Mel in Hawaii

Do I hear a bit of sarcasm there or did CCH get to him?

The problem as I see it is you won't have the advantage of help from those who use other software. I know quite a few of you use other packages and yet still contribute on this board, people who found other solutions fit their situation better. But, they of course won't have the old ATX employees reading their posts either.

Yup, I believe you would Tom. Just for the record, when I canceled, I told them it was a free subscription in the comment box. When I got the email, I assumed it was a refund of $0.00. The comment was more of a 'stupid' thing that happened.

About 6 months ago I signed up for a free magazine offer (4 years no less) online. They had this selection of 8 different magazines that were doing promotions and you could get them for free. Well, I accidentally duplicated my subscription somehow (didn't pay for either of them), so I was getting two sets of the magazine. Not wanting to fill up the landfill, I canceled one of them and was surprised that they sent me an email saying they would refund me. Figuring it was an automated email, I ignored it. But TODAY I received a check in the mail. Now, that's what I call a good offer. The subscription was free, yet I get money back for canceling. Not bad, eh?

Hmm... and here I thought he was going to be there until April Fools day.

Actually if they send you this years program to 'test' you are indeed receiving two years software for the price of 1. I see nothing wrong with the wording of what they are offering, and they already are assuming you have something that you are working on now. ATX has done that promotion since so long ago that I think we did it on our second year. So, if you are an ATX user, they want you to switch... And so it begins... Wear down the numbers of 'atx' users by getting them to sign up for the package, then officially announce that since such a high percentage of people switched, they will end the ATX version and substitute the Taxwise program instead for those who ordered the ATX package. No, the sky is not falling, I just see the writing on the wall since they started the promotion BEFORE the end of tax season. They will offer something else come April 15 and keep changing the offer till enough people switch. Now, if they do the same offer to the Taxwise customers to switch to ATX, then you can call me wrong, but I HIGHLY doubt they are doing it both ways. We already know which company they valued more when they eliminated ATX's support staff.

I have been biting my tongue about this 'announcement' because I fear that you all will think I am trying to cause a mass exodus. Unfortunately, I can't seem to keep my mouth shut and think back to the statements right before the end of the year about how nothing will change and then voila, there it is. Tom, things are progressing, but not as fast as I would hope. I wanted to have a test version for people to comment on by now, but I am not going to let anything out there that crashes every other time I hit print. Eventually I will be able to work full time on it and should be able to find/eradicate the bug, but for now that is limited to a few hours a day plus the weekends. A month from now and you all will have more time on your hands anyways.

Pay per return system... But I agree with your solution, shutting down the computer is a good start, but I would also check available hard disk space as that could also be the culprit if there is not enough disk space for the temporary files (make sure there is at least 50 megabytes free to be safe).

I wish you could order the series on CD, but alas they talk about not being able to license the music.

I was just waiting for someone to jump in and say that yes you could... Personally if the program was on my desk, I could do it for quick printing purposes, but it would cause a bunch of problems, especially when they did update the form. If the form TRUELY hasn't changed, then why would they not update the form for you?

Personally, they were showing their 'non-bias' in not mentioning it, were they not? What I find worse is when these guys were the ones who were slamming the prostitutes and johns and then turn around are caught for what they were despising (substitute gambling, drugs, whatever).

Hey guys... how do you handle this? Guy marries a girl from the Phillippines. She has income in the Phillippines and he has income in the USA. She does not have a SSN in the USA and has never visited the USA. He has lived off and on in the Phillipines for several years. How does he go about filing his tax return in the USA?

Not really...

The mailing I received on Friday from the IRS 'explaining' the stimulus package is more confusing than anything I had read in the media. Haven't you guys already received your copy too?

