Archive for June, 2009

Couple of Photos

I bought these flowers last weekend so they are well past their prime but I liked how several of the flowers were floating on the top of the water in the vase. While shooting, a full flower fell and that is the 2nd shot which I also posted as my photo for the day on pBase

Fake Outlook Security Message & Snail Mail

I wanted to spread some awareness on a new email going around. This morning I got the lovely email from a ‘malware provider’ claiming to be MS. Basically saying, “Microsoft has released an update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express. This update is critical and provides you with the latest version of the Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express and offers the highest levels of stability and security.” First message I got had the ‘fix’ attached the other two have links… If you get one, don’t open it. Despite the fact that they do look real they are not – MS will never send you a link or the actual fix in an email, they will push it via Microsoft Updates. You can read more about it on SophosLabs Blog  but main point is to be aware of it and don’t open it or any others that look like it.

Off of the email topic and on to snail mail topic… really snail mail… you see back in January of 2007 I ordered a drying rack to dry hand washable etc. I watch the tracking progress and was puzzled when it said ‘delivered’ and I never got it! So I called the company and they did a search on it and couldn’t find it either so they sent me a 2nd one. Well today our mail lady showed up and mentioned she had a big package for me. I was really shocked because I haven’t ordered anything big. She opened up the back of the truck and when I saw it I started wondering if it was the long lost drying rack. Sure enough, I opened up the packing slip and it was shipped January 30, 2007. It arrived today, 2.5 years later… apparently it was sitting in a back storage room at the post office and the postmaster had someone clean it out this week.

MS Money Saga Continued

Tiny bit of positive news… one of the recent updates to IE8 (Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP (KB969897)) fixed the invoice printing in MS Money. I can now again print my invoices to Adobe Acrobat pdf! YEAH!

I’ve also decided to hold off a bit on Quicken as there was a note posted by a Quicken representative on the MS Money Forum stating that they are working with Microsoft to develop a file conversion process that will help Money users better convert their existing data files to Quicken. Right now there is a conversion tool however it is said to be buggy: It has issues importing more than 10,000 transactions (I’ve used Money completely since 1997, pretty sure I’m well over that) and can only support 15 character names for categories and accounts…

According to the post, they hope the new converter will be available for the 2010 version of Quicken to be released fall of this year.

I guess it is time to buy Quicken…

Microsoft has officially announced they are discontinuing MS Money…

Microsoft’s Announcement on the MS Money Home page
CNET’s Announcement