Tax Cut

Last was the Henley tax-night.  I didn’t realize that the Tax Cut software is only good for the year in which you purchased it.  At around 10PM I made a Wal-Mart run where I saw the old lady with all the squash like buds all over her body, too bad for her.

When using Tax Cut, the top right of the screen displays what your return (or how much you owe) will be.  This number changes as you enter more information.  I started off owing about $70, then it was $600, then $1400, I was unenthused.  So I kept telling Tax Cut more financial secrets about me, and after a while it must have heard a secret that it really liked, my owing $1400 gradually changed into about $4900 returned.  This is significantly more then we got back last year so I hope that I didn’t inadvertently tell some tall tales.

Old People Rule the World

February 17th of this year was supposed to be the end of TV broadcasting via airwaves. So what happened? The government ran out of vouchers to give to people to obtain cable boxes. The government is delaying the digital transition by 4 months to buy time to obtain more vouchers to give away. This transition was supposed to happen back in 2006, the FCC is way to concerned about upsetting old people who are afraid of change. Way back when color TV originally came out, the FCC protected the grumpy population by demanding that all broadcasts are backwards compatible with black and white TV.

While we are waiting for digital TV to take over the world, play Barack, Paper, Scissors to pass the time.

iPhoto ’09

While in the McDonalds Drive-Through yesterday I experienced some embarrassingly low technology. Being the cheapskate I am, I attempted to give the cashier a handful of quarters along with my credit card. The cashier told me he can’t do both cash and credit. It’s now 2009, and McDonalds can’t handle multiple payment options.

On the flip side Apple has added face recognition and GPS tagging to iPhoto ’09. The Lord Jesus Christ has possessed the new iPhoto with his holiness. You can now tell iPhoto what one of your friends looks like and iPhoto will automatically look through your other photos and find your friends for you. iPhoto sideshow’s now use face recognition to center faces and crop your photos for more professional looking sideshows.

Also iPhoto now syncs with Facebook and Flickr. Once photos are posted on Facebook, any extra tagging that occurs will filter back through to your iPhoto.

I used up the rest of my iTunes money and bought the Neil Diamond Essentials, I’ll be rocking out today.

Meaningless HD.

Over this Christmas season, I’ve seen numerous irrelevant “HD” products that aren’t HD at all:

HD Vision technology gives you clarity that you have never experienced. Enhance your vision. Just like High Definition TV. Modern European Style.

(HD) plasma technology and prismatic micro-diamonds to dramatically resurface and retexturize skin.

OttLite Task Lite HD – White (It’s an HD lamp…. it’s in HD)

Hanukkah

So I celebrated Hanukkah last night.  Ashley’s mom is Jewish (emphasis on the “ish”).  Her parents gave us each $200 that were were forced to spend on happy things.  Promptly after dinner we took the money to the mall.  This was no joke, we had to cover as much ground as possible in a short time, so we parted ways.  You might think that blowing $200 is easy, it stressed me out.  I thought about buying a PSP or an X-Box, but I don’t have time to take on another gaming system.  To make a long story short, I got a gray North Face jacket from Nordstroms, and Ashley got some sexy jeans and accessories.

For whatever the reason, Roscoe forgot then when he’s here, he’s supposed to poop outside.  When I take him out, he just gets confused and wants to bumble around and sniff.  20 minutes go by in the freezing cold, he just sniffs.  So like a little puppy I took treats out to reward him when he finally went, so pitiful.

The Pillars of the Earth is getting good.  Tom’s wife just bled to death after giving birth and Tom freaked out and left the baby for dead.  I especially liked when that woman showed up and randomly had sex with him while he was resting from his baby-leaving adventure.  When I left off, he proposed to her, now to find out what’s up with that…

Let’s Put the FUN back in FUNeral

Last night I lied in bed thinking about my final wishes.  I need some kind of gathering and a burial method.  If remaining family members really need an obligatory religious ceremony, that’s fine.  However, for me I want a pizza party.  Don’t do it in a funeral home, those places scare people.  If you have to be upset, let’s not make it about how your in such a scary place.  I want pizza and Jason memorabilia scattered about.  I want my gathering to be the in-person version on an online profile.  I want my favorite movies and books and TV shows, and friends, and whatever else is used to define me, on display.

