mint.com - Hello and Goodbye in 24 hours - Ads gone wild

Yesterday I tried mint.com. Today I deleted my account. Quicken was asking that I upgrade to the 2013 version for $60, but mint.com was free to try and could be lower ongoing, with a better interface to iPad. My account is now deleted for the following reasons:

1. Unable to set goals - I loaded all my accounts, everything, including mortgage. When setting up the goal to payoff my mortgage the tool was unable to recognize that I had a loan. LOSE
2. Too many ads - Switched to the iPad to see if perhaps it was better. Unfortunately, all that happened was a boatload of ads.
   • I see you paid an ATM fee, here's a bank that doesn't charge those
   • I see you are a good saver, ING has a great rate I have an ING account so that is a pointless ad
   • Quicken loans has great rates on your mortgage, perhaps we can save you money

Goodbye!

Mutant Alien Butterfly

Yesterday we went downtown to eat at Station Square in Pittsburgh. After eating we were walking down the steps and saw what appeared to be an alien mutant butterfly.

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Note when looking from the side those bolts next to it are those heavy duty 1" bolts used to hold buildings together.

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I did some research and it appears to be a Royal Walnut Moth. I think my pictures look better!

F1 Series so far

6 races. 6 winners. Great competition. Alonso atop the leader board. Interesting qualifying. Michael P1 in Monaco, only to be sent back to 6. Can't wait for Austin.

2012 Formula One Season Starts Now

Sitting and watching qualifying for Australia. Since some of my faceboook friends may now know results, I will post my thoughts here.

Should be an exciting season.

Six former world champions in the field.

Qualifying

Q1

Kimi failed to make it out of Q1. Put a wheel on the grass, did not make it to start/finish in time to turn a final flying lap.

Red Bull fairly far back in the pack, hopefully they are waiting for later rounds to turn it up a notch, but they are struggling for down force.

Q2

Alonso beached the F2012 half way through the session. Yellow flag then red flag.

5:00 to play - top of the time sheets looks like last year. Hamilton, Button, Vettel, Webber.

Mercedes seems to be the engine to beat.

Alonso time held for a while, but just as the session ended he was pushed to relegation. No Ferrari in Q3.

Q3

4 former champions still in the hunt: Hamilton, Button, Vettel, Schumacher.

Hamilton P1. All McLaren front row Red Bull pushed to 5, 6.

More tomorrow when the season starts down under.

2011 Canadian Grand Prix

2 plus hours of red flag. Lots and lots of rain. But a great exciting race. Vettel showed a flaw in the last lap and Button took advantage. Last 10 laps were ultra exciting. Always fun when cars switch from full wet to intermediate to dry tyres. Very glad that Fox kept the tried and true broadcast team of Varsha, Matchett, Hobbs, and Buxton. Guess that is the benefit of Fox owning Speed TV. Over to Speed TV for interviews.

Riding the rails

On NJ transit the conductors are much like many metropolitan train conductors I imagine. The one interesting thing is that they have pads of paper and hole punches. They seem to do strange things with these. For instance this morning a young lady was paying for her ticket with cash. I was too distant to hear the interchange with them, however after she handed him a 5 dollar bill he reached into his pockets and produced a pad of pink pages. He took his mighty hole punch and punched 9 very specific holes on the paper before handing it to the young lady, I think he retained a copy of the punches but I cannot be sure. When he came to me I handed him my ticket (a piece of paper with printing on it) and in exchange he handed me another piece of paper with printing on it. This paper had the numbers 2-23 printed on it. At some point further in the journey he came and took this paper from me. Odd.

The Event

So far I have been enjoying this program. It is of course far fetched, talking of aliens, teleportation and other such things. Today however a very stupid thing happened - not stupid in the scientific sense, but rather in the "how stupid can a character that is supposed to be the Chief of Staff for the President" be stupid. For those that haven't yet seen the April 4 episode this is a very minor spoiler. Agent Lee is discovered as a sleeper, upon discovery he searches frantically for a way to escape, only when he is almost out of the white house does the CoS order a lockdown of the building. To quote Bugs Bunny: "what a maroon!"

