April 14, 2008

There were 4 posts published on April 14, 2008 (this is page 1 of 1).

Special delivery

I checked the status of my Amazon shipment tonight and blinked when it said “delivered.” Sure enough, I opened the front door and there it was: the Planet Bike mega-bright bike light I mentioned and a CD thrown in to qualify for free shipping: Cake’s B-Sides and Rarities.

The Cake CD makes my second CD purchase that resulted from Pandora. I love their cover of Mahna Mahna. Its cool in only the way Cake could make it.

The bike light really is bright. I’ll get an opportunity to try it out Thursday night.

And what a wonder it is

After tracking down an issue with our VoIP provider here at work, I rediscovered the wondershaper script: a tool which adds quality of service rules to Linux-based firewalls. It immediately cleared up my dropped voice packet issue at work and has worked well at home, too.

Since the script was written in 2002 and I first discovered it not long afterward, I had been under the impression that I was using it at home. It turns out I wasn’t, so its good to have put it in place again.

One of these days I’m going to come up to speed on all the quality of service minutia.

First entertaining at Tonsler

We had an interesting weekend. Saturday afternoon, the family and I were in a TV commercial (more on that in a bit). Sunday, I went north to the Hobhouse house, borrowed my neighbor Frank’s truck, and fetched the rain tank for use at our new home. My new neighbor Brian and I wrestled it over the fence into our new backyard. Not long afterward, Frank and Brea brought their kids over and we had our first real entertaining in our home.

It sure was fun seeing our friends again. Made our new home seem even friendlier. And margaritas sure are tasty when one has no need to drive anywhere.

Taxes out of thin air

Kelly and I finished up our taxes last night. I thought it was pretty sneaky that our tax software asked if we had a refund from last year. Seems the IRS taxes refunds now. I’m all for paying my fair share, but getting taxing on money that I don’t owe? Well, that’s a bit much.

  • Refund = money you don’t owe
  • Paying taxes on money you don’t owe = a legal fallacy worthy of Alberto Gonzales

And some people wonder why others don’t trust their government