You know “the curse” I have been talking about? Well it hit again. Due to all of the craziness and lack of time in general plus time lost to the craziness and need to do things over and over, I had not backed up my main computer or my work laptop (the old one, not this new one which is still being slowly fed software) for the last quarter of 2018 - which I would normally have done around January 15 - nor did I do a monthly backup for December either. So last Friday I decided to do both. I backed up one computer to the quarterly hard drive and the other to the monthly hard drive at the same time. All went well. I also backed up my calendar, client who I have a separate flash drive for, and my data to each. All went fine. Saturday we were home as there was to be rain so I backed up each of the computers etc to the opposite drive. Still all okay.
I then went to back up for the week. I have a flash drive which holds 6 weeks of data, client, ad calendar files. I update the oldest one each week. This week if the data drive went bad and both of the regular “every session alternately” backups went bad I will have data from a week ago to work with. I back up with a software program that updates the files already in the file I am updating to. It finished running while we were out having dinner on Saturday.
When we got home the backup file did not show everything as finished. There were problems with several older tax client files - this is pdf copies of the returns, info used from the clients and my work papers. When I opened those files - it was all gibberish. Husband looked at them and told me that the drive had gone bad and the files were corrupted.
I did not panic - I have backups and they must be right as the backup program had not had a problem when making them. The back up from Saturday afternoon had the same corrupted files. I should say that, luckily, I had not gotten around to do any actual work on the computer for a couple of days - checked email, updated calendar, started one letter. I tried the backup from Friday and it was fine - whew!!
Husband tried to format the bad drive and it could not be done. So he broke it with a hammer to dust and threw out the dust. (Security is important when financial records are involved.) I had a new, larger flash drive and copied the backup from the day before to that drive. Husband suggested I use all new drives and change them annually from now on. I also have an archive drive - I will soon copy my 2018 files into my archive and remove them from the data drive I use to keep it more compact. Robert suggested that I get a new archive drive also. When I update the archive drive I also make 2 DVDs of it - one goes into my regular disk box and one goes into my “grab and go” accordion folder. This holds copies of our house and car titles, stock certificates, last month’s reconciled bank statements, wedding licenses (we actually have 3 - one government, one from each of our religions), medical insurance and the like. In case of an emergency we can grab this folder and have copies of our important papers to take with us - including DVDs of the archive and of my monthly backup to take offsite.
So I planned to go on Monday to a MicroCenter - a location of the chain and buy 3 new flash drives - one each for the session backups and a larger one for the archive. However, while at Costco on Sunday, husband noticed that my laptop dropped $50 in price since we bought it, so Monday we forgot about buying the new drives and went to back to Costco as they will refund the difference with the receipt. (This is a actually a very good idea. I could have returned the laptop and bought it again to take advantage of the price drop, and they would be stuck with a used laptop, this way I keep my laptop, am happy to get the lower price, and they don’t have to deal with a used laptop - and extra credit card fees for a return and another purchase.)
So yesterday, Tuesday, we bought the new drives. I made two new regular backups yesterday of data, client, and calendar files. I still have to check the hard drive backups and make a weekly backup for last week - though at this point, I will probably not bother and just do this week’s weekly backup on Friday. I also still have to copy the archive to the new drive.
I feel as if I am not getting anything done. I generally can tell how much I have been getting done by the number of papers I have to file at the end of a week, the number of items I have to mail out, and how deep the dust is in the house (okay, there is always too much dust in the house).
I have not finished client’s tax return yet - due March 15 - and need to have it finished and go to her with it before then. I have not heard from my other clients yet - they tend to contact me in March. I am still trying to get missing papers for our personal returns - one corrected IRA 1099 has not come yet - called yesterday about it - to be sent to us. I also have not received a corrected summary statement - but that is for something later this year. I did not get a dividend 1099 either, called up and I am not sure one was sent as the first thing the computer talked about was how much our dividends were and that we don’t need a 1099, but if we want one, they can send “a replacement”. So hopefully that will come soon. I know the amounts for all of these and can do the return without them, but need the paperwork for the same thing later in the year. We have two business returns to do for ourselves. One is due March 15 also and has no income - it is inactive, but we don’t want to close it down. So yesterday, just to get something done I did the inactive company’s tax returns. Well, something is done at least.
And - husband is thinking about going to a woodworking show out of state this weekend - which means Friday as we have the annual party for our reenactment unit on Sunday so we cannot go then and we cannot get up early enough to do that on Sunday and go to the woodworking show on Saturday. We will see. This was a nice show, but the venue it was in was closed and it moved to one that is not at all convenient to deal with. (A quilt show at the same old venue moved elsewhere and was awful and is no more.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
BACK UP! No, not away from the computer. Make sure that you are doing backups of at least important data and things like your important photos. We don’t use “the cloud” for anything including backup as another name for the cloud is “someone else’s hard drive, which is more attractive to hack than yours as they will get so much more” and most of the cloud drives have been hacked. An external hard drive is fairly reasonable to get and one can back up to it on a weekly or monthly basis if they don’t need to back up as often I do. (Remember a lot of this is work stuff I am backing up.) An external drive would also let you take the drive with you in an emergency.
Showing posts with label computer files. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer files. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Thursday, January 10, 2019
2018 SEEMS TO BE CONTINUING INTO 2019
Well, this year seems to be a continuation of last year. Not only did husband hurt himself again (as I mentioned last week) - although a lot less than he did last year, I am doing things over again.
I still have one client who has an employee - herself. I have to prepare an IRS W2 form for her each January, along with a covering form named (appropriately) W3. Then since I don’t use a business name, I also have to prepare a similar form for people one pays that are not employees called 1099-MISC which also needs a covering form named 1096. Unlike most IRS forms which one can download from their website and fill in, these forms have red markings on the copies which go to IRS and can only be filled in as a preprinted form - available from IRS for free and can also be purchased at stationary stores and online. One can also buy software to fill in the forms, The alternative to filling in the forms is to do it online free at the IRS website (or various companies that charge to do so). Most companies have payroll companies which take care of their payroll for them and deal with this for them.
Knowing I will need to do this and knowing that my typing is terrible, even with the word processing typewriter (lets one type a line, check it, and then print it) I have, I always order more forms than I need to have spares. I do this in December so I will have them in January to fill them in. I did so last month - in December 2018, ordering forms for the 2018 year. The forms arrived within the 10 days they are suppose to arrive. I opened the envelope - remember all the craziness last month - and I checked the form numbers and how many of them had been sent - all okay. I put them under my desk where I keep the forms to wait for this month. I am so organized about this since I do it every year.
Last Thursday I decided to fill in the forms while I had some time. I know what the client’s payroll is and can do so without having gone to her yet this month. These forms used to be that the form to the employee/other person had to be given to them by the end of January and mailed to IRS by the end of February. Due to the increasing number of fraudulent tax forms being filed, as of 2 years ago the IRS copies also have to be filed by the end of January. So I fill in the forms before I go to my client so I can have her sign them and mail them out. (I used to bring them to her in February and they were signed and mailed then.)
It took me all 6 copies of the W2 forms I have, and at least 2-3 of the other forms to get a correctly typed form and over Thursday and Friday. I breathed a sigh of relief and scanning them into my computer to keep a copy of them on same. I scanned in the W3 and W2 forms. I then scanned in the 1096 form and was about to scan in the 1099 form when I noticed something and got extremely upset. I had not received 2018 forms - I was sent 2017 forms and none of the forms I had typed were usable. Not only that, but since one can no longer pick up forms at local IRS offices, I had to order them again - during the Federal government shut down!
We went looking online. I can buy the forms - they will run me around $60 for all 4 forms as they sold in much larger quantities than even I with my terrible typing would need to make one form of each. I also would have to make sure that the forms were attached multiple parts that allow one to type all copies at once (W2 forms are 6 part, the 1099 forms are 4 part and the others are 2 part) as if they are not I would have to type each copy of the form separately. (The forms have extra copies as there are copies for IRS, state, employer, and the W2 has 3 copies for the employee - the 1099 has one copy, and the other two have a copy to file with IRS and copy for the employer to keep.)
I can file them directly online with IRS, but I don’t like the idea of putting the client’s and my Social Security number through the Internet, but if nothing else works, that will be what I have to do.
So, I am waiting to see if I receive the forms from IRS before I go to the client - and then start typing them all over again. If I don’t received them in time, I will have to file them online. If I do receive them in time - I have to type them all over again!!
I am not sure why we are in a “place” where it seems that everything we do - from something as simple to as buying a Barbie doll to tax forms that I prepare every year to ordering checks has to be redone.
On the other hand, I did get the second order of the checks I ordered and this order seems to be correct. I am currently shredding the incorrect ones. (I held on to them in case they wanted them back.) To make sure I did not “muck it up” I stored the second, correct set before starting to shred the first set. I am shredding them a bit at a time to not overwhelm the shredder.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes when we are in a “bad” time it just goes on and on. I know that at some point - hopefully soon - this will end and I will be able to go back to doing things once. One just has to do what needs to be done until there is change in karma.
I still have one client who has an employee - herself. I have to prepare an IRS W2 form for her each January, along with a covering form named (appropriately) W3. Then since I don’t use a business name, I also have to prepare a similar form for people one pays that are not employees called 1099-MISC which also needs a covering form named 1096. Unlike most IRS forms which one can download from their website and fill in, these forms have red markings on the copies which go to IRS and can only be filled in as a preprinted form - available from IRS for free and can also be purchased at stationary stores and online. One can also buy software to fill in the forms, The alternative to filling in the forms is to do it online free at the IRS website (or various companies that charge to do so). Most companies have payroll companies which take care of their payroll for them and deal with this for them.
Knowing I will need to do this and knowing that my typing is terrible, even with the word processing typewriter (lets one type a line, check it, and then print it) I have, I always order more forms than I need to have spares. I do this in December so I will have them in January to fill them in. I did so last month - in December 2018, ordering forms for the 2018 year. The forms arrived within the 10 days they are suppose to arrive. I opened the envelope - remember all the craziness last month - and I checked the form numbers and how many of them had been sent - all okay. I put them under my desk where I keep the forms to wait for this month. I am so organized about this since I do it every year.
Last Thursday I decided to fill in the forms while I had some time. I know what the client’s payroll is and can do so without having gone to her yet this month. These forms used to be that the form to the employee/other person had to be given to them by the end of January and mailed to IRS by the end of February. Due to the increasing number of fraudulent tax forms being filed, as of 2 years ago the IRS copies also have to be filed by the end of January. So I fill in the forms before I go to my client so I can have her sign them and mail them out. (I used to bring them to her in February and they were signed and mailed then.)
It took me all 6 copies of the W2 forms I have, and at least 2-3 of the other forms to get a correctly typed form and over Thursday and Friday. I breathed a sigh of relief and scanning them into my computer to keep a copy of them on same. I scanned in the W3 and W2 forms. I then scanned in the 1096 form and was about to scan in the 1099 form when I noticed something and got extremely upset. I had not received 2018 forms - I was sent 2017 forms and none of the forms I had typed were usable. Not only that, but since one can no longer pick up forms at local IRS offices, I had to order them again - during the Federal government shut down!
We went looking online. I can buy the forms - they will run me around $60 for all 4 forms as they sold in much larger quantities than even I with my terrible typing would need to make one form of each. I also would have to make sure that the forms were attached multiple parts that allow one to type all copies at once (W2 forms are 6 part, the 1099 forms are 4 part and the others are 2 part) as if they are not I would have to type each copy of the form separately. (The forms have extra copies as there are copies for IRS, state, employer, and the W2 has 3 copies for the employee - the 1099 has one copy, and the other two have a copy to file with IRS and copy for the employer to keep.)
I can file them directly online with IRS, but I don’t like the idea of putting the client’s and my Social Security number through the Internet, but if nothing else works, that will be what I have to do.
So, I am waiting to see if I receive the forms from IRS before I go to the client - and then start typing them all over again. If I don’t received them in time, I will have to file them online. If I do receive them in time - I have to type them all over again!!
I am not sure why we are in a “place” where it seems that everything we do - from something as simple to as buying a Barbie doll to tax forms that I prepare every year to ordering checks has to be redone.
On the other hand, I did get the second order of the checks I ordered and this order seems to be correct. I am currently shredding the incorrect ones. (I held on to them in case they wanted them back.) To make sure I did not “muck it up” I stored the second, correct set before starting to shred the first set. I am shredding them a bit at a time to not overwhelm the shredder.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Sometimes when we are in a “bad” time it just goes on and on. I know that at some point - hopefully soon - this will end and I will be able to go back to doing things once. One just has to do what needs to be done until there is change in karma.
Thursday, August 9, 2018
ACHOO!
Achoo! Last week I was feeling fine. Then it happened. You know, you wake up with a scratchy throat and wonder - is it a cold or did I just sleep on my back with my mouth open and annoy my throat. Then the coughing starts - and you still hope it is a just a scratchy throat from sleeping on your back, but you are pretty sure it is not. Once the sneezing starts and your nose is clogged... My husband lives in fear of me having a cold. He is a bit of a hypochondriac so he won’t let me do anything if I might “spread the germs” to him. But he doesn’t want to do what he is not letting me do either. Everything takes longer to do as a result and wastes time. Don’t worry - you can’t catch the cold.
He doesn’t want to cook (although he used to love to cook and is the better cook). He doesn’t want to do the dishes. but he doesn’t want me to do either as I will get him sick. The first night he made dinner - ham steak that we shared and a packaged macaroni with mushrooms - add to boiling water and let cook - and canned soup. I did the dishes afterwards with disposable plastic gloves on. One night he was on the computer with a client and I asked if I should make dinner or wait for him and he told me he was busy - so I made dinner and he ate it, but not happily. Then the weekend came and cooking was resolved as we eat out Friday through Sunday nights. This week he cooked dinner on Monday. Last night as we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner a rain storm hit. I mean A RAIN STORM HIT. He received a warning on his cell phone - I did not, although my, no cell service for over a year as it was not working for Internet or phone service and I had to switch, Blackberry received a notice. (I keep it charged for it games and camera.) We had major lightning and thunder for about 2 hours - remember I have fired a reproduction 18th century cannon - the thunder was like cannon fire. We lost our electricity - one of husband’s other great fears. We stood/sat with the front door open watching “the show” . We live on a main road. A UPS truck went past to the right, then to the left, then two of them passed our house, then another one and so on. Assorted emergency vehicles passed the house in both directions with lights flashing - police, ambulances, fire trucks, a couple of electric utility trucks... Cars kept driving in the mess, some would pull over a few minutes and then go on. I am a pretty fearless driver (scared husband the few times he had to drive with me as the driver) and I would have pulled over. Sooo, what will we eat? I was thinking - we have rolls, peanut butter - crunchy and smooth, jelly - strawberry and Ikea ligonberry, American cheese, mozzarella cheese - no problem. I suggested this to him. NO! We cannot open the fridge or his insulin would go bad. (Well, technically if it got too warm it would still be good for 42 days, but I was not going to argue.) Luckily the rain let up around 10:30 pm. We got in the car and drove to a nearby supermarket and bought more rolls and cold cuts for dinner. On the corner passed a 7-11 shut down do to lack of electricity, employees seemed to be sitting in cars in the parking lot. We got home and were getting ready to eat and - the lights came back on. Apparently we were in the largest outage area so we were put back quickly. I honestly do not remember a thunderstorm with so much or such loud thunder with rain that heavy for so long.
