election and recs

I am unmotivated. I am not even motivated enough to rant which is sad and some kind of reflection on our society, I'm sure. Or rather, the election, because it's freaking draining even in peripheral involvement. It's not just that so much news here seems to be dominated by it; it's also the scare tactics, and the mudslinging, and the ridiculous posturing (and I don't even mean by the candidates) or Joe the Plumber (a record deal? Really?) and the relentlessness of equating electoral choice with moral choice, which I hate.

Dualism is workable in fiction, which is by nature two dimensional and easily shaded. It's crazymaking to try and apply that to real life. And the fact that both parties and their adherents do it drives me nuts.

And that is my rant on politics. For those who plan to be online during the election on Tuesday night, anyone schedule a chat yet? I've heard this rumor this election is going to be a bit controversial.

Other News That Is Not Election Related, Yay!

A.) miss_porcupine continues the Qui Habitat universe in Loyaulte Me Lie, a Jeannie-centric companion to the Rodney-centric Art Is Long. I'd say read Art is Long first, but then again, I'd say read the entire damn novel.

Qui Habitat probably one of SGA's best novels (in progress) and makes my top ten reading of all time in fandom for characterization, scope, and creativity. The premise is based on the idea that SG1 did not defeat the Ori and the Milky Way fell, leading to an evacuation to Atlantis. It's ruthlessly practical, unsentimental, and startlingly blunt with few easy answers as the slow emergence of the Ori in Pegasus becomes more and more inevitable.

The Jeannie story, however, is painful in a very different way, and goes a long way to humanize the unthinkable. While completely different from the Jonas-centric Huma, the time taken in these stories to focus on individual people pre-surrender paints a fascinating picture of how it happened on both a personal and political level, and, at least to me, does a better job of explaining what happened than space battles ever could.

i'm all about the financial today

Quicken Online

I'm testing Quicken online, which is a great deal like Quicken except both easier and more frustrating. On one hand, if someone wants to use Quicken, this is a great way to learn the basics fast, since it kind of does everything for you and there's really not a lot of mistakes you can make (in case anyone remembers my adventures with Quicken 2008). On the other, if your bank/institution/card isn't listed, there aren't any manual options for adding in transactions from those, or anything from them. It's very, very frustrating. It also doesn't have the option of adding the entirety of every check including all its pretax deductions and so forth, which isn't precisely necessary, but I like having complete information.

The second is more tricky and more psychological.

On the front page is this huge Money In - Money Out = Saved boxes, which are just freaking *irritating* as hell. This has to do with categorization for the most part; using transfer-in or tranfer-out is surprisingly important, so I finally worked out the only way to work with it is treat anything transferred between my checking, my savings, and my line of credit with the credit union as a transfer in/transfer out or the amounts are off. Plus, for my credit cards, the payment recieved by them is set to transfer in. I'll check it again once all my bills are paid and see if its accurate now. It'll be easier to be sure by the eighth or ten, when pretty much all my monthly bills are paid and have been received and processed to give me an idea of how much I'm actually spending. Seeing October itemized taught me the valuable lesson of how many Egg McMuffins I eat a month. As in, a lot.

(Also, those boxes are depressing as hell. However, pie charts! Yay!)

I'm testing this for a week and getting comfy, then trying Quicken again, which I loved except for all the ways it was really weird to use sometimes. Then, then I shall have incredibly fun spending a weekend configuring it. It satisfies some part of me that needs to be really crazy and overly detailed oriented in a way that doesn't mean I'll find solace and meaning trying to track the ratio of short stories to novels posted in a fandom over the course of six months. Which there is every possibility I might do in a fit of weirdness.

Link: Quicken Online

( financials, part 2: this can only end in hilarious disaster )