July, 2011 archive
I Get Email 0
Actually, if the IRS thinks you qualify for a refund, say because of a mistake on your return, they just send it to you.
Dear Internal Revenue Service customer,
After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of $120.50.
Please submit the tax refund form and allow us 3-5 business days in order to process it.
To access the form for your tax refund, please Click Here.
NOTE!
Thank you,
Tax Refund Deparment Internal Revenue Service.
A whois tells me the “Click Here” website is hosted in Taiwan.
whois 220.132.160.64
% [whois.apnic.net node-1]
% Whois data copyright terms http://www.apnic.net/db/dbcopyright.htmlinetnum: 220.129.0.0 – 220.143.255.255
netname: HINET-NET
country: TW
descr: CHTD, Chunghwa Telecom Co.,Ltd.
descr: Data-Bldg.6F, No.21, Sec.21, Hsin-Yi Rd.
descr: Taipei Taiwan 100
admin-c: HN27-AP
tech-c: HN28-AP
status: ALLOCATED PORTABLE
changed: hostmaster@twnic.net 20030611
mnt-by: MAINT-TW-TWNIC
source: APNIC
(snip)
Export the Troops, McMansion Dept. (Updated and Kicked to the Top) 0
Absurd.
Their plans were for a 2,700 square-foot house.
I don’t think the big old Southern farm house at Pine View Farm has that many square feet; if it does, it’s just barely (see the banner–that’s it right there). I know that the largest house I have owned since growing up and leaving home was an 1800 square-foot three bedroom split, which was large enough to raise three children just fine with only occasional bloodletting.
Addendum, Later that Same Week:
Check out StevenD’s post on this. He goes in to much more detail and it’s even more infuriating than the short item I found in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution led me to believe.
(Link fixed.)
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Impotent, but polite.
About 7 p.m., the man reached in his pocket and apparently discharged the weapon by accident, shooting himself once in the groin.
Bachmann’s Floundering Fathers 0
All seriousness aside, wingnut “history” is dangerous.
Persons who do not understand–indeed, who intentionally misinterpret–the past have no hope of dealing with the present nor of preparing for the future.
Via The Richmonder.
The Sociopath Party 0
The Rude One sums it up quite succinctly in discussing the situation in Minnesota:
Follow the link to undelete the expletive.
And Now for Something Completely Different 0
I’ve been playing around with my new camera.
This looks crude, but some work into it. It was originally 1280×720 and 92 MB in size.
I lightened it and resized it using Avidemux. That took some effort because, although Avidemux is a great program, it’s help file could use some work, at least for the version I have, and, as a colleague of mine once told me way back in the early days of computers,
If the program promises that it will simple, it likely won’t do what you want it to.
If the program promises that it will do everything you want it to, it will not be simple.
If the program promises that it will be simple and that it will do everything you want it to, it will likely accomplish neither.
So far, he’s not been proved wrong.
Note:
The embed works fine for me, but my Windows 7 computer claimed it was missing a plug-in to play it. It’s a standard *.avi file and should not require anything special to play.
If you have problems with the embed, please try the “Download” selection and let me know what error messages you received, using the comments.
Stewart Rips Himself to Shreds 0
Must listen.
Via Hanlon.
Boogie Woogie Budget Boys 0
Daniel Ruth at the St. Petersburg Times writes about what he calls the “Washington kabuki.” I can’t say I agree fully with this, bit I agree mostly. I’m glad he included war defense spending. A nugget:
If you are a Democrat you will not fill a $14.5 trillion hole by simply raising taxes, unless you also are willing to fiddle around with entitlement spending on stuff like Social Security and Medicare, as well as defense.
If you are a Republican you will not address the debt problem by opposing an increase in taxes, or at least making sure wealthy people and corporations pay their fair share of the tax burden they should be paying anyway. When General Electric, which made a profit of $14.2 billion last year, paid zero in corporate taxes, something is horribly nuts.
And Wesley Snipes went to jail for not paying his taxes?
For both sides, the debt crisis won’t be solved if every time someone offers a proposal Washington’s special interest lobbies start sobbing uncontrollably while accusing the offending politico of being an anti-American sot with Marxist and/or fascist tendencies.
Follow the link. The first part of the column, in which he describes the empty ritual of Washington meetings, is a hoot.
(Link fixed.)
Stray Question 0
Why do advertising agencies think that extreme closeups of greasy, gooey, poorly prepared, cardboard cutout, unappetizing food will somehow make it appetizing?
TSA Security Theatre 0
Where privacy is assured, except, of course, for the jokes.
Twits on Twitter, Spill Here, Spill Now Dept. 0
Buccaneer Petroleum, Orwellian twits.
Parallels 0
Harold Meyerson looks at similarities in the stories of the L. A. Times and the L. A. Dodgers and sees a lesson (emphasis added):
In His Merry Oldsmobile 0
Poetry would require that an Olds Cutlass have been involved, but it wasn’t.