A few iPad frustrations

Overall the device is handy. Here are just a few frustrating things about the iPad:

• the email search capability only searches header fields and not email body
• iPod and iTunes seem to be lacking a few details like I cannot easily connect to my iTunes server I can't be sure if this is due to the new home server utility or not either way I don't like it this should be simple
• I still hating the autocorrect - the blackberry shortcuts are by far better
• I still can't find a task list manager I like - outlook task list manager is marginal, lotus notes is a disasster, I've tried appigo todo and a few others none seem to be quite what I want
• I don't like that many of the apps are buy now use later, not enough trial versions

Life with the iPad

Have loaded a few handwriting applications. Don't have one that in like yet. I was speaking with a friend today and we were lamenting the fact that Palm Pilot writing capability or similar wasn't included. The auto-correct is a bit dicey. Maybe it's jut my fat fingers but I seem to always be moving the cursor around when typing. While typing this post it disappeared and I had to go looking for it again. Once again the I wasn't capitalized. The shortcuts I have in my blackberry are very cool and I wish I had then here. I like the financial apps but they always seem to be just a little lacking.

New iPad

A few weeks ago I finally picked up an iPad. So far it has been interesting. I've loaded apps to take notes in meetings although the OCR isn't quite there, track my 73932 todo items, read mail and surf. Still experimenting, not sure if I could use it as my only device but it is fun. I notice spending in dribs and drabs has increased as apps and iTunes hit me for $2.99 here $1.99 there. I just loaded a blog reader which fortunately pulled in my google reader rss feeds. The facepad app is a little clunky. I don't really like the auto spell check it frequently guesses wrong and I still cannot quite get the keyboard to work quite right. Overall I'm happy but not ecstatic with it. I do think that this device or ones like it could help turn the bend on *stupid* applications that user cannot possibly understand. The CNBC and Bloomberg apps were great.

Astronomy Pic

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Another Big Race Day - Sunday May 30

Time to fill up the DVR!

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F1 - Turkish Grand Prix - Looking forward to the 4 apex turn 8 and to see if Red Bull can continue its domination. I have both drivers and their chassis in my Fantasy F1 Team

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Indianapolis 500 Not quite as much fun as when it was Monaco, Indy and Coca-Cola but a lot of racing nonetheless. I haven't really followed the time trials for the Indy, which I normally do. I still recognize quite a few of the names - many are now 2nd and 3rd generation racers - Andretti and Rahal at least on former F1 racer - Takuma Sato and Sara and Danica are back in the pack away. Could be an interesting race.

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Coca Cola 600 Haven't really been watching a lot - looking forward to being in Charlotte later in the year.

Rebuttal on Game Zone Review for Wii Formula One 2009

Here's a review of the game. And here is my rebuttal.

I found your review interesting - although I don't have all of the controllers (I am anxious to get a Logitech wheel) yet I have found the game quite entertaining. I've logged about 12 hours so far. I think there is so much more that could be done with steering controls and am hopeful that the wheel will allow me to run at expert mode and be competitive. I currently use Wiimote/Nunchuck pairing.

A few rebuttals - by the way I am firmly in the camp of those seeking a "....a challenging racing game that was built for a very specific hardcore audience....".

As an avid F1 fan I can tell you the game is quite authentic.

On your comment about the arcade style of speed boost: " This is most apparent with the speed boost feature, which is an element you’d typically find in an arcade racing game. " This is in fact 100% Formula 1 authentic - this year in Formula 1 allowed KERS in certain cars - I suspect your testing was with either Ferrari or McLaren, I drive BMW which doesn't have it. This allows a driver to get a speed boost for up to 6 seconds per lap at the expense of 80 kilos (I think) of weight penalty. Turns out it was mostly a bust and will go away next year.

