Monday, March 17, 2014

Sunday

Again, blogging time has been squandered on other things – this time, computer problems which I will eventually tell you all about.

Nor was much knitting done yesterday – I watched the rugby, and it was seriously incompatible with lace. Not the Wales-Scotland match. I saw but little of that, and little was enough, but France-Ireland.

I have never cared much for the Six Nations Trophy, even in the glory years when Scotland was in contention. I take it match by match, and care a lot about the Calcutta Cup, as you know. Even so, yesterday was interesting. If Ireland won, the trophy was theirs. If France, it went to England – each would have won and lost the same number of matches, so it would come down to a reckoning of points-scored and points-scored-against. And it was the mighty Brian O'Driscoll's last international match – he's almost as old as I am.

Ireland won, by two points. A cliff-hanger, to the last tick of the clock. France had a winning try (=touchdown) disqualified in the closing moments because of a forward pass. According to me (who knows nothing) the two big differences between “American football” (so-called over here) and rugby, are (a) that in rugby you can't throw the ball forward, although you can kick it; and (b) that you can pick the ball up off the ground and go on struggling.

As for Scotland, they lost by the largest margin in their international history – or perhaps it was the largest margin in Six Nations history. Rachel says that the commentator said at one point, Even the cats in Scotland will find themselves being taken for a walk around now.

Today

That much I wrote for you yesterday morning. Now, as EZ says, Onward!

Computer problem

I sat down on Saturday for a much-needed session with my accounts. Quicken came up saying that my license was out-of-date – did I want to renew it now? If I said no, the program closed down. If yes, I was led down a shadowy alley to nowhere – Intuit stopped supporting the UK version 10 years ago.

I have about 25 years of data in that program (and a recent back-up: that's all right). I found the installation disk, after a mighty search – but it won't run on my new laptop. I still may be able to re-install it on Old Slowcoach. Nobody ever mentioned a license before. I was a beta tester, based on the fact that I had written a book called Money Management with Quicken about an earlier version. I think it's the beta version I was still using – until last week.

I've found a new copy of the latest (=10-year-old) UK Quicken on eBay, and it's on its way. But will it run in Windows 8?

Knitting

Not much. I'm nearly finished with the 15th repeat of the centre of the Unst Bridal Shawl.

Stephen West has a e-book out called Crazy for Color – not scarves and shawls, this time, but bizarre hats and sweaters. I'd love to have it, if it were on paper, but I have decided pretty firmly that I don't want to address either knitting or cookery on a computer screen. You can buy some or perhaps all of the new West patterns from his Ravelry store, but that's not the same as paging through a book.








3 comments:

  1. I have had those same problems with Quicken for Mac. (I had no idea you were a published expert!) I've tried other programs but have given up. I never did much management with it anyway. Now I just download into Excel and hope for the best.

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  2. the policies of Intuit regarding loyal customers are ridiculous and arrogant. to insist that you constantly update to the latest version by disabling bank downloads - such arrogance. that being said, you should be able to run in windows 8 ... i am not using the very latest but nevertheless it runs fine. i did try to find another program (moneydance) but it was not satisfactory. alas Q is the best one and has a monopoly which of course leads to the aforementioned arrogance.

    onward indeed.

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    1. ps i forgot to add. isnt there a download version available? i know in the US there is.

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