I just now learned that Karen Kenworthy, the author of a great number of excellent tools [ 1 ] , is dead. All my heroes are dying.
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2022-07-10 - Joe Winett stopped maintaining Karenware.
Checking back in on software ∞
It started with the difficulty of finding and getting things. I would keep things I downloaded from BBS'. I collected a lot.
When I later got into this internet thing, though it took time I admitted the transitory nature of the internet and began saving important things there, too. I've operated under the assumption that I'll lose internet access.
I keep all the important software I use or may use, and some of their alternatives. I don't bookmark things. Again, I operate under the assumption I'll lose internet access.
Now, when going through my software to organize and update things, I'm finding software which has gone stale.
Sometimes a program won't have been updated for a newer version of my operating system. Sooner or later, an old program can't work with what I'm using. I recently learned that I won't be able to use 16 bit applications on Windows 10 and I believe this includes DOS software.
Sometimes the author has gone on to other things, and their software is "done" and continues to work in spite of having not been updated in years (Blackbox, I'm looking at you.). In today's "always-updating" environment, this is a little irksome, but this is the way things used to be. I need to remember that a good piece of software is "done" when it ships, like old console games.
Sometimes the hardware or operating system has been abandoned by the public at large, and the community consists of a mere handful of enthusiasts. I've seen this with several generations of computers. The Commodore 64, the Amiga, DOS, BeOS, generations of Windows, the HP 200LX, the Zaurus (Zaurus SL-C1000), and soon the original Pandora.
.. and sometimes the author has died.
How many years would pass before we check back in for an update and see the website gone, not knowing if the author has moved on to other things or moved on up, never to return?
I've researched people. I've found them in their other projects. I've tracked down and contacted them, but I've now lived into the times when I'll conclude a search at an obituary.
I like to think I give a small amount of respect to each and every program I keep. I categorize them, name them and now I try to post on them and add notes.
Although I haven't used them in years, I'll soon be reverentially posting pages for what tools of Karen's I've kept in my toolkit.
I don't know how long her software will be usable or even relevant. I expect that one day, some future version of Windows will leave her software behind.
Karen's death announcement on Facebook ∞
(source, the linking is mine)
Author of the Karen's Power Tools Newsletter and fellow computer programmer, Karen Kenworthy, died on April 12, 2011.
Karen was one of my first customers at Vigoris Technologies. I had the pleasure of visiting the KarenWare global headquarters to help reconfigure her router and servers when she switched to my DSL service.
In 2009, while I was homeless, I received an email from Karen asking how to reconfigure something else. She wanted to pay me, but I only spent 5 minutes writing an email, so I said I couldn't charge a friend for that...
I received this letter a few days later:
Joe
c/o Salvation Army Shelter
200 E 9th Street
Shawnee, OK 74801-7004Dear Joe,
I hope this letter finds you in time for Thanksgiving. That's because I want to say thanks for your help with my network cutover. Your advice and encouragement helped make the cutover smooth and successful. Since that day, the new network has worked perfectly -- just as you predicted!
I know we discussed compensation for your help. And you were kind enough to offer your help purely as a friend. I was touched by that offer and greatly appreciate it.
But I also know that you have many needs, some of which can be helped by a little money. That's why I'm hoping you'll accept the small amount enclosed with this note. It might help you move into an apartment a little earlier, or provide something you need or would enjoy. Please think of it as my offer of help, purely as a friend.
I hope you have a comfortable and pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. I'll be thinking about you as I sit down to dinner with my parents and friends, and offer a prayer. I hope it won't be long before you fully enjoy the same blessings, as you continue the hard work of "debugging and upgrading" your valuable life (something we all have to do).
Your friend and loyal customer,
(signed "Karen")
Karen KenworthyAnd Karen also sent a donation to the Salvation Army in Shawnee along with a letter saying she appreciated what they were doing for me and the others there. She was kind enough to add that I was one of the best computer programmers she knew.
