The Greatest Thing Since Sliced-Bread For All My Dough…
…Or “programming” Quicken 2005 with Autoit
It’s the most wonderful time of the year again…Tax Time!
Sheesh! Don’t all blow your party horns at once! ;c)
I’m no fan of this necessary evil either. Each year I hope and seek for ways to make it more streamlined. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. I’m a entrenched but somewhat reluctant user of Quicken to “manage” my financial world and every year about this time I have to shore up my financial tracking practices a bit retroactively to make sure that I have my ducks sufficiently aligned to make sense of the US Tax code.
<rant>As I alluded to earlier…I think taxation is necessary. I think the US Tax code is what is evil!</rant>
It’s not the only thing that is sometimes “evil” however. Quicken/Intuit fights hard, it often seems, to gain entry into that which is collectively thought of as the “axis of evil” in the consumer computing world. Anyone who’s upgraded to Quicken 2005 will understand that more was taken away than gained for many users. As I consider the way that the false god/evil spirit of Mammon works, then it is not too surprising to see these sorts business practices of those in the financial software industry.
Quicken does many, many things and most are done well. But…it remains a closed system. If what you want Quicken to do or how you want it to do it wasn’t conceived of by the software engineers at Intuit, you’re pretty much stuck. Using Colin Smale’s excellent program MT2OFX however, I’ve succeeded in incorporating my French bank account into Quicken along with my American one. Works like a champ…in spite of how Quicken is designed. That’s at least one success story of how Quicken can be made to work the way you want it to.
Admittedly, our situation is far from mainstream in the financial world. As American missionaries in France, we’re into “international finance” with very little money! So, we’re not the typical Quicken target customer…but I still want my financial software to be a tool useful to me and not me some sort of pawn in its hands.
Anyway, in seeking how to get some transactions from a “cash account” in Quicken into a “split” transaction in another “non-cash” account to allocate “cash” usage from an ATM withdrawal, I was stymied as to how I could make it happen without simply re-entering all the transactions.
Manual labor alert!!! Manual labor alert!!!
…enter Autoit…
Autoit is a freeware scripting package that allows you to automate virtually anything that you can get at with your keyboard and/or mouse in a Windows environment. I am simply stunned by its capabilities and the attention to detail in the suite of tools that comprise Autoit. It’s put out by a group called “Hiddensoft” and I think that they somehow must think being “hidden” is better! ;c) I troll around a lot of freeware sites and am always looking out for good freeware. What’s more, by “profession” I was a programmer and I’m a bit of a “scripting junkie”. I’m no expert but I’ll gladly script for hours to save 5 minutes (which I justify by the thought that eventually I’ll save time in the long run…and in fact, I’m still pretty convinced of my logic in that! ;c))
Anyway, I’d not come across this gem until last week (which on one hand makes me mad…considering some of the very well-known freeware and over-advertised “shareware” out there…they say it’s been around since 1999…hidden!). Don’t even remember how I stumbled across it, but I was probably searching for something like “automate quicken” and found it. This thing is too good to remain “hiddensoft”!
Not only are the capabilities of this software amazing and, I think, pretty unique, the endless supply of help in the actual coding task is really stunning…especially for a scripting language…especially for freeware.
It’s a “basic-like” scripting language (VB, VBA, VBScript familiarity will carry you far in quickly coming up-to-speed in using this language). If needed it supports a GUI interface and 2 different GUI creators are included in the package, though certainly batch scripts are normal too. It has a keystroke and mouse movement recorder for jump-starting automating human interface actions. It comes with a version of the Scintilla/SciTE editor (also used as the base for such editors as NotePad++) that has all sorts of automated coding aids. The help is excellent and integrated very well with the editor (including autocompletion, etc.). It comes with a dll version of the script engine so that you can combine Autoit with other scripting languages like VBScript (i.e. “extend” VBScript capabilities). You can compile your scripts into an exe file, etc., etc.
Anyway, I’ve been heavy into it for the past week coding this Quicken-automation script…which speaks much more about the frustration of using Quicken (which doesn’t always expose enough info in its interface) than of the capabilities of Autoit. I’m not the best marketer so, I’ll just say that if you have a Windows app and some repetitive tasks and no good way to marry those two together (and can script your way out of a wet paper bag), get on over to www.autoitscript.com today and find your solution. You may find that it becomes your scripting solution of choice as well.
Technorati : Autoit, Intuit, MT2OFX, Mammon, Notepad++, Quicken, Scintilla, Tax Del.icio.us : Autoit, Intuit, MT2OFX, Mammon, Notepad++, Quicken, Scintilla, Tax Ice Rocket : Autoit, Intuit, MT2OFX, Mammon, Notepad++, Quicken, Scintilla, Tax
It was the best of places and the worst of places…
This week, we had a group of American high school French class students from two Christian schools in Illinois (Peoria Christian School and Calvary Baptist Academy) visit Alsace as part of a 2-week missions trip to France. I was blessed to be their logistical contact in the area and help coordinate their activities here. One of their principal contacts was with Collège-Daniel where they did chapel services, some “deep cleaning” in the Chateau and went on a field trip with the students in 8th and 9th grade.
