Well there is no “Home and Business” edition of Quicken online, and the online version of QuickBooks only works with Internet Explorer. WTF was Intuit thinking? Microsoft was even worse – they don’t offer an online version of Money at all.
After some research I found there was… nothing. Unbelievable. Every day I read about stupid websites and failing online startups and I find it hard to believe no one has made an decent online accounting package.
Today I left work early to get all my tax stuff together. I’m the kind of guy who has to dig through closets and sort through piles of paper strewn on the floor to find everything needed. Taxes drive me crazy enough; I shouldn’t be making it harder on myself.
Yes, my physical world lacks organization. But my electronic world is immaculate. You want a copy of that email about that thing we saw at that place some time back? No problem, I’ll have it to you in ten seconds. You want a copy of my W2 from 2006? Too freakin’ bad.
So I’m going paperless. I just made this decision about five minutes ago as I pulled an old document out from under a rusty hammer in the closet we keep all our tools in. How did it get there any way?
Any way. Aside from a computer, a scanner, and a good backup system I’m not sure what’s involved in becoming completely paperless. Though I have a good backup system at home (a 1TB Buffalo Network Drive) it may be time to get off-site backups. In addition to that, I have to consider searchability of the documents I store – I hope OCR technology has improved a lot since I last used it.
I still haven’t found everything I need to file my taxes, but I ‘m close. I’m just a few calls/faxes away.
Currently the inventors of this technology are looking to give the power of speech to the vocally disabled. However the possibilities for us all are endless… from a new way to hold a private conversation to changing the channel on your TV without lifting a finger. Imagine being able to tap your thoughts into the internet for instant research – that would be useful for way more than trivia night at Mellow Mushroom.
My mom is, aside from an exceptional gift giver, a lover of history and culture. So this Valentine’s Day I gave my mom a different sort of gift. I had someone in India call her – from India – to give her a history lesson on the history of Valentines Day in India and it’s impact on India’s culture.
Now that I’ve read through the research that was done for my mother’s gift, I thought I’d share some of the tidbits I found most interesting:
About 10 years ago, Valentines Day was dubbed as “another decadent influence of the west” and written-off by most. However, today Valentines Day is widely recognized and celebrated.
A big influence on the success of Valentines Day in India was the globalization-fueled economic boom which brought with it foreign television channels that often aired Valentines Day specials.
Weeks before Valentine’s Day, “Street Romeos” appear everywhere, reenacting Bollywood style boy-meets-girl stories.
Protests against Valentine’s Day customs have included stealing Valentine’s Day greeting cards from and ceremonially burning them as well as threats to beat the faces and shave the heads of those who participate.
After reading the book, I was surprised my the dissimilarities between the stories. The movie is so different from the book that it may as well have had a different name. There are some common elements, but not many. In both stories, the main character is named Robert Neville, and in both stories Neville must hide from humans infected with a disease at night so that they don’t kill him. And that’s pretty much it.
The movie was good, though I found it disappointing. In essence, the story was a good one that could have been told better. There were too many too-obvious special effects. People in makeup would have been far scarier (and realistic) than the slightly over-the-top and over-stylized CG creatures with super-human powers. A more gritty approach would have brought out more intensity and emotion, which seemed dulled. At several points in the movie I felt “almost but not quite” happy or sad or otherwise empathetic for the main character. Additionally, I felt like something was left out of the film – like some subplot had been eliminated in editing that would have given the film a boost. The movie is rated PG-13, which makes me think that an R rated Director’s Cut would make an excellent DVD purchase, if there ever is one. We’ll see.
The book was also good, but also disappointing in that it gave away the ending way too soon. I’ll go ahead and summarize (err, spoil) it: Neville, out of necessity, kills the infected during the day and sleeps at night only to discover in the end that he himself has become the “vampire” of a new nocturnal society; thus he becomes “legend.” This is a good theme that emphasizes perspective and necessity, but half way through the reader is all but told the “moral of the story” straight-out and given little room to think about it for himself. The second half therefore had me thinking “yeah, yeah, get on with it…” since I pretty much knew the ending and was reading out of self-imposed obligation.
