Catherine

This is a 1912 8th-grade graduation exam. It had to be passed before the student could enter high school. Can YOU pass it? Remember, 1912 -- so no calculators, no Wikipedia -- just you, and your knowledge. I'll let a few folks have some fun before I post the score I got. http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2013/0812/1912-eighth-grade-exam-Could-you-make-it-to-high-school-in-1912/Arithmetic

They are called "wireless extenders;" there are a couple of flavors of them. There are USB and ethernet based wireless extenders. There are types with internal and external antennas as well. Internal antennas can be better in multi-path situations -- but external antennas are better when you need more gain. Go to New Egg and poke around after putting "wireless extender" in the search box. Lots of choices.

I've got some friends who are train nuts; they would probably sound JUST like the guy on the video in the same circumstance!

Best way to deal with the NSA is to bury them in useless and spurious data so that all their unConstitutional "collection" activities are useless. Add "sarin" or "ricin" to every text. Put "plutonium" in your sig line. When calling your spouse's cell phone to ask them to fetch a half gallon of milk on the way home, ask for milk and a set of RPG's. Have FUN with it!!

Being married to an electrical engineer whose specialty is microwave-band communications, we bandy all kinds of odd words about, with disgusting regularity, in this house. Faraday cage. Gigahertz range. 50db. Ground plane (not a plane on the tarmac). Impedance. Lossy. Non-ideal. Non-linear. RF. Plus lots more. We have a wireless network that works within the confines of the office, roughly. The house was built in 1952/53, during civil defense days. The walls are 3/8" rock lath, covered by 3/8" of a very sandy, brownish cement, covered by 1/4" hard plaster. Ceilings (basement and first floor) have expanded metal lath. The whole house is basically a set of interconnected Faraday cages. To download books to my Kindle, I cannot be farther away than the dining room. My daughter's laptop regularly loses its connection from the living room. All the business hardware (and much of the non-business hardware) is hard-wired to the network -- and will stay that way! I've worked in plenty of office buildings with fewer pieces of equipment and simpler network configurations than what we have here... Yes, you do have to be aware of the frequency bands of the various other bits and pieces around your wireless network. You need to be aware of metal studs in office building walls, expanded metal lath, and more. Plus with a wireless network you also have to have security protocols. It's best to have the network locked down so that only equipment with approved MAC addresses can even see the network. Anyone coming here with a wifi laptop can see several of the neighbors' networks (only *some* of which are secured) -- but even sitting right next to the hub, cannot see ours.

Marsh Traveller's Placer get quotes from all of them. be sure to ask about discounts from your professional organization (NAEA, NATP, CPA state society, EA state society, ATP, whatever).

Especially poignant considering he uses crutches due to a childhood bout with polio.

I love KC's advice. I was mainly thinking of using the phone (or kettle on the stove; mine is always there, too) for a colleague who calls to run stuff by me. Well, I do the same sometimes with her as we have different areas of specialty. She can get really long-winded, though, and just *has* to tell me the exact same story in the exact same words three times running. If it's a short story I let it run out but the longer ones... halfway through the 2nd iteration I excuse myself. She's a smart lady, a nice person, and is a good sounding board in a number of areas, but she also has poor social skills, not enough friends (as a result of the former), and has trouble knowing when to stop talking. She's the one I was thinking of.

Itzhak Perlman was playing a solo in front of an orchestra, when one of his strings broke. He swapped his fiddle for the concertmaster's, and kept going. Another string broke. So he kept going, making adjustments on the fly. When asked later on, he said, "Sometimes the point is to see how much music you can make with what you have left."

That's an *excellent* idea. You can be your own "save me" buddy if you have two lines and a cell phone. I could be desperate to ditch some leech, grab my cell and use it to call the house line.... oohh, NICE idea!! Thanks, MAS!

My husband just about went nuts the few years he lived in CA post-graduation. "Late night and early morning low clouds and fog" was the constant forecast. He says CA does NOT have weather; it has climate. (plus fires, earthquakes, and mudslides) lol

1. Sure; demand MORE money from people who already don't have it. That works. Not. 2. Taxed -- Shhh!!!!! Do NOT give them ideas!

Went to a CPE class last year some time, someone who specialized in complex back-tax issues, tax in bankruptcy issues, etc. Apparently a LOT of his business is repeats; folks who come in every 5-6 years with yet another mess on their hands. One of the folks in the group asked if he didn't get *incredibly* aggravated with these people who obviously do NOT follow advice and end up in hot water time after time. He replied that it did when he first started out. However, he changed his attitude, and now he *looks forward* to "the return of the son of tax problem part 17 the sequel" (my term, not his). The attitude change? Stop thinking of them as "problem clients" and instead see them as "walking annuities!" I am striving to make this change in my head, with sporadic success. lol.

