You are looking at posts that were written in the month of January in the year 2005.
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JimmyC
My friend Roger made a comment recently on our email list:
For your “lazy poorâ€, this may be the only way for them to better themselves. Thank you for making my longstanding point about conservatives obvious: they need someone to demonize and someone to keep down, so they can feel better about themselves. This is well stated in the Reagan Creed: if everybody was somebody, there wouldn’t be anybody to be nobody.
If you are somebody, you should be thankful for the opportunities and advantages you’ve had. My question to conservatives: why can’t everybody be somebody in your world?
My response was as follows:
More like the lazy poor that have been made lazy by the “great society” - a Democratic ideal that started the welfare state. You got it wrong:
You say: “this may be the only way for them to better themselves.” That is oppression - in its worst passive form.Republicans that truly care don’t want to keep the poor down; they want them to have the ability to pull themselves up. The same negative argument can be made for most Democrats - they don’t want to share the opportunities with the poor, they just want to keep them alive and ‘right where they are.’ No different then the original Southern Democrats (many of those have switched to the Republican party and poisoned it) that gave thier slaves a little plot of land to call thier own, and also gave them “thier own” toilets, schools and hospitals. “I love you - here I’m giving this to you” - “but you aren’t like me so please dont’ think you can share in my prosperity.”
Those days are over - keep it real and never think a poor man is less capable. He may need help but
Full discussion on my forum
You may call me a Republican - but that’s just my philosophical leaning - in practice I am a pragmatist. So…
It is easy to judge today - with hindsight but I still maintain that GW did what he felt was the right thing to do with the information he had. To make subtle comments like “his war” is like my neighbor’s kids saying to Daniel that “Bush created terrorism.” Its inflammatory to make a moot point. The point isn’t whether “he feels free to send people’s sons and daughters to die in his personal war” he want’s it to end as much as anyone, the point is “what should he do?”
What you would have us do - pull out and leave? We did that in Vietnam, and after the slaughter and oppression things may someday workout. Perhaps things would self sort. Kurds would feel represented, Sunnis will try and get a government started and the Sunni’s will come around… yea, right.
The Sunni sect comprises only between 32%-37% of Iraq’s population - that was Sadam’s Ba’ath Party. The majority of Iraq’s population is Shi’a Muslim. Kurds make up about 20% of Iraq’s people.
If we leave now, things could get real bad and then we have a situation like Sudan today or Iran 20 years ago with ethnic cleansing, a medieval feudal government and a large country bent on terrorizing anyone who isn’t a “believer.”
I’m not one to go to war lightly and I wrote the president before the war asking him to consider Powel’s points but leave now, that is a ridiculous suggestion.
The full discussion at my forum
_________________
Thanks,
JimmyC
Susan Larson wrote an article on Tu B’Shevat and mentioned me and my family.
Tu B’Shevat. It was actually yesterday, but sorry about that. I not only have to deal with a deadline and a publication date, but in this case, two calendars: Gregorian and Jewish.
When I asked my fellow substitute teacher at Meadowcreek Elementary, Shirley Rose, about the holiday, she said, “Yes, it’s the New Year of the trees. I don’t celebrate it, but I can lend you some books about it.”
I learned from Rose’s books that Tu B’Shevat, which means “the fifteenth day of the month of Shevat” is like a Jewish Arbor day which celebrates the planting of trees in Israel.
Moti Shacham, Vice President of Sales for an electronics firm in Norcross, celebrates the holiday and shared memories of his childhood in Israel.
“Tu B’Shevat is all about trees. It’s not mentioned in the Torah, but it’s celebrated because trees are so important in Israel. All the forests in Israel are manmade. I don’t know why the fifteenth of Shevat is the exact date, but that does happen to be the time when the first flowering trees in Israel bloom. We used to sing ‘Schkadia Parachat’, which means “The trees bloom now.’”
Shacham’s wife, Nurit, fixes a special Seder with fruits and dates to commemorate the day.
Karen Lyke, an instructor at the Academy of Somatic and Healing Arts in Norcross, views Tu B’Shevat philosophically.
“Judaism places strong emphasis on nurturing the next generation to prepare for future wellbeing on earth. Planting trees is symbolically and practically an act that provides for such continuity. It also reflects gratitude for the benefits that we have, have received, from others, whether or not we knew them directly. In Judaism, the highest form of charity is for the donor and the recipient of charity not to know each other.”
Jim Charanis, who with his wife, Stephanie, and children, Maia, age 9, Daniel, age 8 and Sophia, age 4, attend Temple Dor Tamid in Duluth, sees the holiday as a time for fun.
“Daniel is a Cub-Scout (North Metro JCC Pack 1818) and I’ll be working
on the conservation patch with them in honor of Tu B’Shevat and we will
be planting a tree. The easy way is to “buy” one in Israel but I think we will get a little dirty here at home.”
Charanis aid, “My favorite memory of Tu B’Shevat is one of the songs the kids used to sing in synagogue. The Cantor brings the kids up and sings with them: ‘Tu B’Shevat/ Tu B’Shevat/ Its a holiday/I like a lot/ And the reason/for the season/is we celebrate trees/on Tu B’Shevat/Apple Trees, Cherry Trees/ Banana Trees, Bubblegum Trees?/Spaghetti trees?, Hippopotamus trees?/’ Then it gets really goofy.”
Yeah? Then how come Adam Sandler hasn’t sung about this?
