My sister, brother in law, niece and nephew are all out of town on vacation, and early this morning I had to take their 15 year old dog to be put to sleep. What a horrible phone call to have to make.
Sweet dreams, Kauai Dog.
I should have been an accountant. I went to H&R Block today to file my taxes. Although I happened upon a copy of TurboTax, I decided to have someone else file for me as a) People who have their taxes filed by a professional are audited less and b) I have a Schedule-C which usually has a higher rate of audit (thus, in reference to point (a), this was more reason to file with a pro). Having my copy of TurboTax in hand, I decided to prepare my own taxes as a dry run, just to see. It wasn’t the easiest thing (Schedule C,s and Misc -1099’s are annoyingly long), but it wasn’t too bad. And so, given that it took me all of 1 hour to do my taxes, I figured the guy at H&R Block should be able to do it in at least the same amount of time.
Unfortunately, it was a disaster. The guy fumbled around for almost 2 hours. When I did my taxes myself (which I know I did correctly), I got a pretty hefty refund. He messed some things up and so I mentioned where he had made some mistakes. But the first iteration ended with me owing $1200?!?!?. I knew this was wrong and pointed out where I thought he had mistakes but was unsure (he was supposed to be a tax pro right??). Second iteration, I owe $800. Still wrong. And so, he gets up and talks to who I assume is a more ’senior’ tax pro (mind you, this guy is easily in his 50’s and the ’senior’ tax pro is at least the same age….).. neither of these guys can figure it out. So on to hour 3 I finally ask him if I can make some edits. He was hesitant, but I mentioned that I had an inclination as to where the mistake was… After 3.5 hours, finally, the refuned appears. Though, even then it isn’t the same as what I had originally thought it would be (it was about $100 off), but at the end of the day, it was done. Unfortunately, they charged me $209 which was somewhat ridicuolous as I had essentially completed my own taxes on their software (their software sucks btw). So at the end of the day I’m down over $300 (the H&R charge + the $100 I’m missing) + 3.5 hours of my life, but my taxes are done….
I need to find a good accountant who knows what they’re doing. Or, I need to suck it up and file my own taxes and get over my fear of being audited……
I just found out, I’m related to George Bush, and John Kerry.
My mom’s been researching our families genealogy and ran across this information:
The genealogical relationships between George Walker Bush and John Forbes Kerry
George Bush and John Kerry share the same ancestor of Henry Herrick, which is my ancestor as well. I’m going to go into the corner and cry now. I think I’m going to just focus on my ancestores roles in burning witches at Salem instead.
Unfortunately I’m not related to Hugh Hefner. That would be cool.
I just wanted to check in real quick and take the blame for bringing this apocalyptic snow storm upon us. Yesterday I took advantage of the beautiful 50+ degree weather to wash my car.
Obviously due to my chronic sinning and blasphemy, God decided to pay a good Fuck You upon me and my beautifully sparkling automobile by dumping a craptillion tons of snow on me while I was driving to work.
Now, don’t get me wrong, the nice 1.5 hours it took me to get here were a pleasant kick to the nuts, but I still take solace in knowing that my until recently clean car is making millions of other people miserable as well.
Take THAT, suckers!
Yesterday my company laid off roughly 10 % of its overall system’s employee’s. We were warned of the upcoming layoffs to our department on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday morning they started pulling employee’s into conference rooms. As they day dragged on, more and more cubes started to become empty, while the grapevine list of laid off employees grew. Everyone’s feelings at the office were numb. We were loosing friends and co-workers. We all tried focusing on the severance package, and that job market being much better now then a few years ago.
By lunchtime, it became apparent which jobs they were targeting. Developers. Having realized this, I figured my time was soon at hand. In the late afternoon I was called into my managers office, and I was told I would be keeping my job. To my surprise, I survived this round of layoffs. When it was over, only myself and another developer survived. All other developers in our building were laid off.
The age of outsourcing has finally come to my company. Everyone is now expecting the company to announce which outsourcing company we will be contracting. My future is still uncertain. I don’t know what my role will be, I don’t know if I will be offered a job with the new outsourcing company, I don’t know if there will be another round of layoff’s and I’ll be cut then.
In many ways I am envious of those who got laid off, their uncertainty is over. Now those who got laid off get to hunt for a new job, with a fairly decent severance package. I survived this round, now I am left with a choice I always had, do I ride it out? Or do I look to see what opportunities lay elsewhere?