To your comment: "While it’s true that the finish line is your goal in F1 2009, you are prevented from driving consistently because every turn forces you to brake nearly hard enough to stop. " This too is a very accurate representation of F1 - I have spent numerous hours trying to nail the turns and establish the right line from turn-to-turn, this is the art and excitement of Formula 1. With the anti-skid turned off and the traction control turned on - I've managed to solidly nail some of the tracks after a few hours of practice. Many turns in F1 require 225mph to 50mph in 50 meters or so in order to be competitive.

On "Sound: 5.0" Not music to anyone's ears. You are sitting in a race car - with a 900bhp engine running @ 19,000 RPM engine screaming behind you - the engine is all you will hear - as it should be - I would put it on "11" if not for the rest of the family. It sounds exactly as it should.

The championship weekends are quite good - with all of the appropriate sessions. I haven't tried full weekend at Monaco so don't know if they correctly have "Friday" testing on Thursday - but knowing what F1 licensing is like - I suspect it is "spot on".

In general I struggled a bit in the beginning and it took me quite a while to get get any sort of decent position in qualifying when I put in on "Medium" opponents. I've played a lot of racing games - and I would go at least 7 rather than your 5.7.

Wii F1 2009

Well I picked this up last week. Definitely better than Ferrari Challenge but still a few quirks. Controls are still a little dicey. They still don't take full advantage of the disconnected nature of Wii. The steering wheel mode doesn't work all that well. I may need to invest in a Logitech Wii Wheel to see if it is better. Tried setting up a new player and it told me my name was "invalid", unfortunately I can't quite remember what name I put in - but it was Italian-like - Dinataldo or some such and it didn't allow it. I eventually managed to set up a player and start a career. There were three settings: Beginner, Advanced, Expert. Beginner was far too easy - secured a ride on the first or second lap, took pole in my first attempt, and easily took the win in Australia and Malaysia. Decided to wipe that career out and try Advanced. This proved much more difficult, in fact I couldn't get a ride with either BMW or Torro-Rosso and had to settle for racing for Force-India. The good part is the braking is very crisp, but as mentioned, the steering is a bit hard to manage. I hope to have some fun with this.

Some things I hope get fixed in W7

In Vista if you want to make the mouse activate on windows in "hover" mode without clicking you need to go to the "Ease of Access" menu then look at how to make the mouse easier to use. If you however choose to go into the "mouse" control panel there is no evidence of how to make the mouse activate windows via "hovering". Why oh why aren't there consistent ways of finding information? Just truly amazing how difficult they make stuff. I'm sure the entire control panel interface will be completely different for no real reason.

Ferrari Challenge for Wii

Just picked this up yesterday at Sam's Club. Fortunately we only paid about $15. I was very excited to pick this up. I really enjoy racing games, but this game suffers from a few problems that others mention. You can read the reviews online from others, but suffice it to say - the in-car camera is like being inside a tunnel, and the controls are difficult to manage. I have quite a few racing games from those that are very arcade - "Mario Kart" to several versions of "Need for Speed". Some are better than others, and with the Wii controls there are certainly much better ways to control the car. The nunchuck controls are the only ones I have even come close to mastering. Sound and graphics were cool, but they should have focused more on playability.

Knowing - enough not to waste your time

Last night we decided to rent a movie. We chose Knowing - with Nicolas Cage. What you will see from this image is - he is the only reason to watch it.

In general I like him as an actor - but I think he made a mistake when choosing to do this role.
Warning this contains spoilers - if you want to watch this movie do not read any further - just know that it is stupid and you will be disappointed.

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The movie starts out interestingly enough. We see some kids working in their school room and a teacher talking about a time capsule. Makes sense - the trailer talks about knowing about impending disasters and what would you do. There were several places where it seemed like there were opportunities to do so much more with the movie and the mysterious number sequences he uncovers, however the movie seems to miss every opportunity at suspense and settle for cheap every chance they can. Here's a few details:

Cage plays an MIT astro-physicist although he never lives up to this potential. Throughout the movie he does a surprising amount of stupid things.

