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|A ^0First Things First |A ^1Diskovery |Aͺ ^0First Things First |A
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^Cby
^CDaniel Tobias


^C^1'Tis the Season

   If we were referring to our issues by date in the fashion of paper magazines 
(which we don't, due to the timelessness of most of our material), this would be 
the December issue.  This means that it's an appropriate time for several 
seasonal things.

   One of them is the annual tradition of Christmas-card sending.  For those of 
you who'd like to send a different sort of greeting than the conventional card 
to your PC-owning friends, we've got a program for you that will generate an on-
disk, animated card to express your season's greetings, complete with holiday 
music in the background.  You choose from a list of scenes and sounds, and 
customize it with a message of your own, then save it to a disk which can be run 
separately from the program that created it.

   Since several non-Christians objected to our publishing "Gospel Godspeed" a 
few months back, you might raise a holler about our inclusion of Christmas cards 
as well.  However, we've got you covered too; in addition to the manger scenes 
in our program's repertoire of designs, are some "generic" winter fun scenes, 
which ought to be suitable for wishing your friends happiness in the winter 
season without any religious overtones.  Since you can put custom messages in 
your card, feel free to make it say "Happy Hanukkah," "Sensational Saturnalia," 
or whatever.

   Another thing that's presently in season, unfortunately, is the income tax.  
It's just about time to wrap up the tax year and begin filling out your forms to 
see if you owe money to the Feds or have a refund coming.  Perhaps you're 
planning on holding off thinking about taxes until April 15th approaches, but it 
may be helpful to have a look at your finances now, before the end of the year, 
while you still have time to make decisions that affect your tax picture, like 
deciding whether to take income and incur expenses this year or to hold them off 
until next year, or whether to start an I.R.A.  There may be a big deduction you 
can take that would significantly affect your taxes, or perhaps it has an 
insignificant effect now and would best be postponed to another year where it 
would be needed more.

   All these things and more can be determined by plugging your personal 
financial numbers into the Taxmaster package on this issue.  This set of 
templates (which can be run using any Lotus-compatible spreadsheet) contain a 
preliminary version of the 1988 1040 form and its major schedules, for you to 
fill in data, see how much tax you'll owe, and experiment to see how this figure 
will change based on different actions.

   Since the IRS reserves the right to change the forms up to the last minute, 
these templates might not exactly match the forms that are actually released.   
Fear not; the publisher of Taxmaster makes the final version available at a 
reasonable price after the beginning of the year, as outlined in the text for 
Taxmaster.  Using that version, you can prepare your taxes, transcribing the 
results line-by-line onto your return.  If you order before January 15, you'll 
also get a similar planning package for 1989 taxes, to let you begin planning 
your tax affairs throughout the upcoming year.  The publisher of Taxmaster 
originally wished to require a shareware fee from users of the planning package 
we're presenting in this issue, but we convinced them to waive it, and rely 
instead on receiving income from orders for the future versions. 

   If you don't have a Lotus-compatible spreadsheet, we've got a good deal on 
Borland's Quattro, a program some think is even better than Lotus itself.  See 
the "Marketplace" article, or call us toll-free at (800) 831-2694.

   Your kids probably don't have to worry about income taxes, but they do need 
to cope with our coinage system.  This can be highly illogical; dimes are 
smaller than pennies or nickels, but worth more than either.  Flippy's Circus 
Coins helps children cope with coin-counting.  Parents (or teachers) should read 
the "Read It" text for the program first before running it, so they can explain 
to the child how the program works and what keys must be pressed. 

   There's other good stuff on this issue, so get right to it!

   One final note: Back in issue #22, we published a program called Simple 
Budget.  Regrettably, there were a few bugs; several users have reported that 
dates are not always displayed properly, and that the program can sometimes 
crash under certain circumstances when displaying outstanding debts.  We've got 
a fix now, and we're including it on this issue.  Our fixed version includes an 
enhancement making it easier to enter dates while you're entering checks or 
bills.  Simply copy the file BUD.EXE from this issue's disk onto the disk on 
which you're running Simple Budget, overwriting the earlier version of this 
file.  The program will now run correctly, and all data you have entered will 
still be good. 

   If you don't already have issue #22, I don't suggest that you run BUD.EXE on 
this issue, since we're not including the data files or documentation.  Issue 22 
is available from us for $9.95, and customers who buy it from us now will get 
the corrected version. 

   This bug fix is part of our commitment to our readers.  All users who pointed 
out this error have already received free updates.  Whenever you run into a 
problem with any program on any issue of BIG BLUE DISK, whether it is a program 
bug, a system incompatibility, or a bad sector on your copy of the disk, don't 
be shy: let us know about it.  If a fix exists, we'll provide it free of charge.  
We're working toward a bug-free America: just say "NO" to bugs!
