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I swore last year would be my final year of coming up short on my taxes. I’ve been paying into “The Man” very year for the last 7 years. I know, I know, everyone pays into “The Man” and that it comes right out of my paycheck. But I’ve farted around a lot with my W-4 in the past which has caused me to come up short every single year. Accountants will tell you that its good to come up short because it means you’ve been living on the government’s dime. What they fail to tell you is that you will eventually have to pay it back in a year.

After paying in the heftiest ever last year I vowed to get my act together and never have it happen again. I found some online aides that helped me determine the right number to put at the bottom of my W-4 and changed my withholdings for 2005. I submitted the form to my employer and prayed I had done it right. The frustrating part is waiting a year to find out.

I filed my taxes last night and was quite happy to find out that “The Man” owed me this year! No scrambling to save this year! w00t! The pennies can stay in the couch!

For the second time in 6 months we’ve received a phone call that our pup, Sydney, had to be rushed to emergency vet while we were away. Last time we dropped everything and rushed back home to be with her. This time, though, we were too far away and had to wait it out on a very long plane-ride home.

The first time she fell ill was in September. At the time the doctors thought it was an allergic reaction to a bee sting. Sydney had stopped producing the natural steriod that helps blood clot causing her to vomit and bleed. My parents found her passed out in the yard.

This time, it was no different. She was staying with my parents again when the same thing occured. No bees this time. The same round of treatment and the same round of bills came in. One night in the emergency room, one plasma transfusion, and lots of fluids fixed her right up.

The doctors insist that she must have eaten decon. This time they even suggested she ate an animal that ate decon. Their explanation seemed a little far fetched.

We spent the next day taking her to the regular vet clinic. They explained to us that her separation anxiety probably caused her to start bleeding, which is normal for dogs. But her lower than normal ability to clot causes a very violent reaction. The diagnosis sounded a little more believable.

We still don’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s being put through the wringer of tests. The plastic is running out of space and I don’t want to make hard decisions.

Check out this video from Japan, a tutorial to quick shirt folding. I tried this out this morning and it has changed my life.

Earlier this week a local radio station was discussing the movie Brokeback Mountain . The morning show consists of 2 men and 2 women. One of the men (We’ll call him #1 for the sake of argument) on the show had seen the movie. The other male host (male guy #2) began ranting about how he wouldn’t be caught dead going to see a movie about gay men. #1 argued that there was no more than 60 seconds of actual homosexual sexual content and referred to the straight dude’s guide to Brokeback Mountain.

#2 continued to rant, stating, “Even 60 seconds is too much.” His commentary seemed a little excessive, then he opened up the phone lines. Soon, it had turned into an all out gay-bashing segment.

I was stunned that I was actually hearing this on the radio. I understand that some radio stations want an edge to their content but this is not typically one of those stations. I tried to keep my liberal opinions in check. But I still felt their comments crossed the line.

I sent the following letter:

Hello -

I was more than a little put off by your commentary about the movie Brokeback Mountain this morning. I thought it was quite disrespectful of gays. Taking calls was inviting the ignorant out to showcase their stupidity.

I don’t think you would have had the same type of conversation if it were a movie involving black people. Try this next time you want to talk about homosexuals, replace the word “gay” with the word “black” and see if you’re still willing to say the same thing. Would you come out on the air and state you will not see a movie about black people? If you are a decent and respectful person you wouldn’t.

You are doing nothing more than perpetuating inequality and creating barriers between people. Shame on you.

Jason.

P.S. I’m straight.

Just to be fair, their form-letter response:

Thank you for your comments, and I’m sorry if you found our positions offensive.

Courtney pointed out that I felt I needed to tell them I was not gay. I was trying to make the point that if I was offended as a straight man, imagine how a gay person must feel. Does being straight make my argument stronger or weaker? I don’t know for certain.

I finished A Million Little Pieces over the holidays. I ranted earlier about it becoming slow and repetitive in the middle of th book. I’m here to say the last 100 pages made up for it. I still stand by the comment that after Frey’s turning point (around page 140) the book goes downill. It’s still good enough to read, though.

