Monthly Archives: July 2011

Nadyne, software

the road away from Quicken, part 2: thoughts on data

In my road away from Quicken, I’ve decided that the first potential Quicken for Mac 2007 replacement that I’ll evaluate is iBank.  Last night, I downloaded it and started the import process1.

After I imported my data into iBank, I realized that it’s only importing one type of data: my account data, which includes the transactions associated with that account.  When I’ve been thinking about importing data, this is exactly the data that I have been considering and most worried about being imported correctly.  However, my account data is only one piece of data that I currently have stored in Quicken.

Scheduled transactions.  I have a lot of scheduled transactions.  The majority of these scheduled transactions are monthly, but there’s biannual (property taxes, auto insurance) and annual (home insurance, subscriptions) too.  Knowing the amount of these transactions (or approximate amount, for things that fluctuate) and date means that I know how much money I need to have available at any given time.

Budget.  Closely related to my scheduled transactions is the budget.  I always have a pretty good idea of how I’m doing compared to my budget.  The budget gets revisited about once per year, or more often if circumstances dictate.  Not seeing my budget really threw me off when I first launched iBank, although in retrospect I shouldn’t’ve been surprised.

Online account information.  Several, although not all, of my accounts have online access.  Quicken has stored my usernames and passwords so that it can automatically download new transactions.

For each of these, I’m going to have to manually reenter or recreate that data.  In retrospect, I shouldn’t be surprised.  When I had been thinking about importing my data, even though I had only been thinking about importing my account/transaction data, I had assumed that I would be able to do that step pretty quickly and then be up and running.  I’m going to have to invest more time to get started.

This isn’t a complaint.  It’s certainly safer that other applications can’t access my online account information.  It just shows that I hadn’t fully considered exactly what it would take to make a transition out of Quicken.

  1. So look for another post on the topic soon. ↩
Nadyne

stop the data abuse!

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As a researcher, I always get annoyed when I see the wanton abuse of data.  Mashable’s article Google+ Users Are Nearly All Male is a great example of data abuse.

The data abuse starts by reporting data without noting anything about the methodology behind it.  Data is meaningless if you don’t know how it was collected.  For this article, they report on two different websites which claim to have analyzed Google+ user profiles.  Neither of these websites say that they’ve looked at all of the profiles, and neither of them note what method they used to sample the profiles that they did analyze.

The data abuse continues by ignoring the major differences in the data that is returned by the two sites.  One says that 86.8% of sampled profiles are male, the other says that 73.7% are male.  What explains a delta of more than 10 points?  I can come up with possibilities, but I don’t know if any of my potential explanations are correct.  In the case of any of the possibilities, it would tell us a very different story.  For example, if the difference is one of time (that is, one set of data was collected earlier than the other), then we’d learn something about the early-adopter curve.  If the difference is one of sampling method, then we might learn about the relative strengths of each of those sampling methods for this type of dataset.

What really bothers me about this breathless repeating of such statistics is that there is no attempt at analysis.  If we accept that the current Google+ users skew male, is this any different than the usual early-adopter curve? Or the early-adopter curve for social media? Or the early-adopter curve for new Google applications?  Data without analysis is meaningless.  Reporting on the data suggests that we should care, that there is something different here.  But it appears that no-one has bothered to answer such basic questions about the data.

We can do better than this.  Let’s stop the blind reporting of data, and instead expend some effort on analyzing the data.

Nadyne

the importance of “me too”

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Back in the dark dark days of the Internet, there was a culture clash between Usenet and AOL over “me too”.  Now, in a social media age, “me too” has made its comeback: retweeting on Twitter, “like”ing on Facebook, +1ing on Google Plus.

Remember that culture clash?  Usenet culture had a strict etiquette, coining “netiquette” to describe it.  Netiquette was largely about saving bandwidth in the days of slow and limited dial-up access.  Read the FAQ, don’t spam, trim replies to only include relevant text, make replies meaningful.  AOL users, when first let loose out of their walled garden in the mid-90s, didn’t respect that netiquette.  The calling card of an AOL user1 was adding “me too!” to a thread.  In nicer forums, this led to a gentle primer in netiquette, but it mostly led to the AOL user being flamed out of existence.

