Archive for April, 2009

Tax Time

April 21st, 2009, posted in Technology

OK, I’m annoyed by this tax season.

The first annoyance was discovering that there is no tax software for the Mac. No QuickTax, No UFile. Both companies say “We serve the Mac Community well through our online tax software”

I don’t mind NetFiling.  In fact I think it’s great. But I’m leery about actually doing my tax preparation and storing my tax data online. I don’t know…. since I can’t download the final file, and it resides on some server somewhere…that just bothers me.  Hackers, disgruntled employees….who knows where my information might end up.

But, I’m in a bind, I’m on a Mac now and I need to do my taxes. So I sign up for UFile. Quicktax still has me disgruntled from past practices so I try to stay away from them, and UFile is at least wholly Canadian.

First decision over, I set up an account and do a cursory hunt for the place where I can upload my data from my 2007 tax year desktop software. Can’t find it, send an email. Close the program. At that point I couldn’t do my taxes anyway since my government contract provider hadn’t yet sent me the confirmation of payment for 2008.

Bounce forward three weeks….no response to my email to UFile…..hmm this is not good.

The clock is ticking so I have to get started. I head back into UFile online and try to see where I can upload my previous years tax info from the Ufile tax file. Hmmmm…where is that option hiding. Can’t find it. Get irritated. Decide to check out Quicken online. Same problem, although I find a link to “carry forward 2007 Quicktax file” Of course that won’t read a UFile format, so I pop back into UFile online and what do I find….? Carry forward Quicktax file…. HUH?

So let me get this straight. Quicktax will import Quicktax files but not UFile files. OK, that makes sense. And UFile online will import Quicktax files but not UFile files????  That makes no sense at all! In fact, that’s just messed up!

So, now all I have for an option is to drag out the Toshiba laptop, go to Future Shop, buy UFile for Windows, install it, import my 2007 file information, and do my darned files on a clunky Windows program, on a lousy PC.

That’s just bloody annoying!!!!

Quicken…UFile….. Get with the program!

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Living with the Loki Monster

April 18th, 2009, posted in CritterTalk

Photogenic....

Loki, Milo, and Gizmo. Our collection of two syllable, multi-faceted, pain in the patootie, critters.

Kirk was away this week, in Toronto on business, and so I was “in charge” (not that anyone is really in charge of these creatures) for the week. Easy, right….? Well, yes and no.

Loki has one talent, he can read a clock! He really is a little pain because of it. I’m getting the morning wakeup call because Kirk is out of town. Mind you, it’s not as bad as the one he gets. At least Loki is letting me sleep a little bit more…although it’s been less every day Kirk is away. Today we battled at 6:20 am until about 7am before Loki conceded that I had one the day’s round. At 8am I had to use the washroom…so at that point, once you’re already up…well, might as well feed him. Usually he wakes Kirk up at about 5:45 am. He’s insistent. He starts by sitting next to your head. If you don’t “feel his intent” psychologically…. you’re going to feel it physically shortly. The next step is usually his very wet nose stuffed into whatever orifice happens to be most convenient…eye, nose, ear, open mouth…any will do and all usually generate the same reaction. You’ll flip over. But he is not deterred. He merely hops over you to the other side and begins again. If he still doesn’t get you up, he’ll up the ante and start his sad little Loki cries in your face. Next up is the “Loki shower” Remember that wet nose? Well, since he’s thinking about breakfast, he’s also salivating a bit and he has these massive ears that need a good shake. So he winds up and shakes his head and flaps his ears and all that moisture in his nose and mouth spray down on your upturned, sleepy face. And if all THAT doesn’t get you up. He will jump off the bed and start leaping up from the floor onto your chest, stomach, groin…whatever. And if you haven’t been up yet, you’ve probably got to pee, and that just makes it worse…so you get up…and he follows you to the bathroom and sits and smiles at you….and you go to the kitchen and feed him…because….well, you’re up anyway!

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Curious Spider

April 14th, 2009, posted in Entertainment, Photography

So I have been on Flickr a little over a year now. Love it. Can’t believe how it has wiggled into my daily life. Not being an overly social person when it comes to new people, I thought it a bit unnerving when strangers added me as a contact and commented on my photos. I was used to Facebook where the only people who can see what is on your page are those you have specifically let in. This ‘open access’ was a little weird for me. But I got used to it…slowly.

And then something strange happened. Some of those distant strangers (mostly in the UK) started chatting in a group page. And since I was traveling lots at the time, and staying up late, I began to chat a bit too. And slowly, somehow, I actually started to make friends with strangers. How very strange (for me anyway).

Now I am excited, because our upcoming trip to Greece will end with three and a half days in England where we plan to rent a car and zip down to Cornwall and then back along the Southern Coast before heading back inland to fly home. It will be a whirlwind trip, but the most exciting part is that we will meet some of those cyber-friends in person! About a half a dozen or so in three or four different locations! Very cool!

So Flickr is photography, but Flickr is people too! But I recently started visiting one fellow’s photostream and I can’t seem to stop visiting it. He’s a good photographer, but more than that, he’s a very interesting writer… in a really weird way…. it’s really quite fascinating to read this guys thoughts…. bored? Really, check out his writing, luckily he only posts a photo or so a day otherwise I’d never get anything done! Curious Spider

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Course goes missing, panic ensues…!

April 3rd, 2009, posted in Critical Thinking

“Well, now this is novel. A student emailed me yesterday asking for advice on how to study for his final exam. I gave him a few pointers and told him to go back through the course material paying particular attention to the lesson quizzes and the self study questions. A few hours later he emailed me again, this time in a complete flap. The course had gone missing from his course menu. he said he had sent a message to IT Services but wondered if I could still see it.

Thinking he had done something silly, like hide the course from himself on the menu, I took a look, only to discover that I too couldn’t see the course on my menu. Hmmm, as an instructor it’s particularly bad when your course and all the students go missing….. more so when they have an assignment due tomorrow and their exam is a little more than a week away.

A response from IT Services informed us both that the course was still there, but all of the students and the instructor (me) had been deleted from it. COOL! Now what?

Well, at this point I am getting all the panicked emails from the other students and I am just telling them to stay calm, it will all be fine I am sure. Of course, at the same time I am wondering about all of their marks. I still have all of the assignments that I marked on my hard drive, so I know what they received on those. But they have a self marking lesson quiz at the end of each lesson and I don’t collate those until the course ends….in other words I have no idea who has done what or what they received for a mark. This is not such a good thing. Everyone may be getting an automatic 20% bonus mark if those numbers are lost. Not sure what else to do, I can’t exactly make them go back and redo all 26 quizzes…although arguably it would be a good way for them to study.

So how did it happen? It’s a mystery, but I suspect it had something to do with a new course shell that my IT guy set up for me. A few days ago I noticed some links and things were not working properly in the course and rather than fix it at this point, and run the risk of messing anything up, I asked if he could build me a new shell so I could make the changes in a course that no students currently populated. He did so, and I saw it there on Wednesday, although I thought it odd that he had numbered the course wrong, but figured it was by design since it is not scheduled to run until September. I updated a few typographical errors in the existing course, and only glanced in the new shell, thinking I would work on it in the next few weeks while the things were still fresh in my memory.

And now BOTH iterations of the course are MIA!

Well, not much to do but sit back and wait. And feel sorry for the poor students who are having anxiety attacks now….. I am really, really glad I am at this end of the issue and not the other.

Is it a crisis? Not really. Is it funny? Well…not really. Am I laughing? You bet!

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