Have you ever read a book, and upon finishing it, immediately wish that you had read the book at an earlier point in your life? This has happened to me only twice…and I read quite a bit. The first time I felt this pang was after reading ‘Home’ by Witold Rybczynski. This is a book that I feel should be mandatory reading for all architects. It really gets to the root of why and how we humans live in a place. I read this book during the end of my 4th year of college. Once having read the book I knew that it would have been of immense value to me if I had read it at an earlier point in my education. I will write more about Rybczynski’s book another time.
The second time that I read a book and wished that I had read it sooner has just occurred. I just finished Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’. This is a fantastic fable that is about discovering any following one’s personal purpose and destiny. This is the book that we all should have read at the age of 19 or 20. I highly recommend this book to all.
Well, there is nothing like tax season to get everyone’s passions rolling. All procrastination aside, I would like to proudly point out that this year I accomplished my taxes 100% on my own.... hopefully this wont backfire on me (please cross your fingers)
2 years ago, Rheagan and I did the H&R Block thing. They spent all of 10 minutes going through our stuff. I felt like they were making way to much money for the effort that they put into our return. Shucks! The fee was almost the same size as the return. This made me feel stupid.
So last year I went into cheep-skate/John Wayne mode and decided to try to do the taxes on my own. As you might have guessed, this didn’t workout at all. You would think that a levelheaded guy with a college education would be able to figure out how to file taxes. This, alas, is not the case.
I started out by going to the IRS website and downloading the hated 1040. This seemed simple enough at first, but then you see that there are almost 50 versions of the form 1040 (1040A, 1040EZ, 1040X, 1040T, 1040r2d2, 1040yourasuckerifyoutrytodoyourtaxesonyourown, and so on). I spent a good hour or two searching though the IRS’s labyrinthine web site just trying to find some kind of guidance on which form to use. Finally, with a guess, I went with the basic form 1040 (the one with out a suffix).
I started going through the 1040 and it would say things like “to complete this section, see page 78”. See page 78 of what? My 1040 only had 2 pages. I could only assume that this ‘78’ was referring to some directions. I did a couple of searches for form 1040 instructions. With the search: ‘1040 directions 2002’, The IRS internal search engine pulled out no less then 150,000 matches. The first 50+ of which did nothing for me.
Turns out that the IRS web site is truly useless to the average citizen. If a person doesn’t already know tax-ease, then he or she will be hopelessly lost. (Although, I must admit that the IRS site is somewhat friendlier this year than last.)
This frustration continued until I finally gave up and filed for an automatic extension. A few months later I picked up the 2002 version of TurboTax on sale. TT made things much easier. It explained all of the forms and walked me though them. The important part is that I learned enough to do the taxes all by myself for the 2003 effort.
It is amazing to me that we have to spend potentially very large amounts of money in the private sector (H&R Block etc.) just to fulfill the basic civic duty of accurately paying taxes. This should be easier.
If you still haven’t mailed in your tax return, you still have a few hours to get with your buddy in Hawaii…where the post office is still open for a few hours.
Thanks God that’s over with! I finally completed and mailed my taxes out. I even had 2 1/2 days to spare. You may be thinking to yourselves: “Good grief! What a procrastinator!”. If you are thinking this to yourself, then it is clear to me that you have no idea what the true meaning of procrastination is. Last year, for all sorts of clever reasons and excuses, I didn’t finish the taxes until sometime around September or October (I forget which). That my friend; is true procrastination.
To all of those folks out there who haven’t finished their form 1040 or extension paper work. I salute you.
Well its official, Lucas has set the world record. He successfully packed more poo into one diaper than has ever been done before in the history of mankind. I know that this is the world record because to get more poo onto the diaper would defy each and every one of Newton’s laws. Actually, I don’t really want to get too descriptive... Let us just say that Lucas must feel very proud. I suppose that I should feel proud as well, considering that I am the one who changed the most poo packed diaper of all time and space. Yet, somehow this accomplishment feels hollow to me. Perhaps the personal pain and suffering that I have put my five senses through was almost too much for me to bear.
Some may find it hard to believe that Lucas has truly set the world record. I imagine that every parent claims to have changed the most poo packed diaper of all time. In response to your doubts, I submit the following 7 facts.
1. The diaper was a specially ordered, super baby-comfort type, cloth diaper. In other words: Large, porous, and capable of absorbing vast amounts of liquid and… other stuff.
2. Rheagan, a hardened and war tested U.S. Marine, fainted when she saw the diaper in question (Thankfully, she has had a complete recovery)
3. Jessie, our cat, also fainted on location and is now unwilling to enter the changing room ever again. (She is expected to have a full physical recovery but may continue to have nightmares about diapers for some time)
4. Since seeing the diaper, I have developed an uncontrollable twitch in my left eye (unfortunately, my doctor has told me that my condition may take a full 18 years to cure)
5. There was a full moon on the night of the incident
6. The National Inquirer has tried to contact me not less than 7 times in an effort to get an interview regarding this new world record.
7. I am not prone to exaggeration… much
Ok, so it wasn’t big bro that I spotted prowling the Internet. Instead, it turned out to be Little Cous: Big Brother’s shorter, less obtrusive, free-capitalist loving Cousin (see comments to yesterday’s post). Sometimes I get their shadows mixed up… very sorry about that.