I admit that I was snobby about those AOL users in my Usenet days.  I failed to see the importance of “me too”.  “Me too” is an acknowledgement that not only did I hear you, but I agree with you.  It’s identifying a point of commonality, a shared point of interest.  No matter how much I want to believe I’m a special snowflake, I also want to have something in common with others.  I like learning that you read Terry Pratchett too2, that you listen to Cowboy Junkies, that you think that flour+water is a great restaurant.

It’s only now that bandwidth is plentiful that “me too” has resurfaced.  The very human desire for connection is ever-present, and it’s now become acceptable in a social media world to acknowledge that need for connection in a lightweight fashion.  I don’t have to write an essay about why I love Pratchett’s novels, I can simply click a button and let you know that we have this point of commonality.

The pendulum has swung the other way.  15 years ago, I never would have imagined posting “me too”, no matter how strongly I felt that connection.  Compare that to a meeting I was in last week.  I was participating in a portfolio review of a candidate, and I asked a question contrasting one of the candidate’s statements with something they had said earlier.  The person sitting next to me looked up and said that he’d just jotted down a note that he wanted to explore that question more.  Further down the table, another interviewers raised his hand and said, “plus one”.  This prompted a couple of others to do the same.

While “me too” is important, there’s also a danger to it.  Our discourse shouldn’t be limited to simplistic statements of agreement that can be fully captured by the two characters of +1.  There are times when that essay about why I love Pratchett’s novels is not only welcome but needed.  Likewise, we need to be able to have a nuanced but respectful discussion about why we disagree on a topic.  We need to acknowledge our commonality, but such acknowledgement shouldn’t be the only communication.

  1. Luser, if you prefer. ↩
  2. And I like it even more when you get it when I call him Pterry. ↩
Nadyne, VMware

bored people quit, engaged people stay

I’m only 8 months into my time at VMware, so there’s no way that I could be bored yet.  But I still read bored people quit from Rands in Repose and found something that applies to me.  He’s talking about how geek managers can avoid boredom in their people, and mentions this:

In terms of a low-cost means of keeping your team content, the simple act of saying, “I know where you want to be and I’m thinking about how to get you there” is a way to demonstrate you care about the growth of your team.

Now that I’m reasonably comfortable with my role and my team, I’ve started to think about what my next career move should be.  I want to grow in my career.  I’ve already told my manager that I want to get to the Staff level here, but there’s also an attendant question of whether I want to continue up the technical track or move into the managerial track1.

In my weekly meeting with my manager this week, we talked about the status of my current research projects.  I’ve also got a couple of pet projects that are more internally-facing to help my user experience team rock, and I now have the green light to put some more energy into those.  In that meeting, my manager explicitly talked about my desire to move up and some short-term things that I should do to move that along.  I went back to my office thinking, “this is SO the right place for me”, banged out a bunch of emails and invitations to get some things moving, and went home with a glow.  As I talked to my husband over dinner that night, I realized that what really got me excited about this was that my manager had heard what I had said, put some thought into it, and came back with specific and direct feedback about how I’m doing so far and the next steps to take.

I’ve got to say: this engineer ain’t bored. 😀

  1. VMware allows its employees to move back and forth between the two tracks, which I think is a good deal for everyone. ↩
Nadyne, software

the road away from Quicken (part 1)

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I’m an old-skool Quicken user.  I’ve been using it since I was working on my first undergraduate degree.  Today, I use it for pretty much everything in my financial life.

Back in my Linux days, I kept a Windows partition only for Quicken.  When I became a Mac user in 2001, I dutifully bought Quicken for Mac.  I’ve been disappointed in it from the beginning due to its lack of features and its unreliability.  I’ve upgraded faithfully on each version (with an exception, more on that in a minute) in the hopes that one or both of these issues would be addressed.  The former has, in a scant handful of cases; the latter possibly has, too, although not nearly enough for my tastes.

