Managing future embedded and ubiquitous systems could be orders-of-magnitude more difficult than managing today?s desktop machines, which is already a challenging task. In this paper, we report our experience in managing the Aladdin home networking system in an actual house for three years to provide some clues on the potential complexity to come. We point out that security, reliability, and robustness in the presence of configuration changes are three critical issues that must be addressed before our society can rely upon future embedded and ubiquitous systems for our daily lives.