verbosity

Pennypacker

What in the Sweet Chocolate Christ is a Pennypacker?

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 15:17:09 -0500
From: mrchima330@netscape.net
Subject: GOOD DAY FRIEND PENNYPACKER,
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;

MR CHIMA VICTOR DATTI
GROUP HEAD TREASURY,BILLS AND EXCHANGE
UNION BANK OF NIGERIA PLC.

GOOD DAY FRIEND PENNYPACKER,

...

Tasteless 419

I already despise spam, but it's completely tasteless to use the recent tsunami disaster as the heart-mover for a 419-scam:

From desmond4@tiscali.dk  Fri Jan 14 17:30:50 2005
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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 15:29:53 -0800
Message-ID: <41AC6AEF00024E73@cpfe0.be.tisc.dk>
From: "Desmond Dube" 
Subject: Tsunami Relief
Reply-To: dd4dube@yahoo.co.in
To: bshane@dmainc.com
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My dear friend,

MY name is  Mr Desmond Dube from South Africa.

With  deep sorrow,I am writing this message which I beleive you may
honenstly comprehend and consider its contents emotionally then expedite
action with dispatch.

The recent disaster(Tsunami Tragedy),consequences of the earthquake which
occurred on 26 December 2005, off the coast of Sumatra / Aceh Province,
causing Tsunami waves which then broke at the shores of most of the countries
off the Indian Ocean,where more than one hundred thousand people have lost
their lives and many more have seen their homes utterly destroyed is indeed
a sad news and great setback to humanity.Though I am presently facing a
terrible ailment here on my side without any remedy as experts'diagnosis,I
do share my sympathy here on my sick bed.In this urgly circumstance,I have
decided to give out my total financial support to the concerned victim/countries.

Hence my  time on earth  to die is  now  very  short  and certained,  may
I crave your indulgence to use your position and experience to claim the
fund, Two Million, Six Hundred and Thirty-four Thousand dollars, which I
have in my Bank  Account, and send it to the body of 'United Nations or
any body' that is responsible for the appropration of the various fund donations
and supports from different sources across the world to the affected  people/countries.

I am counting on you to shouder this assistance base on your statue, in
order to avoid  misdirection of my financial support to the affected people/countries.If
I should exploir the assistance of some Individuals and  Organisations here
in my country,the fund would be misdirected, instead they enriched themselves.
I know without doubt  that you  as  a  person of high magnitude and dignity
will not cheat  or disappoint me in  the appropration and direction of this
my fund support to the Tsunami victims.

I have once contacted my Bank on this matter but I was advised to come
forwared in person to carry out the transaction by myselve due to some
buearucrative procedures.When I explained my present condition to them,
I was advised to sort for a Trusted Representative  to come forward instead,
hence your importance.

If you could honestly represent me in the bank,claim the money without absconeding
then send it to the Tsunami affected people through any of the outstanding
body responsible for the Tsunami funds relief,I am giving you fifteen percent
of the total amount and then send the balanced eighty-five percent as a
reward for your honesty.

In this circumstance, I want you to feed me back as soon as possible so
that I can effect  the support quickly, mostly now that the people of the
affected countries are nursing the pain of their loses, and my condition
is also getting worse everyday.

However. I am  anxiously waiting for your prompt response.

Thanks and Godbless you.

Mr Desmond Dube.

Intuit Extortion

If this web page is to be believed, my assumption was correct and Intuit is charging financial institutions for the ability of Quicken to import their OFX data. This is what is commonly referred to as "extortion." There's nothing different about one company's OFX data that requires extra programming from Intuit, they're just checking some field in the OFX data and rejecting it if the identified bank isn't Paid Up.

I'll be using this link in a few minutes.

[EDIT] The resulting form (if you purchased electronically) doesn't appear to work. I even tried multiple browsers. Big surprise; why should they make it easy to get your money back? Here's the phone number: (800) 811-8766. Yes, it's like pulling teeth when you call them, so prepare yourself accordingly.

For once, Microsoft is the Good Guy. Imagine that. So, from those who have used both Quicken and MS Money, is Money good enough? I track house and vehicle loans, several bank accounts and credit cards, and investments. I like projections and flexible reporting. Or has GNU Cash come along far enough to be usable for all that I need? What about Moneydance?

Import our own data format? Never!

My letter to Intuit (Quicken) after finding out that Quicken 2005 will not allow me to import my checking account's QIF data anymore:

-------------------------------------------------
Forcing financial insitutions to support OFX transaction download by dropping QIF import support only ends up hurting the very customers that want to use your product. I bank with a smaller insitution that's been faithfully serving our city for almost 90 years, providing far better service, even online, than the big-name banks available in my area. Their web site allows me to download in QIF, IIF, and CSV format, and using Quicken's QIF import with their data has always worked perfectly. They also provide a download with file extension .OFX, which they list as being for Microsoft Money. I assume the MS Money OFX is the same OFX format that Quicken is expecting. However, when I attempt to import checking data downloaded in that format, quicken responds with "Quicken is currently unable to verify the financial institution information for this download. Please try again later." Is this Quicken recognizing the data, but rejecting it because the bank name is not recognized. If so, that's absurd. Are you charging institutions money to be listed in Quicken?

Instead of forcing customers to use an old version of your product, or switching to a megacorp bank that provides inferior customer service, you should be doing everything possible to get customer data into your program. "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send." My only options are to revert to a previous Quicken version (missing out on new features, but also not giving Intuit any more money), find some third-party workaround to your arbitrary drop of support, or use a competing product. I'm inclined to switch to another piece of software since Intuit seems more interested in forcing their vision on banks and customers than helping them.
-------------------------------------------------

More information on the QIF-support drop from the horse's mouth, and a FAQ.

I think an open format is great. I think Intuit's decision to arbitrarily drop support for their own data format to force everyone, regardless of ability (banks now have to pay for new software, or pay developers to alter their existing version), to use OFX is just plain stupid.

Death by words

The McDonald's order-taker who "spoke" to me last night was unintelligible. "Hi, welumm to mah-onal" and then either "just a moment please" or "can I take your order please?" My best guess was the former, even though when articulated the two statements don't sound alike at all, plus the usually present but absent in this case interrogative-inflection, so I waited. And waited. And began to doubt my decision, for perhaps the vocally-challenged person taking my order was waiting on me, and wouldn't have the initiative to prompt me again if I didn't come forth with a food or beverage request. I feared a stalemate lasting the entire night.

Man found dead in McDonald's drive-thru early Monday morning. Cause of death appears to be exposure, likely due to the dreaded ordering stalemate. Usually the highly trained order-taking personnel are able to rectify such a potentially fatal situation long before closing time. However, this particular McDonald's recently switched to being open 24-hours a day, and the employee's shift didn't end until 5 in the morning, by which time it was too late for the victim. It is unknown whether the victim's family will be bringing a 64.7 million dollar lawsuit agains the evil corporation.

Who's brilliant management decision was it to put the person least likely to be understand in front of the microphone?