Mel in Hawaii

We all KNOW that the problems that people have been experiencing haven't been caused by a phone system. It was caused by a untimely decision to shutter operations. True, the phone system may be giving them problems, but the true cause was the decision to shutter the tech support department because if they had done the switchover months ago, those problems would have been eliminated before the season started.

Well it's nice to see the support, I disagree with the million to startup. Yes, there will be the costs of a programmer (myself plus a couple others), but the first version of the program will not require a massive call center as there will be fewer people initially. As the orders came in, that would fund the expansion to the point that you would need for for an established company. Why do I want to move away from Hawaii? Have you seen the costs of living in Hawaii? I don't think I could put together a team as dedicated in Hawaii as I could in Maine and the labor costs would be much higher. Telecommuting is an idea, something definately to employ in the early stages to be sure. But moving to Maine, I would have a house to work in that I wouldn't have to worry about the sky high rents in Hawaii, family around to help out with the kids and it would make more sense. More people go by Eastern time zone than they do by Hawaii time, so offering good hours for support would be better there unless I wanted to get up at 2am in the morning every day. As for the trust goes, if you don't want to trust me, that's just fine as I think you could easily just wait until the program was there and you could try it out for yourself. If you wanted to be a customer, then that's fine, if not is also fine. I will setup a private board here shortly, but that brings me back to how to keep it really private? How many of you are connected to CCH? All of you I would assume since you were customers, but at least it will cut down on the rest of the competition knowing what is going on.

Is this how they put it? Upgrade software or you don't get your money back? I wonder what they would say if you said you wanted to 'upgrade' to the competition?

I am not 'in the know' but I believe I have read others have had to call and get their CC number setup on file so they could transmit. You will need to call support.

Just a thought, if any PRIOR ATX employees want to jump in on this... Please be aware of ANY terms in your severance package that may have non-compete clauses etc. The one I saw from my current employer has a very strict non-compete clause in it (luckily I have no intentions to work for the same industry ever again) and the one you got handed may very well too. Another thing, you may want to just PM me instead to avoid hassles with CCH. For me, I can go almost a year before having to worry about work due to that severance package which should give me a good start on the project. I should also setup a closed board for program design discussions, else we would just be tipping our hand to the competition. If there is enough support for this, then I will definately follow through on it, but I wouldn't be out there with my hand out for money until I was sure we would have a product to put on the market in short order. It is just not me as I would want to ensure that I could return on that investment so I wouldn't have any angry people after me at a later date.

Maybe it's time to move back to Maine... *grin*

I wonder what the industry mags are saying about this change, has anyone else seen anything?

Sorry, but the only ticket I have ever recieved had the fine plainly indicated on the ticket, no court required, they even provided an envelope to mail it in. That was for an expired registration on my MOM's car while visiting up in Maine. It's been years so I don't remember what the cost was either. Yes, I am one of those slow pokes everyone hates on the road as I actually follow speed limits to the letter. I never am speeding, yet every time I see a police officer my heart goes nuts, one of these days I wouldn't be surprised if they cause me to have a heart attack, especially when they go zooming by me on their motorcycles and I haven't noticed them before they do. Sorry to hear about your daughter, I don't know if your daughter was as nervous as I was when I got my drivers license, I was more afraid of my dad than the police back then. He would have killed me if I had the situation you list above and I am NOT kidding. Some people have the fear of god, I had the fear of DAD.

Sounds like a copy/paste from a press release to me.

Eli, I dont' really have a good estimate, I just know I don't have what I think I would need for supporting a good programming staff for a year, training some technical support people and then the advertising campaign that would be needed. Some mitigating factors if I wanted to take a 'soft start' would be to use off-shore programmers to help with the core program (not the forms mind you) to keep the costs down, I could do the initial tech support myself as I did when ATX started up, and I could keep the initial advertising just web based. I already have relationships with programmers in the Phillipines (family believe it or not) who could help out. Advertising is the expensive part, ATX did it on a bootstrap initially, working on trying to get reviews and spending cash that came in immediately on ads to snowball the effect. It meant a lean company at first, I believe GW never took a salary from the company for a LONG time. NO, I wouldn't want to 'off shore' technical support. I have seen what a mess that can be. I also would only do the forms here as I know quite a few of these forms quite well, they wouldn't have any experience with them. But, programming a core computational program and the 'bells and whistles' could be done off shore as they would just be programming to spec and leave me open for doing forms and tech. Carolynm, think back to the old days.. Glynn was a CPA... Tax practitioners starting a tax software company only makes sense. I am not a tax practitioner of course, but I have been around it long enough that taxes runs through my veins a bit too.

The ATX of old and the ATX of now may be different, but ATX used to want you to try the programs and offered an unconditional guarantee. I don't know if that changed with the change in ownership though.

Contrats! Now the hard and fun part begins, long sleepness nights, feedings all night, listening to make sure they are breathing. I love the smell of a new baby, but always have been afraid to 'touch' for fear of crushing them in my fingers. When Malika was born I had this horrible fear that I would hold her too tight and hurt her, she seemed so delicate. I hated the diapers, but I would gladly do them again to be able to reexperience my kids at that stage, more than just a memory that is.