I assume you mean I am on VACATION in Hawaii... Far from. For what people think I am probably doing is far from what I actually do. Hardly go to the beach, spend most of my time sitting behind a desk at work or home or taking care of 2 kids. Except for the lack of shoveling snow and extra work trying to keep the growing plants (lawn) cut back, I could just as easily be in Maine. My routine would basically be the same. Get up, get the kids ready for school, head to work, come home, ensure kids have done homework, make dinner, sit down and work at my desk until I can barely keep my eyes open, go to sleep and start the routine right over again. Weekends are a bit better in that I get some time to do chores around the house and play with the kids a bit, but I put in more time working on my stuff on Saturday than the rest of the week. Oh, not to mention that I do consulting on the side as it pays better than my day job and doesn't take nearly as much time. Besides, I think people in Hawaii work more than their mainland counterparts as just about everyone I know has 2 or more jobs here to be able to afford the extra high prices on everything. People in the mainland complain about the cost of gas or electricity, yet we have the highest prices in both those commodities, even outranking California when they were claiming they had the highest prices. I guess they were comparing against the rest of the mainland. If I hear the airlines or UPS say we are an 'international' destination one more time I am gonna scream. "We're sorry sir, we dont' offer ground service to Hawaii as that's an international destination.", when trying to ship something from Hawaii to Hawaii and talking to a call center in the mainland. Don't get me going....

During the day while I am at my day job I am not allowed to work on programming, but I have nothing to do. It's been a year and a half since I got notified that they were closing in 30 days, yet we are still there. Just waiting for my severance package to start and then I will be working all day. As for NOW, I am just taking a break.

Their meter wasn't reading it correctly as it's actually an acid that has vaporized. Their detectors don't do chemical analysis after all, they base their determination on electrical characteristics of the air most of the time. All batteries give off gas when they are charging, but the batteries in UPS's are sealed type that recondense the gas inside the battery so if they are giving off gas then they have overheated and cracked their cases. ALL ups batteries should be replaced every 2 years on average, less if they infrequently experience power fluctuations, more in a high surge/brownout environment. I bet if you take the battery out you will find that one side of the battery (bottom) will seem 'soapy' as the acid will immediately start to eat away at your skin and give that silky soapy feeling. The plastic case will also seem to be bulging. Once the acid has vaporized you will start to oxidize the plates in the battery and depending on the chemistry of the battery will give off any number of different gasses. On another issue with the surge protection side of the UPS, sometimes the MOV's will fail and the leads will actually short out the hot/neutral wires. I have filed 2 claims regarding this, each time without complaint from the company that we buy our UPS's from and everything got replaced without question. Of course, I was just asking for power supplies and the UPS itself. I guess if it was a higher dollar amount they might balk more.

Nips, generic brand cheese crackers...

How much hard disk space is free?

Better make mine an apple banana, better flavor than those bland 'commercialized' breeds. I had some growing in my yard that were quite yummy, but what am I really going to do with 100 pounds (something like that) of bananas all at once?

I am really surprised that they would have asked for permission again, wouldn't the permission carry over after the buyout? I mean, it was nice and all, but they already had your permission if the purchase assumed all the assets of the prior company. Otherwise, wouldn't they have to had to go back and relicense a lot of software too?

I do believe 92 was the first year that 'ATX' program disks were mailed. You could have used it before then, but it would have been downloaded off a BBS or Compuserve.

Glad to hear it, but not too surprising since tech support calls pretty much slowed down by now back when I still worked there. Most bugs have been worked through, most people have found workarounds and even the late installers have finally installed their programs. Another good thing, the guys/gals on the lines have had a chance to learn the basic questions that will be asked and the proper questions they need to ask the customers to find out what they really need.

I keep reading how "ATX couldn't handle my complex return". Specifically, what makes such a complicated return? (Not trying to defend ATX, just wondering as it is something that I don't want to hear commented about on my version when it comes out.)

Well, things aren't as rosy as I wish I could report. Initial work was quite fast to get something running, but I hit a few snags with the major one being a componant that I wanted to use having easily reproduced bugs. Orriginally I thought I was doing something wrong, but I am starting to lean the other way towards there is an actual problem. I can't just leave it to crash the program when manipulating the forms for printing, so I better switch to another componant.