Tag: Personal

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The tax man taketh

It is time for me to pay my taxes again. As someone that is self-employed, I have to pay quarterly estimated taxes, so this happens 4 times a year. One of the things that gets me (it’s a mental thing) is paying taxes in such huge chunks. Salaried employees have taxes withheld and in theory, the total withholdings equals the total tax, so the money comes out in small increments and people don’t end up with a huge tax bill. Being self-employed, my income varies each year. If I have a good year, I end up with a big fat bill. If I have a year worse than the previous year, I get a refund.

Enough about the technical side of paying taxes. When I write the check (figuratively, not literally as I pay my taxes online so the check doesn’t get lost in the mail), I always think about what my taxes buy me. Really, nothing that helps me. You might be asking, what about the roads I drive on? Or the police? Or the fire department? OK, I’ll give you that, but isn’t some of that funded by sales tax, property taxes, and state income tax? What is the federal government giving me? Here’s my list:

  • 1 war in Iraq
  • 1 war in Afghanistan
  • 1 partially finished border fence
  • 1 bailout of Bear Stearns
  • 1 bailout of “greedy” lenders and borrowers (hey, the news used the word “greedy” last night to describe them)
  • 1 fleet of very, very expensive presidential helicopters (now costing something like $11 billion when the budget was $6 billion)
  • 1 questionable detention facility in Cuba
  • And lots more stuff that doesn’t do me any good…

Wow, with that list, I should be more than happy to give the government more money! I reluctantly pay my taxes because if I didn’t, they’d nail me faster than Al Capone.

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Being self-employed and working from home

Note: this is a long narrative that I’ve probably written before, but it helps me to get stuff off my mind by writing.

Periodically people ask me about being self employed and working from home. I’ve been self-employed for almost 5 years (5 years next month) and have been working from home for 8.5 years. So, I have a bit of experience with both parts; while they are related for me, they are quite distinct in how they affect my life.

This is my second stint of working at home; the first time I worked at home was when the small company I worked for closed its offices and I worked at home, in Portland, OR, for a few months. I was miserable; I had only lived in Portland about 5 months, had just bought a house, and didn’t know anyone. I was pretty much just looking for a job and moping around until I landed my next job and actually went into an office everyone. Portland finally got to me and I decided to pack up and move back to San Diego (I only lasted 14 months in Portland; I couldn’t take the rain). After I made my decision, I gave my bosses the customary 2 weeks notice that I was leaving (I had nothing lined up, but I didn’t care). They were pleased with my work (I worked there for 6 months prior to this) and asked if I’d still work for them. I said, “why not?” and continued to work for them for another 3.5 years working out of my apartment and then my house. As I made the decision to work from home and enjoyed where I was living, working from home treated me well. However, I did have some issues. Most importantly, I worked too much. In an 8 hours day, I put in 8 hours of work which meant I typically put in 25% more than people in an office due to chit chat and water cooler talk. For me, this wasn’t a bad thing, but my boss told me I worked too fast.

I parted with that company on good terms as they had no work for me and I was bored out of my mind as I didn’t have work for the last few months of working for them; I literally played video games all day and got paid for it. So, that stint of working from home worked out well; I kept normal hours and had no reason to overwork (I was salaried). I have the kind of personality that can handle being isolated at work; I like to get my work done and don’t mess around. Other people would go stir crazy as they need the interaction of an office; I’m most efficient when I have few distractions which works well for working at home.

Continuing on, at that point, I had already being contracting part time for another company, so starting to be completely self-employed was not a huge leap, but a little scary at first. Where would clients come from? How much time would I have to spend finding them? Would I earn enough money? Well, clients just seemed to come to me; word of mouth is quite powerful. I haven’t had to look for clients and have had enough work (at times more than I can handle) to do well for myself and my family. However, being self-employed means that the more I work, the more I earn. The incentive is always there to work more. That is the biggest problem with being self-employed for me; I have the desire to always work. I am still trying to balance things so that I work less, but it’s hard. It’s even harder that I’m pouring time into ReceiptWallet where the financial reward isn’t immediate and is largely speculative. However, the potential is huge.

Also, if I’m sick, I can’t really work which means I can’t earn money. This, unfortunately, causes me a lot of stress and can cause my ulcerative colitis to flare up like it did several years ago. I just got over being sick (I was sick for about 2.5 weeks), but this time I did my best to work as much as I could and my sickness didn’t cause me stress (my desire to get all my projects done, however, did).

Working at home and being self-employed has a lot of upsides; I’m not sure I could work in an office 5 days a week. Maybe 1 or 2 would be a nice change, but never again could I do it all the time. Self-employment has a lot of scary things and lots of garbage to deal with, i.e. company taxes, company accounting, getting clients to pay, etc. However, there is no job security in any job (OK, maybe some government jobs), so being self-employed is the only way to control your own destiny. Would I work for a company again? If I said no, I’d be lying. If the numbers were right, I would say yes.