I personally don't think I would have a problem getting the forms approvals since the big problem with approvals with ATX has always been that they were 'substitute forms'. If you made them 100% identical to the govt forms, approval process would be even easier, just don't change the line widths, font sizes, etc. Bar codes would have to be assigned and such, but even then I don't think approvals would be as hard. I think that customers would actually appreciate that the forms looked the same as the ones that the IRS prints in their books or provides via PDF. Years ago I can remember the issues we had with getting approvals for forms that didn't have exactly circular circles, etc. When I was starting to design the program I had decided to dump the underlying spreadsheet that always made the issues appear with formatting and make the forms graphical, store 1 copy of the form image and everything else just populates on top of that image. Display the same image on the screen with everything populating on top of it and you would keep the 'forms based' approach with smaller client files to boot. If I wanted to add a spreadsheet in for 'custom calculations' later, that could be added without affecting the tax forms. Transition programs would be impossible for me to program on such a short notice, alas. Although I had thought about it and considered hiring a couple programmers to help. But once you start to look at the volume of work that would need to be done by next July/August to be ready, it's just not possible unless I had the startup capital that I just don't have. Then you have to have people willing to test the program and who would want to do that during tax season. Yes, those bells and whistles would be a kicker. Maybe some of the old timers would realize that we could fit them in the next year version, but others would not bother to look at the new version for their lack in the prior year. The research products would be impossible. It would take 2 years minimum to get to a program that I think I would not be embarrassed about.

Creating the software would not be the hard part, but getting the level of tech support back together would be. I considered (and started) to write a new tax program, but after discussing with the family, I don't think I want to go back to the 100 hour weeks that I spent back when ATX was just a startup. It's not just the tax program, but the sales/support systems, distribution and don't forget the addons that everyone now expects. I could have the core tax program running in a short period, but the full extent of forms would take some time and not to mention the efile system. I certainly couldn't finance getting a team together by myself the way SW and GW did back in the day.

Howard, I am a former ATX employee (something like 8 years ago). I am not sure of what happened to William Tasker, I think he might still be there, try emailing him instead.

It wasn't her choice Howard... All the tech in Caribou were let go.

Easier, "Thank you for calling technical support, how may I help you." (Now listen and determine who is calling by what they say they are doing.

If she didn't get the money, contact the company holding that IRA and start bugging them to put the money back along with all the withholding. Similar thing happened here, took a while but eventually the bank had to eat it (I am sure some insurance company actually did, but you know what I mean).

Unfortunately you must have missed the posts about the layoffs in Maine. Remember that the new support also handles calls for other programs too, so not all of those tickets would be relating to ATX's product I imagine. The company that I work for outsourced our helpdesk to IBM for a while, although the tickets were handled inhouse, you should have seen the rapidly incrementing ticket numbers there. Myself entering tickets at my desk manually, I could enter two tickets in a few minutes that were tens of thousands apart and all I was doing was duplicating tickets and entering a different affected user. I was so glad when we switched back off from them as I was so upset every time that IBM would have someone call me at 3am in the morning to check status on open tickets 'I'm soddy sir, but by my kalkulations it is now 9am in the US, is that not right?' NOOoo, Hawaii is NOT in the Eastern Time Zone (then we would procede with a geography lesson). The guys answering the phone may have been from the US and Canada (contractually stipulated between certain hours) but the people ensuring tickets were completed and handling 'quality control' were always from India. That was such a hairbrained idea, that my boss and I just asked our local users to call us directly as quite frequently the tickets being created wouldn't show up on our queue until like 2 days later as they all went through 'quality control' who for some reason assumed that we would be gone at 5pm Eastern time when we are in Hawaii (5-6 hours difference). So much for a global helpdesk solution. Now, I am not saying ATX's new owners will have such headaches, just meandering along from my orriginal intent. I have seen the issue with continually being logged out before when I had multiple windows opened, some from prior to logging in and the other from after. Do you do as I do and open multiple windows at the same time to access different pages on the site? Maybe that's the reason.

Unfortunately that's the nature of temp agencies... Our location once went through 5 or 6 secretaries trying to find the right one, each working less than a day before they were 'no longer needed'. BUT, looking at it from the other perspective... Maybe they hadn't made their mind up when the people were hired in October. I certainly doubt that William would have known ahead of time and he would have been the one ramping up service. Large companies do have that problem of not knowing what the other hand is doing and politics pay a big part in decisions that should never have been made (Henry's neice works in the xyz office, we don't want to close that one so let's forget that the other office is more productive). Once hired, management wouldn't have wanted to send shockwaves until it really wouldn't matter. Our company has a similar policy of 2 weeks per year of service, but watch out for things like the little statement in ours that says you have to be available to come back to work and if you start working for another company during that severance period, it ends immediately and is paid every two weeks rather than a lump sum.

