[wplug] application/framework to record heterogeneous personal information

[Michael H. Semcheski]

Just curious, have you tried Quicken under Wine or on Linux, or has anyone
else?  I really liked its ability to pull in statements from my financial
institutions automatically.

Does MoneyDance do this?  Does it work well, or as well as Quicken?

Mike

On 3/22/07, Jason Jerome <jjerome2 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I can not help with the medical tracking, but as far as financial I can't
> recommend a product like Quicken enough.  It allows me to be pretty lazy
> when I want (just import and forget), and will get into as much detail with
> things as I want to dish out.  I've been using it for 12 years now (after
> taking a class).  Embarrassingly enough, I've based a lot of my financial
> decisions on whether the data can be directly imported into Quicken, but the
> payoff has been huge.
>
> The key to handling the everyday drudgery and laziness of these systems is
> to automate as much as possible.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael H. Semcheski <mhsemcheski at gmail.com>
> To: General user list <wplug at wplug.org>
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 7:48:44 AM
> Subject: Re: [wplug] application/framework to record heterogeneous
> personal information
>
> I read a book called 'The Long Walk', which was the story of a Polish
> officer after WWII who was sent to a prison camp in Siberia.  Before heading
> to Siberia, he was held for a few years in tight confinement at a prison,
> and beaten and tortured with the aim of coercing him into signing a
> confession.  He held out, refusing to confess to anything, and was sentenced
> to 20 years in a Siberian work camp.  All evidence indicates that everyone
> who signed confessions was more or less promptly executed.
>
> What's interesting about this is that one of the most brutal regimes in
> history, which killed tens of millions of citizens, wouldn't do anything if
> the paper work weren't in order.
>
> Anecdotally, I've heard similar things about other totalitarian regimes --
> the record keeping and bureaucracy is second to none.  The idea behind this,
> I believe, is to discourage independent action and accumulate power in the
> upper levels of the bureaucracy.
>
> I only bring this up because I too have thought quite a bit about an
> inclusive personal record keeping and information tracking application.  My
> gut feeling is that it would be quite a bit of work to keep everything up to
> date in this database, and if it wasn't kept up to date, and wasn't entirely
> inclusive, what's the point?  (Also, I worry that I would turn into a
> totalitarian dictator, or worse, a creepy person.)
>
> But, if I were doing this, I would want the data stored off-site, simply
> because it would probably be a relatively small dataset, and it would be
> most useful if I lost everything, such as if there were a fire or robbery.
> Therefore, I'd probably try to build it on top of Amazon's S3, rsync.net,
> or a hosted webserver.
>
> Mike
>
> On 3/22/07, Alexandros Papadopoulos < apapadop at alumni.cmu.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Dear all
> >
> > Inspired by the unbelievable bureaucracy that hunts my daily personal
> > and
> > professional life, I'm beginning to feel the need for a software
> > application
> > that will make it easier to record anything that might be of use for
> > future
> > reference.
> >
> > Let me explain it by example: These days I'm fighting some physiological
> >
> > challenges. In order to reclaim some of the money I'm spending on
> > doctors,
> > hospitals, prescription drugs, physiotherapy etc, I need to have
> > absolute
> > proof of everything I spent and when, how, for what.
> >
> > The need also arises to trace back to some examinations from a previous
> > life
> > (10 or more years ago) that someone has stored somewhere, but noone is
> > exactly sure...
> >
> > Wouldn't it be great if an application existed to be able to track all
> > that
> > jazz? It would be able to perform string searches and look up anything
> > from
> > anytime. All drugs, prescriptions, diagnoses, examination results would
> > be on
> > its database. It would be easy to link one doctor's visit and the
> > resulting
> > diagnosis to future paperwork/X-rays etc.
> >
> > Is anyone aware of anything that could remotely satisfy this need? I
> > recently
> > read on the MyLifeBits project
> > http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx that
> > has
> > some aspects of what I'm looking for but no working prototype.
> >
> > This doesn't have to be medical only. I'd love to have the financial
> > angle too
> > and be able to track my expenses in accordance to other events.
> >
> > The closest I can think of is a wiki, but it's too static in terms of
> > data
> > presentation... Any ideas?
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > -A
> > _______________________________________________
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> > wplug at wplug.org
> > http://www.wplug.org/mailman/listinfo/wplug
> >
>
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