March 29, 2000
Dear Everyone:
This week’s Letter will be a short one as I spent
most of this evening driving “Jeannie” to the airport.
She’s flying up to
Oregon to spend the weekend with Mother.
“Marshall” is also flying to Oregon this evening from
Fresno.
They will meet at the airport in
Portland,
then proceed to
Canby.
The real purpose of this trip, apart from the joy
of spending time in Oregon (“Marshall” is looking forward to the
possibility of spending some of the time terrorizing fish), is to
consult with a lawyer about another pesky little financial problem that
has reared its ugly head. It
seems that there was a dispute, at one time, between the travel agency
and the company from which they rented office space.
I don’t know the exact details, but the bottom line
is: A collection agency is
beating on Mother’s door, demanding payment of long-overdue rent.
The meeting with the lawyer is to find out what it will take to
make this problem go away.
It has to be an Oregon lawyer for some reason, so “Jeannie’s” friend
(the one who got the insurance company to cough up Mother’s annuity) has
recommended an old classmate who now works near Canby.
Film at eleven.
In other news…
I finished my
taxes last weekend and, in the course of filling out computer
screens, discovered that I am part of a pilot program being run by the
IRS
for completely paperless taxes.
Everything is handled electronically.
At one point, the software program asked me if I had received an
“ECN”, an E-file
Customer Number from the IRS.
I said, “I don’t know.
But if I did, I would have put in this Tax File.”
So I looked in the Tax File and, sure enough, there it was.
A notice from the IRS that, if I wanted to participate, I could
use the ECN as an “electronic signature”.
This tells the IRS that I am who I say I am and allows me to file
my return completely by computer.
Of course, the IRS loves this program because it
means they don’t have to pay someone to go over a paper return and type
all the information into the computer.
All the data has already been typed (by me) and it just goes from
this field in the software program to that field in the IRS program.
After that, the computer just crunched the numbers and sends the
refund directly to my checking account.
No paper involved anywhere.
Except that I’m still required to print everything
out at my end, staple the
W-2 form to the
report, and save it all in my files for at least three years.
But hey, the IRS didn’t have to pay for all that paper and time,
and that’s what counts here, right?
If you don’t like it, you can start your own pilot program.
On the office front, the production data finally
came back from the vendor.
Now I get to set up department groups and software groups and confirm
3500 names are correct, etc.
Add to that around 4000 boxes that have been checked out during the
transition, and which must now be reconciled with the data in the
system; and about 12,000 boxes that have been set to locations that the
system knows nothing about; and we’re talking a lot of late nights and
weekend work before we can let the people get in and start using the
system.
And you thought it was tough balancing your
checkbook. It’s just as well
that “Jeannie” is up north this weekend.
I’ll just have time to pick her up at the airport Sunday night.
Love, as always,
Pete
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