Tax update

[mdlbear]

Well, I've entered this year's W2 info -- that's the easy part. To get there, I resurrected flower_cat's old computer so that I'd have a clean machine to work on that wasn't likely to accumulate spyware over the next year.

Colleen's old machine, aardvark, was in the process of being turned into a new router/firewall/web server; I had already pulled its sound card and DVD-ROM drive, installed new disk drives, and added a second network card. I had also put it into a nice, quiet new case, an Antec SLK2650BQE. Along the way I noticed that with two network cards, a video card, a SCSI card, and a sound card, all of its slots were full. On-board sound would free a slot for, say, a third network card for the wireless access point. Also, the case only has 2 slots for 3.5" hard drives, which is a bit limiting.

AHA, says I to myself; the other dual-boot machine in the office has an almost identical motherboard, only with onboard sound. It would benefit from a quieter case and better sound, too. Meanwhile, I haven't touched aardvark's old drive; figured it would come in handy some day. And I hadn't put the new gateway into service because Debian's security team isn't supporting Sarge yet, and that's what I'm using on it.

So for the moment, I have the old aardvark back for tax prep, and I'll use everything but its disk drive to upgrade tatooine (the office machine) when I'm done. And I bought another Antec 2650 at Fry's on Thursday; they were on sale for $50.

In other news, I've been helping chaoswolf with her homework for her Intro to Unix class. She's at about the same stage with it that she was at with guitar on Wednesday -- struggling and having doubts. I see a pattern.

Comments

as it turns out...

[mdlbear]

... that was a 1650B case, not a 2650BQE. Not bad, but I need to pay more attention.