Karen's letter has a stamp she printed in her office (of course) and it's on letterhead she made (of course) and her letterhead icon is a teddy bear (of course).
Karen was so forward thinking that she registered TeddyBear.com when .com registrations were young and also got herself a separately route-able class-C network. Those weren't available in 1996 when I got started and they probably had not been for quite some time.
In February of 2010 she emailed me saying that she had almost dropped in on me recently because she was with friends not far from Shawnee looking at a hunting lease. We traded a couple more emails and then she said she might be in town that April and we should get together. I was looking forward to it.
April came and went. She didn't reply to my next emails -- I was afraid she might be sick.
Her last newsletter was sent in March, 2010.
Karen has personally touched tens of thousands of lives.
That's all I want to say about that. :(
About Karen ∞
(I believe I got this from the same Facebook announcement from above)
(That Gmail email address is almost certainly unmonitored now)
Newspaper obituary ∞
(source · archived, the linking is mine)
Loving daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. She entered this world June 1952, in Levelland, TX. Graduate of Edison High School and Westminster College. Brilliant, witty, and deeply caring. Survived by parents Joe and Marja Kenworthy of Tulsa, brothers Bill Kenworthy (Susan) of Desoto, TX and Kevin Kenworthy (Lisa) of Falls Church, VA, 11 nieces and nephews, and dear friends Michelle and Terry Starr. Memorial Service 10:30 a.m., Saturday, April 16, 2011, at Moore's Southlawn Chapel. This obituary was published in the Tulsa World on 4/15/2011.
Notes ∞
- https://www.karenware.com/n/kptnl/2011/04/25/with-great-sadness
- Cnet had a page with her software (archived) which bundled shit in with them, but it's gone.
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Though C.P. Williams commented with his interest in revisiting Karen's software, his blog was removed.
Last updated 2022-07-10 at 12:38:55
Thanks.
I was looking for an actualization to Karen back up program and I just finish to read the beautiful story of Karen. I do not know what to say. He was a special person, and leave thousands friends in all the word, included here em Brazil.
Bye my friend.
Rest in Peace. I miss you.
Karen wrote a backup program (Karen's Replicator) that has turned out to be much easier to use than many of the backup programs that I've used before or since in the last 10 or more years.
Thank you kindly for posting this story. Karen will be missed, not just for her programming skills, but also as a fine person who touched the lives of others.
Thank you so much for posting this story about Karen. I have been a big fan of Karen's PT Replicator and used it for years. It's sad to hear of her passing, but I'm sure she is upstairs looking down and knows that she has helped so many people all other the world.
Rest in Peace Karen and thank you for sharing your knowledge and skills with the world.
Kind Regards
Brian Zarth
Sydney, Australia.
I found this quite by accident after searching how to recover clipboard entries. The domain was referenced but obsolete. I appended it and found a link to this article.
I never knew or heard of Karen but this has really touched my heart and as I sit teary eyed I am reminded that there are still some good people in this world we live in.
Unfortunately some have had to leave to the big network in the sky. I wish I had heard about Karen before or known her work. Thank you for sharing such a powerful memory and post.
I have been homeless myself and know it can be tough in several ways.
I hope that you are doing okay these days.
God Bless.
I, too, am saddened by hearing of the passing of this lady that I have never met, never communicated with, but who earned my respect as a fellow programmer simply because of the constant and reliable quality of her software. I still regularly use Karen's Directory Printer and often find capabilities in the settings that are just what I'm after : it was after using it again tonight that I thought "I must drop her a line and praise her to the skies", only to find she is up there already. Bless you, Karen, and I hope that those you loved and left behind glean some comfort from the tributes people have left you, and the safisfaction people across the world still feel from using your exceptional creations.
I had a recent failure of a torrent client.. I was looking for help and search after another I ended up on a reddit post which was mentioning a very familiar sounding Karen's replicator.. I followed some more links and ended up on this sad news..
