Income Tax Time Again

Last night I sat down to start preparing my income tax filing for 2012 as it is that time of year again. Last year I had them done in January. This year the IRS decided to hold off on processing any tax filings before January 31st. I know that Congress could have thrown some last-minute changes at them, but secretly I think they just need an excuse to hold onto my money for a little longer. Every year I get a sizable refund because of all my allowed deductions. I would decrease the amount withheld from my paycheck, but the moment I do that, Congress is going to eliminate all of my deductions and I will get hit with penalties. It is better to receive than to owe.

I have used TurboTax for the past 5 years and so I fired up my old Windows XP computer to begin the process. The computer normally boots into Linux except for the once-a-year task of doing my taxes. Naturally it took ages for the computer to boot. Once it did boot, everything ran so slowly, it was almost unusable. After about 30 minutes of waiting, I decided I would install the Mac version on the Mac-Mini used by my kids. I did an online purchase and immediately downloaded the software. When I went to run TurboTax, it told me my computer was too old. You see, my Mac-Mini uses an Intel Duo, which is only a 32-bit processor. I need an Intel Duo 2, which is a 64-bit processor. Meanwhile the abacus running Windows XP in the basement is a perfectly acceptable computer according to Intuit, the makers of TurboTax.

I have a number of Mac computers perfectly capable of running TurboTax and so I will have to install it on one of them. I wish I had known all of that before wasting an hour of my life last night. You may be wondering why I just don't use the online version of TurboTax as it would have made my life a lot easier. That's easy as I don't trust anyone with my financial data. That is why I use an old computer that only gets turned on once a year. There is no possible chance a hacker can get at that data without physically coming into my house. Yes I am probably a bit paranoid.

Linux Fixes Another Computer

One of my friends has been having computer problems and was about to go out and buy another computer. Rather than spending a lot of money, I had him bring the computer over so I could see if I couldn't fix the problem. Yesterday he dropped it off on the way to baseball practice when he briefly explained the issues he was having.

Windows XP wasn't recognizing the network card that was built into the computer. He went down to Best Buy where he talked with one of their "Geeks." He didn't have the computer with him and so the Geek asked several diagnostic questions. The conclusion was that the computer needed a new network card and so the Geek quickly found one for a really great price.

My friend brought the card home and installed it. He turned on the machine and installed the drivers for the new card. The new network card didn't work either. This means that the computer could not be used to browse the Internet which rendered it slightly more useful than a boat anchor (as a sailor, computers make really lousy boat anchors). So now it was my turn.

The first thing I did was go back to square one. I removed the new card the Geek had sold my friend and confirmed that Windows XP could not see the built-in network hardware. Then I put in the new card and went into the computer's BIOS to turn off the built-in network card. On his computer, it was as simple as hitting the "F1" key during the boot sequence and going to the "Advanced" menu option. Having two network cards in a computer is possible but sometimes they like to step on eachother's toes. It is advisable to have only one network card active when you are trying to debug problems like this.

Once again the network card was not recognized by Windows XP. This was a huge red flag. How do you know if the machine is bad when the the measuring device isn't working properly. In this case, the measuring device was the Windows XP operating system. I tried a simple experiment. I booted Linux from a CD. When you boot from a CD, it doesn't install anything on the hard drive and so you can test your machine's hardware without overwriting anything.

The CD takes a little bit longer than a hard drive to boot and so I went and got myself a sandwich while the computer thought about starting. Once it was up, I opened a browser window and could get to any number of websites just fine. This confirmed that it was Windows XP that needed help and not the hardware.

I told my friend that he had two options: He could reload Windows XP, which would probably fix everything, or he could install Linux. He picked up the machine this morning and will be installing Linux. I think that is a good decision.