The Fifth Sentence is back!

Haha, every so often as I read PlanetGNOME, one of them posts the silly Fifth Sentence thing. The instructions are:

1. Grab the nearest book.


2. Open the book to page 123.


3. Find the fifth sentence.


4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.


5. Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

So here goes. This quote is from "What Color Is Your Parachute?" (the 2005 edition).

The Riley Guide is the best of these, by far.

Odd sentence there. Thanks to John Fleck for being the one to start this for me.

Joey

Just finished watching an episode of "Joey", the spin-off of Friends starring the lovable Joey Tribianni. I was expecting a sad attempt at bringing back the chemistry from Friends, but it wasn't too bad. Joey is still the same character; funny, slightly stupid, but still very sweet. The new show is actually watchable. Mostly because its the same old Joey; so watching an episode of Joey is just like watching an episode of Friends that centers on Joey (you remember those occasional episodes that would feature Joey's family or his scenes on Days of Our Lives and so on).
A really interesting thing I noticed was there seems to be a more definite similarity to "Three's Company". From what I can tell, Joey is living in a house with two girls, one is his sister, and the other he seems to have had a past relationship with. There's a definite "Jack and the girls" feeling from that setup. Plus, it seems Joey has moved to Southern California. The intro sequence show scenes of Joey driving around in a car, and it ends with a scene of Joey sitting on the hood of his car, right by what looks like the same boardwalk that Jack is cycling along in the intro sequence for Three's Company. Makes you think, huh?
All in all, I think the show has potential to become another decent prime-time major network sit-com. It will never amount to the same level that Friends had. But its certainly not as bad as some of the trash out there.

Rainbows

I saw a beautiful rainbow today as I was leaving work, and all the angst and frustration from the day (running around, lifting heavy monitors, crawling under desks, dragging computers around, carting them back and forth from building to building) just faded away. As I stood there looking at the rainbow, I just couldn't help but smile. I love it whenever I see a rainbow. They seem so magical to me. Its like Mother Nature is granting us a small glimpse of her amazingly beautiful events.
This rainbow was extra special; instead of one complete arc (which was beautiful on its own), there were two arcs. The second one was much fainter than the first, but it was really neat to see two rainbows in tandem.

Golden Slumbers

Once there was a way, to get back homeward.
Once there was a way, to get back home.
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry.
And I will sing a lullaby.

Golden Slumbers fill your eyes.
Smiles await you when you rise.
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry.
And I will sing a lullaby.

Once there was a way, to get back homeward.
Once there was a way, to get back home.
Sleep pretty darling, do not cry.
And I will sing a lullaby.

LiquidLedger

LiquidLedger has taken the blue ribbon in my quest for a financial application. I didn't realize how nice the double-entry accounting was. I thought I was looking for something a bit simpler, with single-entry registers, but it turns out that double-entry is a really intuitive method of recording financial transactions. I've come to live the fact that no application can do the transparent OFX talking that I was hoping for, so I'll just have to live with the manual downloading for reconciliation of my accounts. Sounds good though; its nice to finally have found a nice, powerful but simple to use financial application.

More financial application woes

I've looked at iBank, but it seems that iBank requires manual downloading of the OFX .qfx file, and can only do an initial import. What I'm looking for is an application that can automatically download the .qfx file and can update my ledger every so often, when it checks the server and finds new transactions have been posted. Now one would think that Quicken could do this, since its the mastermind behind OFX/QFX, but it seems I cannot make it happen, even in Quicken. Perhaps its because Quicken is one of the most UI offensive applications ever. I sent an email to the LiquidLedger "info" line, and asked them if LiquidLedger can do what I hope. If so, it might be my only option until Apple comes out with the be-all-end-all Finance application. Boy wouldn't that be nice.
So after more analysis and everything, I'm still undecided. iBank is out, iCash is out, Quicken is out... LiquidLedger looks nice, but I can't seem to bring myself to buy it without a trial. I've recently been looking at Checkbook, but it feels like something is missing there too. I think I was hoping for a financial management application that transparently talks with the OFX server to update my registries, and can do budget processing and such with that data. I guess I'm asking for too much.
I guess I'll try lowering my requirements and try another analysis.