Allee K

My husband was laid off this past January, and finally this past month he was able to get interviews at 2 of his top choice companies. #1 is his dream job - great pay, great work; #2 is not as great but still decent - ok pay, great work, but a long commute.

Yesterday, choice #2 offered him a job. The thing is, he just interviewed at choice #1 three days ago and it may be a while (and perhaps several more interviews) before they get back to him.

He would like to take job 2, but he feels he should wait for job 1 - yet if they decide to NOT hire him for job 1, he'll miss out on job 2 as well and we're back to square one.

I'm wondering if anyone has any good advise on this situation? Is there any way to make sure the 2nd job won't be taken while we wait for job #1? Sorry if this is confusing.....

My house have some old carpeting that is 100% wool, and we unfortunately don't have the time/money to replace it. Now that my baby will be out of the crib and crawling around soon, I'm wondering if there's a particular brand of baby-safe carpet cleaner and/or disinfectant that I can use?

I got one of those big cages with smooth plastic bottom (no wire mesh) for my 7-month old bunny.

The lady at the animal shelter where I adopted the bunny from told me that I should get a piece of cotton rug to line the bottom of the cage. I'm afraid the bunny will chew on the rug and maybe eat the cotton fiber by accident, so I'm wondering if it's ok to just line the bottom of the cage with newspaper?

The bunny is litter trained, and I'm using Kaytee Soft-sorbent in the litter box.

Last week my boss pulled me aside and told me that he will be firing the co-worker who I worked closely with during this past year. He expects me to cooperate fully with her replacement (who he already hired).

I really wish he hasn't told me because I know she is NOT going to take it well - she is getting married in 2 months. I will not say anything to her, and I'm doing alright pretending to not know anything - but I don't know what to do on the day that she gets fired, since I did work with her a lot and she might want to talk to me afterwards, I don't think I can pretend to be shocked.

It might be tacky to take the afternoon off so I won't be there when she gets fired, but I really don't want to be there for it. What should I do??

I'm a painter by hobby, and just recently named my "business" Caliope Studios. I don't sell many paintings - at the most, 1 a month, but I would like my clients to pay me by my business name, rather than my name (so their checks would be made out to Caliope Studios and I will be able to cash them).

Can I add the name Caliope Studios to my personal WaMu account and accept checks using that? Since I won't be selling a lot of paintings, I'll much rather not have to open a 'business account' that has a huge minimum balance.

I tried calling WaMu with this question, but their phone systems are having "technical difficulties" today...

I bought a cool plug-in oil burner lamp while I was in China, it requires 220v electricity. I was told that if I want to use it here in the US, I need to buy some sort of converter. Where can I buy such a thing?

All I can find on eBay are converters that let me use US gadgets in foreign countries. I don't want that! I want something that'll let me use foreign gadgets in the US!

Thanks!!

My company has about 10 old computers that we want to get rid of, and we figured it's better to donate them than to just throw them out - and our accountant says we can get a tax deduction from the donation.

We found a private business that said they can draft up a "donation receipt" for us for tax purposes, but they are not a certified charitable organization.

If we give our computers to them, would we still be able to get a tax deduction from the donation, just from the "donation receipt"?

My fiance and I are planning to buy a house in 3 years, so we are looking for ways to start saving money for it now.

A friend advised that we can put away money every month in a mutual fund, "because the economy is so bad now, it has to go up!". Another friend advised that mutual funds are still not stable, that we should just go for a money market account in a bank.

What are your thoughts? Are there any better options?

I'm thinking of upgrading the RAM on my 20" iMac G5 from 1gb to 4gb. I've successfully opened up the panel to the RAM chips and I can remove them, no problem. I'm just not sure what kind of RAM I should buy?

Would 2 of these chips work? If not, which ones should I buy?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=2048DDR253...

Thanks!!

My dad is currently living in Japan, he is retired and his only source of income is from a Roth IRA that he already paid taxes for. I have filed his federal taxes, but I'm wondering if I need to file State taxes for him? I live in New York, but he hasn't set foot on US soil for several years.

