Part of my quest to master Quicken involved reconciling my accounts against past statements to make sure everything was going OK. If you don’t currently do this, by the way, I highly recommend it. Don’t even take the time to enter your account – just make a fake one and reconcile a penny. The rewards are well worth it.

Doesn’t that make the sorrow of today just melt away? There are sunnier skies out there, folks, and it starts with reconciling your bank accounts.

If we’re honest with each other, I think it’s not surprising that keeping track of one’s bank acocunt isn’t a common task. It’s a pain, right? So I’m not surprised to see Quicken try to encourage positive behavior in that regard by reinforcing it with a positive message. Still, the climate of usability these days is heavily against unnecessary dialogs. It seems like something more subtle (with less clicking) might have been in order.

Alternatively, they could have taken a cue from our friends at Facebook and just changed the button text to something like “Yipee!”, “Yessss!”, or “Ownage!”

In related news, I decided to register Quicken a couple weeks back. Now, I feel like I might be tainted having gone through a typography course, so for those who haven’t had any training… does this registration screen look normal to you? No help from past and present CDFers!!