Tonight we took in Chinese food - simple right? Not really. The place we took out from for decades (while I was waiting for the gas company to come and turn on the gas in our first apartment I went and took out from this place for lunch - I did not even have tableware, dishes, glasses, etc in the apartment - I did have a borrowed bridge table and 2 borrowed bridge chairs) has changed. The original owners ran it for a long time - we knew their children, I remember hearing a car stop short in front of our apartment and the father coming running to the corner because his younger daughter had been riding her bicycle and just missed being hit by the car. When he died his older daughter would come home from college on weekends to help her mom. Then the son took over for awhile - even though he really wanted to be fishing - and the place often had fresh fish due to same. Eventually the place was sold - to the son’s sister in law and her husband. They were also nice and the food was the same and we kept going there. Earlier this year we went there and the husband was not there and an older woman (I presume one of their moms) was cooking. The food was not good. We tried another place and were not happy with them. We went back to them figuring maybe it was the change in cook. But the last time we took out the soup was too salty to eat and all the dishes were wrong. We don’t know what happened. This is the place we called on our way back from our 5 hour trip in July, 2017 to get dinner made before they closed - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/07/treading-water-5-hour-trip-to-nowhere.html So, we never know where to take out from and as a result we don’t. We receive an assortment of fliers from take out places and I keep them. One recently caught husband’s eye and he had been planning to try it - so tonight we did. Very nice people and food. Three street parking spaces in front of the 4 stores was the only parking. Then, since I was sick, husband did not hand me the food to hold on the trip home, he put it in a plastic laundry basket we keep in the back in the car, he did not put anything against the bag to hold it. Yes, the bag went on an angle and was soaked when he took it out of the car. After dinner we had to wash the vinyl cover I keep in the car, the basket, and back of the car. We will go back again - and I will hold the bag.
In the middle of all this I had to go to Manhattan to a client for work - I should have gone last month, but she had a cold (could I have caught this cold over the telephone :-) ). So I went yesterday. I packed a zip lock bag with sucking candy, lots of tissues, and an old prescription bottle with one dose of the cough medicine I am taking. In another zip lock bag I had a small bottle I filled with water. Did I mention the temperature yesterday was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit? Luckily I did not need any of the items.
As a result of this normal housework and keeping things in order are only done if absolutely needed. Instead of changing the bedding, I changed only my pillowcases. I suggested he change his, but he said it was okay to just leave them until next week. I had to talk him through changing the hand towels. We were in the downstairs bathroom - “Where are they?” “In the cabinet under the sink - see those 2 whiteish towels? Take them and the green dish towel below them.” (I put out a green dish towel each week in that bathroom to use for quick clean ups of water around the sink - it matches the bathroom.) Upstairs? “Which towels?” “The yellow ones.” (I figured yellow was bright and he would easily see them.) “You mean these yellow ones?” They are the only yellow ones we have.
Last week I had washed and dried the clothes the night before I got the cold. A load of jeans were in the dryer drying overnight. So we had clothes for the week. I did not wash the towels or the bed linens. Good thing I have 2 weeks of towels plus one extra set for up and down. I was trying to figure out how to mention to him about the laundry when he brought it up. I put the clothes in to wash. He will put them in the dryer - with me talking him through it - and then bring them upstairs afterwards. He brought up last week jeans load when I put in the load to wash. He says he will fold the laundry. I normally pull out his shirts as I put the clean, dry laundry in the basket to take upstairs so that they do not need to be ironed, as I put them over the top of the other clothes and if he does that, and sorts mine from his, I can deal with my clothes and he can deal with his or leave them in the basket and pull them out as he needs them.
Hopefully either this cold will be definitely over with or he will give up by Monday so life can return to normal.
On the other hand, I had some extra time in the office as we came home quicker in the afternoons. I managed to shred all of my 2008 records - other than few I kept such as the checks written that year for our income taxes - 3 tall kitchen bags plus, worth of shredding. I then packed my 2017 records into the same box, relabeled it, and put it back in the closet - ah, room to fit papers in file folders again.
I also had time to transfer my 2017 computer files to my archive file and make 2 DVD copies of the revised archive files. I still have to change my back up files so that the old files are gone from them, but that will happen as I make backup files.
I went through an assortment of old computer instruction manuals sitting on a shelf in the office - why? I needed space for 2 magazine holders. I pulled a number of the manuals - mostly from programs or hardware that I had - and I will put them out over a couple of weeks with the recycling. I still have a stack for husband to go through - understand this are DOS or pre Windows XP software and hardware that I cannot figure out what or where it is. The magazine holders fit nicely in the shelf now with room for the manuals for computer things we are actively using.
The office floor is a mess due to my cheapness in not wanting to waste extra garbage bags when doing shredding and pouring from one to another - as well as throwing handfuls of shreds from one bag to another. I had planned to vacuum up the shreds - but then caught this cold - maybe tomorrow I will get to vacuuming.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One gets ill. It happens. I am glad that it only a cold so all it has been is inconvenient. In the larger world it is nothing, just an inconvenience. I am happy that is not serious and by next week either I will be better or he will give up trying to do things for me so he does not catch the cold. (I have never pointed out to him that I touch the light switches and so does he.)
Try to do as much as one can without overtaxing one’s self - this will vary based on what is wrong with one.
I leave you with a final achoo! If I rambled too much - will, hey! I have a cold! :-)
He doesn’t want to cook (although he used to love to cook and is the better cook). He doesn’t want to do the dishes. but he doesn’t want me to do either as I will get him sick. The first night he made dinner - ham steak that we shared and a packaged macaroni with mushrooms - add to boiling water and let cook - and canned soup. I did the dishes afterwards with disposable plastic gloves on. One night he was on the computer with a client and I asked if I should make dinner or wait for him and he told me he was busy - so I made dinner and he ate it, but not happily. Then the weekend came and cooking was resolved as we eat out Friday through Sunday nights. This week he cooked dinner on Monday. Last night as we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner a rain storm hit. I mean A RAIN STORM HIT. He received a warning on his cell phone - I did not, although my, no cell service for over a year as it was not working for Internet or phone service and I had to switch, Blackberry received a notice. (I keep it charged for it games and camera.) We had major lightning and thunder for about 2 hours - remember I have fired a reproduction 18th century cannon - the thunder was like cannon fire. We lost our electricity - one of husband’s other great fears. We stood/sat with the front door open watching “the show” . We live on a main road. A UPS truck went past to the right, then to the left, then two of them passed our house, then another one and so on. Assorted emergency vehicles passed the house in both directions with lights flashing - police, ambulances, fire trucks, a couple of electric utility trucks... Cars kept driving in the mess, some would pull over a few minutes and then go on. I am a pretty fearless driver (scared husband the few times he had to drive with me as the driver) and I would have pulled over. Sooo, what will we eat? I was thinking - we have rolls, peanut butter - crunchy and smooth, jelly - strawberry and Ikea ligonberry, American cheese, mozzarella cheese - no problem. I suggested this to him. NO! We cannot open the fridge or his insulin would go bad. (Well, technically if it got too warm it would still be good for 42 days, but I was not going to argue.) Luckily the rain let up around 10:30 pm. We got in the car and drove to a nearby supermarket and bought more rolls and cold cuts for dinner. On the corner passed a 7-11 shut down do to lack of electricity, employees seemed to be sitting in cars in the parking lot. We got home and were getting ready to eat and - the lights came back on. Apparently we were in the largest outage area so we were put back quickly. I honestly do not remember a thunderstorm with so much or such loud thunder with rain that heavy for so long.
Tonight we took in Chinese food - simple right? Not really. The place we took out from for decades (while I was waiting for the gas company to come and turn on the gas in our first apartment I went and took out from this place for lunch - I did not even have tableware, dishes, glasses, etc in the apartment - I did have a borrowed bridge table and 2 borrowed bridge chairs) has changed. The original owners ran it for a long time - we knew their children, I remember hearing a car stop short in front of our apartment and the father coming running to the corner because his younger daughter had been riding her bicycle and just missed being hit by the car. When he died his older daughter would come home from college on weekends to help her mom. Then the son took over for awhile - even though he really wanted to be fishing - and the place often had fresh fish due to same. Eventually the place was sold - to the son’s sister in law and her husband. They were also nice and the food was the same and we kept going there. Earlier this year we went there and the husband was not there and an older woman (I presume one of their moms) was cooking. The food was not good. We tried another place and were not happy with them. We went back to them figuring maybe it was the change in cook. But the last time we took out the soup was too salty to eat and all the dishes were wrong. We don’t know what happened. This is the place we called on our way back from our 5 hour trip in July, 2017 to get dinner made before they closed - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/07/treading-water-5-hour-trip-to-nowhere.html So, we never know where to take out from and as a result we don’t. We receive an assortment of fliers from take out places and I keep them. One recently caught husband’s eye and he had been planning to try it - so tonight we did. Very nice people and food. Three street parking spaces in front of the 4 stores was the only parking. Then, since I was sick, husband did not hand me the food to hold on the trip home, he put it in a plastic laundry basket we keep in the back in the car, he did not put anything against the bag to hold it. Yes, the bag went on an angle and was soaked when he took it out of the car. After dinner we had to wash the vinyl cover I keep in the car, the basket, and back of the car. We will go back again - and I will hold the bag.
In the middle of all this I had to go to Manhattan to a client for work - I should have gone last month, but she had a cold (could I have caught this cold over the telephone :-) ). So I went yesterday. I packed a zip lock bag with sucking candy, lots of tissues, and an old prescription bottle with one dose of the cough medicine I am taking. In another zip lock bag I had a small bottle I filled with water. Did I mention the temperature yesterday was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit? Luckily I did not need any of the items.
As a result of this normal housework and keeping things in order are only done if absolutely needed. Instead of changing the bedding, I changed only my pillowcases. I suggested he change his, but he said it was okay to just leave them until next week. I had to talk him through changing the hand towels. We were in the downstairs bathroom - “Where are they?” “In the cabinet under the sink - see those 2 whiteish towels? Take them and the green dish towel below them.” (I put out a green dish towel each week in that bathroom to use for quick clean ups of water around the sink - it matches the bathroom.) Upstairs? “Which towels?” “The yellow ones.” (I figured yellow was bright and he would easily see them.) “You mean these yellow ones?” They are the only yellow ones we have.
Last week I had washed and dried the clothes the night before I got the cold. A load of jeans were in the dryer drying overnight. So we had clothes for the week. I did not wash the towels or the bed linens. Good thing I have 2 weeks of towels plus one extra set for up and down. I was trying to figure out how to mention to him about the laundry when he brought it up. I put the clothes in to wash. He will put them in the dryer - with me talking him through it - and then bring them upstairs afterwards. He brought up last week jeans load when I put in the load to wash. He says he will fold the laundry. I normally pull out his shirts as I put the clean, dry laundry in the basket to take upstairs so that they do not need to be ironed, as I put them over the top of the other clothes and if he does that, and sorts mine from his, I can deal with my clothes and he can deal with his or leave them in the basket and pull them out as he needs them.
Hopefully either this cold will be definitely over with or he will give up by Monday so life can return to normal.
On the other hand, I had some extra time in the office as we came home quicker in the afternoons. I managed to shred all of my 2008 records - other than few I kept such as the checks written that year for our income taxes - 3 tall kitchen bags plus, worth of shredding. I then packed my 2017 records into the same box, relabeled it, and put it back in the closet - ah, room to fit papers in file folders again.
I also had time to transfer my 2017 computer files to my archive file and make 2 DVD copies of the revised archive files. I still have to change my back up files so that the old files are gone from them, but that will happen as I make backup files.
I went through an assortment of old computer instruction manuals sitting on a shelf in the office - why? I needed space for 2 magazine holders. I pulled a number of the manuals - mostly from programs or hardware that I had - and I will put them out over a couple of weeks with the recycling. I still have a stack for husband to go through - understand this are DOS or pre Windows XP software and hardware that I cannot figure out what or where it is. The magazine holders fit nicely in the shelf now with room for the manuals for computer things we are actively using.
The office floor is a mess due to my cheapness in not wanting to waste extra garbage bags when doing shredding and pouring from one to another - as well as throwing handfuls of shreds from one bag to another. I had planned to vacuum up the shreds - but then caught this cold - maybe tomorrow I will get to vacuuming.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One gets ill. It happens. I am glad that it only a cold so all it has been is inconvenient. In the larger world it is nothing, just an inconvenience. I am happy that is not serious and by next week either I will be better or he will give up trying to do things for me so he does not catch the cold. (I have never pointed out to him that I touch the light switches and so does he.)
Try to do as much as one can without overtaxing one’s self - this will vary based on what is wrong with one.
I leave you with a final achoo! If I rambled too much - will, hey! I have a cold! :-)
Thursday, May 3, 2018
FINALLY STARTING TO CATCH UP
Husband gave up on his weaving project this past Monday - someday he will try to do this type of weaving again, but not now.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
FRUSTRATION'S ALL AROUND
Since the main Christmas tree did not go up until the last minute, I sort of figured that husband would be okay leaving it up a bit later than usual. Usual being this past Monday (3rd Monday in January - no reason other than it is a holiday here in the U.S. - honoring Martin Luther King, Jr - a civil rights leader - and therefore sticks out in one’s mind as it being the time to start taking down the tree and the decorations. But on Monday afternoon before I had a chance to bring up the subject, he asked when the tree would be down - so he could take back the living room for his weaving. He needs the length of the room to warp (set up threads on) his loom for his next project. He said that he regretted having to take it down, and the rest of the decorations could/should stay up for a while yet. This also led him to consider maybe putting the tree in the dining room next year to avoid this - the only time our living room is used for anything other than his weaving these days is decorating for Christmas, opening our limited presents on Christmas morning, and taking down the decorations. I told him that it was scheduled to start coming down the same day he asked and it would.