Seriously, you don’t need a holiday to plant a tree, but isn’t any tree planted worth celebrating. Belated Tu B”Shevat tova, y’all!
So - here is the deal. Banks buy OFX servers that collect transaction data from the back office Host systems - DDA, Lending, etc. They store the data on the servers and these servers format them and have data protocol technology so that the Quicken software can connect to them and synchronize the data. Both collect transfers and new bill payments and send balances and transactions. For years Quicken/Intuit has been extorting banks for “certification fees” - banks pay by the size and number of banks they have. Heck, this is very Democratic, it puts the cost on the banks - not the consumer right? So recently Intuit made another shift -they only certified with the past two copies of Quicken. That is why you all have had to buy upgrades! It wasn’t the bank, it was Intuit forcing upgrades.
I’m not done. I recently switched Stephanie to a Mac from Windows. First there was no simple way to convert the data. I can buy that - different platforms, different databases. They could have written in Java and made it easy but they didn’t. Then I realized that they even have a different OFX format for Mac VS Windows. SO THEY GET ANOTHER CERTIFICATION FEE FROM THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS FOR MAC QUICKEN!
So if you were a bank and you had to pay again - you would have to evaluate the cost/benefit of supporting Mac. SO I’m out of luck for automatic updates from Vanguard and E*Trade till they see if I’m valuable enough.
JimmyC
Back to my post on the 11th - war with Quicken. I switched to Quicken for Mac and they don’t support the same banks on the Mac as Windows. They claim the file format is different… You can go back and read more there.
Dear Mr. Charanis,
Thank you for your e-mail regarding Quicken and E*TRADE on the Macintosh.
At this time, Intuit and E*TRADE Financial are working together to determine a method to standardize account data for both the PC and the Macintosh platform. While it does currently work for the PC side, select institutions for the Macintosh version such as E*TRADE Financial and certain mutual fund companies such as Fidelity and Vanguard have yet to be included. We are looking to finalize our compatibility with Quicken by the end of tax time for 2005. As I am the Macintosh specialist on the Tech Support team, you may wish to contact me at 916-858-5090 x5536 M-F 5AM-2PM for more details.
Sincerely,
L. Scott Laronge
Tech Support
M-F 5AM-1:30PM
916-858-5090 x5536
E*TRADE Securities Customer Service
http://www.etrade.com
See the post on the 11th - I’m trying to get brokerage up on Quicken for Mac…
Thank you for your recent e-mail.
We are in the process of analyzing the demand for Quicken for the Macintosh
support, as well as determining what changes would be necessary for us to
support the transaction download. Because we have relatively few Macintosh
users, we must carefully weigh the expense of designing, developing, and
testing the download service, coupled with the necessary fees, against the
number of users interested in this service.
If we then determine that we will be able to support transaction downloads
to Quicken for the Macintosh, we will need to develop the necessary
software, test the product, and complete Intuit’s certification processes
before we can release our OFX download files for the Mac. Unfortunately, I
am unable to estimate when this process will be complete.
Please be assured that we are listening to and acting upon your request for
a transaction download to Quicken for the Macintosh. While I cannot tell
you that we will definitely support the download to Quicken for the Mac, we
are investigating our options for offering that service. We are constantly
accepting ideas for improvement on our site, and it is often through
recommendations such as yours that enhancements are made.
If you have any questions, please feel free to call our Client Services
Department at 1-800-662-2739 and ask to speak with a Web Technical Support
Specialist. We are available to assist you Monday through Friday from 8
a.m. to 7 p.m., Eastern time.
Karin Schwenk
Support Specialist
Vanguard Web Technical Support Services
Quicken has updated Mac version in 2005 by offering automated account setup. OFX/QIF is going away to some extent in that you cannot simply setup an account and download a file from the web. The BANK MUST be in their list of financial institutions.
When I wrote Quicken they said that I had to request the bank list themselves in the application. I know there is more to this - often there is a certification process - I wonder if they charge separately for Mac version.
This means that both my Vanguard and ETrade accounts will not be automatically updated.
I’m writing them both to see what is up!
_________________
Thanks,
JimmyC
So here I am starting a new year - The Physical Therapy is starting to work!
About 3 months ago my running went in the dumps. I ran the Cartersville 10K and though my time was pretty good just over 46 minutes I hit a wall at 5 miles. The nagging pain in my left knee turned into persistent pain and inflexibility. With this pain in my knee and persistant pain in my shoulders most of my adult life I decided to go to an Orthopedic surgion. First visit he said he didn’t know what was up with my shoulders but he thought my knee was tendonitis. An x-ray showed nothing special. So I took some anti-inflammatory pills for a few weeks and stayed off of it. I went back and he did some more questioning and we decided it was Chrondomalacia patella. He also X-rayed my shoulder and said that I have impingement in between my rotator cuff and the bone in my shoulder - He could shave it back but I’m doing PT first.
So he sent me to a Physical Therapist. He is an interesting guy - Basil Papotto . It was slow going at first but it seems to be working. My knee is more flexible. The pain is still there when I stress it but I think I’ll be running again soon. I threw the football around last weekend and it felt tight at first but I opened up a few times and let loose with little pain.
The real problem is getting back in shape. For a while I was running and it was great. I got a Nike Triax Elite SDM and Heart Rate Monitor and it was fun to use. Today I was going to go to the JCC and workout but never got there. I need to ease in with the bike and some weights then go full strength by February if I’m going to run the Peachtree 10K comfortably this year. Not to mention loosing the spare tire for summer! Rolling Eyes
