Heaven in Hell's Kitchen

I manage my personal finances with Quicken 2005. Quicken Customer Care just notified me that Quicken will discontinue support of the 2005 version on April 30, 2008.

Get this. They don't just mean that they won't provide technical support for the old version anymore. They mean that my existing functionality will cease to operate. I will no longer be able to download data from my bank.

It never occurred to me that a third party would be able to stand in between my client application and my financial services vendors. If my bank decided no longer to supply a file format for my old version of Quicken, well that would be between me and my bank. And if a software provider decided no longer to support an old release of an application, well I would be on my own as far as existing bugs. I accept that.

However, I expect to be able to use the existing functionality of a program I bought without obstruction from a third party. The application is a client that connects with a data provider. I expect to be able to fetch that data as long as the data provider provides it.

Quicken calls this a "sunset" provision, and yes it's mentioned in the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). Per the sunset provision, they support the current version and two previous ones. I know, by buying the program and installing it I had to accept the EULA. On the other hand, I won't do it again. Continuing to use existing functionality to connect from my client software to my bank requires no "support" from a third party. I will not accept the sunset provision by purchasing another product from Intuit, the makers of Quicken.

Ironically, I wanted to upgrade my version of Quicken because I really like the product. However, I don't accept being required to do it.

I was going to start developing my own personal finance application using Universal Data Models out of my Len Silverstein books. I figured I would start out with a simple check register and put it in Access or mySQL. It turns out I don't have to. You can download free accounting software licensed under the GNU GPL called GnuCash.

Posted by Jai at 01:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My pal (and very respected colleague) Bob, thinks that excuses for not using Vista, the latest Microsoft operating system, don't hold water.

Vista Excuses Don't Hold Water

Yep, I guess that means I'm passing water. No interest in Vista, at least not today. Here's an excuse you didn't mention, Bob. I'm busy doing stuff without any problem!

Not Broken
XP isn't holding me back. I have a smoking machine I assembled myself. It does what I need. I don't need to weigh it down with anything else.

Posted by Jai at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My fiancee, Jan, loves to hear all about my work as database administrator of a data warehouse. I know, because sometimes when I describe it to her, she can listen intently with eyes closed tightly in concentration for hours!

In spite of my detailed and exhaustive explanations, I know that I’ve probably given her a slightly inaccurate impression of what a “data warehouse” is, so I put together a couple of snapshots from the office to show her what my work environment is like.

Outside our office

My desk is in back just around the corner

This is why I'm so tired after loading data all day

Posted by Jai at 05:03 PM | Permalink

I can't believe it. Two people actually listened to me.

You don't need to build websites anymore. Just get a blog. And you can even get them for free.

My friend and colleague, Bob Sala wanted to build himself a website. I suggested that he make technology work for him instead of him working for technology. He even quoted me. (This is a blatant excuse for a trackback.)

Similarly, my friend Francis Roach wanted to rework his website for Luigi's Dance Centre. Bob had found that it was easy to get a WordPress blog. One great service of WordPress is that they give you static pages, so it was easy for me to create a new WordPress version of the Luigi Jazz site by copying-and-pasting existing text from the old Luigi site into static pages in the new blog. Now maintaining the site becomes a non-programmer's job. Current news can go into the website as blog posts.

Great, huh? I don't know if Francis will point his domain to the new blog, but here's how the blog version of Luigi's Dance Center looks.

Motto: don't program, manage content.

Posted by Jai at 04:38 PM | Permalink

Here's a whole kit bag of tools for YouTube.

The Amazing YouTube Tools Collection

Posted by Jai at 06:28 PM | Permalink

Here's a picture of my new computer.

You see, I built it myself. My previous desktop died. I don't know why. (The old case is peeking up over the left. I salvaged some of the parts.) At first I thought it was the hard drive, but that wasn't it.

I wanted something that would protect me from data loss due to hardware failure and gutsy enough to support Jan's photography work. So I wanted sizable memory and fast processing as well as data redundancy. My requirements weren't really available off-the-shelf, and I hated the idea of painting myself in a corner with some candy-ass Crapple Computer. <-- Does Lee read my site? We'll see...

My uncle Don gave me the encouragement I needed to do it myself. Mark Rusch and my boss at work gave me technical guidance that was indispensable. The picture above shows all the pieces I picked out.

Here's what it looked like when I first turned it on. It booted to the BIOS the first time!

Posted by Jai at 02:10 PM | Permalink