So after dinner I went downstairs and brought up box #4 for the tree decorations - last up, first off as it gets the outermost decorations. I started taking down icicles, plain balls, gold paper figures, etc used to fill in open spaces after the nicer decorations go on the tree. He suddenly realized what I was going and came into the living room, looked, and then said “Maybe it all should stay up a little longer.” I stared at him - “Yeah, I know it was my idea.” He then started helping me take things off the tree - actually trees as I have to pack the studio tree ornaments away at the same time as they are packed together and shared ornaments. I did most of 2 boxes of ornaments (out of 4). Frustrating - I would rather not have started yet - and then he says I shouldn’t have!
I am on a comics discussion group. As of a week ago Monday (maybe earlier, that is when I go online to the group to read a week’s worth of posts) the site was not so much there - and I was not sure if it was a problem with the site or my computer. A check with another computer showed that it was not accesible from that computer either. I figured all would be well the next day - it was not. I went looking back in my emails as I had a couple of email conversations with the fellow whose site it is. I never kept a record of his email address, because it is on the site. I found that, yes, there was a problem and it was “now” expected to be back by Thursday (last Thursday now) after it had not been back by “Tuesday” (2 days before last Thursday). As of last night it is still not working right enough to use. Frustration - I enjoy the company of those on that group and we have great discussions beyond the comics we are talking about.
I am also on an embroidery discussion group. This group is in the middle of migrating to a new site and “wonderful”changes. The site started moving in December and due to everything that was going on, I did not have a chance to register with and start to use the new site. The old site is still open (until at least the end of January) and I was communicating a bit with the members through that site. But it was now January and I signed up with the new site. Not as bad to use as I feared. There was one problem - either very few people were posting or I was not able to see all of the posts. The page numbers were listed at the top of the page - but when I clicked on any page number, I was still on the same page. Very frustrating I was missing seeing photos of everyone’s work and hearing about their holidays. I posted about this and finally had an answer appear as the last one in the list and therefore on the page I came on the group on - there was a problem and there was a work around. So finally last night I was able to move around in this group and read the posts for half of December and all of January.
Last night I went to make a monthly backup of my main computer, while at the same time making a quarterly backup of my work laptop -onto 2 separate external hard drives. The one I have been using for quarterly backups did not work. It had electricity, but did not show up on the computer. I then tried plugging it into my desktop computer - did not work there either. Oh, well, I had thought about replacing it, just had not gotten around to it. The biggest problem I had was this computer is wonky. The oldest back up of this computer is on the drive which did not work - and it is a “clean” backup which I need if I have to start this computer over.
I did what I hate to so. I told husband about the drive not working. This resulted in at least an hour’s worth of his repeating all I did with his computer. We then took apart the case the drive was in and took the drive out of it. When I updated the hard drive on my main computer we had bought an external drive case for the old drive so I could still access it when I found missing things. We opened that case, took out the old drive, and put the backup drive with the problem in it - it worked. I copied the needed file off it to the monthly back up drive. (And husband thought it a waste when I decided to back up the computers to 2 drives instead of one.) We then reassembled my old hard drive into the case and put the backup drive into a small box to keep it safe. I now will get a new second backup drive. (See backing up drives is important!) Now the backups are set up when I am going to backup and I walk away and they just run on their own. Very frustrating and a waste of time.
I have to go to my client in Manhattan as I have to do her payroll taxes - and the date for filing the company’s copy of her W2 has been moved up to January 31 from February 28. Last year I mailed the forms to her for her to mail out and it did not get to her - but came back to me in the mail, despite being correctly addressed to her. So I really wanted to get to her early this month in case there were problems getting the forms to her to mail. Then I realized something - she will have taken at most one payroll check last year (the business is not doing well) and I can make do the paperwork in advance and bring it with me. So I pulled out my typewriter and started typing the forms. I had ordered the forms from IRS in December to make sure I had them - 2 different forms and a different cover form for each - 4 kinds of forms in all. I was fine until I did the second form - there were no cover forms! I went looking and counting - they had sent me 2 sets of the other cover form. So I had to go online and order more forms - and I hope they will be here early enough to fill in and mail to her for her to sign. I am going to her tomorrow - I hope. We have had another snow storm - very light, but I didn’t want to drive in the snow. It was last night to today. So tomorrow morning I will get up and call the client and hope she says I can come there tomorrow - if not I hope I can go there next week. Not only do I have to do her work - I get paid quarterly and we need the money to pay bills. So, between the weather and IRS not sending forms it has been frustrating.
Now, tonight I took the garbage from the kitchen out for pickup tomorrow morning. Husband was having a reaction of some sort from the dinner we had and I did not want to open the garbage pail when he was in the room. I took it out while he was upstairs. I did not tell him I was doing so - I have taken the garbage out for the 29 years we have lived in the house and I just about never tell him I am doing so - unless there is some unusual reason to do so. I put the garbage at the street and came back to our side porch and pushed the handle button to open the storm door - the button did not move. I tried again several times - and it is cold out (not as bad as has been this winter, but still around freezing) and it did not work. I thought about the front door - but I had only cleared snow from half of the steps and I was concerned it might be icy since it would have melted and might have refrozen - so I pulled out my cell phone and texted my husband. He got the message and for a minute thought I was just telling him something - then figured out that I was stuck outside the house and came and let me in - and also went back and sprayed the handle lock. Following this I was told that I should never go out of the house without telling him! This led to an extensive discussion with no resolution as to my competence to go out alone without telling him - again, frustration.
I have been good at keeping up with my housework,, but - uh oh - I just realized that I never put in laundry to wash - I will do so as soon I get this posted.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustration takes so much away from us (or at least from me). It takes concentration (why else would I forget the laundry) and time - I have had to keep going back and checking to see if the two group sites are working that I could have used on other matters. But we have to deal with it and move on.
So after dinner I went downstairs and brought up box #4 for the tree decorations - last up, first off as it gets the outermost decorations. I started taking down icicles, plain balls, gold paper figures, etc used to fill in open spaces after the nicer decorations go on the tree. He suddenly realized what I was going and came into the living room, looked, and then said “Maybe it all should stay up a little longer.” I stared at him - “Yeah, I know it was my idea.” He then started helping me take things off the tree - actually trees as I have to pack the studio tree ornaments away at the same time as they are packed together and shared ornaments. I did most of 2 boxes of ornaments (out of 4). Frustrating - I would rather not have started yet - and then he says I shouldn’t have!
I am on a comics discussion group. As of a week ago Monday (maybe earlier, that is when I go online to the group to read a week’s worth of posts) the site was not so much there - and I was not sure if it was a problem with the site or my computer. A check with another computer showed that it was not accesible from that computer either. I figured all would be well the next day - it was not. I went looking back in my emails as I had a couple of email conversations with the fellow whose site it is. I never kept a record of his email address, because it is on the site. I found that, yes, there was a problem and it was “now” expected to be back by Thursday (last Thursday now) after it had not been back by “Tuesday” (2 days before last Thursday). As of last night it is still not working right enough to use. Frustration - I enjoy the company of those on that group and we have great discussions beyond the comics we are talking about.
I am also on an embroidery discussion group. This group is in the middle of migrating to a new site and “wonderful”changes. The site started moving in December and due to everything that was going on, I did not have a chance to register with and start to use the new site. The old site is still open (until at least the end of January) and I was communicating a bit with the members through that site. But it was now January and I signed up with the new site. Not as bad to use as I feared. There was one problem - either very few people were posting or I was not able to see all of the posts. The page numbers were listed at the top of the page - but when I clicked on any page number, I was still on the same page. Very frustrating I was missing seeing photos of everyone’s work and hearing about their holidays. I posted about this and finally had an answer appear as the last one in the list and therefore on the page I came on the group on - there was a problem and there was a work around. So finally last night I was able to move around in this group and read the posts for half of December and all of January.
Last night I went to make a monthly backup of my main computer, while at the same time making a quarterly backup of my work laptop -onto 2 separate external hard drives. The one I have been using for quarterly backups did not work. It had electricity, but did not show up on the computer. I then tried plugging it into my desktop computer - did not work there either. Oh, well, I had thought about replacing it, just had not gotten around to it. The biggest problem I had was this computer is wonky. The oldest back up of this computer is on the drive which did not work - and it is a “clean” backup which I need if I have to start this computer over.
I did what I hate to so. I told husband about the drive not working. This resulted in at least an hour’s worth of his repeating all I did with his computer. We then took apart the case the drive was in and took the drive out of it. When I updated the hard drive on my main computer we had bought an external drive case for the old drive so I could still access it when I found missing things. We opened that case, took out the old drive, and put the backup drive with the problem in it - it worked. I copied the needed file off it to the monthly back up drive. (And husband thought it a waste when I decided to back up the computers to 2 drives instead of one.) We then reassembled my old hard drive into the case and put the backup drive into a small box to keep it safe. I now will get a new second backup drive. (See backing up drives is important!) Now the backups are set up when I am going to backup and I walk away and they just run on their own. Very frustrating and a waste of time.
I have to go to my client in Manhattan as I have to do her payroll taxes - and the date for filing the company’s copy of her W2 has been moved up to January 31 from February 28. Last year I mailed the forms to her for her to mail out and it did not get to her - but came back to me in the mail, despite being correctly addressed to her. So I really wanted to get to her early this month in case there were problems getting the forms to her to mail. Then I realized something - she will have taken at most one payroll check last year (the business is not doing well) and I can make do the paperwork in advance and bring it with me. So I pulled out my typewriter and started typing the forms. I had ordered the forms from IRS in December to make sure I had them - 2 different forms and a different cover form for each - 4 kinds of forms in all. I was fine until I did the second form - there were no cover forms! I went looking and counting - they had sent me 2 sets of the other cover form. So I had to go online and order more forms - and I hope they will be here early enough to fill in and mail to her for her to sign. I am going to her tomorrow - I hope. We have had another snow storm - very light, but I didn’t want to drive in the snow. It was last night to today. So tomorrow morning I will get up and call the client and hope she says I can come there tomorrow - if not I hope I can go there next week. Not only do I have to do her work - I get paid quarterly and we need the money to pay bills. So, between the weather and IRS not sending forms it has been frustrating.
Now, tonight I took the garbage from the kitchen out for pickup tomorrow morning. Husband was having a reaction of some sort from the dinner we had and I did not want to open the garbage pail when he was in the room. I took it out while he was upstairs. I did not tell him I was doing so - I have taken the garbage out for the 29 years we have lived in the house and I just about never tell him I am doing so - unless there is some unusual reason to do so. I put the garbage at the street and came back to our side porch and pushed the handle button to open the storm door - the button did not move. I tried again several times - and it is cold out (not as bad as has been this winter, but still around freezing) and it did not work. I thought about the front door - but I had only cleared snow from half of the steps and I was concerned it might be icy since it would have melted and might have refrozen - so I pulled out my cell phone and texted my husband. He got the message and for a minute thought I was just telling him something - then figured out that I was stuck outside the house and came and let me in - and also went back and sprayed the handle lock. Following this I was told that I should never go out of the house without telling him! This led to an extensive discussion with no resolution as to my competence to go out alone without telling him - again, frustration.
I have been good at keeping up with my housework,, but - uh oh - I just realized that I never put in laundry to wash - I will do so as soon I get this posted.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustration takes so much away from us (or at least from me). It takes concentration (why else would I forget the laundry) and time - I have had to keep going back and checking to see if the two group sites are working that I could have used on other matters. But we have to deal with it and move on.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
SHREDDING AND SCANNING
I have been very busy scanning bills and shredding papers - two separate, but slightly related projects. This has taken me only about 4 days - and by days I mean 4 sessions of a few hours each.
First the scanning - Last month I decided and posted about - 4-13-17 POST
- deciding to scan in bills as I pay them. Understand if I pay a charge card bill, I am only scanning in the statement, not every slip - even I am not that crazy - this is to make it easier if I need to view or need a copy of what I paid. Per the earlier post this is the result of needing a bill from last year and not being able to find it. I was lucky enough to have a scan of the bill and was able to use that for reference.
So I have since been scanning each bill as I pay it. For our personal checking account I am scanning them into my data drive. I set up a folder for the year with a subfolder for each month to make it all easier to find. For our business checking account I am just using a folder for the year as we write very few checks. I will go back when I have a chance shortly and scan in the bills from earlier in the year.
Once a year I empty out the oldest storage box of records - I have 9 boxes so it is the one from 9 years before - and refill it with the previous year. I cannot do this in earlier in the year as I want to include in the new year’s storage, the papers needed for income tax and our bank statements through the end of the prior year and I like to have the last statement we have at hand - some of our statements come in quarterly, so this can not be done before mid-April at the earliest and generally later than that. This year since I did not put our business return on extension I was ready to do this switch over now. I have been getting rid of 2007 records to make room for storage of 2016 records.
I was already to get rid of the 2007 records when the thought hit me - why not scan in the 2016 bills so I have them for reference before I store them away.
Second, the shredding - Before I get rid of the old records (in this case 2007) I shred them. I shred and shred and shred. I actually ended up with almost 39 gallons (3 kitchen bags) of shredded papers. Some papers I toss in the shredder without looking at, others I check first.
Which ones do I check? I look through the checking statements - personal and business - and keep any checks which paid income taxes or sales taxes (for the business). I keep these (or a scan of them - front and back) forever. I set them aside in my “to file” holder on my desk to file at the end of the week when I do filing. They will go in my tax files - personal or business - depending on what they are for. I also go quickly through our credit card statements. I look for any large amounts (over $100) and check what they are for. If they are for hotels, food, etc. I just skip them. If they are for a specific thing I look at them. This is especially true for expenditures for the house which may add to its cost (technically its “basis”) when we or our heirs one day sell the house and will lessen the profit on that sale. Anything else large I look at and sometimes discuss with my husband if we need to keep it for any reason. Almost always anything other than house related bills go into the shredder. For 2007 there were few bills that I looked at and those were large food bills or hotel bills. One bill was for a clothing item for me to wear when reenacting. I pulled that bill and made a note of the name of the company as reenacting friends have asked where I bought it and I did not remember. Now I have the name to give them.