The field trip day, Thursday, dawned gray and rainy. Due to recent heavy snows in the our area it was pretty “gross” (slushy, etc.) everywhere. We had a caravan of 8 vehicles (I think). I’m ready to charter a bus next time! ;c) Anyway, we distributed the Americans amongst the French students and vice versa. We were very pleased at how much they all interacted and dared to try and speak the other’s language. For me it was concrete French/American-Euro/American reconciliation seeds being planted.
Our target for this field trip was two historical sites in Alsace. One was the Oberlin Museum and the other was the Struthof Concentration Camp. I had been in the area of the Oberlin Museum before but not the Concentration Camp. I was surprised to find out therefore, as I looked on the map in preparation for the outing, that the two are only 10 kilometers away from each other…and that’s by extremely circuitous roads in the middle of the Vosges mountains. As the crow flies Google Earth claims that it’s only 5 kilometers between the two!
But…they couldn’t be father apart from each other in what they commemorate…
At the Oberlin Museum, the life and work of Johann Friedrich (Jean Frédéric or John Frederic) Oberlin is celebrated…and what a life it was. If you’re an American, you may have heard of Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. Other than that, however, perhaps not…I hadn’t before I came here. Oberlin was a pioneer (in my opinion) of how to manifest the Kingdom of God on the earth…literally living the proclamation that Jesus is Lord of ALL. I quote portions of his life history found at this page on Oberlin College’s website…a good read (my emphases):
Oberlin entered the university at the age of 15. … he chose a wide variety of courses in the liberal arts, giving special attention to ancient languages and cultures and the natural sciences. He also attended lectures in medicine and studied human anatomy in the dissecting laboratory. He took the Ph.D. at the age of 23.
He took a position as tutor in the home of Strasbourg’s leading physician and surgeon. This gave him an opportunity to develop some ideas he had conceived about the education of children, to increase his knowledge of medicine by reading in the doctor’s library, and to acquire some rudimentary skills in surgery by observation and some practice.
After two years he rematriculated, this time in theology. He finished the course and was ordained at the age of 27.
Oberlin had been reared in the tradition of 18th century German Lutheran Pietism, with a strong. infusion of the discipline of the Moravian Brethren. On his 20th birthday he had written out a long and solemn “act of consecration” in which he dedicated to God “all that I am and all that I have: the faculties of my mind, the members of my body, my portion and my time.” It became his habit to renew this pledge by endorsing it again at the beginning of each decade. His last endorsement he made at the age of 80.
Oberlin believed that this act of consecration required of him renunciation of all worldly comforts and total dedication to the working out of God’s will. As a student he had accordingly practiced a severe austerity of life, and he now hoped for a vocation that would demand of him the discipline of asceticism, of renunciation, of mortification of the flesh through deprivation and hardship.
He recognized his opportunity when it came in the form of a call to serve the community called the Ban de la Roche. It was a large and far flung parish high in the Vosges mountains. It comprised five villages: Waldersbach, Belmont, Bellefosse, Fouday and Solbach. It was physically nearly inaccessible. Its climate was inclement and its soil infertile. It was culturally isolated because its language had deteriorated to a barbarous patois that was incomprehensible even to its neighbors. Its people were suspect and despised as residents of a Protestant island within a Roman Catholic sea. It had been devastated in the Thirty Years War and plundered for centuries by greedy feudal lords under the medieval system of vassalage that persisted in that remote corner of Europe until some years after the French Revolution. For these reasons, its poverty was immeasurable. It was a forgotten enclave that seemed to have been passed by in the march of history. Among Oberlin’s fellow theologs it was spoken of as a place of exile, an Alsatian Siberia.
To that unpromising scene Oberlin joyfully went forth. His soul was imbued with Pietistic yearnings for a heavenly perfection on earth. His will was steeled by rigorous self-discipline and a profound religious faith. The goal that he had set for himself was to make of the unlettered folk of the Ban de la Roche a “Gottesvolk,” a people of God.
And that, literally is what he did. His influence in this extremely difficult context was nothing short of amazing. He went as a pastor but his life was hardly limited to any supposed “ecclesiastical boundaries”. He “discipled” a whole region in the mountains. His influence is a model of multiplication, discipleship, perseverance, faith, etc. His theology didn’t chop life into tiny morsels to be carefully placed in a secular or sacred box. God permeated everything and thus everything was transformed…not just certain components of life. As N.T. Wright (among others) likes to say, Oberlin practiced an “inaugurated eschatology.” He lived “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” in a very real way. A visit to this very fine museum is definitely worth if “if you’re ever in the neighborhood!”.
…Sorry that this is so long!!
To deeply contrast with that was our 2nd visit of the day…the Natzweiler (Struthof) WWII Concentration Camp. As I mentioned, the weather was pretty horrible. That made just walking on slushy and icy sidewalks in the rain an interesting adventure in itself.
Struthof is already located in the Vosges mountains, but it is on a barren top of one of the rises. The nasty weather blew in our faces. The Americans had suffered the delayed-delivery of much of their luggage and most were ill-equipped for this sort of weather.