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

I have a small business site that deals with design, that has only the company's name in the domain name.

A business colleague suggested that I go and purchase a bunch of domains that has to do with my industry. For example, I should purchase "BestDesignNYC.com" and "YourGraphicDesignerNY.com" and the likes. I should point these domains to my primary business site with domain forwarding.

He said having these domains would make my business rank higher in Google searches.

Does that actually work??

My roommate's IBM Thinkpad T23 has a dead hard drive, and I'm helping her to replace it. This is the info on the old drive that I took out:

Model: #IC25N020ATCS04-0

IBM 20GB 2.5-Inch Notebook HDD

20 GB formatted capacity

4200 RPM spindle speed

12 ms average seek time

7.1 ms average latency

UDMA/100

2.5-inch form factor

9.5 mm height

She'll like to get a new drive that's at least 60GB. Which new drive should she buy to replace this one?? We just want to know what kind of drives would fit into an IBM Thinkpad T23.

Thanks!!

My optometrist recommended to me that I should get a pair of computer glasses, with +1.25 power. I asked him if I can just get a pair of reading glasses from the drug store with the same power, and he said "no, you should get a pair here at the store".

Then I came home and did some research on Google, and saw that most stores that sell "computer glasses" have only +0.25 power, not the +1.25 that my optometrist prescribed.

I thought any glasses with an ADD (+) power are reading glasses? Should I spend the extra hundreds of dollars to buy a pair computer glasses?

A friend sent me this YouTube video from this year's Christmas concert in Vienna:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIw5cIcbOfM

I'm in love with this composition. Does anyone know where I can buy a recording of it?

I got an eye exam at LensCrafters last week, and was told my vision changed for the worse, so I got a new pair of glasses there. Got the glasses today, and they feel a little bit weird.

Note: I've gotten many pairs of glasses in my life, and I know it always takes a few days to get used to new prescription. Just never had this problem before. I had brought this problem up at the store, but they told me the prescription is 100% correct. Also, one of my eyes is much worse than the other: left lens is -5.50, right is -1.50.

The right lens on these new glasses are fine. But the left one is very strange - I can see perfectly if I look straight ahead, but if I look just a little bit to the sides or up and down, vision gets blurry.

Could it be that they gave me a lens with the wrong astigmatism prescription? The doctor there told me that I have "a little bit of astigmatism, but it's negligible". Left eye's axis is 180, right eye is 005.

My business is looking to start a contest with some expensive ($2000+ worth) prizes, and we're in the process of drafting up the rules and regulations right now.

My question is, can we just come up with the rules and regulations on our own without a lawyer? There are plenty of "rules & regulations" pages on the Internet, can we just copy and edit those?

And one of my colleagues thinks that we must register our contest with the FTC with the value of our prizes. Do we have to do that?

My parents have asked me to wire some of their savings in the US to their current bank in Europe. They'll transfer the money from their US bank to my Citibank account, and then I'll wire the money from Citibank to their bank now in Europe.

I'm just wondering if the wired amount would have an impact on my taxes this year? It will only stay in my Citibank account for a few days.

Thanks!

I've had my dwarf hamsters for about a year now, and they're FINALLY starting to use the wooden chew toys I bought them when I first got them. They're vigorously chewing the toys down, and there are now wood shaving everywhere. I try to clean it up as much as I can, but has anyone had any experience where their hamster got splinters from wooden chew toys??

Just being a bit paranoid as usual!

My father is 62 and is now living abroad in Europe. He has been without income for the past 2 years, and he has not done his taxes every year because of that (he has, however, written letters to the IRS notifying them of his situation).

He has paid his taxes faithfully for as long as he worked in the US for the past 40 years or so. Would his 2 years of "tax gap" hinder his social security checks?

My father is a US citizen currently living abroad in Europe, he is 66 and is thinking of cashing out his Traditional IRA account to our bank account in the US. When he tried to get in touch with Vanguard, their customer service was automated and sent him a bunch of forms with no real answer. So his questions are:

1. How much of his IRA can he cash out at age 66 without penalty?

2. Will there be any taxes?