Now here is where I took a big chance on being able to do two things at once. I had the large plastic box of 2007 records and a cardboard box (that originally held large manila envelopes) which was holding our 2016 bills. Two tasks to do - which to do?
Both of course. I would put a bill from 2016 in the scanner and hit the scan buttons. I would then take a handful of papers from the 2007 box and shred them - setting aside the bank and credit card statements. I did this for 3 days - working in checking the statements and shredding them also. I managed to not shred any of the 2016 records and not scan any of the 2007 records.
As of tonight I have finished shredding all of 2016 and the 3 white kitchen size bags of same have been put into a large black garbage bag - so that one cannot see what is in the bags through the white plastic - and the large black garbage bag is out at the curb for pickup tomorrow morning by the Town sanitation department (the garbagemen).
I have also finished scanning of our personal bills from 2016. I have maybe 30 bills for our business which I will scan tomorrow. The box from 2007 has been refilled with bank statements from 2016 and the personal bills from same - the business bills will be added. The information used to do our and the business’s income taxes are also in the box (but not the copies of the returns - they are in my accounting file drawer for my accounting practice - although they are also scanned into the computer as I also do with clients’s returns.
Right now my office is a mess. I end up emptying the shredded papers into our garbage pail in the office as the shredder fills. While I have a fairly heavy duty shredder, it can fill our 13 gallon garbage pail at least 3 times. Pouring this into the larger pail invariably ends up with shreds of paper all over - they have a good deal of static electricity and stick to things. I have promised husband now that I am finished I will vacuum the office tomorrow to clean it up - okay, they followed me out of the office door (it is a spare upstairs bedroom) into the hall and partially down the stairs and that will also need to be vacuumed.
After I scan the 2016 business records into the computer I will add them to the box. I have already gone through our personal and our business file drawers and pulled any records which are not needed at hand for last year and put them in the box. Before putting the box back into the closet I will take a folder in our file drawer marked “last year to file” and add some papers to the 2015 box. These are papers which for whatever reason were not stored or were not able to be stored away when I did this last year for 2015 (which replaced 2006 in a box). I know that something will always turn up which is why I have this file.
I also have a file called “this year”. It is the place I throw anything I want/need to keep and don’t know where to file - it is gone through when I do this switch over and the papers will either go into the 2016 box, be tossed or in some cases left in the folder. To give an example - we receive in the mail a card each from our election board each year with voting information for the year - where to vote, what votes there are and when they will be. I keep this card so when we go to vote we can figure out which of the, constantly changing in location, tables is the one for us to vote at. I keep it until the next year’s cards arrive. Last year we did not receive the cards when they were mailed for the primary (I telephoned and was told we should have received them and confirmed where we should go to vote) and we brought the one from the year before to help us figure out where to go in the room. (Mysteriously they did arrive, several months late, before the actual election.) Normally when we get the new cards I shred the old ones and throw them out - but they “reside” in this folder.
In past years in going through the records to be shed from the older year, I have found interesting items such as paper items from our 25th anniversary stay at a Colonial Williamsburg restored tavern - I did not keep any longer, but it was nice to remember the stay. (Yes, one can stay in restored houses and taverns on streets within the restoration as part of their hotels. It is rather pricey by our standards and this was the only time we did so - and even then, we stayed there for 3 nights during a reenacting weekend and stayed at a regular - much cheaper - hotel the rest of the stay.) This time I could tell by various papers and checks I found that this was the year husband quit his job (which is when I thought he did). Hard to believe that 10 years has passed.
Oh - you may wonder why 9 years in boxes - why not an even 10? Two reasons. The boxes were sold in packages of 3 boxes. Also I can fit 9 boxes on top of the closet in our office, but not 10. I figure that with the current year I have 10 years of records for taxes - and with scanning - even more.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
How do your store your old records? Presuming that you are in the U.S. you need to keep at a bare minimum 3 years of records for income taxes. Ten are generally recommended. IRS and states can generally audit you or say that there is an error for 3 years after you file a tax return, 7 years if after the due date if you do not file a return. (General rule - states can always have their own laws.)
I know that in the past our state has had “amnesty” periods when one can file a tax return which one has not filed and/or pay any taxes owed and apply to have any penalties on that amount waived so that one only pays the tax and interest (and sometimes one does not even have to pay the interest). I know that clients, as well as us, have received notices during these amnesty periods for return which were filed and paid. When I contacted the state about it being too long after the returns were filed and paid as no notices were receive before and it was past the 3 or even the 7 years I always got the same response - “We mailed you notices and we do not know why you did not get them so the action was started within the required 3 years.”
As a result of this I tell clients to keep all payments for taxes forever. This is the checks which pay estimated taxes or the final payment, W2 forms with withholding. 1099 forms of any type which have taxes withheld (these are the forms you receive in January for interest, dividends, stocks etc sold, amounts you received from pensions IRAs or 401k plans etc), Forms K1 from partnerships, small business corporations or LLCs, etc. You can scan in them into your computer to keep them or keep them as paper copies or both. I keep copies of same of ours.
First the scanning - Last month I decided and posted about - 4-13-17 POST
- deciding to scan in bills as I pay them. Understand if I pay a charge card bill, I am only scanning in the statement, not every slip - even I am not that crazy - this is to make it easier if I need to view or need a copy of what I paid. Per the earlier post this is the result of needing a bill from last year and not being able to find it. I was lucky enough to have a scan of the bill and was able to use that for reference.
So I have since been scanning each bill as I pay it. For our personal checking account I am scanning them into my data drive. I set up a folder for the year with a subfolder for each month to make it all easier to find. For our business checking account I am just using a folder for the year as we write very few checks. I will go back when I have a chance shortly and scan in the bills from earlier in the year.
Once a year I empty out the oldest storage box of records - I have 9 boxes so it is the one from 9 years before - and refill it with the previous year. I cannot do this in earlier in the year as I want to include in the new year’s storage, the papers needed for income tax and our bank statements through the end of the prior year and I like to have the last statement we have at hand - some of our statements come in quarterly, so this can not be done before mid-April at the earliest and generally later than that. This year since I did not put our business return on extension I was ready to do this switch over now. I have been getting rid of 2007 records to make room for storage of 2016 records.
I was already to get rid of the 2007 records when the thought hit me - why not scan in the 2016 bills so I have them for reference before I store them away.
Second, the shredding - Before I get rid of the old records (in this case 2007) I shred them. I shred and shred and shred. I actually ended up with almost 39 gallons (3 kitchen bags) of shredded papers. Some papers I toss in the shredder without looking at, others I check first.
Which ones do I check? I look through the checking statements - personal and business - and keep any checks which paid income taxes or sales taxes (for the business). I keep these (or a scan of them - front and back) forever. I set them aside in my “to file” holder on my desk to file at the end of the week when I do filing. They will go in my tax files - personal or business - depending on what they are for. I also go quickly through our credit card statements. I look for any large amounts (over $100) and check what they are for. If they are for hotels, food, etc. I just skip them. If they are for a specific thing I look at them. This is especially true for expenditures for the house which may add to its cost (technically its “basis”) when we or our heirs one day sell the house and will lessen the profit on that sale. Anything else large I look at and sometimes discuss with my husband if we need to keep it for any reason. Almost always anything other than house related bills go into the shredder. For 2007 there were few bills that I looked at and those were large food bills or hotel bills. One bill was for a clothing item for me to wear when reenacting. I pulled that bill and made a note of the name of the company as reenacting friends have asked where I bought it and I did not remember. Now I have the name to give them.
Now here is where I took a big chance on being able to do two things at once. I had the large plastic box of 2007 records and a cardboard box (that originally held large manila envelopes) which was holding our 2016 bills. Two tasks to do - which to do?
Both of course. I would put a bill from 2016 in the scanner and hit the scan buttons. I would then take a handful of papers from the 2007 box and shred them - setting aside the bank and credit card statements. I did this for 3 days - working in checking the statements and shredding them also. I managed to not shred any of the 2016 records and not scan any of the 2007 records.
As of tonight I have finished shredding all of 2016 and the 3 white kitchen size bags of same have been put into a large black garbage bag - so that one cannot see what is in the bags through the white plastic - and the large black garbage bag is out at the curb for pickup tomorrow morning by the Town sanitation department (the garbagemen).
I have also finished scanning of our personal bills from 2016. I have maybe 30 bills for our business which I will scan tomorrow. The box from 2007 has been refilled with bank statements from 2016 and the personal bills from same - the business bills will be added. The information used to do our and the business’s income taxes are also in the box (but not the copies of the returns - they are in my accounting file drawer for my accounting practice - although they are also scanned into the computer as I also do with clients’s returns.
Right now my office is a mess. I end up emptying the shredded papers into our garbage pail in the office as the shredder fills. While I have a fairly heavy duty shredder, it can fill our 13 gallon garbage pail at least 3 times. Pouring this into the larger pail invariably ends up with shreds of paper all over - they have a good deal of static electricity and stick to things. I have promised husband now that I am finished I will vacuum the office tomorrow to clean it up - okay, they followed me out of the office door (it is a spare upstairs bedroom) into the hall and partially down the stairs and that will also need to be vacuumed.
After I scan the 2016 business records into the computer I will add them to the box. I have already gone through our personal and our business file drawers and pulled any records which are not needed at hand for last year and put them in the box. Before putting the box back into the closet I will take a folder in our file drawer marked “last year to file” and add some papers to the 2015 box. These are papers which for whatever reason were not stored or were not able to be stored away when I did this last year for 2015 (which replaced 2006 in a box). I know that something will always turn up which is why I have this file.
I also have a file called “this year”. It is the place I throw anything I want/need to keep and don’t know where to file - it is gone through when I do this switch over and the papers will either go into the 2016 box, be tossed or in some cases left in the folder. To give an example - we receive in the mail a card each from our election board each year with voting information for the year - where to vote, what votes there are and when they will be. I keep this card so when we go to vote we can figure out which of the, constantly changing in location, tables is the one for us to vote at. I keep it until the next year’s cards arrive. Last year we did not receive the cards when they were mailed for the primary (I telephoned and was told we should have received them and confirmed where we should go to vote) and we brought the one from the year before to help us figure out where to go in the room. (Mysteriously they did arrive, several months late, before the actual election.) Normally when we get the new cards I shred the old ones and throw them out - but they “reside” in this folder.
In past years in going through the records to be shed from the older year, I have found interesting items such as paper items from our 25th anniversary stay at a Colonial Williamsburg restored tavern - I did not keep any longer, but it was nice to remember the stay. (Yes, one can stay in restored houses and taverns on streets within the restoration as part of their hotels. It is rather pricey by our standards and this was the only time we did so - and even then, we stayed there for 3 nights during a reenacting weekend and stayed at a regular - much cheaper - hotel the rest of the stay.) This time I could tell by various papers and checks I found that this was the year husband quit his job (which is when I thought he did). Hard to believe that 10 years has passed.
Oh - you may wonder why 9 years in boxes - why not an even 10? Two reasons. The boxes were sold in packages of 3 boxes. Also I can fit 9 boxes on top of the closet in our office, but not 10. I figure that with the current year I have 10 years of records for taxes - and with scanning - even more.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
How do your store your old records? Presuming that you are in the U.S. you need to keep at a bare minimum 3 years of records for income taxes. Ten are generally recommended. IRS and states can generally audit you or say that there is an error for 3 years after you file a tax return, 7 years if after the due date if you do not file a return. (General rule - states can always have their own laws.)
I know that in the past our state has had “amnesty” periods when one can file a tax return which one has not filed and/or pay any taxes owed and apply to have any penalties on that amount waived so that one only pays the tax and interest (and sometimes one does not even have to pay the interest). I know that clients, as well as us, have received notices during these amnesty periods for return which were filed and paid. When I contacted the state about it being too long after the returns were filed and paid as no notices were receive before and it was past the 3 or even the 7 years I always got the same response - “We mailed you notices and we do not know why you did not get them so the action was started within the required 3 years.”
As a result of this I tell clients to keep all payments for taxes forever. This is the checks which pay estimated taxes or the final payment, W2 forms with withholding. 1099 forms of any type which have taxes withheld (these are the forms you receive in January for interest, dividends, stocks etc sold, amounts you received from pensions IRAs or 401k plans etc), Forms K1 from partnerships, small business corporations or LLCs, etc. You can scan in them into your computer to keep them or keep them as paper copies or both. I keep copies of same of ours.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
BACKING UP COMPUTER FILES SO YOU DON'T USE THEM
I have written before about my regular daily back up of my data and my archiving it at the end of the year. There is other backing up that I do that I thought I would tell you about.
I was very careful about backing up - day after day - and then I realized I had problem with the data to my organizer. There was a problem (I forget what by now) and unfortunately both my daily backups (A and B) were bad - for over a week. Now I had to go and try to figure out what went wrong and when and come up with replacement info about what I had done. (Remember I use my organizer for appointments, to dos, anniversary/birthdays, my contacts directory and memos - things to buy, info I need, etc.) I managed to get it corrected. I was lucky that I make a monthly backup on an exterior hard drive.
Once a month I run software to copy my computers to an external hard drive. The idea is that if my computer hard drive crashes I can restore it quickly and easily. Of course this sometimes goes awry since one does not know if the backup worked unless and until one needs to use it. I also copy my data and organizer separately at the same time to the same external hard drive. So lucky me, I had organizer data from less than a month before to help me catch back up.
To prevent the loss of data backup from overwriting the backup daily - even with A and B alternating backups - I came up with the idea of - yes - another backup. I took a flash drive (you can see I love these things) and made a folder - “Backup” and another “Calendar” (meaning everything from the organizer), and another one “client name” for each client. On a Friday I backed all my data from these assorted sources to this drive. I call it my weekly drive. The following Friday I went and added the date of the first backup to the names of the backup files I had made and made new “backup”, “calendar”, and “client’s name” files. I ran the backups again. Now I have a backup as of the end of “this” week and one from the end of last week. If I overwrite the data and backups with the same error - I have a backup from only a week ago. I kept doing this for 4 weeks. At then end of 4 weeks I had the latest weekly backups which just had the names of the backups and 3 backups from the prior 3 weeks - each labeled with the date they were backed up. What then? Well, I again added the date to last Friday’s backups, but this time I removed the date from the oldest backups - putting them back with their original names and ran an update backup. This is what I do each week now - add the date to last week’s backups and remove the date from the oldest backups - and update them.
