Eric

It took me about 6 seconds. Thank you, internet. Sure, it's not as impressive as actually figuring it out, but hey, I work with the tools that are available to me. :D

Could you give me a link to the post so I can see it? Sorry about taking so long to respond, we've had a pretty rough last couple of weeks.

Forest Gump was smarter than the majority of the people who hold public office in this country.

There's nothing to debate. It is a spending problem. The only thing to debate is whether or not the republican party would be doing any different. Recent history gives us no reason to think so. Yes, the Bush administration gave us 3 major tax cuts, but not without huge increases in federal spending. If you've got a half an hour to spare, here's a video called I.O.U.S.A. (the 30 minute condensed version) that talks about the history of the national debt in the US, and deficit spending. It was made before Obama took office, however, so it looks like there is no shortage of material for a sequel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_TjBNjc9Bo Oh, and I got an e-mail from Despair Inc the other day about a new t-shirt they're selling. "I helped spend billions to bail out a failing auto-maker, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" http://site.despair.com/governmentmotors/

I have Safari installed, but I prefer Google Ghrome. Chrome uses Safari's rendering engine, so websites should function exactly the same way in both browsers. I believe Chome's got the best javascript performance of any browser, making javascript-heavy web applications much snappier to use. Firefox just has so many extensions available that I can't imagine them missing from my browser. ... Oh yeah, and IE6 is a heap of crap.

I installed it even though I don't use IE. It's got somewhat better standards support than IE7 does, and as a web developer, that's all I care about. I may not use it, but the more IE users with the latest version of IE, the happier I am. Internet Explorer 6 is such a heap of crap, I wish it would just go away. Of course, I would prefer that everyone ditch IE for Firefox or Chrome, or Opera, or Safari... but it wont happen. Many companies build websites that require IE (although fewer and fewer all the time)

The BIOS: it depends. Sometimes you can just plug in a new video card, and the computer will recognize that and disable the on-board video automatically. Sometimes, however, you have to go into the BIOS and disable the on-board manually. My suggestion is to ignore the BIOS and see if you get a picture on the monitor plugged into the new card when you boot up. If not, plug the monitor back into the on-board, reboot, enter BIOS, disable on-board video, save settings and leave the BIOS, and then try the new card again. Don't worry if you don't get a picture right away. You can always remove the video card and go back to on-board to keep tinkering. As far as drivers and Vista goes, you're probably right about Plug-and-Play, but it's a good idea to go online and download the newest video drivers from the card manufacturer (ATI or nVidia).

It's likely that you'll have more than one type of slot. Go with PCI Express 16x if you can. If it's in there, it's always the one on top. Here's a picture of an actual motherboard. The top one is PCIe 16x, the next two are PCIe 1x, and the other three are just plain PCI. No idea why the last one is red, probably just for looks.

The nice thing about having separate monitors is to be able to physically split your applications. You can maximize an application in one monitor without it overflowing to the stuff that's on the other.. if you split them up side by side in a single monitor, maximizing one of your windows would make it take up the entire screen. That just seems like it'd be a pain to me. Also, I'm going to guess that you're running your 17" monitors at 1024x768. Two of them gives you a horizontal space of 2048 pixels. Your average 24" monitor runs at a native resolution of 1920 x 1200, which is actually less horizontal space, but a bit more vertical space. You can get a 22" monitor and a 19" monitor for about the same price, or maybe just a few more bucks than a single 24"

My advice would be to have someone open up the computer and see what type of card you should get. It sounds like you probably need a PCI Express video card, but I don't know if you have a PCI Express 16x slot or a 1x slot. Lots of budget systems only have the 1x slots and regular PCI slots. And if this card is just for work and no games or movie watching, you shouldn't have to spend more than $65 for a good video card.

What are the rules of the competition? What are the details on that rifle?

The Conficker Eye Chart http://www.confickerworkinggroup.org/infec...cfeyechart.html

Poll added

I like "ATX Jedi Master".. I think I'll add that one!

Congrats on reaching "ATX Guru" status.. holy cow that was fast!

Doctoring log books and forging toll receipts? Just a guess based on most of the truck drivers I know. :D

I personally don't feel that X% of the population paying X% of the total income taxes is a relevant statistic. I think that X% of income would be a more "fair" way to look at things. (not that our current system is any more "fair" in that respect) I agree that tax cuts alone right now would be irresponsible. They were irresponsible when Bush made them, primarily because the size of the government ballooned during his administration. He had 6 years of republican control to reduce the size of the federal government, but instead it expanded more than under any presidency since FDR. (in terms of federal spending as a percentage of GDP) I've given up hope in ever seeing a lean federal government, and a modest foreign policy.

It's not much, but this year's birthday gift to the Community is to increase upload capacity for file/picture sharing. It was a measly 2mb per user last year, and I'll be upping it to 10mb. After tax season, and after the next major version of this forum software is released (fairly soon, I think), I'll start working on adding the option to change font size. :bday:

You can also do the larger version the same way. In Photobucket, when you are given the option to share a photo, use the address from the Direct URL box.

Also, if the picture is already hosted up on photobucket, you can avoid having to upload it again by using the image button in the toolbar of the post editor, which looks like this: It'll ask you for the address that points to your picture, which you can find on almost any website by right clicking on the pic, and choosing "copy image location" in firefox or choosing "properties" in internet explorer and copying the whole website address from the box that pops up. Also, sites like Photobucket usually also have a feature that lets you find out the link so that you can share it on forums or e-mail. Once you have the address copied, you can paste it when prompted by the forum when you click the above mentioned image button.

So I get an e-mail last night at 10PM from what looks to be a legit CCH e-mail saying they want me to give up the atxcommunity.com domain. My first response was a reply asking if it's an April Fool's joke, but it really did look like it came from CCH, and I didn't get a response, so I was left to wonder about it. If it turned out to be real, I was ready to tear the guy a new one for trying to pull your community out from under you folks at the end of tax season AGAIN. But as it turns out, it WAS an April Fool's joke. From what I understand, KC and Bulldog Tom put Kyle up to it! I guess I had it coming You guys were thiiiiiiiis close to getting moved to www.taxcommunity.net I must say, that was a good one. I'll think twice before messing with you guys again, haha

All this talk of BBQ sure does make me want to grill tonight though.

Haha sorry about adding stress to everyone's tax season, even if only a few moments worth :P

In that case, it was all Kyle's idea.

Isn't it awful how close to the end of tax season April Fools day is?