ran back to get his bike, rode it back to me, and jumped off to help push again.

After I hit the slope, he jogged alongside for a moment to make sure things were okay, and then took off on his merry way. Once we had dropped the car off, we returned to see if we could find him and thank him (some more), but he was nowhere to be found. He'll have to settle (!) for our prayers.

It's good to know that there are at least a few decent people in this world.

I just finished reading Larry Burkett's Business by the Book.

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My monthly statement from USAirways came today. They had some offers, so I thought I'd check them out. To fly to Grand Bahama was apparently $181 from Charlotte. So I decided to look for dates. I was presented with a low price of $128. When I finally selected the flights, the price per person (I was planning on taking my wife), the price was $225 each. What's the deal? I can understand the first number being without taxes and the second with taxes when you have to pay - but what's up with the third number?

I was browsing the feed from the Charlotte Observer today. The paper is owned by Knight Ridder, so you can typically access stories from any of the sites - appears to be one giant server (or set of them) with a bunch of domains pointing to the same place. Which is fine. If I used "charlotte" or "centredaily" or any of a dozen others, I can get to the articles. Everything is good.

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I've always enjoyed the columns of Walter Williams. Not only is he a good writer, but he has an entertaining sense of humor to boot, making the reading of his views on our world (and specifically economics) a joy to read. I've actually corresponded with him on at least one occasion about providing a news feed, so I don't have to keep checking his web site for updates. But no luck as yet. Perhaps one day.

Nonetheless, he hits the nail on the head again with his latest column, titled appropriately enough The Role of Prices. In it, Mr. Williams illustrates that the higher prices we see in the wake of Hurrican Katrina may illustrate price gouging by some, but that the role of higher prices makes perfect sense from an economic standpoint.

For instance, I certainly would prefer not to pay $5 or $10 per gallon of gas, but I can bet you if that was an option, I would do two things. First, I would re-evaluate my actions to make sure that I wasn't wasting quite so much - and therefore go longer between fill-ups, and then I would look around for competition that's pricing it cheaper. I don't get why we have a problem with this.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg government has announced a variety of new email newsletters, offering news across a number of different areas. Not news feeds, but it's better than nothing!

After hearing about Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney splitting up after just four months of being married, it's refreshing to see just the opposite - a celebrity couple who is actually working to stay together. The really interesting thing is that it's a couple that involves Charlie Sheen - perhaps one of the more notorious celebrities around.

Today I followed a link from Microsoft Money to a potential upgrade - from 2003 to 2004 (yes, I'm a bit behind). Naturally, the link didn't work. Nice. So I then visited the actual Money home page. After reviewing the possible options, I settled on the Standard edition - I don't generally need all the bells and whistles, and it seemed to fit the description well. Plus, a $10 rebate dropped the price to just $20.

So I chose the "download" link. It sent me through a purchase process. That actually went pretty well, but I had to sign in with a Passport, so I used my Hotmail address. No problem, but when I went to check the account for a receipt of sorts, nothing was there, since I hadn't signed into Hotmail for a while. I activated the account and all, but it looks like it was too late. So no confirmation. That means no rebate. But not a big deal at this point.

Next, I went about trying to actually figure out how to get the software. The thank you page essentially indicated that you signed into your current Money installation with a Passport account and it would automatically kick off the upgrade. No luck with my dated copy of Money 2003. So I searched the knowledge base and troubleshooting documents. No luck.

Finally, for no particular reason, I downloaded the trial version of Money 2006 Deluxe, and installed it. What do you know - when I logged in, I was prompted about an upgrade being available. Good planning there.

Once I actually got signed into the product and was poking around, I received a message about an update being received, and I needed to restart. I clicked the appropriate button to start the process, and it turns out that the program crashed. So it restarted automatically - still in Deluxe Trial mode. Out of frustration, I closed it and restarted once more, and what do you know - I finally have my copy of Money 2006 Standard running. What a nuisance.

Update; Just for kicks, I checked my Hotmail account after writing that, and I actually managed to get the email. Maybe I'll score a rebate after all!

This mashup is pretty cool - use the Google Maps interface to find the closest sellers of the vehicle you want at eBay Motors & Google Maps (via). Neat.

What I think would be really cool is to see instead how many vehicles are for sale in your general area. That way you could find out what sort of drive you are willing to make, and find a car that fits the criteria - instead of looking for a particular vehicle that may be available just outside of your range.

This would be awesome in conjunction with the MLS database as well - that way you could easily browse a particular area of town, seeing what is available where you'd like to live, rather than being completely constrained by the number of bedrooms and bathrooms (ideally you could check those as well).