So now I am backing up my data and calendar daily to flash stick drives (A and B) and then backing up my data weekly to a different flash stick drive, and monthly to an external hard drive, when I back up my computers to same.
I think, but I am not sure, that I have mentioned I do a backup once a month to still another flash stick drive (and yes, they are very well labeled so I know which is which and what is on them) that also has a copy of my annual archive on it, which I bring to my bank safe deposit box for “offsite” storage. I used to send this drive to work with husband when he worked in an office which was not in our house. He would take the drive to work and bring back the one he already had there. Now I take the one I just updated to the bank box and bring home the one from last time. The one from last time will be updated just before it goes back to the bank box.
One would think this was enough backups - right?
My external hard drive was getting a bit old (and therefore is rather small). It suddenly dawned on me that if the external hard drive went bad, I would lose the data and if the computer crashed, well I would be stuck (sort of like when we bought a new internal hard drive due to problems with my old one and the backup had not worked).
So - I bought a new larger drive (the storage was a lot larger, the physical drive only a bit larger). So now I back up my computer and assorted data onto this drive monthly - and I have new software so hopefully if I need to use it, it will work. I then backup to the old external hard drive quarterly - just as, well, a backup of the backup. I work on the idea that more backups make it harder to lose data or computer hard drive.
Now, I know I am backing up way more than anyone short of a major corporation does, but I don’t want to lose my data or my hard drive again.
Do you back up? You really need to. I lose business type data - if you have your photos on the computer you could lose the photos if you lost your drive. At least get a couple of fairly inexpensive flash drives and make copies in an alternating pattern .
Oh, another advantage to my keeping my data on flash drives is that they are small. I can take them from once computer to another - very easily. I can also put all of my flash drives in the pocket of my jeans - at the same time - if I needed to take them - which leads to -
I have mentioned that I have a grab and go folder for financial stuff - last bank statements, insurance policies, copies of deed, mortgage payoff and car titles, duplicate birth and wedding certificates and such. I also have a copy of the latest archive on DVD. If we need to leave the house in an emergency we can grab this folder (actually a sectioned “file wallet” with a top that closes) drop in the lastest data drive and run in an emergency and have as much info with us as we can. If you have precious photos you can keep a copy of them in there also - DVDs are more definite than flash drives (another reason I keep a lot of backups - flash drives can go bad) and you will not have lost info you need plus personal photos and infos you would miss. (Remember you can scan in your child’s art work, etc. also.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
It is May. While I know the weather is odd this year, we are over a quarter of the way through the year and well onto halfway through the year. Don’t wait any longer. Do something towards getting rid of clutter and beginning to organize and clean up.
Today I had my embroidery chapter meeting. We have the room until 2 pm. Most, sometimes all, the other members leave at the end of the program- between noon and 1 pm generally. I always have some embroidery project (or two) with me. Today two other members were staying and working on their needlework after the others had left. I took out one of the projects from my bag and started stitching. I did not get a lot done as this particular project is a slow one with tiny stitches and one strand of cotton embroidery floss at a time, but I am now that much further along on the project - not even a ful petal of a flower - but I am that tiny bit closer to finishing it.
Each step you take towards getting organized - throwing even one item out or otherwise getting it out of your house - is a bit less that needs to be done. Small amounts add to large ones. There is a quote (I think from Patrick Henry) “I have never seen a man devour an entire bunch of grapes at one time, but I have seen a man accomplish the same thing, by plucking the grapes and eating them one at a time.” In the same way we cannot accomplish everything needed to declutter, organize, and clean everything at once - but we can do this a bit at a time - so do something as the first step and then tomorrow do something else, and so on.
I was very careful about backing up - day after day - and then I realized I had problem with the data to my organizer. There was a problem (I forget what by now) and unfortunately both my daily backups (A and B) were bad - for over a week. Now I had to go and try to figure out what went wrong and when and come up with replacement info about what I had done. (Remember I use my organizer for appointments, to dos, anniversary/birthdays, my contacts directory and memos - things to buy, info I need, etc.) I managed to get it corrected. I was lucky that I make a monthly backup on an exterior hard drive.
Once a month I run software to copy my computers to an external hard drive. The idea is that if my computer hard drive crashes I can restore it quickly and easily. Of course this sometimes goes awry since one does not know if the backup worked unless and until one needs to use it. I also copy my data and organizer separately at the same time to the same external hard drive. So lucky me, I had organizer data from less than a month before to help me catch back up.
To prevent the loss of data backup from overwriting the backup daily - even with A and B alternating backups - I came up with the idea of - yes - another backup. I took a flash drive (you can see I love these things) and made a folder - “Backup” and another “Calendar” (meaning everything from the organizer), and another one “client name” for each client. On a Friday I backed all my data from these assorted sources to this drive. I call it my weekly drive. The following Friday I went and added the date of the first backup to the names of the backup files I had made and made new “backup”, “calendar”, and “client’s name” files. I ran the backups again. Now I have a backup as of the end of “this” week and one from the end of last week. If I overwrite the data and backups with the same error - I have a backup from only a week ago. I kept doing this for 4 weeks. At then end of 4 weeks I had the latest weekly backups which just had the names of the backups and 3 backups from the prior 3 weeks - each labeled with the date they were backed up. What then? Well, I again added the date to last Friday’s backups, but this time I removed the date from the oldest backups - putting them back with their original names and ran an update backup. This is what I do each week now - add the date to last week’s backups and remove the date from the oldest backups - and update them.
So now I am backing up my data and calendar daily to flash stick drives (A and B) and then backing up my data weekly to a different flash stick drive, and monthly to an external hard drive, when I back up my computers to same.
I think, but I am not sure, that I have mentioned I do a backup once a month to still another flash stick drive (and yes, they are very well labeled so I know which is which and what is on them) that also has a copy of my annual archive on it, which I bring to my bank safe deposit box for “offsite” storage. I used to send this drive to work with husband when he worked in an office which was not in our house. He would take the drive to work and bring back the one he already had there. Now I take the one I just updated to the bank box and bring home the one from last time. The one from last time will be updated just before it goes back to the bank box.
One would think this was enough backups - right?
My external hard drive was getting a bit old (and therefore is rather small). It suddenly dawned on me that if the external hard drive went bad, I would lose the data and if the computer crashed, well I would be stuck (sort of like when we bought a new internal hard drive due to problems with my old one and the backup had not worked).
So - I bought a new larger drive (the storage was a lot larger, the physical drive only a bit larger). So now I back up my computer and assorted data onto this drive monthly - and I have new software so hopefully if I need to use it, it will work. I then backup to the old external hard drive quarterly - just as, well, a backup of the backup. I work on the idea that more backups make it harder to lose data or computer hard drive.
Now, I know I am backing up way more than anyone short of a major corporation does, but I don’t want to lose my data or my hard drive again.
Do you back up? You really need to. I lose business type data - if you have your photos on the computer you could lose the photos if you lost your drive. At least get a couple of fairly inexpensive flash drives and make copies in an alternating pattern .
Oh, another advantage to my keeping my data on flash drives is that they are small. I can take them from once computer to another - very easily. I can also put all of my flash drives in the pocket of my jeans - at the same time - if I needed to take them - which leads to -
I have mentioned that I have a grab and go folder for financial stuff - last bank statements, insurance policies, copies of deed, mortgage payoff and car titles, duplicate birth and wedding certificates and such. I also have a copy of the latest archive on DVD. If we need to leave the house in an emergency we can grab this folder (actually a sectioned “file wallet” with a top that closes) drop in the lastest data drive and run in an emergency and have as much info with us as we can. If you have precious photos you can keep a copy of them in there also - DVDs are more definite than flash drives (another reason I keep a lot of backups - flash drives can go bad) and you will not have lost info you need plus personal photos and infos you would miss. (Remember you can scan in your child’s art work, etc. also.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
It is May. While I know the weather is odd this year, we are over a quarter of the way through the year and well onto halfway through the year. Don’t wait any longer. Do something towards getting rid of clutter and beginning to organize and clean up.
Today I had my embroidery chapter meeting. We have the room until 2 pm. Most, sometimes all, the other members leave at the end of the program- between noon and 1 pm generally. I always have some embroidery project (or two) with me. Today two other members were staying and working on their needlework after the others had left. I took out one of the projects from my bag and started stitching. I did not get a lot done as this particular project is a slow one with tiny stitches and one strand of cotton embroidery floss at a time, but I am now that much further along on the project - not even a ful petal of a flower - but I am that tiny bit closer to finishing it.
Each step you take towards getting organized - throwing even one item out or otherwise getting it out of your house - is a bit less that needs to be done. Small amounts add to large ones. There is a quote (I think from Patrick Henry) “I have never seen a man devour an entire bunch of grapes at one time, but I have seen a man accomplish the same thing, by plucking the grapes and eating them one at a time.” In the same way we cannot accomplish everything needed to declutter, organize, and clean everything at once - but we can do this a bit at a time - so do something as the first step and then tomorrow do something else, and so on.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
CATCHING UP
Well tax season is behind me now and I am trying to catch up on everything which fell by the wayside.
It amazes me that when I was working full time in the first 4 months of the year I would do payroll taxes for 10 business clients twice each - January & April - and the January ones involved typing W2s for all the employees of the clients, corporation or partnership returns for the businesses, year end sales tax for most of them (NY has a sales tax year which ends the end of February and is due in March), and personal returns for about 40 clients while also keeping house, dealing with Easter and Passover, a trip out of state for my husband’s birthday, and towards the end of April - a trip to Maryland for a reenactment event, plus dealing with my embroidery chapter and reenactment unit’s treasuries and renewal of membership for the reenactment unit. It exhausts me to just list all of this.
These days I have about 6 tax returns, two corporations and a partnership (and only one of the businesses is not ours), three sales tax returns, payroll taxes for one company which has one employee, little to do for the holidays or husband’s birthday, and no trip to Maryland (too cold for RV to be dewinterized). Still dealing with the two treasuries and the renewals for the reenactment unit. Yet, I still have trouble finishing it all up timely. It is true that work expands to the time allotted to do it. Maybe this thought comes to mind just because I am watching the series on TV about Einstein and that brings to mind his relativity theory.
Think about it - you look around. The house needs decluttering and cleaning. If you have guests coming over on Friday - you are going to do what you do before Friday, if they are not coming until the first of next month - the same work will take you until then - right? We used to have a room where no one could go when we had people in also. When I was a girl it was my bedroom closet. Mom would tell me periodically (I am guessing when people were going to be coming or she just could not look at it any more) to clean my room. I would do as much as I could - then what was left would be tossed into the bottom of my closet. (Sound familiar?) Once or twice a year I would even be told to clear out the bottom of my closet - generally I would find items such as the bag with most of my Trick or Treat candy in it around May or June - that was a toss out as mom told us we would get sick if eat anything that old. One problem was that no one ever actually explained to me the concept of throwing things out or passing them along, to me cleaning was put everything out of site. I have since learned better.
So now I am dealing with the catchup. The stack on my desk - on top of my “todo folder”, which means that these items must be done before I can start on what I have to do - is shrinking.
I spent an afternoon dealing with items waiting for me from our reenactment unit. In addition to being treasurer I am also the membership chair as it is easier for one person to do so. Dues are long ago collected, the dues collected for our national went out on time back in March. Membership cards had been typed up (yes, typed on a typewriter) and given to the unit commander to mail to members. I had managed to get to the bank and deposit the dues check - and one for an event the unit did in January. But, some members have been waiting to be paid for money laid out and I had to pay them. One of our unit insurance policies had come in and I paid it. I had the forms that members had filled in which had to be scanned into the computer so I could shred and toss the originals. I had to make up the membership list for the year. I worked on all this - all done except it took until today to get a clarification from one member as to whether the new phone number she gave me was her home or cell number that had changed. I heard from her today - the new list will be out to the commander to email out by this weekend - I hope.
I managed to keep up on paying the bills for my embroidery chapter - most were to third parties, and were paid right away. A couple of checks to members for, again, money laid out just were written. Our national embroidery group has a membership year that runs from June through the following May (yeah, it confuses the heck out of me why that is the year for membership dues - the financial year is a calendar year, and somehow in the change from quarterly renewals based on when members had joined to an annual one - we paid for the month of June twice one year) and while I am not the membership chair, I help her as the treasurer. I do serve as the newsletter editor and today wrote the May newsletter for the chapter, which is also the meeting notice for our upcoming meeting. This one was a bit harder than most. Last week chapter president had emailed her message for the month which included talking about the program for the meeting - which was not exactly what I remembered and had on our website as the meeting program. I had a hands on project - she had a “fashion show” of what I had us doing - she had in mind the idea that we had sort of worked on this all year and members should show what they have done on the project. I doubled checked with her and yes, that was the meeting program. Yesterday I got an email from the VP of the chapter and she had the info to do the project I thought we were doing - and she was the leader of the project. I also had an email from the chapter president saying a sort of “whoops - I guess I thought about it differently” and that I should go ahead with the project as the meeting and maybe include bring in items started. I had to combine both ideas. The president had told me to dump her message, but I managed to work it into a version of what she wanted for the meeting as a side to the hands on project. Plus I had a lot of related exhibitions to list, so what should have taken half an hour to put together - 2 hours! Then after it was emailed out (and I email out one version to our members and some region people and the same with a “you asked for this, let me know if you don’t want it” message to people who have asked for info about our chapter) I realized that I had forgotten something urgent. Yes, I forgot to tell the members that it is renewal time. So I sent out a separate addendum to the only the members.
That leaves bank statements to reconcile, a month’s worth of filing for our reenactment unit papers (I managed to do the month’s worth of personal, business, and embroidery chapter filing over last weekend), and an assortment of other items to do - including scanning in our personal tax return and papers and printing a copy of same for my records. (Right now there is a stack - you know about stacks right? - of the tax papers in front of the office closet waiting for me.) If I had one day to sit and work.... Tomorrow I have to go to Manhattan to my remaining business client (other than our businesses) and do the books and payroll taxes.
I also need to pull out the 2007 box of old records. I will shred almost all of what is in the box. I scan the credit card and other bills to see if there is anything I need to hold onto. With the credit cards I will scan each for amounts over $100 to see what they are. Sometimes there may be a reason to keep a larger receipt - generally not and they will be shredded also. I will also pull out any checks, W2, or 1099 forms which paid income taxes (for the business if it paid corporation taxes, sales taxes, or annual filing fee) and keep them. I always do that. It is good to always keep proof that taxes were paid.
