Aren Cambre's Blog

This week I formed Limitless Technologies LLC.

I’m not rushing into long term plans: computer and information technology consulting need little physical capital, so I can use a “pay as you go” system for now.

I have two objectives.

First, the obvious one: As a separate legal entity, Limitless Technologies LLC bears almost all liabilities for all actions performed through it, protecting me and my family from financial harm.

Second, I have political aspirations. The citizen politician ideal is a myth for ordinary citizens like me, mostly because you can’t make up for lost wages and benefits while campaigning. That’s a huge dent for families, especially in a time-consuming competitive race. I need to develop an asset pool and a more flexible income stream that can bridge me through a leave of absence from my main job.

This is the closest I have come to publicly annoucing a run for office. Don’t worry: we don’t see it happening in 2010!

I titled this “back in business” because I used to co-own Scarsdale Computers, Inc. in the late ’90s. Supposedly I was the brains to back up the sales acumen of the other guy, but I really couldn’t contribute much. My IT knowledge dropped off a cliff past computer hardware and desktop OSes back then.

Twitter is chatter. Disconnected, random, sporadic thought-lets. What’s the point?

Its sub-140 letter messages don’t stand on their own. Chatter needs to be with something bigger. A blog, text messages directed to specific people, or Facebook profile can help.

But thought-lets on a simple web page? Meaningless!

So what makes Twitter special? Beats me. Maybe if it was a platform, some kind of technological innovation? But it’s not. WordPress already has Prologue, Facebook has largely cloned Twitter’s strengths. And it’s outrageously simple.

Twitter remains unprofitable. I’m not surprised. It’s dumb.

I’m not jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. How about you?

Palm finally did what they should have done years ago: they killed Palm OS.

Palm OS was junk when it came out and outclassed even by Windows Mobile 2002. Thankfully, it’s gone.

It’s about time!

(OK, technically Palm OS isn’t dead. Palm sold the software to a Japanese company a few years ago and licenses it back. When the largest licensee ditches an uncompetitve product, the product’s probably dead.)

[CORRECTION: I lost no prepaid domain registration time. Dreamhost's domain transfer requires purchase of a 1 year additional registration on top of existing registration. Existing registration time is retained.]

1and1.com lost my business.

Yesterday, that web host screwed up my hosting package, causing a multi-hour email and web outage.

Being sick of 1and1’s routine incompetence, I already plotted my escape. I changed settings so my domains would no longer auto-renew. I probably had $30-$35 of prepaid domain registration time left with the 6 domains I am keeping, so I figured I would keep them registered at 1and1 and transfer later.

Instead, 1and1 screwed up all my DNS settings and initiated a total package cancellation, causing a major service outage.

This was the last straw, so I expedited my move to Dreamhost.

I am almost running again. Let me know if you got any bounces on emails sent to me.

Even though Dreamhost has a mixed reputation, it can’t be worse than 1and1.com. Some of my web apps run noticably more quickly. And their support staff responded with a coherent answer. Wow!

Wikipedia logo

Last night, I finally gave up Wikipedia editing. It’s not worth it.

Wikipeida is a bona fide nonprofit, and work on it is charitable. But what makes charitable work “worth it”? Here’s a few reasons:

1. Have a connection. Charity work with a group of friends counts, as does charity work for an organization in which I have a relationship.
2. Get value out of it. I like my volunteering with Boy Scouts and my neighborhood association because it’s as much an education for me as it is a benefit for them. Also fulfilling a religious calling is a value.
3. Some kind of permanence. My charitable effort must make a lasting difference in someone’s life.

Wikipedia does none of these.

I have no connection. I only know two editors, and I have met netiher in person. I value relationships, but I only have “so much time” to develop them. I’m not interested in spending that scarce resource on people whose connection is only editing an encyclopeda.

I get little value out of it. I see no religious merit. Sure, maybe a little entertainment on the debates, maybe a little pride in knowing I affected some articles. But whatever value I get is totally offset by the lack of permanence described below.

Among Wikipedia’s largest flaws is the lack of authority. Any clown can destroy your changes. Content that is both not part of common sense of laymen and not easily verifiable will be destroyed by successive edits.

