Eric

Sleep, are you kidding me? There has been some improvement there, but they're never on the same schedule. Sometimes one of them will want to sleep in, but rarely do they both want to sleep in at the same time I'm staying at home with them through September and October and trying to work a bit from home. They make a 30 hour work week feel like 80, haha.

Oh, I thought you were talking about private messages, not forum threads.

That's how it's supposed to work. I think it's weird too, but it's designed to work the same way Facebook does. As soon as you click on the messages, it assumes you have been properly notified, and the red thing goes away. Unread messages should still show as unread (bold font), however.

Another handy new feature, when you're in the topic list, as you hover over each thread you'll see a down arrow icon appear to the right. Clicking it will allow you to preview the first couple posts in the thread without leaving the page.

I will add those features to the Google Search option, but the forum search doesn't have that sort of flexibility. EDIT: Done. You can test it by going to the Google Search page, and doing a search for "dep" which should now bring up results containing the word "depreciation" Also, I think it would really benefit the community if people utilized the new tagging feature, which you'll see when you create new threads. I have assigned a bunch of random tags to this thread, which you'll see at the top of this thread, as well in thread list. Tags can be searched, or you can click a tag to view all threads that contain that tag. I've also gone though and assigned the NOL tag to a few threads as an example: http://www.atxcommun...arch_app=forums Right now the tag list includes a few key terms as well as all state abbreviations. If anyone has suggestions for tags, I'll add them to the list. I'll also consider making a few more members forum moderators so that we can have people adding tags to threads that need them (if anyone is willing, that is) Links to the Google Search, MyATX, and Donation page are all back up there now. Avatars are fixed now too.

I'll be adding the donate, myatx, and google search links back very soon Gotta fix the avatars first.. seems to be a bug in the software. I'll have it sorted soon though.

For security reasons I must always upgrade to the latest version of the software... this latest version seems to require 1024x768 resolution or better. My first suggestion would be to try the mobile template that is optimized for small screens which you can choose at the very bottom left corner of the page. Click Change Theme and choose IP.Board Mobile. You might also try the Google Chrome browser which would do the best at utilizing your limited screen real estate. Let me know if either option works for you and if not, I think the next step would be to shop for a secondary template for the site. If you want to take a look at templates, look at ibforumskins.com and preview the ones that are marked "Version 3.2"

I don't mind creating new forums, but I'd like to avoid creating one that is so infrequently used that its always empty. I'd say it's up to you guys to determine if a particular category of discussion would be active enough to sustain its own forum.

Alright, the upgrade is finished, but there are still some broken things that I'm taking care of. You'll notice that some people's avatars are busted, that's first on my list to correct. If you notice anything that seems out of place, please mention it here! Some of the new features aren't enabled yet, as I'm still configuring them. I'm adding a tagging system soon. I'm going to add all of the state abbreviations as tags that can be associated with topics, but I'm looking to you folks to provide me with more tags that would be useful, such as tax terms (NOL, EFILE, AMT, etc) so please list those here as well, especially terms shorter than the minimum 4 characters that are allowed in the search.

Twins. A boy and a girl, instant family. I'm so tired. Here are a few pics

Howdy folks, lots of changes coming to the website soon. Some of the more interesting ones: - New Design.. for better or for worse, there's a new design associated with the upgrade. I like it, and I'm hoping the change isn't too disruptive. - New post editor. Much more visual, see style changes in real time. - Improved usability on smartphones and tablets - If you're replying to a topic and someone replies before you finish, you'll be alerted and given the option to see their response before posting yours. - My personal favorite, a tagging system will be added. Now posts will be able to be tagged with keywords such as state abbreviations, or other tax terms to make it much easier to find the topics you're looking for. And some features removed: (sorry, I have no control over this, but if it's problematic for anyone, I'll do my best to find a workaround) - Linear+ and Outline modes removed for topic viewing. Does anyone use these? - No longer separate settings for Member Photos and Avatars. They're being merged into a single feature: Member Photo. The goal is to get this stuff implemented in early September. I had planned to do all of this back in June, but due to a big project at work and my wife having twins, my hands have been full to say the least.

Any reputable repair shop should be able to fix it for the cost of an hour's labor plus parts. I'd guess that the fan will probably run you about $20-$25. An hour's labor isn't unreasonable, because getting to that stinking fan usually requires removing three dozen tiny screws and disassembling the laptop layer by layer until you get to the bottom where the fan is. If you're curious about how much the replacement part will cost, Google it. "Compaq Presario [exact model number] Fan" And you might get lucky and there's no problem with the fan at all. A couple months ago, a friend gave me a laptop to repair, which just happened to be a Compaq Presario F700. The problem was that it'd shut itself down after being on for half an hour. Turns out a clump of pet hair was keeping the fan from turning and the laptop was overheating, but I still had to tear it all the way down to find the problem.

