TurboTax and e-filing

I had e-filing problem last year and even customer support people could not figure out what was the problem (BTW, it was the first time I saw people doing remote desktop thing for support which is pretty cool), so they end up with refunding my money paid for e-filing.

I tried e-filing again this year and same thing. Reading the help articles and discussions on the web doesn’t help too much. I tried to change SSL/certificate setting in IE, nothing helped, I’m on wired LAN so wireless problem should not be an issue to me, I tried on both Vista and XP but neither worked so …

I thought it could be because I’m using Chinese version of those Windows, so I installed everything on my corporate-issued laptop (thanks for the download version, easy to install anywhere you want), things are working like a charm.

I still need to dig out if it is network issue (such as TurboTax or IRS blocked Comcast which seems less possible), or it is actually Chinese edition problem – I would like to say the 2nd one is more reasonable.

However, I may only get the answer the coming year, since I’ve filed everything …

Concurrent Remote Desktop for Vista SP2

Just to mark here – this is the only one works for me:

http://www.technullogy.net/index.php/2009/06/22/multiple-remote-desktop-sessions-on-vista-sp2-x86-x64/

I’m trying to migrate some VMs to the Vista Ultimate so that I can utilize all those 4 cores and 6G memory.

I need to test some mysql proxy and master/slave things, and better try it out in different environments.

Hello, world from CLisp on Windows

Now here are steps to build a Windows application as for “hello, world”

Create a message.lisp:

(use-package "FFI")
(def-call-out messagebox
              (:name "MessageBoxA") (:library "user32.dll")
              (:arguments (hwnd int) (text c-string) (capt c-string) (type uint))
              (:return-type int)
              (:language :stdc))

(defun main()
  (messagebox 0 "Hello World!" "Message" 0)
  (quit))

then run:

clisp -M “C:\Program Files\clisp-2.47\base\lispinit.mem” -x “(load \”message.lisp\”)(ext:saveinitmem \”message\” :init-function #’main :executable t :norc t :quiet t)”

now we have a message.exe under the same directory, run it, you will get a standard Windows message box like this:

Almost all stuffs mentioned here are coming from:

http://www.frank-buss.de/lisp/clisp.html

except I added “:quiet t” to avoid CLisp’s welcome messages printed out in screen.

usenet helps

While I was trying to dig out how to play with lisp, especially how to create an executable from it, I came across this message posted to c.l.l:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/a8ffbb6d53f6b3db

pretty much what I want I’ve managed to created a executable on my Windows box and it runs just fine, well, with some tweaks, and actually a follow up describe the Windows dll problem:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/71544781ad46b5c3

Windows 7

Downloaded and installed Windows 7 in a VirtualBox VM, the UI is pretty neat, but that’s it, I haven’t found anything else, yet.

Most likely I will leave it there and play with it once another while, but I may not be able to have enough time to do serious evaluation, as I’m not a serious Windows developer or a system administrator . I would like to assume all potential development should be based on Windows XP or at most Vista, so to make majority can run it.

By the way, I haven’t figured out what’s the difference between Vista and 7 .

LogMeIn.com

Got this site from co-worker, pretty good. Now I need to test the speed of connecting from China, and once it works I will install it on my parents’ computer so that I can help checking their computer problems once there is any.

Better than remote desktop or VNC, as it does not need port forwarding nor firewall holes.