I will then refill the box with the matching paperwork from 2016, change the label on the box to 2016 and put it back in the top of the office closet. To make this easier I have different color labels on file folders in my files for permanent (leave everything in this folder in it) and annual (check this folder every year to see if anything should stay in it - or be put in the annual box). I use red or yellow for annual and blue or green for permanent - red and blue are used for our personal files and for my embroidery chapter files, yellow and green for our corporation files and our reenactment unit files. I also have a folder with items which need to be added to the 2015 box. Then I will be able to open the office closet door again without having to move stacks of paper. :-)
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Take a deep breath and start doing a bit of “spring cleaning”. If nothing else switch whatever you need to from winter to spring. If you put away winter clothes - see what you will not want next year and either donate it now or put it in a labeled box for the fall to donate then, if where you donate will only take seasonal items. This way you can donate it without having to look at it again then.
Remember that time is relative, but one can only do so much.
And - if you live near where Carvel is located and you read this post early enough - Thursday, April 27 is free cone day this year.
It amazes me that when I was working full time in the first 4 months of the year I would do payroll taxes for 10 business clients twice each - January & April - and the January ones involved typing W2s for all the employees of the clients, corporation or partnership returns for the businesses, year end sales tax for most of them (NY has a sales tax year which ends the end of February and is due in March), and personal returns for about 40 clients while also keeping house, dealing with Easter and Passover, a trip out of state for my husband’s birthday, and towards the end of April - a trip to Maryland for a reenactment event, plus dealing with my embroidery chapter and reenactment unit’s treasuries and renewal of membership for the reenactment unit. It exhausts me to just list all of this.
These days I have about 6 tax returns, two corporations and a partnership (and only one of the businesses is not ours), three sales tax returns, payroll taxes for one company which has one employee, little to do for the holidays or husband’s birthday, and no trip to Maryland (too cold for RV to be dewinterized). Still dealing with the two treasuries and the renewals for the reenactment unit. Yet, I still have trouble finishing it all up timely. It is true that work expands to the time allotted to do it. Maybe this thought comes to mind just because I am watching the series on TV about Einstein and that brings to mind his relativity theory.
Think about it - you look around. The house needs decluttering and cleaning. If you have guests coming over on Friday - you are going to do what you do before Friday, if they are not coming until the first of next month - the same work will take you until then - right? We used to have a room where no one could go when we had people in also. When I was a girl it was my bedroom closet. Mom would tell me periodically (I am guessing when people were going to be coming or she just could not look at it any more) to clean my room. I would do as much as I could - then what was left would be tossed into the bottom of my closet. (Sound familiar?) Once or twice a year I would even be told to clear out the bottom of my closet - generally I would find items such as the bag with most of my Trick or Treat candy in it around May or June - that was a toss out as mom told us we would get sick if eat anything that old. One problem was that no one ever actually explained to me the concept of throwing things out or passing them along, to me cleaning was put everything out of site. I have since learned better.
So now I am dealing with the catchup. The stack on my desk - on top of my “todo folder”, which means that these items must be done before I can start on what I have to do - is shrinking.
I spent an afternoon dealing with items waiting for me from our reenactment unit. In addition to being treasurer I am also the membership chair as it is easier for one person to do so. Dues are long ago collected, the dues collected for our national went out on time back in March. Membership cards had been typed up (yes, typed on a typewriter) and given to the unit commander to mail to members. I had managed to get to the bank and deposit the dues check - and one for an event the unit did in January. But, some members have been waiting to be paid for money laid out and I had to pay them. One of our unit insurance policies had come in and I paid it. I had the forms that members had filled in which had to be scanned into the computer so I could shred and toss the originals. I had to make up the membership list for the year. I worked on all this - all done except it took until today to get a clarification from one member as to whether the new phone number she gave me was her home or cell number that had changed. I heard from her today - the new list will be out to the commander to email out by this weekend - I hope.
I managed to keep up on paying the bills for my embroidery chapter - most were to third parties, and were paid right away. A couple of checks to members for, again, money laid out just were written. Our national embroidery group has a membership year that runs from June through the following May (yeah, it confuses the heck out of me why that is the year for membership dues - the financial year is a calendar year, and somehow in the change from quarterly renewals based on when members had joined to an annual one - we paid for the month of June twice one year) and while I am not the membership chair, I help her as the treasurer. I do serve as the newsletter editor and today wrote the May newsletter for the chapter, which is also the meeting notice for our upcoming meeting. This one was a bit harder than most. Last week chapter president had emailed her message for the month which included talking about the program for the meeting - which was not exactly what I remembered and had on our website as the meeting program. I had a hands on project - she had a “fashion show” of what I had us doing - she had in mind the idea that we had sort of worked on this all year and members should show what they have done on the project. I doubled checked with her and yes, that was the meeting program. Yesterday I got an email from the VP of the chapter and she had the info to do the project I thought we were doing - and she was the leader of the project. I also had an email from the chapter president saying a sort of “whoops - I guess I thought about it differently” and that I should go ahead with the project as the meeting and maybe include bring in items started. I had to combine both ideas. The president had told me to dump her message, but I managed to work it into a version of what she wanted for the meeting as a side to the hands on project. Plus I had a lot of related exhibitions to list, so what should have taken half an hour to put together - 2 hours! Then after it was emailed out (and I email out one version to our members and some region people and the same with a “you asked for this, let me know if you don’t want it” message to people who have asked for info about our chapter) I realized that I had forgotten something urgent. Yes, I forgot to tell the members that it is renewal time. So I sent out a separate addendum to the only the members.
That leaves bank statements to reconcile, a month’s worth of filing for our reenactment unit papers (I managed to do the month’s worth of personal, business, and embroidery chapter filing over last weekend), and an assortment of other items to do - including scanning in our personal tax return and papers and printing a copy of same for my records. (Right now there is a stack - you know about stacks right? - of the tax papers in front of the office closet waiting for me.) If I had one day to sit and work.... Tomorrow I have to go to Manhattan to my remaining business client (other than our businesses) and do the books and payroll taxes.
I also need to pull out the 2007 box of old records. I will shred almost all of what is in the box. I scan the credit card and other bills to see if there is anything I need to hold onto. With the credit cards I will scan each for amounts over $100 to see what they are. Sometimes there may be a reason to keep a larger receipt - generally not and they will be shredded also. I will also pull out any checks, W2, or 1099 forms which paid income taxes (for the business if it paid corporation taxes, sales taxes, or annual filing fee) and keep them. I always do that. It is good to always keep proof that taxes were paid.
I will then refill the box with the matching paperwork from 2016, change the label on the box to 2016 and put it back in the top of the office closet. To make this easier I have different color labels on file folders in my files for permanent (leave everything in this folder in it) and annual (check this folder every year to see if anything should stay in it - or be put in the annual box). I use red or yellow for annual and blue or green for permanent - red and blue are used for our personal files and for my embroidery chapter files, yellow and green for our corporation files and our reenactment unit files. I also have a folder with items which need to be added to the 2015 box. Then I will be able to open the office closet door again without having to move stacks of paper. :-)
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Take a deep breath and start doing a bit of “spring cleaning”. If nothing else switch whatever you need to from winter to spring. If you put away winter clothes - see what you will not want next year and either donate it now or put it in a labeled box for the fall to donate then, if where you donate will only take seasonal items. This way you can donate it without having to look at it again then.
Remember that time is relative, but one can only do so much.
And - if you live near where Carvel is located and you read this post early enough - Thursday, April 27 is free cone day this year.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
BOUNCING CHECKS?
I am an accountant - since I was 12. A few years ago I found the columnar book I used when I was in college to keep track of the cash I spent while in college. (Never a boring thing - I found out which was the first Broadway show husband and I saw together as we each paid for ourselves - something which greatly upset my mom - and I had my ticket purchase recorded in the book, what a nice memory from such a dreary thing). And yes, I used to always have cash I spent which did not make it into the book - adjustments the end of every week. I keep our records on Quickbooks so everything is accounted for and my arithmetic is doublechecked by the computer. We pay every bill in full - every month. No part payments on credit cards. I am sooo careful!
This has been a busy tax season for me - not exactly so much from the actual tax return preparation but on a personal level lots of things have gone wrong and we were busy trying to do things. I spent last weekend through Monday night finishing up our personal return and our business return. We mailed out our personal return Monday at the post office and picked up the mail in our post office box and then returned home so I could finish the business return.
In the mail at the box was a letter from our bank to my husband. I almost set it aside as I figured it was something about his IRA account. I am so glad that I did not. I opened the envelope and glanced in just to check what it was ----- A BOUNCED CHECK NOTICE??? How could that be? Impossible!
We normally deposit money we receive in our savings account and then once a week I transfer money to our checking account to cover the upcoming bills plus a cushion for anything which might arise during the week.
However, we had needed a lot of money in our checking account all at once and it had to come from husband’s IRA. We had a huge credit card bill due to my new eyeglasses, husband’s teeth, and regular expenses, plus our real estate tax was due and so on. That money had to go directly into our checking account and it did - or so I thought.
As I started pulling out papers in the office to see what could have happened - Did we forget to make the deposit? Did the bank make a mistake? I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. In addition to this check certainly more checks must have also bounced - with a fee of $34 per check this could cost us real money - plus it was the large credit card payment - there would be interest and fees there also as well as on the other end of whatever else had bounced. My head was swimming. I kept hoping it was a bank error as then there would be no bank fees from then and apology letters to where the checks had bounced and reimbursement for the costs resulting from same (or so I hoped). I found the deposit slip and found it is was my error - out of force of habit I had deposited the check to our savings account!!!
I sat down to call the bank - I could barely see the phone pad to dial and could not see the deposit. Husband offered “Do you want to go to the bank to deal with this?” I looked at the clock - only 3:30 - we went to the bank.
One of the higher level tellers who knows me said hello and came over and asked how they could help. I managed to get out that I had deposited the money in the wrong account. He nicely told me that all I would need to do is transfer the money from one account to the other. I sort of sputtered out that no, I needed to see one of the platform (desk) people as checks were bouncing.
Luckily the person we spoke with was a woman I had worked with before for other more normal matters. She also tried to calm me down. She pulled up our account - two other checks had come through before a later transfer I had made into the checking - and they had both been paid despite the lack of money in the account as they were small amounts - but of course they each had a $34 charge. Finding this out I felt a bit better - I had envisioned maybe 10 checks bouncing and the work that would be needed to be done, as well as the expense, as well as needing to transfer money to cover the cost of the fees on the checks.
She transferred the money to our checking account for us. She then checked and since we have not had any other bounced checks or such in the last 2 years (on her records - maybe 35 years for us and then the checks bounced because my pay check bounced) she could reverse up to 3 fees for us - just the number of fees we had. Oh, I was feeling a bit better. We thanked her and headed home.
I then telephoned the credit card company. I explained to the employee what had happened. I think she could hear the panic in my voice as she was very reassuring. She, of course, saw on our record what had happened and asked if I wanted her to debit our checking account to pay the bill. I thanked her and said that I was going to ask if she could do that. It was done and the payment was made. I was very lucky. I mail the payments at least a week before payment is due. This payment was due on the day this was happening. I checked with her and this counted as paid in full, on time - no interest due! I asked her what the bounced check fee was - $25. I was about to ask if she could waive it, when she said that she was going to check to see if she could. Again, since we pay in full every month with no prior problems or fees, she was able to waive the fee. I thanked her. (I was going to fill in the survey that was suppose to follow and compliment her profusely, but it never came on the line and I hung up.)
I started to breathe normally again.
Then I remembered that we had also received a letter from our RV insurance company asking again for the premium payment - per the transaction listing from the bank this was one of the checks paid without funds. Panic started again. Was this just a question of the second bill and our payment crossing in the mail or had it actually bounced. I telephoned the insurance company and it was just a case of paperwork crossing in the mail - thank goodness. The ability to breathe returned to me again.
I looked husband in the eye over the desks and told him that he could yell at me all he wanted to about this - “tomorrow” - I could not deal with it that day as we still had the business return to finish and send out the next day. He is not a yeller, but sometimes out of frustration yells, and I could see this being one of those times. He calmly said that he was not going to yell, but thinks it would be a good idea for him to check things as we go along and that I should do the same for him as he is forgetting things and getting confused. I told him this was fine with me as I keep trying to get him more involved in our money management (we are the opposite of the normal “husband deals with the money and the wife has no idea about it”) and it would be fine with me.
The corporation return went out on Tuesday on time. Finished - except for all the catching up.
Important to note is the fact that I was able to get all the fees waives as it was a one time occurrence. My hard work at keeping all our bills paid timely and in full paid off again in this situation. It was obvious that it was some sort of one time unusual problem and not us bouncing checks at random.
The fact that it was dealt with immediately also helped as there was no time for additional charges to occur - if I had called the credit card company the next day, my payment would be late and I would either be asking for the interest payment to also be waived or paying the interest - on our largest credit card bill in years.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
It should be obvious after the above that my thought is that it is very important to make payments on time and in full - or at least the entire amount of the minimum amount due or more. When one has a good record with the various companies one does business with (and yes, your personal finances are doing business with the various companies you deal with) it is recognized when help is needed.
In addition, hopefully you have all filed your income tax returns if you are in the U.S. or at the very least have filed an extension. Start working to make next year’s return easier to do. At the very least set up a folder or large envelope and drop bills which will be deductible next year into it. Drop income items into it also. Put a large X or * next to expenses paid by check or credit card payments which pay same if they are tax deductible. A program such as Quickbooks or Quicken or a simpler program can be a big help if you use it. A spread sheet that you make up in Excel or similar can also help. I personally do not keep anything in “the cloud” and want my data here in the house, but if that is what you prefer that can help you also. (“The cloud” is actually just someone else’s hard drive and since it on the Internet it can be, and most of them have been, hacked.)
This has been a busy tax season for me - not exactly so much from the actual tax return preparation but on a personal level lots of things have gone wrong and we were busy trying to do things. I spent last weekend through Monday night finishing up our personal return and our business return. We mailed out our personal return Monday at the post office and picked up the mail in our post office box and then returned home so I could finish the business return.
In the mail at the box was a letter from our bank to my husband. I almost set it aside as I figured it was something about his IRA account. I am so glad that I did not. I opened the envelope and glanced in just to check what it was ----- A BOUNCED CHECK NOTICE??? How could that be? Impossible!