Ugh, that's awful to hear. I just suggested the Dell Studio XPS to someone who thought my computer was great (built from carefully selected parts) and wanted to buy something with similar specs. I'm hoping their experience with that system isn't nearly as problematic... Especially since I could have put together a computer with the same specs and higher quality parts for about $250 less.

Mark, what you're looking to do is really not all that different from installing the entire application on a secondary partition. Even when you do that, all of the system files required by the application still get installed on the primary windows partition. Now, the non-data parts of the software (executables and whatever) aren't going to be on your faster solid state primary drive, but I really don't think that would give you much of a performance increase even if you could do that. The software still has to access the slower hard drive every single time it needs to access the data, which is constantly. Having only the program itself on your solid state drive might allow you to start the program faster, but once it's loaded into memory, you're not likely to see any further performance improvement. So if better performance is the primary goal, your data should be on the solid state drive and backed up regularly. Of course, that goal puts you at odds with your wish to conserve space on your new drive.

I just want to be sure that a couple days after tax season isn't too early. I'm not even sure of when the new version will be released, I just know it'll be out soonish... so it may be a non-issue. The design will be changing again, although it won't be as drastic a change as last time. I may remove the CleanCut skin as an option, since maintaining two themes is proving to be a bit of a pain. I will keep a large-text skin choice available, although it might not be ready until a couple days after the initial upgrade.

When you receive a personal message on the forum, you may get an email notification depending on your account settings. This email is only a notification, and it comes from my atxcommunity email address. Any email sent to that address is delivered to me, not to the person you received the private message from. So, long story short, if you want to reply to a private message, make sure to do it from the private message system on the forum instead of replying to the notification email. On a totally separate topic, there are going to be some forum software updates coming which will include some new features and refinements on existing features. I don't want to change anything mid-tax season, so I'm looking to you folks to tell me when to do the upgrade.

Yep, that's exactly right. Internet Explorer 9 requires Windows Vista or Windows 7. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't let you install on XP even if you tried. It's disappointing because as a web developer, I'd love everyone to be running the latest version of their favorite web browser. Internet Explorer's lack of standards support is really holding back innovation on the web, and making IE9 inaccessible to people using Windows XP certainly doesn't help.

The final version of IE9 is out now, and it's quite a bit better than previous versions. It's only about 2 years behind the rest of the modern browsers in terms of standards compliance (instead of about 5 years behind) The interface no longer has a kludge of ugly at the top of the screen. And those are the only nice things I can say about it. If you're an IE user, I highly recommend an upgrade if you can. Windows XP isn't supported. If you're not an IE user, keep using what you're using because no matter what that is, it's likely better in almost every way.

People are going to have to cut back on their pie to get out of this mess. Problem is, nobody is willing to.

I am baffled at how anyone can feel like the Obama administration is somehow a change in direction from the previous administration. We've still got the tax cuts and out-of-control spending to go with it. I don't think we could dig that hole any faster if we tried. I have been of the opinion for many years that our federal deficit is the most serious problem facing this country. Somehow, mainstream conservatives were able to ignore it during the entire Bush administration, and only felt it was worth getting upset about once he was replaced with a democrat. That attitude towards politics really angers me, because it shows that very few people are willing to think beyond regurgitating what they heard from their favorite political commentator. Sorry for raining on the parade, but I can't find anything to celebrate here. Ron Paul was marginalized by the media and his Tea Party has been hijacked by morons. Wake me when major government departments and agencies are being annihilated. EDIT: Sorry again, politics makes me grumpy. I should ignore these threads.

Due to a technical limitation of the database used to store all threads/posts/information for the community, I can't modify the forum search to work on short strings like that. Technically, it is possible to change the mySQL database setting to allow it, but it would really hurt search performance, and tax the server. I have added a Google Search option at the top of the screen, which uses Google to search the site, instead of the internal forum search. No character limit is in place for the Google Search option.

Done, the Poll is here:

This poll is to determine whether we should separate the General Chat forum into two different forums, one for talking about taxes and business, and one for more general discussions (birthdays, political rants, jokes, etc) I created the poll as a result of this thread, so you may want to read it before voting: Also, if you're for having two separate forums, feel free to suggest names for them.

It's not trivial to make a setting that would allow someone to automatically ignore birthday posts and other non-tax related discussions, because the forum software doesn't know the difference. A custom addon could be written to watch for certain phrases in topic titles, but it seems like it would be kind of a kludge to maintain through each forum software update. From my end, the easiest way to handle this would be to separate General Chat into two different forums, such as "Tax Talk" and The Water Cooler" or something along those lines. This is a change that I could easily make in just a few minutes.. so what's the next step? Should I just go ahead and do it? Should I make a poll first?