Eric

I work for a public university as my day job. I can't speak for anyone else's competence, but I know my Idunno what's up with these other places, but here we've seen enrollment drop consistently for quite a few years. I have no idea what portion of our funding comes from the state, but I've been told that as a percentage of total income, it's become less of the pie. I have no idea if that's true or not. This particular institution has had relatively modest tuition increases as a result of the dropping enrollment, but much more drastic changes are being made elsewhere. Maine has a system of public universities that includes 7 mostly autonomous campuses. Every campus used to have it's own IT department, now there's a single system-wide IT department that serves all 7 campuses. Every campus used to have its own HR department, now we're moving toward regional HR employees that travel between campuses. Next is Administration and Finance. After that, they're talking about removing academic programs from some campuses to reduce overlap between campuses. I don't know if any of these things sound like a big deal, but when you consider the rural location and geographical isolation of the top half of Maine, there are significant hurdles to making these changes work. If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I just wanted to explain that not every university is bloating up their administrative workforce and increasing tuition to cover it. In fact, we were named one of the top 5 universities in the north (a region that spans 11 states) for graduating students with the lowest debt load.

  Learning to navigate a bureaucracy is one of the most important things you'll do in college.  You'll use that skill for the rest of your life.   I mean, you're tax prepares, it pretty much defines your profession!

Nothing will be lost.  There's an extensive migration process (it takes hours to run) that should get 100% of the data into the new format.  I'll be making full file and database backups before I start, so if anything does turn up missing I'll be able to roll it all back.

I'm going to shoot for next weekend.   I'm going to get the ball rolling on Saturday May 2, and hope to have it finished by the end of the day on Sunday.   That is, unless I forget, which has been known to happen.

It's good to see that most of you survived tax season with your sanity (mostly) intact. The forum is going to receive a pretty significant makeover soon, but it will require some downtime, perhaps an entire day, to complete all of the changes.     My question you you folks is when the best time for that is?  When will things be sufficiently slow that taking down the site for a day won't be a huge disruption?

Web developers/designers have a site called http://clientsfromhell.net/   I think you guys have enough content to start your own site with a similar format.

There are a few people using Drake on the forums.  They're bound to see your post here, but I just wanted to point out that we've got a dedicated Drake forum also: http://www.atxcommunity.com/forum/6-drake/

Reminds me of an ad I saw a couple weeks ago, some of the same pairs of critters, I think  

Ahh, here's the thread. I'll get a donation. And then another will follow an hour later. I wonder "coincidence?" And then a another couple more. "Naw, someone is talking about donations on the forum" Thanks everyone Some big changes coming soon! (after things quiet down)

You're probably not going to find any professional tax software that runs on a tablet, outside of tablets that run a real version of Windows.   Personally, I can't imagine trying to be productive on any machine that doesn't have a good keyboard.  Shallow key-travel drives me nuts, so even a lot of laptops I find pretty horrible to use for long periods.  Tablets are definitely geared more toward consumption of information/media.     Yeah, but it really blurs the line quite a bit.  That's probably the most computer-like tablet you can buy.

The T100 is quite nice, and the price is right.   I guess it comes down to how much you want to run ATX on the thing.  I think you'll be hard pressed to find anything that will do a good job of running ATX software for $350, even if it's a refurb, since nearly all tablets have mobile processors which are geared toward efficiency instead of processing power (better battery life and less worry about cooling requirements are important considerations for the tablet form factor)   The only tablet I can think of with a real desktop-class processor is the Surface Pro series, and they're not cheap. 

What size tablet do you want?    I might suggest the Nexus 9, which is a decent mid-range tablet, and since it's a Nexus device it's quick to get the latest OS updates directly from Google.  It's already got Android 5.0.2 and 5.1 should be available any time now.   It's got a 8.9" screen and the 4:3 aspect ratio is a lot nicer for productivity applications at that size than a 16:9

  Sometimes you feel like the money will be worth the headache.  In my experience though, it hasn't been.

  I have handled it exactly this way, and although it was tempting, I've never actually explained to them that they're a pain in the ass.  I just doubled my estimates for work, which started out quite high to begin with.  After every job, I'd up the price even more.  Eventually I quoted them $4000 for a project I'd normally only bid $1200 for.  To my relief, I wasn't asked to do the work.  They fished for quotes a couple times after that, and then I never heard from them again.

  :lol:

I've heard all kinds of things about the snow.  I've heard 6-11 from one source and 12-18 from another, but I'm not going to be up here to deal with it when it hits so I'll have to figure out how to get it taken care of while I'm away.   There is relatively little snow on the ground up here right now, and I'd would gladly take more if it meant we could catch a break from the cold.  It's been -20 or lower almost every morning for the past month, and I'm definitely going a little stir crazy.  You know it's been cold when you wake up to zero degrees and no wind and it feels damned near tropical.

I suspect the issue is support for GPT (GUID Partition Table) vs the older MBR (Master Boot Record).     It's odd if Windows 7 supports it, but the backup software they supply with the OS does not.   Since it's not an issue of OS support, better backup software would solve the problem if you don't feel like re-partitioning the drive. EaseUs and Acronis True Image Home both support GPT.

I keep hearing that peanutbutter and fluff sandwiches are a Maine thing.  Is that true? I had no idea.

It looks like just another average storm this far north, only 8-15".    And don't bother going to the store for bread and milk or whatever people are always buying before a storm.  If you're going to stock up on anything, it should be booze and snacks.

  I'm still not sure if Jack's chinese food response had anything to do with me offering to eat the chocolate lab with lava cake for dessert.

I'll take both, I didn't have lunch.

It's really is a bit of a pain.    If adding a hard drive to a computer is the kind of thing you could do without googling it, and you understand what partitions/partition tables are, then you can probably do it yourself.    If not, then I'm with Jack--take it to someone.  Especially if the data on the drive is something you don't want to lose.  It doesn't hurt to back up your data before you hand over your computer either.  Some technicians aren't as qualified as you would think.  Not to make you nervous or anything.   If it's a Samsung SSD, they offer decent software for doing the migration.

I don't have anyone prepare my return because I keep terrible track of my expenses (doing my taxes involves an extensive and careful search through my email over the past year for receipts). 3/4 the reason I don't claim OIH is because I'd have to dig through EVEN MORE records. I'll do the simplified OIH method this year though. With the amount of money we spend renovating our home, and the size of my office, I know I could get more, but I don't care. I can't be bothered. And I'm sure that's the worst kind of client to have, so I'll save you all the trouble--seriously. The shameful disorganization of my finances should be my burden to deal with. The level of discomfort that I feel when dealing with these things is so high, that there is no tax refund amount that could get me to file before April 10. I could win 100 million dollars in the lottery, and I would put off receiving it as long as possible due to the paperwork that would be involved. Nice of you folks to offer though, thanks anyway

  I would consider myself an average taxpayer, but I am WAY too paranoid to take that route.  The closest I get is "it's unfortunate that I have to check that box, my return just took a nosedive" You're right though, they shouldn't show the average person their dollar figure in real time--it's probably irrelevant and just acts as a temptation to be dishonest.   I've never used their online service, which at the price mentioned seems awfully expensive considering their home and business software for doing a Sch C costs less than that, even if you include federal and state efile.  I find that it's pretty thorough, but it takes me FOREVER to get through my return.  I read and re-read every stupid box that pops up to make sure I'm getting everything correct, and then i leave my desk because reading that much gibberish makes my head hurt after a while.

Well I guess would explain the whole microwave oven thing that I've never really understood or looked into. That may be another reason wireless/induction charging hasn't been done with pacemakers yet--it uses a magnetic field to generate voltage in the device.