Although once, long ago, with folks I had known for years before I started doing taxes, I scolded BOTH of them so hard they backed down and submitted a return as MFJ. Two years we did that (their case got filed late in year 1), until they were legally divorced. Don't do taxes for either of them any more (both eventually moved away) but both have stayed friendly with me. And both have (separately) thanked me for scolding them into behaving sensibly all those years ago. They got big refunds instead of owing; they both needed car repairs.... filing MFJ ensured both could get to their jobs (plus more)! Very special and rare case; your mileage WILL vary.

Jack must be on the same email list as my cousin Norma in NC; she sent this to me yesterday. My husband laughed out loud, too (as did both my girls).

In other news, it's been HUMID!!!! (dew points up to the mid-70's; blech) and either warm or downright hot. Torrential downpour on the way home yesterday noon-ish with visibility down very low even with the wipers on high. Going up a small hill a couple stones at the side of the road were throwing up 8" rooster tails! Radar shows more rain this way but I will be glad once the meandering front finally decides to go on past.

A friend of mine posted this... (I took out a couple of typed emoticons and replaced them with Eric's) Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day. The Summer is now officially over. From Pittsfield and the Berkshires, to Worcester, right across Boston and to the Cape and Islands, starting at midnight TONIGHT expect wind gusts up to 80 mph, ice and snow accumulations of 3 feet, a high tide that will flood the Lynnway, and your sweet little tootsie's better be covered up. LOL.

Which, in a way, will be more of a commentary on the culture than on anything she did. Sad, really. So many talented young people turn themselves into "meat" under a mistaken idea that it makes them important rather than pathetic.

I will have to ask her.

My older girl has the most wonderful way with words. She (at the grand old age of 23) is disgusted by the way people let their pre-teen and young teen girls dress. She has coined a new term for these girls: "prostitots" She also has a wonderful term for those super-short shorts the older teen girls wear, that have the pockets *longer* than the shorts themselves. "cargo panties" I love that girl.

My toddler is out on her own and my newborn is a junior in college. Blink three times and that five year old will be in high school!

Along with "just claim whatever is the maximum with no receipts -- that's $500, right?"

Moving: Smith Smith goes to see his supervisor in the front office. "Boss," he says, "we're doing some heavy house-cleaning at home tomorrow, and my wife needs me to help with the attic and the garage, moving and hauling stuff." "We're short-handed, Smith," the boss replies. "I can't give you the day off." "Thanks, boss," says Smith, "I knew I could count on you!"

I used to do that work and stopped years ago. The E&O insurance is filthy expensive (ten years ago it was over $5K/year); compliance paperwork requirements are onerous enough that you *must* have hired help to stay on top of it; you need a large "natural market" of sheep to fleece -- um, I mean clients to assist; and don't get aggravated by the multitudes of people who will simply not turn up for confirmed appointments (including not being at home when you show up to talk to them) -- I found it unworkable. At least as someone who (1) refused to do anything but what was right for the client even if it put not a nickel in my pocket, (2) without a large "natural market," (3) without funds to hire help (even though it was less onerous a decade-plus ago), and (4) far too busy to want to deal with multiple missed appointments for which one cannot charge. It also doesn't help that I am not a good salesman -- but then, I expected people to be grownups and able to make decisions, not to have to cajole and spoon-feed and pressure folks into taking action to protect themselves. It is true that every one of my clients back then was far better off for following my recommendations.

And yet, study after study shows that within two or three generations, the children, grand-children, and great-grand-children of the ultra-rich by and large ooze their way to the middle class. Dilution by generation, dilution of the work ethic and drive that their ancestor used to amass a fortune, a "spend spend spend!" mentality instead of a "save & invest!" mentality... the money ends up in the general economy, generating more tax receipts as it goes. For the oligarchs and oligarch-connected, even the estate tax doesn't work -- they have set up family foundations and trusts decades in advance. Can anyone say "Kennedy?" Rose Kennedy, who lived in MA all her life and was uber-rich, was found, upon her death, to actually be a legal resident of Florida. Not subject to Mass. estate tax. A cartoon in the New Yorker some years ago showed a couple of guys in suits in a high-rise office. One says to the other, "These new regulations are going to fundamentally alter the way we get around them." And that's about it for the oligarchs and their nepots.