'a wireless received to a wireless router to my laptop'. I will interpet this to mean you have some broadband internet provider (doubting that it's wireless but it could be in some areas of the country) that is connected to a netgear wireless router and your computer gets it's connection wirelessly via that router. If we look at your Netgear wireless router, it most likely (as it's the default) takes a single internet IP address on the public internet and then 'shares' this IP address with up to 253 (not 256 btw) computers in your office via wireless or even wired connections. This 'sharing' is called NAT or Network Address Translation which can further be described as a 'simple' firewall. Simple in that the router isn't really processing any rules or filtering anything intentionally. It just matches requests from inside the network with responses from external sources and routes them correspondingly. If your computer hasn't made a request from XYZ computer on the internet and XYZ attempts to contact your computer, it drops the packet because it doesn't know what computer it is actually trying to contact since the port number the request is coming in on hasn't been set in it's lookup table as coming from any internal computers. So, you have a simple firewall protecting your network, I applaud your intelligent decision considering your statement that you are slow in this area. Maybe you aren't as slow as you say you are and are just being modest. *grin* Of course, you can do fancier stuff by going into the configuration, making static assignments, special rules, etc, but most users are not doing so as they are taking the unit out of the box and just plugging it in and possibly doing some MINOR setup such as assigning a network name (but most just have networks called NETGEAR or other default names based on their routers). Some models are fancier than others, but what I was recommending was the simple 'Internet Sharing Device'/NAT/router as a minimum. Do you need a Cisco PIX firewall? Not really unless you have a reason for it. I have one, and it's nice to use for things like private tunneling over the internet, loading up VOIP, blocking blacklisted sites and my favorite is blocking those 207net advertising people. On the other hand, if what you are calling your router is actually just a netgear HUB or SWITCH, the above doesn't apply. But the fact that you have a box at all, leads me to believe it is actually a router/NAT box.

I personally believe that EVERYONE should have a hardware firewall in place, even if it's just the cheapo 'line sharing' device. They stop the majority of most intrusions off the net. I HATE Norton, espeically combined with their firewall product. As for the rating of software, I find that every AV software manufacturer out there will miss SOMETHING, the more popular ones are even targeted by the hackers. The problem with the freebie ones is that they don't update frequently and can be slow to respond to outbreaks. But, if you have a hardware firewall in place and do not share files with other people that much, and don't SURF the web, then that freebie may be all you really need. Business desktops should not be randomly surfing the web, just going to a select few trusted sites like the IRS, state agencies and such, and as such won't experience the same problems as a home gaming computer would. As for McAfee, I think they have too many nagging issues, meaning they 'pop up' too many windows when doing normal everyday activities.

Personally I see it as calculated timing on their part. How many customers would have switched to another program had they known that they were going to dump ATX's customer support? How many more would have delayed renewing at least. Funny how they managed to keep the 'support' from the old laid off employees. Just don't have to pay for it now. That just shows you the devotion that the emplyees in Maine actually had. I can certainly tell you that the employees in the company I am at now here in Hawaii don't seem to show that same spirit. ATX had a special thing going back when GW was still there, I can't say after he left as I had already left.

That's close to what I was looking for. I question it's portability due to the alarm going off when turned upside down, also the pills seem to be able to spill out when the wheel moves forward. 7inches is also large for a kids pocket. It's definately better than what we have now though. Thanks for the help!

When I was a child, I had to take medication every 6 hours because of a medical condition I had. Unfortunately, I am very forgetful of such things and tended to forget taking the pills which showed up on my twice weekly blood tests as wildly varying blood levels. Luckily, back then my doctor gave me an automated pill dispenser that wouldn't allow me to have the pill until it was time and sat there bleep bleep bleeping until I opened the compartment and took the pills. It was small enough that it fit in my pocket about the size of a deck of cards and could take it everywhere and even had a clock on it so I didn't carry a watch. It was a godsend and ensured that I was able to take my pills on time. Luckily after a few years, I was free of taking the medication and no longer have the device (I wish I had saved it). Now, I know that times have changed and I would have thought technology had improved, but I have been searching for such a device now and I just can't find one. A call to the Doctor and he said he would 'research' it. I know that most schools would have an issue with kids having medication at school, but there has to be someone that makes these things today. The only ones I can seem to find are in the UK and 'Can not be shipped to the USA'... I don't know why, it's not a drug, just a reminder device. Anyone out here as forgetful as I am and take medications regularly and have one of these devices? I need some information on the manufacturer or name so I can get one again. The features I need are this: Needs to be small enough to carry in your pocket. Needs to have an alarm reminder (preferably loud) that doesn't go off until the pills are taken. Needs to be able to dispense 3 times a day and carry at least a weeks worth of pills. Preferably that also restricts the ability to get to the pills until it's time to take them (my old one had a key that my parents kept). It doesn't have to be solid as a bank, just prevent playing with the pills or double doses. The three pills are small so compartment size is not a big deal, tight closure is as one is very small. Thanks in advance for any assistance.