We normally deposit money we receive in our savings account and then once a week I transfer money to our checking account to cover the upcoming bills plus a cushion for anything which might arise during the week.
However, we had needed a lot of money in our checking account all at once and it had to come from husband’s IRA. We had a huge credit card bill due to my new eyeglasses, husband’s teeth, and regular expenses, plus our real estate tax was due and so on. That money had to go directly into our checking account and it did - or so I thought.
As I started pulling out papers in the office to see what could have happened - Did we forget to make the deposit? Did the bank make a mistake? I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. In addition to this check certainly more checks must have also bounced - with a fee of $34 per check this could cost us real money - plus it was the large credit card payment - there would be interest and fees there also as well as on the other end of whatever else had bounced. My head was swimming. I kept hoping it was a bank error as then there would be no bank fees from then and apology letters to where the checks had bounced and reimbursement for the costs resulting from same (or so I hoped). I found the deposit slip and found it is was my error - out of force of habit I had deposited the check to our savings account!!!
I sat down to call the bank - I could barely see the phone pad to dial and could not see the deposit. Husband offered “Do you want to go to the bank to deal with this?” I looked at the clock - only 3:30 - we went to the bank.
One of the higher level tellers who knows me said hello and came over and asked how they could help. I managed to get out that I had deposited the money in the wrong account. He nicely told me that all I would need to do is transfer the money from one account to the other. I sort of sputtered out that no, I needed to see one of the platform (desk) people as checks were bouncing.
Luckily the person we spoke with was a woman I had worked with before for other more normal matters. She also tried to calm me down. She pulled up our account - two other checks had come through before a later transfer I had made into the checking - and they had both been paid despite the lack of money in the account as they were small amounts - but of course they each had a $34 charge. Finding this out I felt a bit better - I had envisioned maybe 10 checks bouncing and the work that would be needed to be done, as well as the expense, as well as needing to transfer money to cover the cost of the fees on the checks.
She transferred the money to our checking account for us. She then checked and since we have not had any other bounced checks or such in the last 2 years (on her records - maybe 35 years for us and then the checks bounced because my pay check bounced) she could reverse up to 3 fees for us - just the number of fees we had. Oh, I was feeling a bit better. We thanked her and headed home.
I then telephoned the credit card company. I explained to the employee what had happened. I think she could hear the panic in my voice as she was very reassuring. She, of course, saw on our record what had happened and asked if I wanted her to debit our checking account to pay the bill. I thanked her and said that I was going to ask if she could do that. It was done and the payment was made. I was very lucky. I mail the payments at least a week before payment is due. This payment was due on the day this was happening. I checked with her and this counted as paid in full, on time - no interest due! I asked her what the bounced check fee was - $25. I was about to ask if she could waive it, when she said that she was going to check to see if she could. Again, since we pay in full every month with no prior problems or fees, she was able to waive the fee. I thanked her. (I was going to fill in the survey that was suppose to follow and compliment her profusely, but it never came on the line and I hung up.)
I started to breathe normally again.
Then I remembered that we had also received a letter from our RV insurance company asking again for the premium payment - per the transaction listing from the bank this was one of the checks paid without funds. Panic started again. Was this just a question of the second bill and our payment crossing in the mail or had it actually bounced. I telephoned the insurance company and it was just a case of paperwork crossing in the mail - thank goodness. The ability to breathe returned to me again.
I looked husband in the eye over the desks and told him that he could yell at me all he wanted to about this - “tomorrow” - I could not deal with it that day as we still had the business return to finish and send out the next day. He is not a yeller, but sometimes out of frustration yells, and I could see this being one of those times. He calmly said that he was not going to yell, but thinks it would be a good idea for him to check things as we go along and that I should do the same for him as he is forgetting things and getting confused. I told him this was fine with me as I keep trying to get him more involved in our money management (we are the opposite of the normal “husband deals with the money and the wife has no idea about it”) and it would be fine with me.
The corporation return went out on Tuesday on time. Finished - except for all the catching up.
Important to note is the fact that I was able to get all the fees waives as it was a one time occurrence. My hard work at keeping all our bills paid timely and in full paid off again in this situation. It was obvious that it was some sort of one time unusual problem and not us bouncing checks at random.
The fact that it was dealt with immediately also helped as there was no time for additional charges to occur - if I had called the credit card company the next day, my payment would be late and I would either be asking for the interest payment to also be waived or paying the interest - on our largest credit card bill in years.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
It should be obvious after the above that my thought is that it is very important to make payments on time and in full - or at least the entire amount of the minimum amount due or more. When one has a good record with the various companies one does business with (and yes, your personal finances are doing business with the various companies you deal with) it is recognized when help is needed.
In addition, hopefully you have all filed your income tax returns if you are in the U.S. or at the very least have filed an extension. Start working to make next year’s return easier to do. At the very least set up a folder or large envelope and drop bills which will be deductible next year into it. Drop income items into it also. Put a large X or * next to expenses paid by check or credit card payments which pay same if they are tax deductible. A program such as Quickbooks or Quicken or a simpler program can be a big help if you use it. A spread sheet that you make up in Excel or similar can also help. I personally do not keep anything in “the cloud” and want my data here in the house, but if that is what you prefer that can help you also. (“The cloud” is actually just someone else’s hard drive and since it on the Internet it can be, and most of them have been, hacked.)
Thursday, April 13, 2017
SCANNING TO MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND PAID BILLS
Last October - October 26, 2016 post I posted on the usefulness of having a printer and a scanner to help one get organized and keep papers organized. Here’s an additional thought on that subject.
I am good - really good - at keeping track of bills to pay and paid bills, after all, I am an accountant. I have a paid bills file next to my desk - one of those large wallet things with sections in it. When I pay a bill I post it in my Quickbooks program, mark it paid, attach any charge slips, etc and then file it in the appropriate section of the paid bills file. I generally have a section for each credit card and type of bill. The credit card we use most often actually has two sections - bills paid January through June and bills paid July through December as there are a lot of charge card slips. The sections for taxes have folder in them to further divide the bills. I will not go into all of the sections right now as I am already digressing too much.
Early in January I pull out all of the paid bills from the year before. Other than tax related bills, the bills are put into an old manila folder box which is redated with a black marker for the year of the bills in it. These bills will sit in this box until around May when I go through my other files for last year, add the paid bills, tax returns, etc and box them up in a box in the top of my office closet. I pul out the oldest box up there - when I do this for last year I will be pulling out the 2007 box - basically shred what is in the box, relabel the box with the new year and store it all in the box, which is returned to the top of the closet.
The tax related bills when pulled in January for the prior year I combine them all in one folder which will generally not be used until towards the end of the following year and put them where I will be putting clients’s tax information. The remainder of the tax info folders, now empty, go back in the paid bills file.
Okay, that is the background of my paid bills.
We have a VERY small RV. We have a contract from a company for road service for the RV in case it breaks down, has a flat tire, etc. Sort of like the Automobile Association of America (of Canada, etc.), but for RVs. (Yes, these companies often also cover one’s cars and AAA will cover some RV problems but one will not have a specialist in RVs come if one calls AAA.)
When paying bills late last Friday (after business hours anywhere in the lower 48) I noticed that I have the renewal for this RV road service policy is due April 25. I double checked that I did not have the bill and then did what any wife would do - I asked my husband if “we” (meaning he) has an online account for the company. He did.
He attempted to sign in and was told that since the account was expired more than 90 days ago, he no longer had an account. He tried to sign in with their alternate method, in case he made a mistake in his sign in info. This required the RV manufacturer’s name from a list and the RV’s VIN number. The list of RV manufacturers was rather short and our RV was not on the list. Husband starts to get upset.
As usual his first reaction is that I did not do something I should have done - or did it wrong. “Are you sure you paid the bill last year?” I told him I did and would get the paid bill for him. I climbed up and took down the box of last year’s paid bills. I went through all of the bills - I could not find it. So - what do we all do? I went through them again. No paid bill.
Perhaps it was with the tax related papers? The RV is not tax related, but our car and van are partially so and I tend to keep the car related bills together. No, not there - again I checked twice.
I looked the payment up in Quickbooks Yes! I did pay it - on March 31 and it cleared the bank on April 7 last year. I found the copy of the canceled check in with the bank statement. (This was in the drawer in the file cabinet for personal items - having the info from Quickbooks made it easy and, well, quick to find.) Proof I paid it and it was not my fault.
But a copy of the bill? Then I remembered. Last year I scanned in one of each type of bill to the computer with the idea that if something happened to me, husband could bring up the scanned copy of a bill of that type and see what I did when I paid it. (The bill is scanned in, and then the items I send - check, stub, envelope - are scanned on the last page of the file.) So there was a scanned copy of the bill in that file. I printed out the first page of the bill - showing all the info needed and set it aside to telephone the company on Monday.
Thinking about this over the weekend I decided two things. First, I would create a separate folder in the paid bills, tax related sections for all car related items. Second, it was so convenient to pull up the copy of the missing bill that I will scan in all paid bills in the future. Understand, I will still keep the hard copy as they have the assorted credit card slips and other supporting papers attached to them and I will not scan in all these attachments, but I will scan in the bills themselves for quick and easy reference if needed. I plan to set up a folder for “paid bills” with 12 folders in it - one for each month - and label the scan of each bill with the check number which paid it. I hope this will make it easier in the future to quickly find bills for reference.
Oh, in case you are wondering - I telephoned this past Monday and had a terribly odd conversation with an employee of the company. He first was confused as our plan ended April 25, 2016 - huh? I told him that I had our canceled check for the year ending April 25, 2017,which cleared our bank on April 7, 2016. (See how useful the payment info is.) “Oh, yes. There is an error, I see the payment. I’ll update the computer. I then asked him if this means that we have had no coverage for the past year - despite paying for it. He, of course said no. When I pushed him as it what would have happened if we needed service - “Service would have called us and we would have found the error and fixed it.” What if I needed the help, say last Friday - they keep business hours in the office? “Oh, you would have just paid for the service call and we would have reimbursed you.” The fact that I would not have known who to call and would have needed to have money to pay them for the tow, well that did not make sense to him. He wanted me to renew by credit card over the phone. “Do you even still deal with my brand of RV, since it is not on your list of RV companies?” Of course they do, just that if one gets a new policy it has to come through the RV company - which makes no sense as to why the company is not on their alternate ID for sign in list. I asked him to mail us a bill to pay.
He seemed a little too quick and pat with the answers and husband went looking on the Internet, Yes, this has happened to a number of people. Our RV company has it’s own road service company now - so they would not be signing us up with them. In addition they have dropped the inexpensive basic policy we had for one which is more than three times as much cost. So after all this we are looking for a different company - but at least I will be able to find the paid bills as we go forward as they will be scanned into the computer.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
I feel odd about this thought it is different than my usual posts for same and it is not intended to be religious or political, although it is a bit of both, but I intend it to be more of a any person to any person idea.
As the Jewish people celebrate Passover and the Christians celebrate Good Friday and Easter this week, please take to heart the idea of all of us being siblings. Be a little nicer to people in your daily life - strangers as well as those you know.
Say please and thank you a bit more - even in situations where you might not normally think to do so. Hold the door open for someone - even if they capable of doing so on their own. Help a mother who is juggling child, purse and lunch tray as she tries to move a high chair. Smile at someone who looks a bit upset - it is an amazing feeling when one does this and the other person smiles back and then, at least, seems a little less upset - a bond between two people of only seconds. (These are all things I have done during the past week - and try to do when I can.)
Let us - even those not of a religion celebrating these holidays - be a bit more neighborly to those we see during the day. Not only will the other person feel better, it is amazing how long the memory of the smile from a stranger lasts - no matter which of us initiated it.
Our world is in a state today that I, for one, find scary. Perhaps the more of us who show small kindnesses to others, the better the world can be.
I am good - really good - at keeping track of bills to pay and paid bills, after all, I am an accountant. I have a paid bills file next to my desk - one of those large wallet things with sections in it. When I pay a bill I post it in my Quickbooks program, mark it paid, attach any charge slips, etc and then file it in the appropriate section of the paid bills file. I generally have a section for each credit card and type of bill. The credit card we use most often actually has two sections - bills paid January through June and bills paid July through December as there are a lot of charge card slips. The sections for taxes have folder in them to further divide the bills. I will not go into all of the sections right now as I am already digressing too much.
Early in January I pull out all of the paid bills from the year before. Other than tax related bills, the bills are put into an old manila folder box which is redated with a black marker for the year of the bills in it. These bills will sit in this box until around May when I go through my other files for last year, add the paid bills, tax returns, etc and box them up in a box in the top of my office closet. I pul out the oldest box up there - when I do this for last year I will be pulling out the 2007 box - basically shred what is in the box, relabel the box with the new year and store it all in the box, which is returned to the top of the closet.
The tax related bills when pulled in January for the prior year I combine them all in one folder which will generally not be used until towards the end of the following year and put them where I will be putting clients’s tax information. The remainder of the tax info folders, now empty, go back in the paid bills file.
Okay, that is the background of my paid bills.
We have a VERY small RV. We have a contract from a company for road service for the RV in case it breaks down, has a flat tire, etc. Sort of like the Automobile Association of America (of Canada, etc.), but for RVs. (Yes, these companies often also cover one’s cars and AAA will cover some RV problems but one will not have a specialist in RVs come if one calls AAA.)
When paying bills late last Friday (after business hours anywhere in the lower 48) I noticed that I have the renewal for this RV road service policy is due April 25. I double checked that I did not have the bill and then did what any wife would do - I asked my husband if “we” (meaning he) has an online account for the company. He did.
He attempted to sign in and was told that since the account was expired more than 90 days ago, he no longer had an account. He tried to sign in with their alternate method, in case he made a mistake in his sign in info. This required the RV manufacturer’s name from a list and the RV’s VIN number. The list of RV manufacturers was rather short and our RV was not on the list. Husband starts to get upset.
As usual his first reaction is that I did not do something I should have done - or did it wrong. “Are you sure you paid the bill last year?” I told him I did and would get the paid bill for him. I climbed up and took down the box of last year’s paid bills. I went through all of the bills - I could not find it. So - what do we all do? I went through them again. No paid bill.
Perhaps it was with the tax related papers? The RV is not tax related, but our car and van are partially so and I tend to keep the car related bills together. No, not there - again I checked twice.