But then the Intel transition happened, and Intuit made the decision that they would start over with a new version of Quicken for Mac instead of transitioning their existing codebase to Intel.  Having been on the Office:Mac team during the Intel transition, I have a reasonably good understanding of why they made that transition.  I understand the decision, even if I don’t really like it.  The new Quicken was delayed multiple times, and Intuit finally shipped Quicken Essentials for Mac (QEM).  On its release, Intuit said that it didn’t have all of the features of its predecessor, Quicken 2007 (Q07).  I relied (and continue to rely) on some of those features, so I continued stumbling along with Q07.

OS X 10.7, Lion, changes that.  Q07 is my last PowerPC application that requires Rosetta, and Lion no longer supports Rosetta.  In all of my years of dissatisfaction with Quicken, I’ve looked at various alternatives, but have rejected them relatively quickly as not meeting my needs.  However, if I want to stay current with my OSes1, something’s gotta give.  Q07 has got to retire, and I’ve got to figure out what that is.

I currently run two instances of Q07.  One is on my personal Mac for my personal finances, one is on the household Mac for my shared finances with my husband.  He might also run an instance of Quicken for his personal finances, but I don’t use his Mac so I don’t know.

My personal finances consist of the following active accounts:

  • chequing account
  • credit cards
  • stock account
  • stock account
  • 401(k)
  • IRA
  • Roth IRA
  • mutual fund account

The household finances consist of the following:

  • mortgage
  • chequing account
  • savings account
  • credit cards
  • life insurance
  • our home2

What do I need in a Q07 replacement?

  • Import of my existing Quicken data.  I actually wouldn’t mind it if I didn’t have to import all of it.  After all, since I’ve been using Quicken for well over 15 years, I’ve got accounts that are long past closed.  I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have to import the data from a mortgage that I had more than 10 years ago.  There’s not an easy way to separate out such old data from my existing data file3  But I do want to have access to my full history of my current accounts.  I like being able to see how much progress we’ve made on paying off our mortgage.
  • Downloading of transactions.  I’ve got a lot of accounts, and so the ability to download my transactions makes managing everything a lot easier.
  • Downloading of security prices.  Okay, so I only own stock in three companies4, but I still like to see how they’re doing.  This also includes the mutual funds in my 401(k) and IRAs.
  • Budgeting.  I maintain a budget (both personal and household), and I want to be able to see how I’m doing.
  • Eye candy.  Yes, I admit it, I want some eye candy.  For example, Q07’s graph showing me how my net worth has changed over time gives me a nice warm fuzzy.  Of course, the graph showing me the hits that my 401(k) and IRAs have taken have the opposite effect.  Sigh.

Q07 has some features that I don’t use:

  • Dashboard widgets.  I don’t use Dashboard anyway, so I don’t care about the widgets.
  • iOS app.  Well, this strictly isn’t a Q07 feature, but I still haven’t felt the need.
  • Bill pay.  I use my credit union’s website for this.
  • Printing cheques.  I write one cheque per month5, and I don’t even own a printer.
  • Integration with other apps.  I don’t need iCal reminders, and I’ve got an accountant for my taxes.

That’s the state of my financial union right now.  Next up is to compile a list of the possible contenders and rank them.  After that, I’ll start downloading trials of the contenders (where applicable, that is) and see how they compare when running side-by-side with Q07 today.  Look for more posts in the future.

If you’ve got a favorite financial application that you’d like to recommend (or, an application that you’d like to recommend against), the comments are open.  You’ll get special bonus points if you note how well they will (or won’t) fit with the financial institutions or requirements that I’ve listed above.

My fear is that the winner is going to be Quicken for Windows.  I’m sure that this makes me a bad VMware employee, but I don’t actually run Fusion6 on my Mac at home.  If I’m going to have to install Fusion, then purchase and install Windows, I’m not sure if I want to reward Intuit by buying another copy of Quicken.  This does mean that if you’ve got Windows financial software options, I’m open to those as well, although my preference is definitely for Mac-native apps.