Random stupidity - the kids sing "This little light of mine!" a children's Christian gospel song - being sung at a public school in Massachusetts - the most liberal state in the union and nobody was there from the ACLU taking exception

There is a plane crash that happens just after he makes an interesting discovery regarding the number sequence, and he attempts in vain to save several burning passengers. Eventually the first responders tell him to go away - which he does with little discussion or drama.

We spend untold minutes of screentime wandering around in the dark with diver quality flashlights ala X-files.

Cage's kid has some wild dream that, as near as I could tell, was a test of the special effects crew's capabilities but little else.

At one point he makes a call to the FBI to warn them of what will happen instead of stating: "I am an MIT professor, please listen to me when I tell you something" which could have led to all manner of intrigue and discussion regarding the number sequences, what had happened, what will happen, etc. instead, he yells into a random pay-phone "something will happen at location X tomorrow - get everyone away or they will die" which would clearly put him on the terrorist watch list.

Later in the sequence he walks up to a random cop and asks why they haven't cleared the area - surprise all law enforcement starts chasing him

When chasing and being chased in the subway he is cornered by several cops, he states rather bluntly: "you should arrest him" and points to the person he is chasing, they instantly unfocus on Cage and focus on the other guy.

He frequently abandons the children in his charge to go investigate random things.

The end of the movie was off scale high on the stupid meter. With about 20 minutes left in the movie and no realistic ending, we throw in a random car chase where a woman essentially kidnaps his son and in the middle of the chase Cage pauses in his pursuit of his CHILD to spend a few minutes with the now dead woman he has known for 36 hours, this enables him to see an intriguing black rock

Finally, we go completely implausible with an ending involving aliens rescuing mere earthlings from impending disaster and over the top stupid dialog between Cage and his son.

We also have a token reference to Noah - 2x2 animals and some (I think) reference to "The Matrix" with two white rabbits.

Finally, while the entire movie is set in and around Boston, when disaster strikes big time - New York City is what we see - hello continuity department where are you? Poor New York City- always the place to destroy - Independence Day, Armageddon, Sudden Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, I'm sure there many others.
I'm sure there are more specific stupid things - but that's all I can think of right now.

Another Fun NHRA SuperNationals

Yesterday marked our third journey to Englishtown NJ and the 2009 SuperNationals. As always it was great fun. A few notes:

• Early rain delayed the start of the day's events, which allowed for more viewing of cars in pits, playing games, and such.
• The the DHL Top Fuel Funny Car did a solo pass in honor of Scott Kalitta who died at this event last year.
• In response to Scott's accident NHRA has shortened Top Fuel finish line to 1000 ft from 1,320 ft.
• Interesting that the article above notes that it will still allow fans to see cars at near 300 mph speeds.
• Ashley Force and a few of the TF-Dragsters still managed to go over 300MPH.
• Honestly, the sound, the flames, the speed, it doesn't matter if you go to 1,320 or not, it's great.
• They closed the track a little earlier this year so the night qualifying was not quite as late as last year.
• Still watched some flaming action when the top fuel cars lined up after 7pm local time.

Full slide show of mostly racing.

New camera made for some really nice action photos - able to snap off 30 frames. Here's a full set of a side-by-side Top Fuel Funny Car race from start, until the camera reached buffer max.

Futuristic Car Ads

I was browsing through the paper today and turned to the back cover. As usual it was filled with car ads. I found this regular looking ad.
Now I ask you - if you had managed the spectacular task of transporting the cars from the year 2099 back to our time, wouldn't you do a little more than just put a little ad in the newspaper?

Racing Dream Day

Well Sunday is the day. What a great day for a race fan. Monaco F1 Grand Prix @ 8am EDT. Indy 500 at 1pm and Coca-Cola 600 at 5:45pm. It will be nearly 10 hours of racing from sun up to sun down. Thankfully there are a few breaks in there. Watched qualifying again for the F1 race. Lewis planted it in the wall, so he's starting 16th - not a very good location for him. Button on pole, Kimi alongside, with Rubens in 3rd - the Brawn GP team is continuing the pace. Should be a good race.