Imagine when we heard that prisoners were made to stand outside in just this sort of weather with nothing but prison “pajamas” for clothes and some even lacking shoes. I really can’t even imagine it. Of course the list of atrocities goes on and on…
The facility (museum) is well-done and I will go back in better weather when more of the actual camp will be accessible to visit, and when I can spend more time.
I don’t really want to go into detail of what happened there 60-some years ago as it’s already well-documented many places. I’m a full believer that we need to remember these things and understand their impact even today as a measure to stand against that evil and any potential to release those horrors on another generation. I do believe, however, that the stories like that of Oberlin’s are under-told. Since Struthof presents clearly a picture of manifesting Hell-on-earth and the life of Oberlin a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven-on-earth, I’m content to leave that as the longer part of this entry.
As I mentioned before, I find it intriguing that these two sites are so physically close to one another. On the other hand, there may be an increase of just this sort of juxtaposition in the years to come on earth as the “wheat and tares” both begin to ripen before the Lord puts in the sickle at the end of the age.
Jesus, please help us walk in Oberlin’s shoes…even while some are deprived of theirs…and of walking at all on this earth.
Technorati : Christian school, College-Daniel, Natzwiler, Struthof, Waldersbach, concentration camp, museum, oberlin, tares, wheat Del.icio.us : Christian school, College-Daniel, Natzwiler, Struthof, Waldersbach, concentration camp, museum, oberlin, tares, wheat Ice Rocket : Christian school, College-Daniel, Natzwiler, Struthof, Waldersbach, concentration camp, museum, oberlin, tares, wheat
Dauvillers…perfect snow timing!
Yesterday was the beginning of March. After a busy February, it came up quickly! (as I think that most March’s do). I can’t say that it came in like a lion or a lamb…simply that it was good to have fur on either way!
March 1, 2006 was a Wednesday…key for us because until the last 2 years of Junior High, there is no school on Wednesdays for our Collège-Daniel-schooled kids….AND…it snowed a bunch Tuesday night! ;c)
We woke up to this:
So I took an early morning walk in the nearby vineyards and snapped tons of “snow shots“.
Later in the day, Angela had a brilliant idea…that normally would have set my sedentary, couch-potato-glued-to-the-computer perspective of life to screaming in resistance: “Why don’t you take Noah sledding for an hour?” I was comfortably installed in front of my screen and keyboard, and I was being quite productive…but…the idea didn’t mess me up too much this time…perhaps because my early morning walk in the snow primed me for more adventure…who knows!
The sledding hill is about a 1/2 hour drive heading into the Vosges mountains (I use the term loosely for our friends from the Rockies…but they are more than just hills too!). I’d never been there before and we only had the name of some obscure town to go on: “Dauvillers” (which when you know French spelling and pronunciation could be spelled about a dozed different ways!) Our car has run out of oil twice in climbing up steep hills, but Angela found the place on the map for me and it looked to be just before the beginning of steep switch-backs. Still I wondered if I’d be pouring oil into our engine half-way up!
So, we got out our one saucer-sled and quickly dug out boots, snow-pants, and goggles and off we went. About two kilometers before Dauvillers, there is a sign that says that road salting ends here and chains are obligatory now and there were a few people off the side of the road being good citizens and putting on their tire-chains.
We don’t have any...
Never mind, we’ll give it a go anyway...
I really didn’t know how far it was from there but we took the chance and no police were around to scold us. The roads were plowed/packed-snow and our tires are in decent shape. I took it easy…really!
Finally we found the place and it really is an ideal sledding haven!!
In France, you can’t drive until you’re 18 and it costs a chunk of change to go through lessons to get your license (and your parents don’t have a 2nd car to lend you anyway). Put that all together and there aren’t a flock of teenagers where they can’t walk to or there isn’t public transportation. Dauvillers fits both those bills. While some of the dearest people in my life are teenagers (I was once too!), a whole bunch of them hangin’ out without the rest of their family doesn’t always make for the most family-friendly environment.
The place was practically deserted at 1:30PM when we arrived and it had received much more snow than down in our lower elevations. Later in the afternoon there was a good crowd but it was all families. Lots of parents slip-sliding up the hill and helping their young children get into their plastic rockets and cheering their wild rides and snowy crashes. It was a wonderful atmosphere! It was far enough up into the hills that you really had a “mountain feel” but not so far that our little car couldn’t make it and not a horrible drive either.
Sharing one sled was probably not the most fun, but it allowed me to rest while Noah took his turn, after trudging up the hill in deep snow. The deep snow made a great lounge chair as well while waiting your turn! As more people came, Noah and I “pioneered” some new sled runs in the fresh snow (I’m a good snow plow at my size). Later we had fun watching others families use our “custom runs”. Finally, the occasional snow-leaks in our “armor” got Noah cold enough that he was done, but not before we’d had a bunch of fun and discovered a really cool, free, easy-to-get-to, family sledding hill.
I’m ready to go back!
Technorati : Dauvillers, sledding, snow, storm Del.icio.us : Dauvillers, sledding, snow, storm Ice Rocket : Dauvillers, sledding, snow, storm
About News Prayer Gallery Contact Support