  1. This is likely, since I’ll probably get a new Mac later this year. ↩
  2. Not an account, of course. Honestly, I put this asset in Quicken so that the total line in my list of accounts doesn’t show that I’m a trillion dollars in the red. ↩
  3. At least, I’m not aware of one.  Please do comment if you know of one! ↩
  4. MSFT, AAPL, and VMW, if you must know. ↩
  5. My HOA isn’t set up for online bill pay. ↩
  6. Or that other, lesser, virtualization software; nor Boot Camp. ↩
vCloud Director, VMware, vSphere

launch day! vSphere 5, vCloud Director 1.5, Cloud Infrastructure Suite

Today’s a big day on the VMware campus in Palo Alto.  Our early-morning1 live webcast just ended, wherein we launched vSphere 5, vCloud Director 1.5, and the Cloud Infrastructure Suite.  Full details are available at the post VMware unveils vSphere 5 and the Cloud Infrastructure Suite at the VMware Console blog, which is the blog of our executive team2.

Aside from the sheer awesomeness that is contained in these announcements, I learnt a few things this morning about this release that make me totally proud to be at this company.  This is the largest coordinated launch of software that VMware has ever done, with more than 1 million engineering hours and 2 million QA hours going into this release alone.

There’s been a lot of effort put into getting workflows right.  It’s not about automating steps, it’s about eliminating steps whenever possible.  For example, in the new vCloud Director 1.5, using linked clones means that you can provision VMs in about 5 seconds.

I’m sure that there’s going to be a lot of articles about these new announcements today.  @vmware is probably the best aggregator of them, although I’ll also point to Duncan’s 5 is the magic number post that lists five of his favorite topics around our announcements.  And, of course, it wouldn’t be a VMware announcement if there weren’t an accompanying video. This one is a five-minute overview of what we announced today, all filmed on our campus:

 

  1. 9am PT is early for geeks! ↩
  2. I have to admit that my little geek heart goes pitter-patter that our execs have such a well-named blog ↩
Nadyne

request for laptop bag recommendations

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It’s time for a new laptop bag.  My current laptop bag is a messenger bag that was a gift from my wonderful husband.  It’s starting to wear out.  I’ve been looking at laptop bags, and I haven’t found what I’m looking for.  So I turn to you, dear reader, in the hopes that you can help me out with laptop bag recommendations.  My requirements are as follows:

  1. CANNOT USE VELCRO IN ANY WAY.  This is a strict requirement.  I want to be able to sneak into a conference room and not have the rrrrrrrrrrip of the velcro give away that I’m a few minutes late.  I hate velcro with a burning passion.
  2. The main compartment should close fully, probably via zipper.  My laptop bag will get stuffed under airplane seats and otherwise treated poorly, and I want to minimize the risk of something falling out.
  3. Must be able to hold a 15-inch MacBook Pro.
  4. Additional pockets are nice.  My laptop bag is home to a MBP power adapter and a small bag of miscellaneous cables and adapters.  I also always carry a couple of pens, a small notebook, a granola bar or two, and a deck of cards.
  5. When I’m on a business trip, my laptop bag is also usually my purse, so having a place to fit my wallet, keys, phone, and sunglasses is useful.  So is an easy-to-access external pocket to slide a boarding pass in.
  6. Minimal branding.  I don’t wear clothing with visible brands1, and I don’t want my laptop bag to have a lot of branding on it either.
  7. Colors.  There are enough boring black laptop bag in the world, mine shouldn’t be one of them.  A laptop bag should have personality.

So: what ideas do you have, dear readers?  I’m open to either a messenger bag (although that first item removes many of them from consideration) or a backpack, or something else if it looks good.

  1. With exceptions: I’ll wear VMware-branded stuff ’cause they pay my bills, and I’ve got a pile of geek t-shirts for the gym ↩
Nadyne

when a satisfaction guarantee isn’t

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A couple of months ago, I purchased a deal from Plum District for flowers from From You Flowers1.  The deal came just when I was trying to figure out what to send to my mother for Mother’s Day, so I decided that this was a sign from the universe that my mother needed flowers.  Once I got the voucher, I went straight to the From You Flowers site to select a bouquet.  They offered delivery on Mother’s Day.  I ended up paying about $30 over the cost of the original Plum District voucher, which was fine by me.

