07:55 – I start work on our federal and state incomes taxes today. As far as I can see, our LLC makes zero difference to how I’ll do the taxes. The revenue and expenses for the corporation go directly to Schedule C on the federal return, just as they did when I was operating as a sole proprietor. And the state return simply uses figures plugged in from the federal return, as always.
Speaking of the state return, I finally took some time yesterday to get my new Epson V300 scanner up and working. There was no prayer of that happening on my main office system, which is running Ubuntu 9.04 (!). So I took the scanner back to Barbara’s office and connected it to her system, which is running a more recent Ubuntu. Epson supplies Linux drivers, but the installation wasn’t completely straightforward. I had to install an older version of one of the support files manually, after which the scanner was immediately recognized by xSane. I did a test scan, and everything appears to be working normally.
What motivated me to finally get the scanner running is that the stupid North Carolina PDF tax forms can be filled out and printed with Adobe Reader, but they can’t be saved. How stupid is that? So, my choices were to just print an extra copy of the completed return for our records or to get the scanner working. Either that, or to what I’ve done in a couple prior years when I didn’t have a working scanner: put the completed forms on the floor and shoot images of them with a digital camera.
Barbara tried to give Colin a bath yesterday. As usual, she stripped down and got in the downstairs shower and then I brought Colin into the bathroom. The last time, he was pretty good about getting into the shower with her and seemed resigned to being bathed. This time, he simply refused to get in the shower. He was terrified. He actually snapped at Barbara. I could feel him shivering in terror. So we bagged it. With the weather getting warmer, it’s not a big deal. Barbara will wash him outdoors with the hose at the next opportunity.
We’re starting to get queries about the biology kits, which will start shipping next week. Other than the supplemental DVD included with each kit, we have the first batch of 30 kits made up and ready to go, with components for 30 more in the on-deck circle. We hope that’ll be enough at least to buffer the initial flood of orders when the book hits the stores, but of course we’re prepared to order in components for and assemble a lot more kits quickly if the initial flood of orders is larger than expected. We’re also in the process of making up 30 more chemistry kits, and we’ve penciled in some time in a couple of months to begin assembling forensics kits. Obviously, we’re going to be busy for the next few months.