I looked the payment up in Quickbooks Yes! I did pay it - on March 31 and it cleared the bank on April 7 last year. I found the copy of the canceled check in with the bank statement. (This was in the drawer in the file cabinet for personal items - having the info from Quickbooks made it easy and, well, quick to find.) Proof I paid it and it was not my fault.
But a copy of the bill? Then I remembered. Last year I scanned in one of each type of bill to the computer with the idea that if something happened to me, husband could bring up the scanned copy of a bill of that type and see what I did when I paid it. (The bill is scanned in, and then the items I send - check, stub, envelope - are scanned on the last page of the file.) So there was a scanned copy of the bill in that file. I printed out the first page of the bill - showing all the info needed and set it aside to telephone the company on Monday.
Thinking about this over the weekend I decided two things. First, I would create a separate folder in the paid bills, tax related sections for all car related items. Second, it was so convenient to pull up the copy of the missing bill that I will scan in all paid bills in the future. Understand, I will still keep the hard copy as they have the assorted credit card slips and other supporting papers attached to them and I will not scan in all these attachments, but I will scan in the bills themselves for quick and easy reference if needed. I plan to set up a folder for “paid bills” with 12 folders in it - one for each month - and label the scan of each bill with the check number which paid it. I hope this will make it easier in the future to quickly find bills for reference.
Oh, in case you are wondering - I telephoned this past Monday and had a terribly odd conversation with an employee of the company. He first was confused as our plan ended April 25, 2016 - huh? I told him that I had our canceled check for the year ending April 25, 2017,which cleared our bank on April 7, 2016. (See how useful the payment info is.) “Oh, yes. There is an error, I see the payment. I’ll update the computer. I then asked him if this means that we have had no coverage for the past year - despite paying for it. He, of course said no. When I pushed him as it what would have happened if we needed service - “Service would have called us and we would have found the error and fixed it.” What if I needed the help, say last Friday - they keep business hours in the office? “Oh, you would have just paid for the service call and we would have reimbursed you.” The fact that I would not have known who to call and would have needed to have money to pay them for the tow, well that did not make sense to him. He wanted me to renew by credit card over the phone. “Do you even still deal with my brand of RV, since it is not on your list of RV companies?” Of course they do, just that if one gets a new policy it has to come through the RV company - which makes no sense as to why the company is not on their alternate ID for sign in list. I asked him to mail us a bill to pay.
He seemed a little too quick and pat with the answers and husband went looking on the Internet, Yes, this has happened to a number of people. Our RV company has it’s own road service company now - so they would not be signing us up with them. In addition they have dropped the inexpensive basic policy we had for one which is more than three times as much cost. So after all this we are looking for a different company - but at least I will be able to find the paid bills as we go forward as they will be scanned into the computer.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
I feel odd about this thought it is different than my usual posts for same and it is not intended to be religious or political, although it is a bit of both, but I intend it to be more of a any person to any person idea.
As the Jewish people celebrate Passover and the Christians celebrate Good Friday and Easter this week, please take to heart the idea of all of us being siblings. Be a little nicer to people in your daily life - strangers as well as those you know.
Say please and thank you a bit more - even in situations where you might not normally think to do so. Hold the door open for someone - even if they capable of doing so on their own. Help a mother who is juggling child, purse and lunch tray as she tries to move a high chair. Smile at someone who looks a bit upset - it is an amazing feeling when one does this and the other person smiles back and then, at least, seems a little less upset - a bond between two people of only seconds. (These are all things I have done during the past week - and try to do when I can.)
Let us - even those not of a religion celebrating these holidays - be a bit more neighborly to those we see during the day. Not only will the other person feel better, it is amazing how long the memory of the smile from a stranger lasts - no matter which of us initiated it.
Our world is in a state today that I, for one, find scary. Perhaps the more of us who show small kindnesses to others, the better the world can be.
Thursday, July 28, 2016
BEST LAID PLANS... PART 2
Well, last week I left off with my computer having Windows reinstalled and having to reinstall software. The computer is still not up to full working set up. I figure it will take at least another week.
I started installing software in, more or less, the order that 1 - I thought it was of importance and 2 - I thought I could install it myself. In addition to installing the software much of it needs to have its registration information given again (from the original registration of the software into this computer). Luckily when programs have needed to be registered I have made a record of the registration information which was given to activate the program - in one case of the “hidden” location the registration information (is validation the correct term) where the information has to be entered.
Installing software takes time - which is why the backups were made to begin with - and while the installations are being done I have been using my larger, slower, “kitchen” laptop to get some work done. I also, by hand, copied all of the entries in my Palm Centro to the organizer on this laptop so I was finally able to sync the two and not lose any entries. I am continuing to do so until the computer is setup and the software for the organizer, the sync program, and the sync program for my cell phone are installed on the desktop computer - they will be put in towards the end of software installation. Tuesday and Wednesday last week were spent installing software to the point that the computer was partially workable.
Thursday I installed my email software - a freeware program. I am not good at updating programs and was using a rather old version of the program. Husband told me to install the newest version. I did so. He then tried to copy my profile from the old hard drive to the new. It did not work in the program. He tried all kinds of things. Finally we reached the conclusion that old profile did not work in the new version of the program. We uninstalled the email program and installed the old version from my old downloads file. The program would not open. The computer thought the deleted version was still running. We rebooted the computer - 3 times; it did not help. Finally husband figured out what to do. So after about 2 or 3 hours of installing and uninstalling and rebooting, I finally had my email program back. I had only been checking my more critical email and the accounts more likely to have email, so for the first time since the previous Friday I finally checked all my email accounts. No surprises, thank goodness.
On Friday I tried to add 2 of our printers to my computer, the 2 I actually use on a regular basis. (We have a travel printer which was not of immediate need, a plastic tape label printer - I don’t think I have ever printed on it from the computer, a photo printer - only husband uses, and an older printer which still needs to run on a parallel port.) Our printers were purchased before my version of Windows. The disks therefore did not work. When I tried to have the computer add the printers, they were not listed. Panic set in. I then looked in the downloads file from the old hard drive and found - YES - the printer drivers!! We installed them and as of last Friday I can print again! Well, I guess, technically, I always could print by copying what I needed to print to a laptop, but who wants to do that.
Since then I have not had a chance to install more software. I am coping with the fact that my computer looks “wrong”. I don’t know how I had it set before, but buttons look smaller, icons look bigger. One button just looks wrong. Husband says to me that can wait until all is up and running.
On Monday morning we get not one, but two orders for our craft business. We have few enough orders that when we have one I have to remember how I do the paperwork for our records. Not only do we have 2 sales, but one of them is for multiple items - goodness knows how long since we had same - and is for our home state - which means sales tax was collected and I have to remember how I do an invoice with sales tax. All of this would be minor, except I am using alternative software, other than I normally use, for some of this as the software I normally use is not yet - let’s hear it - installed. I have a program which lets me write pdf files with multiple pages. The program I am using instead makes one page pdfs, so I have to start a folder to hold what is normally a single file until I can fix it. The software I use to print labels is not yet - let’s hear it again - installed. Husband manages to print a label on his computer with some program he has - we had to figure out which Avery label number the labels were. The orders went out on time, but I still have to get around to straightening out my records to what I like.
At this point husband suggests that I make a backup with the new backup program - so if anything happens as we go, we have everything to this point saved. Of course there are problems using the new backup program. I finally had to leave him working on it as I had to make dinner. He figured it out and I have a backup - which hopefully will work if I ever - oh, I hope not - need it.
Tuesday I went to work. No dealing with the desktop. I just had to use my work laptop - unchanged, everything as it was. What a pleasant thought. All went fine until I was done. I keep the info on a USB flash drive as I keep all my data on same and each client’s info is on its own flash drive so I can just bring that client’s info with me when I go to the client and I am always using the correct version of the info as it is on a specific flash drive. When I am done and about to leave the client, I back up the info to the laptop’s hard drive (and then again at home onto my regular backups). I finished work and went to back up the flash drive - I get message that the drive is full and it cannot be backed up. Panic starts to hit me. Then I think about it. I have about 3 backups at home from last month. I did not do that much work while here that I could not easily duplicate it next month if needed. I can deal with it. I come home. I put the flash drive in my desktop - as I thought, the drive is only about 1/3 full. All the work I did was there and it was easily copied to my backup. Okay, one problem easily solved.
When I made the list of programs on the old computer we realized that some software related to the processor chip was missing. I found the instructions for the software - which apparently is on the mother board disks. Husband installed the software for me while I was out today.
Today I had to go to a board meeting for an embroidery group I am treasurer of. Normally I am the most organized person there. I have notes and information - whatever might be needed. Between not being able to work on my computer and prepare in advance and dealing with this client and running to back up it’s data tonight, I am not prepared for the board meeting - or the errands I plan to run tomorrow around the meeting. I printed out a financial report and quickly made some notes on the back. When I got to the meeting today I explained, that they are about to see the other me - the one without her computer to keep her organized. Luckily, I still managed to come up with most of the info needed.
I still have not hooked up the USB hub with my flash drives - archive, data, backup A and backup B and I am waiting until a few other programs are reinstalled and ready to use. For now I put the flash drives in and take them out as I need them.
Hopefully when I next post it will all be resolved - I doubt it though.
Have you ever been through a mess like this?
I started installing software in, more or less, the order that 1 - I thought it was of importance and 2 - I thought I could install it myself. In addition to installing the software much of it needs to have its registration information given again (from the original registration of the software into this computer). Luckily when programs have needed to be registered I have made a record of the registration information which was given to activate the program - in one case of the “hidden” location the registration information (is validation the correct term) where the information has to be entered.
Installing software takes time - which is why the backups were made to begin with - and while the installations are being done I have been using my larger, slower, “kitchen” laptop to get some work done. I also, by hand, copied all of the entries in my Palm Centro to the organizer on this laptop so I was finally able to sync the two and not lose any entries. I am continuing to do so until the computer is setup and the software for the organizer, the sync program, and the sync program for my cell phone are installed on the desktop computer - they will be put in towards the end of software installation. Tuesday and Wednesday last week were spent installing software to the point that the computer was partially workable.
Thursday I installed my email software - a freeware program. I am not good at updating programs and was using a rather old version of the program. Husband told me to install the newest version. I did so. He then tried to copy my profile from the old hard drive to the new. It did not work in the program. He tried all kinds of things. Finally we reached the conclusion that old profile did not work in the new version of the program. We uninstalled the email program and installed the old version from my old downloads file. The program would not open. The computer thought the deleted version was still running. We rebooted the computer - 3 times; it did not help. Finally husband figured out what to do. So after about 2 or 3 hours of installing and uninstalling and rebooting, I finally had my email program back. I had only been checking my more critical email and the accounts more likely to have email, so for the first time since the previous Friday I finally checked all my email accounts. No surprises, thank goodness.
On Friday I tried to add 2 of our printers to my computer, the 2 I actually use on a regular basis. (We have a travel printer which was not of immediate need, a plastic tape label printer - I don’t think I have ever printed on it from the computer, a photo printer - only husband uses, and an older printer which still needs to run on a parallel port.) Our printers were purchased before my version of Windows. The disks therefore did not work. When I tried to have the computer add the printers, they were not listed. Panic set in. I then looked in the downloads file from the old hard drive and found - YES - the printer drivers!! We installed them and as of last Friday I can print again! Well, I guess, technically, I always could print by copying what I needed to print to a laptop, but who wants to do that.
Since then I have not had a chance to install more software. I am coping with the fact that my computer looks “wrong”. I don’t know how I had it set before, but buttons look smaller, icons look bigger. One button just looks wrong. Husband says to me that can wait until all is up and running.
On Monday morning we get not one, but two orders for our craft business. We have few enough orders that when we have one I have to remember how I do the paperwork for our records. Not only do we have 2 sales, but one of them is for multiple items - goodness knows how long since we had same - and is for our home state - which means sales tax was collected and I have to remember how I do an invoice with sales tax. All of this would be minor, except I am using alternative software, other than I normally use, for some of this as the software I normally use is not yet - let’s hear it - installed. I have a program which lets me write pdf files with multiple pages. The program I am using instead makes one page pdfs, so I have to start a folder to hold what is normally a single file until I can fix it. The software I use to print labels is not yet - let’s hear it again - installed. Husband manages to print a label on his computer with some program he has - we had to figure out which Avery label number the labels were. The orders went out on time, but I still have to get around to straightening out my records to what I like.
At this point husband suggests that I make a backup with the new backup program - so if anything happens as we go, we have everything to this point saved. Of course there are problems using the new backup program. I finally had to leave him working on it as I had to make dinner. He figured it out and I have a backup - which hopefully will work if I ever - oh, I hope not - need it.
Tuesday I went to work. No dealing with the desktop. I just had to use my work laptop - unchanged, everything as it was. What a pleasant thought. All went fine until I was done. I keep the info on a USB flash drive as I keep all my data on same and each client’s info is on its own flash drive so I can just bring that client’s info with me when I go to the client and I am always using the correct version of the info as it is on a specific flash drive. When I am done and about to leave the client, I back up the info to the laptop’s hard drive (and then again at home onto my regular backups). I finished work and went to back up the flash drive - I get message that the drive is full and it cannot be backed up. Panic starts to hit me. Then I think about it. I have about 3 backups at home from last month. I did not do that much work while here that I could not easily duplicate it next month if needed. I can deal with it. I come home. I put the flash drive in my desktop - as I thought, the drive is only about 1/3 full. All the work I did was there and it was easily copied to my backup. Okay, one problem easily solved.
When I made the list of programs on the old computer we realized that some software related to the processor chip was missing. I found the instructions for the software - which apparently is on the mother board disks. Husband installed the software for me while I was out today.
Today I had to go to a board meeting for an embroidery group I am treasurer of. Normally I am the most organized person there. I have notes and information - whatever might be needed. Between not being able to work on my computer and prepare in advance and dealing with this client and running to back up it’s data tonight, I am not prepared for the board meeting - or the errands I plan to run tomorrow around the meeting. I printed out a financial report and quickly made some notes on the back. When I got to the meeting today I explained, that they are about to see the other me - the one without her computer to keep her organized. Luckily, I still managed to come up with most of the info needed.
I still have not hooked up the USB hub with my flash drives - archive, data, backup A and backup B and I am waiting until a few other programs are reinstalled and ready to use. For now I put the flash drives in and take them out as I need them.
Hopefully when I next post it will all be resolved - I doubt it though.
Have you ever been through a mess like this?
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