Then Mother’s Day arrived, but the flowers didn’t.  Thanks, guys, for making me look like a bad daughter who forgot about Mother’s Day.  I wrote to both From You Flowers and Plum District the next day to enquire about the missed delivery.  The flowers arrived later that day.

In response to my mail enquiring about the missed flower delivery, Plum District apologized profusely.  They even noted that they’d seen my tweet on Mother’s Day about it.  They offered me both a refund of my original voucher purchase and a $10 credit on my account.

From You Flowers, on the other hand, took a different approach.  They noted that the florist was unable to make all of the requested Mother’s Day deliveries, and said that the driver was supposed to have apologized to my mother for the late delivery.  Now, I get that Mother’s Day has got to be a very busy time for florist.   But I ordered a week in advance, and they offered the Mother’s Day delivery.  They should know how many deliveries they can handle, and not accept more orders than that.  I know I’ve called florists in the past and had them tell me that they didn’t have a delivery available on the requested date.

What really annoyed me about this is that From You Flowers touts their “100% Satisfaction Guarantee” on their website.  Here it is:

From You Flowers, LLC offers a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. We strive to make your experience buying flowers online with us amazing. Whether you are looking for discount flowers, same day flower delivery, or cheap flowers we promise to ensure great quality, personable customer service and one-of-a-kind florist arranged bouquets.

If you are not satisfied with our service for any reason feel free to contact us. We will either refund your money or redeliver a new product. The choice is yours! Problems are rare, but when they occur From You Flowers is available 24 hours a day to help you.

It took a couple of emails where I quoted this policy to them, but they finally did issue a refund of (wait for it!) $3.43, 10% of the purchase price (not including the Plum District voucher).  They didn’t even refund the full cost of the delivery ($14.99) that they didn’t make on-time.  I didn’t realize that their statement that they would “refund your money” actually meant that they would issue a partial refund.

This experience shows an odd dichotomy between how the two sites handled the exact same issue.  Plum District, which doesn’t have a satisfaction guarantee2 issued an instant refund and gave me a credit to boot.  From You Flowers, which does have a satisfaction guarantee, took more than a month to issue a $3 refund.  I wasn’t expecting anything from Plum District.  I don’t view it as their fault that the florist didn’t make its commitment.  I wrote to them to let them know that the florist hadn’t lived up to their end of the bargain, in case this is an issue that others experienced with the merchant.  On the other hand, I wasn’t expecting to get entirely blown off by From You Flowers.  I wasn’t expecting the full price of the flowers to get refunded (although I think that their satisfaction guarantee at least implies that it would be), but I did think that it was fair that they refund their delivery fee since they didn’t make the delivery on-time.

There’s several lessons learned here.  First and foremost is likely that I should’ve just called a florist in my mother’s town to order flowers directly instead of going through a middleman like From You Flowers.  I also should’ve done my homework on From You Flowers and discovered that their 100% satisfaction guarantee isn’t.  And finally, there’s the open question of whether using a deal website like Plum District really is a good idea for either the merchant or the buyer.  I have to give credit where it’s due and say that Plum District far exceeded my expectations in dealing with the problem, but perhaps the problem is one that’s bigger than this individual interaction.

  1. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide for themselves whether the daily deal sites like Plum District, LivingSocial, and Groupon are really a good idea. ↩
  2. At least, I couldn’t find one on its website. ↩
Fusion

sign up to participate in VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation betas!

One of the top questions I get asked by my Mac geek friends is how to beta-test Fusion.  If you’re interested in participating in betas for either VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation1, fill out the form here.  When we’ve got room in our beta program, we’ll send out invitations to those who have expressed interest.

I’m totally a fiend for dogfooding, and I’ve got to say that the next version of Fusion has some awesome stuff coming.  More details to come later … !

  1. That’s an OR, not an XOR. ↩