This ‘n That Thursday

• Tonight was the second episode of the new season of Survivor – the 20th (hard to believe, isn’t it?)  .  I think that Heroes vs. Villains is going to be the best season yet.  I’ve loved Boston Rob in every season he has played in and I’m rooting for him again.  If I have to pick a runner-up to Rob, it will be Russell.  We’re not seeing a whole lot from him yet…  but I think there are going to be a lot of surprises to come.  What does it mean when I’m rooting for the Villains? 

• Not having a snowblower anymore this year, I want one of these!
  
  

  
  Who can resist a robot snowplow that eats snow and poops out snow blocks? 

  As a side note, I was talking with one of my neighbors who is going to set me up with a snow blade for my tractor.  Next winter should hopefully be a lot easier when it comes to snow removal over here – I’ve been doing quite a bit of shoveling… 

 

• If you and/or your family made less than $49,000 last year, you can get your taxes done for free at the University of Buffalo by IRS-certified accounting students from the School of Management.  I think I might take advantage of this.  I usually do my own taxes, so it would be interesting to see if there are any tax credits I’ve been missing out on.  Dates and details are here.

• Please Rob Me – I’m not sure if this is such a smart web site to have.  In theory it’s a good idea to raise awareness of the information that people put “out there”, but what’s going to happen when someone really does get robbed?  If it’s found that the burglars found information on the internet that helped them rob a house, regardless of whether or not it was from this site, they are still going to get blamed.  It will be interesting to see what the legal implications will be.  And they will happen.

• How cool is this?

   

  … However, this guy has waaaaaaay too much time on his hands!

 

First :(

We all like to be first in stuff. First prize at the fair. First place in a race. First or top of your class. Well lucky me – I get to live in the county that is first in the annual ranking of highest taxed counties. Oh joy. My money problems are bad enough – I don’t need any help.

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I record a lot of stuff on TV – usually movies that I want to see eventually. Often, quite a while passes before I actually sit down and watch the show. That was the case with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I’ve never read the book, but loving most things sci-fi, I wanted to see it. The SciFi (now SyFy) channel had it on a while ago (months ago?) and I finally got around to watching it.

I can say that I will probably never read the book – I didn’t really like the movie… the whole story/plot was just a bit too weird for me. However, there was one part of the movie that grabbed my imagination: At one point a really cool gun was used – if you were hit by the gun’s beam, you would see the point-of-view of the shooter. Wouldn’t it be great if something like that existed in real life? Not only to have other people to see my point-of-view, but for me to see theirs as well. Can you imagine how different the world would be if everyone had one of those guns? I wonder if it would be better or worse? As much as I would like to say it would make the world a better place, I could see it going either way…

And I knew that the voice of Marvin was Alan Rickman. The IMDb is one the internet’s greatest inventions – I use it all the time. I sleep better at night because I don’t stay awake wondering about stuff that shouldn’t be keeping me awake 🙂

What the…???

OK, so I decided to finally sit down and do my taxes. This year they are pretty straight forward, so I wasn’t anticipating any problems – except for a couple years when I had cashed in some stocks, I’ve usually done my taxes myself.

I chose TaxAct to do the nasty deed online, a program I’ve used many times before. This year, the program was pretty bad. There was way too much advertising in between the steps, but the worst part was BEFORE I EVEN ENTERED ANY INFORMATION, the program told me that I owed New York State $6!!! What the hell???? (For the record, I got a refund from my state taxes last year. It was very small, but still a refund)

I finished up putting in my information anyway, but didn’t finalize anything. I had read on another blog (for the life of me, I can’t remember which one) that someone had done their taxes on two different programs and got two different answers. I’m going to try another program and see what I come up there.

Hopefully I’ll make out better with another program than what I did with this one – I was reminded that the less money you make, the smaller your refund is 😦

Stay tuned!