Here’s a tape from my Apple Calculator.

29.99 + 62.99 + 42.02 = 140

WTF?

Part of my recent switch from Windows XP to Mac OS was to get my 12 years of Quicken data moved over. No big deal, I thought. I did that 10 years ago when I switched from Mac OS 9 to Windows 2000.

Yeah, right! I exported my Windows Quicken data as QIF data, and spent $60 to get the overpriced Quicken for Mac 2007 software (they don’t have the cheaper Basic version I like to use on Windows). After importing my data into Quicken for Mac, I notice the balances are off…way, way off…not even close. I thought, WTF, so I did the export and import again. Still OMGWTF! So I go to The Internets and ask The Google about it. There’s a tech note on the Quicken support site about it, which states:

Quicken for Windows and Quicken for Macintosh have different features and data file structure. Due to the differences in the programs, not all data can be converted from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for Mac. The following information shows the data that will NOT convert from Quicken for Windows to Quicken for Mac. This information will need to be re-entered in Quicken for Mac after converting your file.

I’ll translate that for you. “Due to our bad programming, you are shit out of luck if you believe our file formats are anything close to standard or consistent.”

Even though I have WIndows XP running in Parallels on my Mac, I really didn’t want to use it for personal data like my financial accounts. I wanted to move everything back to Mac. So I found a 60-day evaluation for a Mac financial program called Liquid Ledger. I imported my Quicken for Windows QIF export data. Low and behold, the data showed up just fine. All the reconciled and running balances came out to the penny. After I used it for a while, however, I got frustrated with its interface. It’s a bit clunky and difficult to use, and acts quirky at times. For example, I used a filtered view to show just the last two months of transactions, and entered a new transaction with the date in the form mm/dd/yyyy where it expects mm/dd/yy. But it recorded the year 2007 as 2020, and the transaction disappeared from view. I thought it was acting flakey and reentered it, and yet again until I noticed a wildly negative balance. Yikes! It took me a few moments to figure that out and get it corrected. Ultimately I didn’t like it and deleted the software. And it was more expensive then Quicken so I’m glad I didn’t buy it.

Next up was iBank 2. I had some problem importing all my data — it locked up twice before it succeeded, and it flagged all imported transactions as cleared, so my reconciled balances were wrong. The latter was reasonably easy to fix by reversing the cleared status on everything for the past month, plus a few more from late in the previous month. IBank2 has a nicer interface and is easier to use. It also has a Dashboard widget for making quick entries, although it is flawed because there is no field for entering check numbers. I don’t write a lot of checks, but I do sometimes. I have 30 days to decide if I want to keep it, but it seems the most promising now.

I did get my $60 back from Quicken.

Consider this scenario involving a geometric sequence. You need to cover the distance from a start to an end. For each leg of the trip you can go exactly half the remaining distance to your destination, no more no less. At first you get halfway there, then 3/4, then 7/8, then 15/16, and so on. Going this way you will get close, but you never quite arrive.

I’m doing a clean install of Windows XP pro SP2. This is what Windows Update is like. I run it, reboot, and go back to find that an update has an update. Rinse and repeat again.

I’m typing this from my Mac since my PC is on its never ending journey to fulfillment, an unreachable nirvana.