Here’s some photos from a little vacation I took in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. With only limited time to take one and not much time for planning, I decided to get away while I had the chance. Photos were taken with an old point and shoot 5MP Olympus C-50 camera.

On the Baja ATV Tour, armed with a Yamaha Grizzly.

Photos of the quaint little inn, where I stayed…

I met some interesting people from different countries, along with several from Portland. Snorkled, rode on boats, rode ATVs, saw a marlin fishing competition, ate some interesting food, read a book, lost my wallet, miraculously recovered the wallet, practiced Spanish, and did a little photography.

Kites flying at Long Beach, Washington

Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

Sand texture on the Washington coast

Huge stack of clams near Bay Center, Washington

Fishing near Cape Disappointment State Park

Lake house along Ocean Beach Highway in Washington

Ivy infested trees in Bay Center, Washington

Ocean view rooms at Long Beach, Washington

Collapsed barn near Skamokawa, Washington

I bought QuickBooks 2005 for the business. It worked fine, but suddenly stopped downloading my online transations. A little popup says that the regular software services still worked, but after 3 years other ’special’ services will be discontinued. By special services, it meant online downloads- which I considered a normal part of the QuickBooks package. It’s a sneaky way to force people to upgrade every 3 years, even when they don’t need to or want to. It won’t even import a pre-downloaded OFX file. How lame.

Annoying popups will keep harassing you to upgrade as well. Clearly, the hunger for corporate profit outpowers the usefulness of the software for the end user.

Since my 2005 software no longer works, I did indeed buy an upgrade. Upgrades, as it turns out, are exactly the same cost as buying the package brand new. In fact, I saved $50 from buying QuickBooks on Amazon for $150 instead of buying the special low ‘upgrade’ price of $200 from QuickBooks direct. What a scam.

But now that I have QuickBooks 2008, even though I haven’t owned it 2 weeks, it’s already pestering me to upgrade to 2009! …claiming that it’s way better than that OLD version.

This is being posted to the ‘Marketing Tricks & Scams’ category.