Since I work for a

Since I work for a state university, I got today off from work. I've spent much of the day running errands, did a little shopping, and cleaning around the house. I've also filled out a lot of mail-in rebates today, if that isn't an exercise in patience, I don't know what is. Fortunately, many of them can at least be filled out on the computer, then printed out now, so you don't need to fill in the tiny little forums with your illegible chicken scratches. I bought my tax software for the year too, choosing TaxCut over the TurboTax I've used in the past. This year, Quicken (who makes TurboTax) decided to implement a product-activation scheme in their Tax software, to prevent people from installing it more than once. I'm protesting via my wallet on this one by purchasing the competing product, TaxCut, which is just as good, and doesn't have the lame protection scheme. I generally do my taxes early, and after having filed, I uninstall the software, and give it to a friend or family member to file their taxes. There's nothing on the box that says "Good for one tax return only", and if I'm not using it anymore, I'm not violating the copyright, so Quicken can kiss my business goodbye.

Of course, if you get TaxCut Deluxe, then you get a form for a $5 rebate, a free (after rebate) copy of TaxCut State, a free (after rebate) electronic filing, and a free (after rebate) copy of Microsoft Money 2003, which gives you some more software, at a low cost, assuming you've got the gumption to fill out all those rebate forms, which is what I'm going to spend the next hour doing.