I’m glad this has gotten attention from Boing Boing. Intuit, makers of Quickbooks, Quicken, Turbotax and other generally-useful financial software, has decided to pull the plug on online services from older product editions.

I just renewed payroll service for my Quickbooks 2002. Intuit has decided to kill it after April. My paid-for service will vanish. In essence, I have thrown my money away by buying Intuit products and services.

It’s tax time. Go buy H&R Block’s Tax Cut instead of Turbotax. At least H&R still cares about its customers.

Below is my feedback to their website. You might want to add your own comments.

Your sunset policy is the nail in the coffin for my ever buying an Intuit product again. Because of your stupidity, my Quickbooks 2002 will no longer do payroll.

Why does it seem that every chance Intuit has had to make an ass of itself, it has succeeded with flying colors? First it was the spyware issue, now its sunsetting.

I could understand if it was an issue of the burden of supporting a non-revenue service. But I am *PAYING* for subscription services. I believe you owe me a refund for the portion of the payroll service ***I PURCHASED*** which Intuit has arbitrarily decided not to deliver.

I will buy H&R Block products from now on, and will encourage anyone within earshot to do the same.

Once in your corporate lifetime, you listened to customers. I’m genuinely sad you have driven me away.

My pal Scott is celebrating a birthday today. Go wish him a good one!

(Its also National Cornchip Day, of course. So offer to buy him some Doritos while you’re there.)

The freezy stuff is expected to begin this afternoon and last all weekend. I’m starting to miss the 70-degree January days.

I came across a collection of my old business cards and thought it would be fun to scan them all in. Thus, here is my business card resume, showing who and where I was.

(Many of these companies no longer exist. What does that say about me?)

Its no longer Australia Day. As fine a day as it was, it is instead Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birthday. Happy birthday, Mo!

I hope everyone is enjoying a joyful Australia Day today. I plan to celebrate by listening to the music of Midnight Oil, AC/DC, INXS, and Men At Work, watching movies by Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John and Mel Gibson, and wishing Rupurt Murdoch would just go away.

They might do everything upside-down, but Aussies are all right, mate.

This is from Smash Mouth‘s first album, Fush-Yo Mang.

Neighbor called my landlord
She said that she was pissed
Up all night making noise
And she cant get no rest
She said we was running a flop house
Full of thieves and thugs
Musicians and hooligans and we were all on the drugs
So she got bent and raised the rent
Said it would only take one more
Phone call from my whiny neighbor
Continue reading →

I ran across an interesting new project from Free World Dialup-creator Jeff Pulver called Bellster. Bellster is like Napster but for phones. Participants share their phone lines with other participants. Thus, participants can make calls throughout the Bellster network for free. The service runs through each individual’s Asterisk server, and thus can be locked down to prevent toll calls and to limit abuse.

With VoIP already making international calling dirt-cheap, I wonder how this service will fit in. Still, you can’t argue with the success of Free World Dialup.

Keep an eye on Jeff Pulver. The man knows what he’s doing.

I opened my paper this morning to see this picture of Tanner and Bram Lovelace in the “City and State” section. They were out demonstrating their Geocaching expertise for this N&O story. Pretty cool, guys!

I only wish you could see Bram’s face a bit better. He’s a cute kid.