Hardcoded moneyGuru

I'm trying to open moneyGuru at work, where my connection is behind a proxy server, and every time I open it, it just hangs, unresponsive. It's long enough that I had assumed the program simply wasn't working at all (until I later figured out it was network related and left it to time out on its own).

If I disable/disconnect my network, it will open just fine, but when the connection is available moneyGuru hangs. I've tested this a few times each way to make sure, and this occurred without automatic update checks enabled.

This suggests to me that
a) moneyGuru is "phoning home" for some reason on launch
b) the "phoning home" is a blocking call
c) the "phoning home" has a very long timeout considering there's no indicator that you should be waiting for a timeout
d) it does not make use of the system proxy settings when phoning home, or is connecting via a port which is blocked (outbound) at my place of work

I saw a couple of errors in my console:
21/01/11 10:35:12 AM [0x0-0xb17b17].com.hardcoded_software.moneyguru[51237] WARNING Couldn't connect to open.hardcoded.net
21/01/11 10:35:17 AM [0x0-0xb17b17].com.hardcoded_software.moneyguru[51237] WARNING Communication problem with currency.hardcoded.net: [Errno 61] Connection refused

I would suggest that the problem could be fixed by one or more of the following
a) remove "phoning home" (admittedly I don't know what it's actually doing, but I'm always slightly concerned about software that phones home... especially when I'm planning on putting a bunch of personal financial info in it!) - of course I'm sure it's nothing dodgy, but is it necessary?
b) parallelise the "phoning home" calls --- or are they strictly required before you can open a document?
c) shrink the timeout
d) add a GUI element explaining what's happening so people know why its not launching (at least on my system it's just a hung app with no windows)
e) utilise system proxy settings (in my case, OS X proxy settings)

moneyGuru version: 2.3.4
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6.6