Monthly Archives: February 2005

Is that OK for you?

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Another quick rant. I’m working at home today, which means I’ve had to field two telemarketing calls already, and it’s only lunchtime. Both calls were from companies that I am already a customer of, but they both used a technique that I’d encountered in the past but only recently got wise to: the “Is That OK?”

Rather than asking a question that’s unambiguous, like “would you like to take advantage of this offer?”, the New Telemarketers are asking “is that OK?”, or “how does that sound to you?” A positive response on your part, meant to indicate that the offer sounds interesting but you’re not committing to anything, is taken as an acceptance of their offer. Sly, very sly. But I’ve got wise to you now: ha!

Evil popups are back

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Grrr. I thought we’d seen the last of these, but I had noticed the odd popup lately, in both Firefox and Safari. It seems that those dirty advertisers have found ways to get around the popup-blockers present in most modern browsers by default (and IE with XPSP2 or a third-party add-on).

Veerle Pieters has a great quote from a web advertiser on her blog:

By using a popup blocker, you are essentially stealing their work. You’re nothing more than a common thief.

Nice to know that particular advertiser cares so much for their users.

The Proverbial Six-pointer

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Southampton play West Brom tonight. Southampton are 19th in the Premiership; West Brom are 20th, with two fewer points. If we lose, we go bottom. If we win, we’ll go above Crystal Palace, who are currently safe in 17th place, on goal-difference.

To say this is the biggest match of the season is an understatement. FA Cup Quarter-final1 against Man. Utd? A trifle, in comparison.

To think I gloated at my brother last year as his team – Leeds Utd. – were relegated…

Update:
It finished 0-0, despite Saints having at least three good chances. Bring on Arsenal!

[1] If we beat Brentford in the 5th-round replay.

Oi! Bent! No!

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Marcus Bent. What can I say? Comedy name, son, but your last-minute equaliser for Everton against the clearly-superior-on-the-day Saints has robbed us of two desperately-needed points.

The run-in to the end of the season isn’t great:

  • 22 February: West Brom (A)
  • 26 February: Arsenal (H)
  • 05 March: Tottenham (H)
  • 19 March: Middlesbrough (A)
  • 02 April: Chelsea (H)
  • 09 April Blackburn (A)
  • 16 April: Aston Villa (H)
  • 19 April: Bolton (A)
  • 24 April: Portsmouth (A)
  • 30 April: Norwich (H)
  • 07 May: Crystal Palace (A)
  • 14 May: Man Utd (H)

You can write off the away games, probably, unless our form away from fortress St. Mary’s improves dramatically: we’ve had no away wins all season.

In the spirit of always looking on the bright side of life, though, I would offer these crumbs of comfort:

  • We seem to raise our game against better teams. We played Everton off the park on Saturday, and destroyed LIverpool two weeks ago.
  • We have still got to play West Brom, Norwich and Crystal Palace: two three six-pointers.
  • Paul Smith is clearly a competent replacement for the injured Antti Niemi.
  • Erm, that’s it.

Keep your fingers crossed, Saints Fans, it’s gonna be one heck of a ride. Man Utd at home on the last day of the season? Somebody pass me the calming pills, please…

Looking for Mac OS X personal finance software

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I’m pretty, ahem, dedicated to keeping our finances up to date and accounted for, and traditionally have used MS Money on Windows for this purpose. Say what you like about Microsoft (I’m not their biggest fan, to say the least) but Money is an app that works well and is pretty simple to use. I started with Money 98 in 1998, then upgraded to Money 2000 two years later.

The thing is that we now use our iMac for 99.99% of our computer work, and it would be really handy to have a finance app on the Mac that works, conceptually at least, like Money. There is no shortage of accounting software for the Mac, of varying quality, but no big players are in the market. Intuit pulled out of the UK Mac market a few years ago (pre-OS X) and have just recently pulled Quicken out of the UK Windows (and therefore the UK as a whole) market as well.

I can’t believe that I’m the only one who needs personal financial software as a Mac user. I know there’s MYOB, and I’ve downloaded a trial version, but it seems much more business- than personal-focused.

Over the course of the next few weeks I am aiming to do a group test of various OS X personal finance apps, both freeware and shareware, that I have discovered.

So far my list consists of:

I’m confident that I can whittle these down pretty quickly to a much shorter list, as I have quite particular requirements:

  • Categories, not accounts, for income & expense categorisation. I’m not a trained accountant – all that double-entry stuff leaves me a bit cold…
  • Similar look and feel to MS Money/Quicken.
  • Easy setup of accounts.
  • Loan amortisation functionality: input the interest rate, length of term, payment etc and have it work out the missing info.
  • Support for investments, credit cards and liabilities as well as regular current/savings accounts.
  • Budgeting.
  • Something like Money’s Debt Planner.
  • Reporting.

Not much to ask, is it? I just want Microsoft to port Money to the Mac, really. I imagine that would be one step too far for the Mac Business Unit, though ;)