Feel free to ask me questions or comment on my thoughts.

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Planning for Aiden’s first birthday

Our son, Aiden, is rapidly approaching his first birthday. We’re trying to figure out what to do. Should we have a clown? How about a pony? How about one of those jumpy things? Wow, this is going to be huge. We’re going to spend a lot of time and money planning a party that our son will never remember! Just kidding, we’re not going overboard with his first birthday, maybe another birthday down the line, but why one that he won’t appreciate? My wife has told me that some of the mothers she has run into are planning elaborate parties for their child’s first birthday. What a waste.

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SqueezeCenter and Apple TV Take 2

I decided to take the plunge today and install the Apple TV Take 2 update on my Apple TV and attempt to get the SqueezeBox software (now called SqueezeCenter) running on it. I previously had this running on Apple TV version 1.1, but I want the ability to rent movies, so I had to update my Apple TV and decided to install the new SqueezeCenter at the same time. Unfortunately this has been quite complicated. I almost have things working.

  1. Following the instructions in this thread, I created a PatchStick to install SSH on my updated Apple TV. Prior to updating the Apple TV, I copied all the necessary SSH files off my Apple TV
  2. Pick up the latest SqueezeCenter (7.0) and the XM Radio Plugin
  3. Create a folder on the Desktop called SlimServer
  4. In that folder create 2 files. The first is called StartupParameters.plist and it contains:
    {
  Description     = "SlimServer";
  Provides        = ("SlimServer");
  Requires        = ("Disks");
    Uses		= ("mDNSResponder", "Resolver", "DirectoryServices", "NFS", "Network Time");
    OrderPreference	= "Last";
    Messages =
    {
	start = "Starting SlimServer";
	stop = "Stopping SlimServer";
    };
}

    The second is called SlimServer and it contains:

    #!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.common

SERVER_RUNNING=`ps -axww | grep "slimp3.pl|slimp3d|slimserver.pl|slimserver" | grep -v grep | cat`

StartService() {
ConsoleMessage "Starting SlimServer"
if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" = z ] ; then
	pushd "/Users/frontrow/server"
    sudo -u frontrow "SqueezeCenter.app/Contents/Resources/start-server.sh"
    popd
fi
if [ z"$#" != z"0" ] ; then
    ConsoleMessage -S
fi
}

StopService() {
if [ z"$SERVER_RUNNING" != z ] ; then
    kill `echo $SERVER_RUNNING | sed -n 's/^[ ]*([0-9]*)[ ]*.*$/1/p'`
fi
}

RunService "$1"
  5. Tar up the folder:
    cd ~/Desktop
tar -cvf slim.tar SlimServer
  6. On a Tiger machine:
    cd /System/Library/Perl
tar -cvf ~/Desktop/perl.tar 5.8.6
  7. Mount the SqueezeCenter dmg file that was downloaded above
  8. From the image, copy Install Files/SqueezeCenter.prefPane/Contents/server to your desktop
  9. Place the XMRadio plugin in ~/Destkop/server/Plugins
  10. Modify ~/Desktop/server/SqueezeCenter.app/Contents/Resources/start-server.sh to add
    HOME=/Users/frontrow; export HOME

    before the ./slimserver.pl lines

  11. Replace the mDNSResponderPosix with the one from the SlimServer 6.5.4 as the one for SqueezeCenter apparently is a PPC only app and the Apple TV doesn’t have Rosetta. The SqueezeCenter developers are going to fix this.
  12. Tar up the folder:
    cd ~/Desktop
tar -cvf server.tar server

  13. sftp -1 frontrow@appletv.local

    (Password is frontrow)

    put slim.tar
put server.tar
put perl.tar
  14. Login via ssh using
    ssh -1 frontrow@appletv.local

    password is frontrow

  15. Change the root file system to read/write using
    sudo mount -uw /
  16. Uncompress the files
    tar -xvf perl.tar
tar -xvf server.tar
tar -xvf perl.tar
  17. Move the Perl modules into a good spot
    sudo mkdir /Library/Perl
sudo mv 5.8.6 /Library/Perl
  18. Move the SlimServer folder using
    sudo mv /Users/frontrow/SlimServer /Library/StartupItems/
  19. Make the SlimServer file executable
    sudo chmod +x /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer/SlimServer
  20. Change the owner

    sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/SlimServer
  21. Disable auto updating
    sudo bash -c 'echo "127.0.0.1       mesu.apple.com" >> /etc/hosts'
  22. Restart the AppleTV
    sudo reboot
  23. From Safari goto: http://appletv.local:9000/
  24. Change the music directory in the SlimServer prefs to /mnt/Media/Media Files
  25. Use iTunes to change the ID3 tags to version 2.2.0 and use that option to Reverse the Unicode strings to repair some issues with my database

I’m still trying to get the XM Radio plugin to allow 2 simultaneous connections, but other than that, I’m done. This has been a torturous process, but I figure by the next time I have to do this, I’ll be able to do it in minutes 🙂