I am sure though she is in Paradise, whatever it is for each one, a place of neverending joy and peace and goodness. Amen
I'm using KAREN's Replaticator for 5 year's and was looking if she had maybe an update and saw this sad news that she was not living anymore... RIP
I have looked around hoping someone, like her brother maybe, would pick up her work and take it forward, It is not like she did something every week/month. She worked on these little gems and sometimes skipped a year before posting one. I hope I can work a little faster.
I have nearly all of the Karenware Power tools she had on her site and the code for them as well. I do not have a copy of her CD but I hear it had a few items that were not on her site on it. I an hoping to find someone with a copy of it I can get and post.
I will be putting up all of them in time. A list of all her programs will be on the site Friday and Show Stopper will be released the week following. I am working on the .NET version of showstopper as well. Her version is pretty complicated with a great number of API's embedded into it so I will have a challenge getting it moved over to .NET.
Nothing Karen did was simple. She was an amazing complex programmer and a giving person. I never had the chance to meet her I was grateful to be acquainted with her.
I am hoping I will be able to convert and create new programs for others to take part in.
[2018-04-26 edit - his website, craigware.blogspot.com, was listed as deleted and I couldn't find an archive of it.]
I'm glad to hear that the source code didn't go down the memory hole. I applaud your interest in revisiting and updating that code.
Will you consider open sourcing your revisions once they're sufficiently different?
I too have been using Replicator for many years, and still to this day. I heard of Karen's passing some time ago and wondered if someone might carry on her awesome work.
If you posted her list of works, where did you list those? I am looking for a utility program that she probably wrote that allows for printing of folders.
Also, while I said that I still use Replicator, I seem to have a problem with it running automatically, on schedule. I think the setting are correct. Maybe it's just a WIndows setting? Or, maybe it's me?
If you could help, that would be great!
The list is here: craigware.blogspot.ca/2017/03/here-is-list-of-software-karen-had-in.html
[edit: dead link, check out the resurrected main website]
Thanks much! I found the little nugget I was looking for...Karen's Directory Printer...perfect!
I am needing help getting Replicator to run on schedule. I have it set to do so, but it does not run every weekday like it is supposed to. Any ideas?
I'm that guy, taking up Karen's work, Joe Winett. The owner of Karen's work is Terry Starr.
You could buy a copy of the CD from us, at https://www.karenware.com/licenseme. The ISO image presently offered is Karen's March 2010 master. We're releasing another disc around Christmastime addressing the Windows 10 Creator's Update problems and we will be going on to .NET (Karen had already been working on it)
I'm really exhausted right now, so open source sounds great to me anyway, but it won't be happening in 2017 and probably not in the first half of 2018 -- Karen's terms are Terry's terms --- the CD comes with a text document and a Microsoft Word document of the commercial license.
Yeh, I'm seriously worn out tonight -- I suspect I'm going to scroll down the page and find a rant from me written in July about this... I know there's one out there somewhere....
March 2017
Karen's reputation and skill lives on, way up a remote inlet on the BC coast where Replicator faithfully moves files from a virtual XP out to Windows 7 and then onwards to Dropbox each night.
Replicator is a brilliant piece of kit.
I will motivate the owners to Pay It Forward so that some people who could use some help will get it, courtesy of them and in gratitude to Karen.
Fred Mason
Doh, there was just one more post, Fred's. Stories of people using Replicator are great -- stories of modifying Replicator to better suit a purpose are even better --- i'd like to publish the stories, even.
It's when I run across the aggregation sites that repackage Power Tools with crap, or put up the original install packages for download next to misleading ads that end up being randsomeware, then my stomach turns even more. Ironically those distributions didn't break the terms of her license. I think Karen would have loved the Drop Box plugin. Replicating to cloud will be a new official plugin at some point. Maybe there would be a "Click Here to Replicate on KarenWare.com's diverse storage cloud" -- but there wouldn't be any reason a person or company couldn't replicate to their own cloud... If open source then real businesses could store replica sets for profit just like Red Hat supports Linux for it.
I emailed Craig Williams to see if he's still around.
Oh my, there's a new maintainer for Karen's software!