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The fallacy of an income tax refund
I'm almost ashamed to admit that this year I received a tax refund. Why? A tax refund means that you (including me) have provided the government with a zero interest loan. Granted I wouldn't have earned all that much on my refund, but it's the principle of loaning the government money. In my case, I was self-employed for a long time and doing an accurate estimate of my owed taxes was nearly impossible as my income fluctuated based on contracts I had and ReceiptWallet income, so I always ended up owing taxes at the end of the year. The latter part of last year, I started a W-2 job which kind of changed the game.
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What to do without the Internet?
I put my son down to bed and came downstairs to check on the Software Update Server I setup at work (I'll have some hints on this when I get a chance), only to find that my computer wouldn't connect to the Internet. I restarted and had the same problem. I went over to the cable modem, saw the blinking lights, restarted it, flipped on the TV to see snow and dialed the cable company (I memorized their phone number years ago when problems were quite frequent). The tech I spoke to asked me to restart my cable modem, I told him it was pointless as I had no cable TV, but he insisted. So, I just said, OK, walked into the other room, grabbed my computer, my cellular modem, and walked back into the TV room. The tech asked me to plug the cable modem back in, so I said, OK and went about my business of writing this post. Of course, I didn't bother to do what he said because I had no TV picture, so obviously I wasn't going to have a working cable modem! I love calling tech support and having people read from scripts.
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Oh the joys of plumbing problems
Friday night as we were about to goto dinner, my wife tells me that she sees some water running down the driveway. I took a look, saw a pool of water near the water shut off, shut off the water to the house and asked her to call a plumber. After I turned the water off, I could still hear the water running, so I knew there was an issue between the house and the street. I shut the water off at the street and the fun began!
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Another MacHeist Bundle and More Tempers
I've waffled on what I think about bundled software like that being offered at MacHeist at a steep discount. My latest ramblings have been supportive of it. As a consumer, it's great to get lots of stuff for just a little amount of money. Will I use everything in the bundle? Unlikely. However, I've used some of the programs I've bought here and there. For the most part, I might use 1 or 2 programs, but just in case I have a use for something else, I know I have it. For instance, today I used GraphicConverter to convert some graphics; I would not have bought GraphicConverter at full price (the awful UI really puts me off).