Plans, People and Pain

The word of the week is quotidian. Because it sounds cooler than it is.

March 14 -Taxez

It used to be that I was afraid of tax time, or at least very wary - it's like that for a lot of people, as many don't understand how taxes work. Having dealt with filing taxes with people for six years now at work, I can say that the majority of people have no clue and simply expect large sums of money back with no aforethought or preparation... then get annoyed when they owe $$. I'll leave it for another blog entry to explain the ins and outs of ensuring you are likely to GET a return - there's lots you can do. Myself, I just make sure I pay as little as possible to DO my own taxes... like using Turbotax, formerly QuickTax. I've already filed my own this year for less than twenty bucks, and I didn't pay a cent to figure it all out beforehand - love that website. It's worked for me for five years now, lets me plug in all sorts of numbers and save everything to my PC drive when I'm done. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes to see how their tax numbers work as you enter the info, and see if you can make your return better by playing with your options - for free all the way!

March 15 - Painful Cars

Looks like it's time for a new vehicle... but not for me. Today my mom revealed that she's in a LOT more pain than she's been letting on due to her knee joints, so much so that it's excruciating for her to get in and out of the current Mazda3. Which means we now have to search for a deal on a Mazda5, which she has no trouble with as the seat is much higher-set. Which also means my carefully-laid plans for financial parity are going out the window again for another five years or so, give or take. Makes me want to go buy a nice solid bench-vice and stick my head into it to see how much more pressure I can take before my head implodes. Solve one problem and another is right there waiting to jump you for your wallet. Maybe I should just sell off everything I own and go find a nice mountain to become a hermit on... I'm already halfway there where I'm living now.

March 16 - Prisoners of Gravity

Oh joy! After years of going without, now millions can enjoy Prisoners Of Gravity directly from the source on TV Ontario! Up until now, only a few low-quality episodes of this landmark sci-fi talk show were available on YouTube and pained the eye to watch. Now TVO has put dozens of episodes up on the web on their homepage, all of them in excellent quality that will suck you in and spit you out a happier, wiser person... or at least entertain you. I loved Prisoners Of Gravity when it came out, not only because it used the then-cutting-edge Amiga computer for the graphical touches, but because it had ALL the coolest sci-fi / fantasy authors of the day on there. Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock and Spider Robinson were all recurring guests, as was Robert. J. Sawyer and many others. Go. Watch. Now!

March 17 - Scammy Bracelets

At work, I often deal with fraudsters, scam artists, petty criminals and the results that these scum have on regular people. For every heart-warming story you see about people giving back to the world, there's a dozen( or more )untold ones where people were bilked by others with no moral or conscience. Take, for example, the makers of the Q-Ray 'pain relief' bracelet - a total placebo product that made millions for its creators while doing nothing for the purchasers. Thankfully, the makers of the Q-Ray were taken to court and fined heftily - read through the article and you'll laugh in delight at what the presiding judge had to say about it concerning the effectiveness of the bracelet( hint: it involves aliens! ).

March 18 - Half the day at work

Ack! Another example of why being a manager stinks: one of my CSR's had an allergic reaction to some medication yesterday night, and as they were scheduled to open today... you get the picture. Instead of sleeping in( slightly )after my 2 days off( luxurious! )I rushed into work to open the store( late )and spent a total of 12 hours there with an hour off for lunch( unpaid )and a few sanity breaks interspersed. Mercifully it wasn't an insanely busy day, but I was still beat at the end. It's also a good example of corporate doubletalk: I catch flack for every hour of O/T paid out, but when someone's sick it becomes VERY apparent that we don't have ENOUGH staff to cover. In effect, the company is squeezing all it can by reducing payroll costs to the bare minimum to serve customers, and this has its fallout when things go loopy. In comparison, the Tim Horton's next door has TWENTY people working some days... makes me wonder what their monthly revenues are - I should have paid more attention when I worked there last.

March 19 -  Moons

Tonight was the 'Supermoon' - where the moon was 30,000km closer to the earth at apogee. Many astronomers( but not astrologers )went gaga( not Lady )over this. Me, not so much - I've seen the moon on many a clear cold night through a telescope, and it's pretty... but dead. How much more interesting would it be to have a moon with clouds, or ice, or anything but a stark white face that never changes? I've a fondness for a scifi series by David Weber  that started with a book called Mutineer's Moon, as it postulates that our moon is not really a moon, but a gigantic spaceship trapped in orbit for millennia... and no, it has nothing to do with the Death Star. Grab a copy if you can, it's a very worthy read, or just read the first 24 chapters right at Baen Books online!

March 20 -  Spring... springs.

Today is the first official day of Spring, and for the most part it lived up to it here in Victoria - and I was stuck inside, of course! The sun was out and the clouds were few until very late in the afternoon, so I saw rafts of people moving around outside with their jackets open or just in shirtsleeves; glorious. Many people commented that it 'smelled like Spring' outside, and my brain kicked up a little factoid: Spring smells like it does because of bacteria in the soil - don't believe me? Have a look here and wonder at the, er, wonders of science. Search that same site for answers to all sorts of pithy questions you may have about the world around you, without having to travel to your local science centre; score one for the 'net.

So that's it for another week here in BC - I'm really looking forward to the good weather to get out on my cycle, as well as do some foot exploration hereabouts. Maybe even some trails?