disgruntled? can't decide
Feb. 19th, 2006 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luciabLast year Nikulai convinced me that I'd do better itemizing deductions on my income tax than by taking the standard deduction. All year long I saved receipts from the art and office supply stores, hoarded receipts from doctors, and kept every damn "Explanation of Benefits" that came in the mail. As if I don't have enough crap lying around.... This morning I finished putting in every deduction I could lay hands on, including mileage (40.5 cents per mile for January through August, 48.5 for September through December, FYI) for anything that I could document as a business trip or a medical trip. The bad news is, all that saving bits of paper was for naught... I still come out way better with the standard deduction.
The good news is that I will get some money back this year, instead of having to pay them some horrifying amount, as I have for the last few years. Whee! File early!
I am presently seriously annoyed with technology. I got very organized on Friday and hit the store for all those little random things I've been putting off, like a new keyboard. The Apple keyboards are tres elegant, but too sensitive for this household. And I hate the Apple one-button mouse. I like having five buttons that I can program for things like "back" and so on. I also was feeling comfortable enough with the financial situation that I was willing to buy the battery and wireless card for the laptop A&R gave me.
So off I went, all jaunty and brave. When I went in to the store, I couldn't find anyone to help me, and a computer store with aisles and aisles of little gadgets is pretty damned intimidating if you don't know what all that stuff IS. I was walking around, stretching my neck to see over the rows of stuff, looking for a salesperson when a man wearing a name tag approached me: "Do you need some help?" Why, yes... yes I do. Again with the good news/bad news-- as soon as he starting helping me, he revealed himself to be a used-car-salesman type. Big, false-hearty, condescending... you name it. Goody. Even if I could have figured out how to ditch him, there still wasn't anyone else around to help me. Grrr.
After much running around the store, repeated questions, and several clear indicators that he was a manager and not a computer person, I selected a keyboard, a mouse, and found the wireless card for the laptop.
I'm outta there. Got home. The (wireless) mouse needed to be charged before it could be used. Sigh. Changed out the keyboard. Remembered that the Apple keyboard has USB ports, and without them, I'm one USB port short and can't hook up my palmtop to hot sync it. Grrr. Well, okay, I'll go on and do the wireless card, and order the battery online. Got the battery ordered with no problem. (At least it's ordered.) Installed the software for the wireless card and inserted card A into slot B. No joy. After trying everything I knew to try, I took it back to the store the next day, and wound up with a USB-connected wireless setup.
And the mouse-- well, it needs drivers installed, and they are on a 3-1/2" floppy disk. The iMac doesn't have any way to use a floppy disk. I went online to the manufacturer's site, and they don't have the one I need to download. GRRRR!
And to remind me constantly of how much fun all this is, the new keyboard is sized differently and the keys are off juuuuuust enough that I keep hitting "home" instead of "delete." I am so not amused. Keyboards are inexpensive enough that I suppose I could just get another one and keep this for emergencies, when I'd be glad to have any keyboard. And I still need the extra USB port....
The good news is that I will get some money back this year, instead of having to pay them some horrifying amount, as I have for the last few years. Whee! File early!
I am presently seriously annoyed with technology. I got very organized on Friday and hit the store for all those little random things I've been putting off, like a new keyboard. The Apple keyboards are tres elegant, but too sensitive for this household. And I hate the Apple one-button mouse. I like having five buttons that I can program for things like "back" and so on. I also was feeling comfortable enough with the financial situation that I was willing to buy the battery and wireless card for the laptop A&R gave me.
So off I went, all jaunty and brave. When I went in to the store, I couldn't find anyone to help me, and a computer store with aisles and aisles of little gadgets is pretty damned intimidating if you don't know what all that stuff IS. I was walking around, stretching my neck to see over the rows of stuff, looking for a salesperson when a man wearing a name tag approached me: "Do you need some help?" Why, yes... yes I do. Again with the good news/bad news-- as soon as he starting helping me, he revealed himself to be a used-car-salesman type. Big, false-hearty, condescending... you name it. Goody. Even if I could have figured out how to ditch him, there still wasn't anyone else around to help me. Grrr.
After much running around the store, repeated questions, and several clear indicators that he was a manager and not a computer person, I selected a keyboard, a mouse, and found the wireless card for the laptop.
I'm outta there. Got home. The (wireless) mouse needed to be charged before it could be used. Sigh. Changed out the keyboard. Remembered that the Apple keyboard has USB ports, and without them, I'm one USB port short and can't hook up my palmtop to hot sync it. Grrr. Well, okay, I'll go on and do the wireless card, and order the battery online. Got the battery ordered with no problem. (At least it's ordered.) Installed the software for the wireless card and inserted card A into slot B. No joy. After trying everything I knew to try, I took it back to the store the next day, and wound up with a USB-connected wireless setup.
And the mouse-- well, it needs drivers installed, and they are on a 3-1/2" floppy disk. The iMac doesn't have any way to use a floppy disk. I went online to the manufacturer's site, and they don't have the one I need to download. GRRRR!
And to remind me constantly of how much fun all this is, the new keyboard is sized differently and the keys are off juuuuuust enough that I keep hitting "home" instead of "delete." I am so not amused. Keyboards are inexpensive enough that I suppose I could just get another one and keep this for emergencies, when I'd be glad to have any keyboard. And I still need the extra USB port....
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-19 11:54 pm (UTC)sorry!
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Date: 2006-02-19 11:55 pm (UTC)Alternate Site
Date: 2006-02-20 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 09:40 pm (UTC)What kind of mouse? We can probably copy the driver to a USB key. Of course, thats assuming the driver on the floppy is a MAC driver...
You can get a USB hub fairly cheap - Id say under $25 though I havent priced them in a while.
Which computer store did you go to?