I think it was Science magazine that found that Wikipedia is remarkably accurate for scientific articles. Maybe so, but it’s only because the facts are so easily verifiable. The accuracy and verifiability of other articles are debatable. I’ve especially noticed this in articles with a political slant; way too often they conform to how political authorities market things in ways they aren’t.

Good bye Wikipedia. It was interesting, but you’re not worth my time.

Canon PIXMA MP970

Canon’s PIXMA printers have a defective duplex mode. (Duplex is where you print on both sides of a page.)

Canon says that when using duplex mode, “grayscale will be created using a combination of the color (dye) inks to prevent smearing.” Even when you print black and white, the printer still approximates the black color using the color tanks.

This is stupid:

• Gratuitous waste. Color inks are expensive.
• Duplexing is slow. Color printing considerably slows printing.
• Poor quality. Approximating black with color inks produces a murky, greenish black, not a true black.

Summary: to prevent smearing, they make the printer use more ink. Does that make sense? Maybe if the goal is to sell more color ink cartridges!

Microsoft Money Plus Deluxe

Last Wednesday, Microsoft announced the end of Microsoft Money’s annual release cycle.

I think Microsoft actually killed it. Here’s why:

1. The announcement was routed through a fanboy, not an employee. Bob Peel is a “MVP,” which really means he is not an employee and donates a lot of time to Microsoft. (As much as I like Microsoft products, I think it’s absurd to donate time to a for profit corporation.)
2. “Customer feedback” apparently convinced Microsoft that yearly upgrades weren’t helpful. I have no idea why they suddenly realized this. The microsoft.public.money news group has lambasted the annual upgrades’ minimal net value for years.
3. The current version, released in mid 2007, is Money Plus. Normally it would be named Money 2008. By removing the date, the current product’s name won’t expire.
4. Microsoft discontinued retail sales. Why would you abdicate retail sales channels to Quicken? Because your product is dead. All future sales will be over download channels.

I suspect Money was unprofitable. The frequency of and poor added value of upgrades suggests that Microsoft’s true goal was milking the revenue out of a dead product. Money Plus is so long in the tooth–it’s slow, its database is terribly inefficient, and it doesn’t work well with other products–that it needs a huge rewrite.

What’s in store for Microsoft Money? Probably nothing, at least not anything I can install on my computer. If it has any future, Money will probably morph into a web site. But knowing how poorly Microsoft does web products, don’t hold your breath.

My recommendation? The desktop version is dead, and Microsoft sucks at online services, so explore alternatives.

Quicken is more primitive than Money, but Intuit promised major enhancements for the upcoming Quicken 2009. Barring that, there’s online services like wesabe.com and mint.com.

I changed my domain name to arencambre.com.

Most .biz domain names are spam sites, so cambre.biz hurts my electronic reputation. Already, Google never returns my older blog posts.

I don’t know of a sensical email address for this new domain. aren@arencambre.com? Weird. I’ll keep  aren@cambre.biz for now.

I’d rather have cambre.net, cambre.com, or cambre.org, but they’re all taken.

I made up my mind on my prior shared hosting vs. roll my own dilemma.

I’m going to use shared hosting for everything except two things:

• Infrastructure to support a camera monitoring system.
• List server software.

Even better, we’re going to use Windows Server 2008. Ubuntu and Linux are such pains to manage.

I am at a crossroads with my neighborhood association’s electronic presence.

Currently it consists of:

• A simple static HTML site hosted through my 1and1.com Beginner shared hosting plan, the same where this blog is hosted.
• Five different Google Groups: announcements, discuss (everyone can contribute), mom’s club, recipe club, and association leadership.

I have an opportunity to use my own server to host all these features and some more. At first glance, this seems appealing, but it is so cut-and-dried:

The argument gets even more abstract.

What’s the best way to ensure I can pass the torch to someone else? To not even use my own software. That means the correct option is “none of the above.”

There is already a service called neighborhoodlink.com. Some adjacent neighborhoods use this company. For example, Little Forest Hills. Why not use this? Sure, it’s kind of ugly. Sure, it’s feature poor, and it looks kludgy. But will it “get the information out”, do it for the least possible effort, and increase continuity? Yes, yes, and yes!

This is a tough decision.