But the big question I am faced with the only true eternal question: to cremate or burry?  I’m really not sure what I want to do.  Burial is probably the norm, you get a definitive resting place that people can come to if they so choose.  However, the entire burial process seems so scary.  The iconic image of the casket can have such a strong visceral effect, I’m not sure if that’s what I want for my last harrah.

On the flip side, some people don’t like to think about their loved ones being burned up.  Me personally, I don’t care about being burned, I’m already dead.  However, if I am cremated, I don’t want to be in a jar in someone’s house. No one needs that constant depressing reminder.  No, go on a fun road trip and scatter me all over the place.  Familiar places and unfamiliar places, it doesn’t matter, just have a good time with me.

I also don’t want lots of money to be spent on my final arrangements.  If people want to bury me, buy my casket like a bottle of wine at a restaurant, go to the cheapest and then up one (just so people don’t talk).  No one is going to be spending that much time at the graveyard, so don’t waste hard earned money on the dead, instead buy something cool in my honor.  Buy a nice surround sound.  It’s a good practical memorial that won’t be wasted.  If you expect your legacy to be at your grave site, then you probably aren’t worth remembering.  But I still don’t know for sure if I want to be buried or not.

Aquamantra

Many Whole Food grocery stores are now selling Aquamantra bottled water. Aquamantra is a magical bottled water. These bottles have been infused with positive phrases like “I am grateful” or “I am healthy”, and through the use of quantum mechanics, the water makes the phrase on the bottle true for you after you drink it.

The site claims the creator isDr. Masaru Emotowho was made famous by the the quantum physics movie What the Bleep Do We Know where he taped emotionally charged words onto glasses of water. He then studied the ice crystals and according to his findings, all the happy words spawned beautiful water crystals, and all the mean words spawned ugly water crystals. Because the human body is made up of 90% water, it also is subject to this kind of “quantum magic.” So for $2 to $3 Dr. Masaru Emoto will sell you magic happy water that will make you lucky, happy, and healthy.

So if you’re an attractive blond girl, you too might be an Aquamantra drinker:

Aquamantra is also “Proven to to change your Aura”. Grammar aside, it has to be true.

Q: What do Wal-Mart, and Obama and anti-virus software have in common? A: Apple

Apple iPhones are going to be sold for $100.00 before the new year at Wal-Mart!  Remember when iPhones were $500.00 about a year ago?  Also some other poor guy died at Wal-Mart.  He stole a bunch of stuff and an employee and some other guy held in face down in the parking lot until he mysteriously died.

Apple pulled a virus warning from thier website because it was “Bad PR.”  Apparently there was a page that recommended users use anti-virus software, but that scared Mac users so they took it down.  Some big wig just claimed the page was outdated and therefore no longer relevant.

Obama was caught using a Zune!  Some news website crashed the other day because word of him using a Zune caused so much traffic that it temporarily went down.  According to the report, he usually uses and iPod, but this particular day, he was Zuning.

justthrive.com

I’ve recently signed up for justthrive.com. This site pulls all your financial information from all your prospective financial websites and gives you a concise view of your financial health. It looks at your bank accounts, your credit cards, your loans and mortgages, your investments and gives you a score based on how good you are with money. The site is fantastic,

It tally’s how much you spend on going out vs buying groceries,
It makes suggestions oh how much more or less you should try to spend,

It tells you how much your lifestyle costs per day,
It tells you how long you could survive without a job,

It estimates you how much you will make per year once you retire.

Don’t be afraid of putting up your precious financial into. The site does not contain any account numbers, and you have not access to the money that’s visible on the site, it only gives you a birds-eye-view of what you are spending your money on. Worse case scenario, if someone just had to break in, they might find out that your debt has just decreased $400 since last month.

On an irrelevant note, check out my new Hanna Montana tissue box for my car!

Circuit City: Not My Favorite

When I was 17 I worked in the “Advanced Consumer Electronics” (alarm clocks and telephones) department at Circuit City.  One of my managers was a large bearded man who went by the name Wolf. He had giant gawdy gargoyle rings on his fingers and wore a pentagram pendant around his neck. Once I even found a homemade pentagram token under my cash register, it made me feel strange.

The dark lords didn’t serve Circuit City too well, Circuit City has filed for chapter 11. I’m OK with that. Once Best Buy came on the scene I never looked back. Circuit City was dark and depressing, the commission driven employees stressed me out. True, the desperation to make a sale caused Circuit City employees to become experts, but I’ll take lazy Best Buy folks any day.