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Tech Support is the bane of my existence

ReceiptWallet and DocumentWallet have done fabulously well, almost beyond my wildest dreams (OK, maybe not, I dream that I can sell 100 copies a day and then I could just sit back and relax). One of the downsides with this success is that support requests are on the rise. Some of the questions are simple and are just inquiries as the documentation could use a lot of help. Some of the requests are crashes; a majority of these crashes are due to poorly written scanner drivers and there is nothing I can do about them. A small number of requests have to do with bugs in the software. While I don’t (usually) mind some of the requests that are nicely worded and relatively short (the longer the message, the less inclined I am to read it; bulleted questions have a higher chance of getting a good response), some just drive me crazy. I answer every question myself, even if it is a canned response. I don’t like questions unanswered, so I feel the constant need to check my email and answer right away.

This, of course, causes me a great deal of stress as I’m not a very patient person. I do my best to answer questions in a professional manner, but sometimes I feel like answering questions with flippant responses.

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You know you’re in trouble when…

you step onto an elevator and there is an employee that says “count to 3 and hope this goes up”. Well, that’s what happened today when we were out at the San Diego Wild Animal Park today. We go on their new elevator (today was the first day that it was open), when it wouldn’t go up. The employee hit the button a few times and after the door opened and closed, it eventually went up. Also, the employee had a radio in case it got stuck! As we were leaving the park, I heard over one of the employee radios that the elevators (one was already out of operation when we were there) were not working. Not a good opening day for the elevators!

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I pulled an OJ

No, I didn’t commit any crime, I ran through the airport like in the old Hertz commercial. I left for the airport quite early for my 12:10 pm flight back home to San Diego just to be on the safe side. I figured I could work at the airport as I’d be there quite early. I got to the airport and went to print my boarding pass (it’s hard to print my boarding pass ahead of time when I don’t have a printer and it said my flight was cancelled. While waiting in line, I checked my iPhone and saw that there was a 10 am flight and an 11:10 am flight; this was at about 9:45 am. There was no way that I could make the 10 am flight, but the person at the counter put me on it and said to go through the employee security entrance. So I did, took my cell phones out of my pockets, pulled out my laptop, took off my jacket, sweatshirt, and shoes, shoved everything in the X-Ray machine and proceeded. I forgot that I had a water bottle that had to be confiscated. I quickly put on my shoes and grabbed all my stuff than darted off to the gate. I made it on the plane with about 7 minutes to spare!

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Macworld 2008 Summary

Now that I’m done with Macworld 2008, here are my reactions.

  • Apple’s announcements were pretty much snoreville.
    • The MacBook Air is an interesting device for some, but for me, it is lacking. I need a machine that is faster than my current 2.16 GHz MacBook Pro (Core Duo) and has a significantly larger hard drive (I have a 7200 RPM 100 GB drive). I only have one main machine, so I’m looking at a 2.8 GHz MacBook Pro with a 200 GB 7200 RPM drive. I’m going to wait as my machine is quite adequate for now (it does have a nice dent in the corner when I dropped it a few months ago when trying to put luggage on a cart; it works fine, but has a dent in the corner near the power connector).
    • The AppleTV announcement was pretty much a given based on the rumors. I’m excited to have the free software update, but will have to wait until someone hacks it so I can install the SlimServer software back on it.
    • The iPhone/iPod Touch updates aren’t of much use to me, as far as I can tell. I did try out the GPS-like stuff in Google maps and it worked adequately.
    • Time Capsule – not a whole lot of use to me as I use a local Time Machine backup and use SuperDuper! to backup daily
  • There was still a lot of iPod/iPhone stuff on the floor, but less than previous years. I could do without this. How many iPod/iPhone cases can you use?
  • Nothing really new in the hardware front. A few new scanners, more junk from Canon, HP, and EPSON.
  • No new software that I didn’t already know about. I think that BusySync is an interesting competitor to Spanning Sync (I’ve know the folks behind BusySync for years as they used to do Palm software.)
  • On the positive side, I’m excited about ReceiptWallet as I got some real good ideas for enhancements. However, I don’t have enough time to implement them!
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Doh, fixed a blog issue!

This week I’ve written a lot of posts and noticed that the “Previous” link didn’t show up at the bottom causing people to potentially miss some of my excellent work! I finally took a look and discovered that one of my WordPress plugins (Adhesive) caused the issue. I installed this plugin right after I ran my first marathon 1.5 years ago! Oh well, now people can see the older posts.

BTW, I’m playing around the theme for my blog and will keep searching for one that I like. Please don’t mind my mess.

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Zig-Zagging Through San Francisco

One of my problems with traveling is that I eat out all the time and become a bump on a log. This negatively affects me and I hate it. This morning, I decided to take a stroll through San Francisco to get my heart going. One of my former co-workers said that the way to walk in San Francisco is to zig zag so that you don’t have to wait at the lights. This is great if you have no place to be, like me this morning.

get.do.jpeg