A few months ago, I purchased Quicken 2012 Home & Business with the intent of upgrading my Quicken 2008 version which runs pretty well under Linux in WINE. I finally got around to trying to get it working. I’m sad to report that after over 8 hours of attempts, I was unable to get Quicken 2012 to startup and stay running for more than 10 seconds before crashing under WINE. Sorry.

There are instructions over at the WineHQ to get Quicken 2012 running. These did not work for me.

For most readers, that is enough to move along.

Every year I receive a text message on my cell phone reminding me that my minutes are about to expire. For the last 5+ years, I’ve added $10 worth of minutes every October to keep the plan alive.

Just $10/year for cell phone use?

A few times every week, we all get offers from the local cable company or telecom that has a low-low-low price in a 48pt font. The price is so low that we open the letter and read a little. I’m staring at an offer from AT&T right now, but it could be from the cable company just as easily.

$29/month for U-Verse TV +
HD-Ready DVR Included +
No Equipment to Buy!

Wow! That sounds like a great deal. How can I possibly pass it up? Then I read a little more, you know, the fine print.

For Six Months

So what’s the price after 6 months? Will they say?

There’s an old SSL/TLS security hole (from 11/2009) that has been out and patched for over a year (since 2/2010), but it appears that many major websites haven’t bothered patching it. CVE-2009-3555

The guys over at ssltls.de have a list. Seems that consistently patching is tough for many organizations. The list is pretty shocking for who is and isn’t patched. Take a look and be afraid. There are lots of big banks on the unpatched list. Scary. The list is not comprehensive, so just because your site or bank aren’t listed, doesn’t mean they are consistently patched.

• home.americanexpress.com is patched, but
• www.americanexpress.com cannot be confirmed as patched.

There are attacks in the wild that take advantage of this issue. I need to check whether my SSL sites are vulnerable too. Here’s an SSL checker

Ok, not really 101 uses for a Password Manager, but many more than you thought, about 30.

Use A Password Manager

For the last few years, I’ve been trying to get anyone with more than 5 passwords to remember to start using a password manager, PM, as part of increasing your desktop security. Below I’ll go into a few alternate uses for that password database beyond just storing computer and website passwords.

In this Tax season, I find myself needing to share sensitive documents with relatively unsophisticated people and organizations. How should I share my files with them?

The Options

There are a few options to get those sensitive files to a provider. I will attempt to list the options, then describe the problems with each. Sadly, there aren’t any good solutions unless the service provider already has a solution setup. In my experience, be it an accountant, lawyer, doctor or shipping company, they do not.

1. Encrypted Email with PGP or OpenPG or GnuPG
2. Encrypted files, probably ZIPped attached to emails with a shared password
3. Encrypted shared file service – perhaps Dropbox or sftp
4. SSL Encrypted web portal with non-trivial userids and passwords

Sadly, there is no universal standard for sharing files, securely.

Came across this article form 2004 about a small business that dumped Microsoft after the BSA showed up and discovered 8 installed, but not used, pieces of software on their systems. Keeping up with software licenses is tough. The software marshals arrived, closed his business for the audit and found about 8 pieces of unlicensed software. $65K in fines and $35K in legal fees forced him to settle rather than fight.

The CEO got mad and told his IT guys to dump Microsoft. This was back in 2004. Back then, things were harder than today. That company doesn’t use any Microsoft products anymore, but they do use proprietary tools. Redhat Linux was their choice back then. I’d be curious to find out whether they’ve changed to CentOS on their servers or a different desktop.

Key Takeaways

Many of us prefer to use Open Office, OO, for our productivity applications, but most of the people we deal with do not. OO does a good job of supporting MS-Office file formats, but it isn’t perfect. I’ve caused format issues with my team and clients because I chose to use OO instead of booting MS-Windows just to run MS-Office. They were not happy that my touching the files screwed up all the paragraph formating or worse.

If your team uses commenting or any other advanced feedback features in MS-Office, give up on OO and load MS-Office for those times when you must use MS-Office.

Enough was enough for me. I’ve already paid for the MS-Office license, so running it under Linux would be ideal for me. WINE to the rescue. Below I’ll talk through the easy installation process and let you know what to expect in each of the apps after you get MS-Office loaded.

Let’s assume you are middle class and would like to retire as middle class. How much money do you need to support that lifestyle? What is the annual amount of that lifestyle today? $40K, $60K, $80K per year? Let’s assume $60K/yr buys you the middle class retired life. You won’t be jetting around the world every year, but you can afford to eat out and have a few hobbies.

I hope the tables turn out readable.

According to WINE, Quicken 2008 works under WINE – Wine Is Not an Emulator.

WINE Report on Quicken 2008

This means that many people running Windows who would like to run Linux have one less application holding them back. I’m not in a position to try this myself for a week or so, but I definitely will try it. According to the install hints, you just need a few Windows DLLs (from those old licenses you aren’t using) preconfigured in WINE to get it working. Only sound doesn’t work, which I see as a plus.

Watch the comments for my results. Cross your fingers.