Tux Fans

Just a note to say Happy New Year to everyone! One of my clients sent me a wonderful beach-type bag full of goodies. My kids saw the stuffed penguin and immediately knew it was none other than Tux himself! They love that one of my clients is Linux Journal - we get penguin stuff from time to time :) I'm raising good little geek kids!

Happy New Year!

***NEWS FLASH*** Federal Office Closures Do Not Extend Tax Deadline!

Federal tax payments that are due on January 2, 2007 are still due that day despite federal office closures as part of the National Day of Mourning for former president Gerald Ford.

See what the IRS is saying at: https://www.eftps.com/eftps/

Low Expectations

According to Deloitte & Touche USA LLP's 21st Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends, twenty-four percent of the people surveyed do NOT expect to get what they want during the holiday season, at least not as a gift. Sad, eh?

As a married woman who has received a number of questionable gifts over the years (can we say Ab-Doer?) I wonder how many of the people surveyed were women. The flipside of that, however, is that men tend to get less of what they want for the holidays (purely personal opinion here, but it applies to all the men in my life over the age of 10) because they are harder to shop for. Women may be shopaholics, but men tend to simply buy what they want, and rarely talk about what they want, leaving the people shopping for them to guess. Or is that just me?

The report also seems to suggest a decline in the importance of "Black Friday"--the Friday after Thanksgiving, so named because many retailers rely on sales from this day through the end of December to put them in the black for the year. More and more shoppers are procrastinating waiting until December to shop, men in particular (really, I'm not picking on you, guys, I promise).

In odd contradiction to that, people seem to want holiday merchandise out earlier in the year. The report indicates that a lot of people would like to see holiday merchandise, that stuff that doesn't become available until the week of Thanksgiving or later, available earlier in the year. Some even want to start seeing retailers decorated for the holidays as early as September.

Huh? Yea, as early as September. Personally, I would like to see the 'hot' stuff for the year available earlier because I'm a year-round holiday shopper. In my youth I messed up my budget every year by waiting until December to shop without planning it ahead and spent the first half (or more!) of the following year paying off holiday debt. If holiday merchandise is available earlier people can plan better, buy earlier, and spread their purchases out over a longer period of time. I don't really think this would have a negative retail impact since there will ALWAYS be people who wait for the big sales and incentives of the holiday season. Offering merchandise earlier might also help prevent some of the notorious toy and electronics shortages of the holidays.

That said, please, no one convince retailers to actually decorate earlier! I hate seeing Christmas trees at Home Depot in October, it's just WRONG.

Novell and Microsoft... Playing Nice?

First, check out the news story at Yahoo News, here. Then you can come back and read my driveling, non-IT professional opinion.

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Done? Good.

Now then... As an Open Office user (though not Novell's version) this scares me.

Windows is so full of security holes and such a large hacker/virus target that I'm afraid improved interoperability between Office 07 and Open Office will end up leaving the latter vulnerable to attack.

Well, yea, okay, and I think Novell surrendered - if you can't beat 'em and don't want to be ground out of business by them, "partner" with them. I'm a little confused on how Novell charges for Open Office in their products since it's free and they don't own the code, but, again, I am not an IT guru, so there's probably a logical, legal explanation out there somewhere.

Intuitive Online Banking?

Intuit (makers of QuickBooks and Turbo Tax) recently announced their plan to purchase Digital Insight, a company specializing in online banking software used by banks and other financial institutions.

Candy & I talked it over a bit, trying to guess at the impact this might have on her clients since she works in QuickBooks so much. Our conclusion?

Almost no immediate impact, other than the fact that Intuit will be heavily in debt in 2007 after taking a nearly billion dollar loan to seal the deal. This looks like a move by Intuit to add to their market share, since they have businesses (Quickbooks) and consumers (Turbo Tax), with the acquisition of Digital Insight they'll be adding financial groups and banks.

The short term effect is pretty much, well, there isn't one. The long term effect, with luck, will be improved interfacing between QuickBooks and Intuit's personal financial software with your bank, since online banking services don't always mesh smoothly with QuickBooks et al. Hopefully this will change in the next couple of years and make things easier on everyone.

For more skinny on the deal straight from the source, check out the Digital Insight (five page!) press release on the subject.

Good Times...

Just a shout out to Anne Haikola from Realty World. I've been working with Anne and her husband, Bruce (Haikola Custom Construction) for quite a while now and they are both the nicest people you ever would want to meet. Seriously, a cut above... Anne invited my family and I to a holiday party. What a great time! They had a bouncy castle, balloon animals... and carriage rides. My kids had a great time and it was so nice to have some fun and relax. It's been a week and a half and my little ones are still raving about the chocolate fountains! If you're ever looking for a Realtor in Austin, get in touch with Anne -- she's fabulous. You can reach her HERE.


I am not kidding when I say I have the very best clients and friends. I absolutely love what I do and the people I work with!

Tres Bien

I can't claim credit for the title--it was the subject line when someone emailed me the link to this article about the French government bidding Microsoft adieu.


The French government has been using Linux on servers for a while, but, starting in 2007, will start using Linux on desktops and workstations, too. The French parliament claims it will save money on the switch, despite the conversion and re-training costs.

Personally, I think they're just as sick of the software bully as the rest of us.

Start Yer Business Here, Folks!

Candy blogged a while back about Microsoft's new small business accounting software. I'm guessing that a lot of people have reacted the way she did.

Microsoft is giving away $100,000, a rent-free (for a year) Manhattan storefront, and hardware and software to start a new business. It's a contest, and, like Candy's post about the software, I'm not going to link to it.

If you google it, click on the link to the contest you are taken directly to a page that mentions a little about the contest and A LOT about downloading MS's accounting software. Uh-huh.

I'm guessing, though, that if you want to start a software company you are probably not gonna win.

Excess Tax Excised

Yea, it was a weak headline, but amusing. To me, at least.

Seriously, I got the email from my mom about the personal telephone excise tax refund a few weeks ago. If it came from my mom I know it has run the rounds of the Web at least once, maybe twice.

The personal stuff is pretty straightforward - flat deduction amounts based on the number of land lines in your home unless you have vast quantities of paper to show what you've actually been charged over the years, then you can claim that amount.


In November the IRS announced a formula for businesses and nonprofits to compute their excise tax refund. You can find out more in the IRS press release about it. For details about the personal version, check out the FAQ.

For those of you who avoid the news (like me) and have no idea what I'm talking about (I didn't til my mom emailed me, I live under a rock, what can I say?) here's the scoop.

The telephone tax refund is a one-time payment available on your 2006 federal income tax return that is designed to refund federal excise taxes on long distance telephone service. This is an old tax that was assessed on your toll (long distance) calls until August of 2006. It was based on how long the distance was for the call being placed and how long you were on the call. When phone companies began to offer flat fee phone services, several court challenges to the tax cropped up. They pointed out that flat fee/rate phone service had nothing to do with the distance or length of the phone call and that the excise tax should no longer be assessed.

The courts agreed with the challengers and phone companies were given notice to stop assessing the federal excise tax as of Aug 30, 2006.

There... Now, it's December 8th, better start digging up those old phone bills!

A funny phone call from today...

I get wrong numbers sometimes, but this one was hilarious...

Me: Good afternoon, OffAssist, this is Candy.
Guy: I'm looking for counseling for a couple.
Me: (thinking financial counseling) What type of counseling?
Guy: Um, anger management counseling.
Me: Oh! Sorry, this is a bookkeeping firm.

----Told Tom (the hubby) what happened...

Tom: Yeah, that would be Pissed-OffAssist.

*snicker*

Yeah, we are dorks, but you know you want to laugh.