Don’t get me wrong, I’m a long time Quicken user, but I’m a Mac user and its fairly frustrating dealing with the differences between their Mac and Windows versions. Unfortunately, my accountant is a Windows user, so every time I have to share my books with her, I have to export a Windows file. She in turn, exports back to me. Unfortunately its not a 1:1 mapping and its a logistics hassle to have to share files.

So one alternative is to try QuickBooks Online where I can just store my data in the cloud and give my accountant access to my account. Makes a lot of sense except that Intuit sees my attempt at an end-around and slams the door on me. Curiously, their Quicken Online offering does not suffer from this same problem.

Were it not for my near seamless experiences with Apple’s products these days, I would probably take these things as par. But this isn’t par in this day and time. I hope they figure this out and remedy the problem real soon.

The company I currently work for permits us to define self-indulgent personal objectives which factor heavily into our bonuses each half year.  A lot of people take the easy way out (quite frankly, because they can) and do pretty basic things like give presentations or do other less-than-ambitious projects.  I try not to do this myself if my core project work is at all manageable.  Sadly, this is less often than I’d like.  But I digress.

This half (note that much of the half is already expired!) I have decided to combine several of my personal technology interests into a project which will reinforce my knowledge of each.  The project will be a Rails-powered website which leverages the YUI and YUI-Ext user interface widgets.  The database will be MySQL and I will endeavor to keep the markup clean and semantic and the Javascript unobtrusive.  I’m going to make some concessions in the validatability of the markup and the degradability of the site because I’ll be making heavy use of Javascript.  That said, alternative UIs are definitely possible, I’m just probably not going to bother.

So what is the application?  Its modeled after a Mac-based information organizer utility called Yojimbo.  You can store bookmarks, notes, web page archives, serial numbers, and passwords within the Mac-based utility.  This is obviously easily done in a Wiki or online spreadsheet, but the point is not necessarily to create a whiz-bang application, but to learn the technology.

Since Yojimbo is designed to be run on a Mac, it has a single-user usage model.  I’m going to tweak that slightly and add some multi-user facets to make it a useful utility for my team at work.  Quite frankly, I need something like this to track various serial number and passwords that come into play daily.  I’m not blessed with great mental recall, so this utility will be helpful for me at the very least.

My secondary objectives are to expose my workplace to some of these “new” technologies.  We are completely Java right now.  Further, most people have a tenuous grasp on standards-based markup and next to no knowledge of Javascript.  As you might expect, our apps most of the time resemble the Extreme Makeover Home Edition before house.

Along the way, I hope to post a few notes on the implementation here.  I’ve not seen much blogging on YUI + Rails, so maybe I’ll help to fill a void.  I’m not sure how the folks at Bare Bones Software (makers of Yojimbo) will respond to this type of project, so its unlikely that I’ll be able to put the site up publicly.  If they are amenable, I’ll see what I can do and maybe make it available.

Hopefully, this is of interest to some who may wander by.

I have no complaint against Parallels as yet since I have yet to really get going. It should be pointed out that the initial install of Parallels gray-screened on me consistently when running my first virtual machine. After googling, I discovered that I needed only to download the latest build from their website. So far, so good on that.

So once I was able to get Parallels to run my first virtual machine, I began the process of creating a Windows XP Professional install. Except that I had overlooked the fact that the only CD I had was an upgrade CD. I have XP on my desktop, my old Dell laptop, and on my PowerBook and yet I don’t have an original install CD. The PowerBook copy was obtained through the Microsoft Virtual PC for Mac, but unfortunately that install appears to be contained into a proprietary virtual disk. So though I have three running copies, I do not have an install CD. This is frustrating since I’ll basically have to buy a copy in order to install it. Now, I think I can be clever and buy the cheapest version and then upgrade, but still it, its money out of my pocket.

On the other hand, I have an Ubuntu Linux distribution CD that was acquired for free. This makes me question why Microsoft insists on charging for their OS products. Shouldn’t their strategy be to give those away and then try to lock users in with the sale of their applications? It seems they should be minimizing the friction for the sale and propagation of their other products.

In the meantime, I have to consider whether I’ll buy a copy of XP knowing full well that Vista is around the corner. I probably won’t on principle.