The Smoking Gun has a very interesting investigative report into the stories told by James Frey. They attempt to discredit Frey by illustrating some creative embellishments he took in the book. During one instance with the police Frey mumbles “Fucking Pig” which lands him in deep do-do with the cops. TSG pulls the police report and finds no mention of the comment and concludes that his embellishments are too much and he’s full of crap. Hardly a strong argument in my mind. Of course, this comes from an admitted embellisher.

I’ve fallen in love with an application called Hamachi. It is a peer-to-peer tool that allows anyone to create secure “private” networks (VPNs) over the internet. Typically VPNs are only used by businesses and the super-nerdy. Hamachi allows the common folk to easily create one.

You’re probably thinking, “That’s great, Jason, but why do I need this?” Well, you probably don’t. But I do. It allows me to create a small, personal network of computers over the internet. Whether I’m at home or at a friends house I can access my computers as if I’m at my house. VPNs can be created without Hamachi but it’s complicated. Very, very complicated.

Even better, Hamachi allows me to create more than one private network. I can create a network of friends and/or family. We can easily share our (legal) files. No more monkey business with torrents, FTP, and email box quotas.

A few friends at work bet their hair on the Rose Bowl. Check out Murphy’s site for the results.

Since I’m ranting about the gym anyways, I’d like to add the fact that I have a hard time taking the workers at the gym seriously if they aren’t in shape. I’ll cut all the machine wipers and the card scanning greeters some slack since their job doesn’t involve fitness directly. And honestly, the trainers are always in good shape. But have you seen the sales people? Christ, I don’t know if they’ve ever stepped foot out of their office and onto a treadmill. I won’t buy anything from anyone who hasn’t tried their own product.

When I joined the gym two years ago Frank warned me that the gym becomes crowded right after the New Year. Whether it be the gluttony of the holidays or new resolutions, people tend to show up for about a month after January 1st.

This year I decided to pay particular attention to new members, to see if this prediction as true. Since Thanksgiving I have noticed a steady increasing stream of sign-ups. (If you are wondering how I know about new sign-ups, I work out at the prime time after work and hit the treadmill nearest to the sign-up desk.) Over the course of 45 minutes I noticed about 3-4 new sign ups each day.

I went to the gym for the first time in ‘06 last night and, as predicted, the place was booming. But I seemed to recognize that most were the same people who are always there. They were all just there at the same time.

I happened to notice that many were fidgeting with new gadgets. Whether it be a new iPod, a fancy new heart monitoring watch, or some new fitness outfit, many people seemed to have come to the gym to give their new dodads a trial run. People were walking into each other as they pushed, plugged, and turned on their gizmos.

It seems the gifts of gizmos has driven this years influx of gym rats. I’ll let you know if they’re still around in February.

I recently went to visit my grandparents who live on the Mississippi River in La Crescent, MN. For the longest time their neighborhood has been comprised of cottages and cabins. 20 years ago their river-front property wasn’t more than a weekend get-away for most. But over the course of the last 8 or so years builders have moved in, bulldozed most of the cottages, and built monsterous houses that span entire property lots.

I don’t typically bring my laptop with me when I go to visit. My grandparents use dial-up for internet. This time I decided to, just to have something to occupy my time. Before I left I had installed an application called NetStumbler that does a pretty good job locating and listing wireless access points. I fired it up at the grandparents and was surprised to find someone in the neighborhood had a Linksys router. Gitty with excitement I got to work.

The signal was weak and seemed to come and go. I spent the better part of a night trying to figure out where the signal was coming from. After a little “war-walking” (That’s what Courtney calls it) I found that it was coming from a house to the south. The signal was still too faint for my to get solid communication to the DHCP server on the router. I attempted to set my IP address manually guessing the network default was either a 10.0.x or 192.168.0.x based network. I had no luck and gave up for the night.

The next morning the fog was hanging a little lower than before and the clouds were moving in. Perfect for bouncing a wifi signal my way! I fired up my laptop again and started away. After letting my Intel wifi card do its thing for a few extra minutes I was finally able to retrieve an IP address from the DHCP server, on the 192.168.1.x network. I was sooo close! Damn! The signal was still very weak and I had a hard time doing much of anything. I pulled up a web page and showed off my trimuph to the family. They were less than impressed but it solitified my nerd status.

So I did it. I accomplished getting on to the internet through a wireless connection no faster than my grantparents dial-up connection that already existed. But it was fun nonetheless.