This last weekend, I gave into my vanity and decided to add a counter to my website. I wanted to know how many people were checking out frantzworkshop.com. (For the benefit of those rare few who are less computer savvy than I, a counter is a device that counts the number of times that a website is visited) Turns out, counters are very easy to acquire. All I had to do was go to one of the many free web counter providers and agree that in that I will show the web counter’s logo on my website in exchange for the counter. After agreeing, the counter company sends html code to imbed into the website. The code enables the counter to work. Getting the counter code took all of 5 minutes with the aide of a google search. The hard part was trying to figure out how to get the code into my website. Normally, slipping new code into a website is a synch. However, my website is far more complicated than my tender webmaster experience can handle. Movabletype, the organization that created the program that was used to create this website is the culprit of my difficulty (man that was a mouthful…). Er maybe, it is just that my ignorance is the culprit…
I spent some time fumbling through the administrative options on the control panel of my website in an effort to find the source code (fumbling is definitely the operative word). In the mist of my almost random clicking, I came across an already existing counter on my website. Only this counter, which only the webmaster can see, is more than a counter. It is a comprehensive accounting firm. It counts, categorizes, and identifies every single visit and visitor to this website. It tells me which IP address clicked on which picture and at what time. Additionally, the imbedded-counter groups all of the acquired information into graphs, pies, and charts. Looking at the information made feel like I was at a WorldCom board meeting…it felt uncomfortable.
I was/am shocked. How can it be that every single click of the mouse is tracked, cataloged, and plotted? For some reason I had it in my head that it was not possible to tell who was visiting a website. Well, so much for anonymity. If my website dose this (and I didn’t even know it!), then it is only reasonable to assume that every web site can do this. The good news is that generally speaking, it is not possible to tell which IP address belong to whom. However, some IP addresses leave many clues. For instance, movabletype, is able to distinguish between various kinds of servers (military, educational, organizational, etc). It is only fair for me to let every one know that every click on the internet has the potential to be seen. Seen in detail!
For my part, all I can say is that I will not seek to find out which IP address belongs to who. I would consider this a violation of your privacy. Furthermore, if I am able, I will turn off all of this statistics gathering shenanigans.
Anyways, as you can see, I didn’t add the counter…
Darth Poppy: "Accept the clean diaper, Lucas. Accept it and join me, together we can overthrow your mother and end this destructive diaper rash. Then we can rule the house as father and son"
Lucas: "Ill never let you change my diaper!"
Darth Poppy: "Give in to the clean side"
Lucas: "Never!"
....They built Deep Thought, the second greatest computer of all time and space, to tell them the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything. After seven and a half million years the computer divulges the answer: 42.
"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Happy Birthday to luxfx
This has got to be the strangest story to release on April Fools day:
Today the United Kingdom declassified information confirming that in the 1950s they had worked towards developing a Nuclear Device that used a live chicken as one of its key components. The nuke in this case was used as a mine to prevent the advance of the Soviets if WW-III were to break out. The Nuke in question was very sensitive to cold weather. The solution that our tea-drinking hat-wearing brethren came up with was to stuff a few live chickens inside of the nuclear device to keep it warm enough to operate properly. Everyone is swearing up and down that this is not a hoax.
A more compete story can be found at the following links:
ABC
San Francisco Chronicle
Yahoo
On a side note, the US Air Force considered using live chickens to steer the B-52 launched cruise missiles. However, it turns out the chickens weren’t able to attain the requisite ‘Top Secret’ security clearance so the project was scraped. ;)
There is something strange about driving a car in silence (see yesterday’s post). Did I say ‘silence’? What I mean to say is driving in silence alongside of a frothy 4.0 liter V6 Jeep Cherokee engine in full-tilt-boogie just 2.5 feet away. Hooah!
What is silence anyways? I don’t think that I have experienced a period of true silence in years. There always seems to be the sound of some manmade machine within earshot. Always! Be it a car, a plane over head, the Air Conditioning system, or even a wristwatch. The ‘made’ world is utterly unavoidable. Therefore, I suppose that I should clarify things a bit. For the purposes of this post, silence means: No sound other than the frothy 4.0 liter V6 Jeep Cherokee engine in full-tilt-boogie just 2.5 feet away.
Anyways, as I drive in silence, the most remarkable thing happens to me: I have complete thoughts. At first, this may seem like a very simple thing but I feel that it is also profound. Every time that I listen to a radio show or music (or TV), my mind is guided in specific directions and then suddenly interrupted, only to be guided into other directions. All of my thoughts become reactions to the mood or lyrics of particular songs and focus on the catchy commercials that tell me, not less than 3 times, that I can not live without a certified pre-owned Trabant or that Fast-Food-Joint X’s cheeseburgers taste good because their cows are ‘happier’. Pre-owned Trabants? Happier cows? Somebody out there has a very dim view of the average consumer. Why do we willingly subject ourselves to this kind of commercialist madness? I find that I am not my own master when the radio is on. This is why I have decided to take up an additional ‘religious’ practice. Instead of a Zen Buddhist or Transcendentalist, I have become a Trans-Highway Contemplateist.
Operating a sport utility vehicle for 2 hours a day in pure uninterrupted silence, is by no means a form of meditation but it is the best thing that I have. Don’t be fooled, Trans-Highway Contemplation is not for the faint of heart! It’s major tenants are no radio, no fast food, and yes, no cell phone. The major deity is the immaculate gleaming Green-Light of lead footed joy and it’s great nemesis are the utterly unholy Red-Light of malice and its wicked cousin the always lurking Double Yellow Line of vehicular passing hindrance.
I suppose that the other major American religion is that of Water Closet Fundamentalist (WCF), as the water closet is the only other possible location of uninterrupted thought in our great fee nation. I once practiced WCF in earnest. However, being a father has caused me to neglect some of those time honored WC fundamentals. I will write more on WCF another time. Until then: Have a happy Trans-Highway Contemplation day.