Cassie’s vet bill is the first piece of paper to be scanned into p2 (aka Paperless Project) in 2007, and it was relatively easy to drop it into the scanner (the MP 530 this time since the ScanSnap doesn’t like stapled-on credit crad receipts etc.) and then dispatch the paper doc to the recycling bin.
The big test for p2 will be preparing 2006 taxes: we alway try to get them done in January or early February, and our ace tax man Ed Sallee is good at prodding us to get things done and in. Other than federally-mandated paper copies of expenses, most everything here is in PDF in p2 this year – bank statements, credit card statements, charitable deduction letters et al. There’s some paper left over from before we began p2 in earnest last September or so (we did back-scan a ton of stuff from an overstuffed file drawer), but so be it.
All of our incoming interest statemants, W2s etc. will be scanned (and preserved as paper, just in case) and sent down to Ed as as a PDF package… I want to see if this is any easier for all involved. It’s still taxes, but maybe the administrivia will be easier…
After a morning in full combat with our deeply-entrenched World HQ LAN cruft, time and pending appointments dictated it was time to build out the new LAN as a layer, even though some further cruft reduction is planned (perhaps involving high explosives detonated in the house – sorry, dear). Photo above doesn’t really reveal the depths of cruft that were stripped off, at great personal peril this AM. Cruft never goes easy.
In any case, the moment came to unpack the 2 bags of stuff I bought at Fry’s last weekend, lined up next to reusable existing components as seen above. Remembering our ’simplify, de-construct’ philosophy that resulted in the successful Cheesy Crate design, our first choice was the config seen in the small photo above, left. A newer NetGear firewall mated with an 8 port Gigabit switch would be the core, attached to the Comcast cable modem mounted just under the shelf.
Woulda been, except the new NetGear firewall (admitted a Fry’s return that saved me $10 – I usually have good luck with Fry’s returns) had somehow been trashed: no mind the lost documentation (it was easy to find online) but paper sticky labels had been pasted over Ethernet ports, the unit had other odd blemishes, and the thing refused to respond past its basic default access web page (these things are all browser-configurable from the LAN side via their tiny internal web servers). Somehow this unit was or had been hosed, so we are, at least for time being, back to the older version, which is a little less optimal, but, for now, it works. Next up the (yes, believe) the POTS bus install, final cruft demolition, new, better, more secure WiFi and then the interesting new user-oriented services built on top of this…