Sold my trailer today

Yeah I know, the title and topic of this post is more worthy of an attention whore's facebook update than of the musings of this righteous blog's author.  But still, I thought I'd share it with the world.  If you've been reading my blog you'd know that...

Wait, I say that a lot.  The number of times I've told someone "If you've been reading my blog, you'd know that..." is well into the five figures.  Wait, I meant fingers.  Five fingers.  As in, I can count on one hand how many times I've said that to people.  Because I don't have any friends.  :sniff:

Kidding, I tend to say that a lot.  Even if it is to the homeless man who tries not to look at me while he passes by the nest I've made for myself between the dumpsters in back of the TGI Fridays and ask him for change.  Or to the attractive blond I've been chatting up for the past 20 minutes before I realize it's a cardboard cutout of some failed actress who now resorts to hocking diet beer to pay the bills.

Anyway, if you've been reading my blog, you'll know that last year I purchased a folding utility trailer I could tow with my Corolla so I could move all my stuff cross country without having to get a U Haul.  I put it up on craigslist recently, and today the gentleman and I went to the DMV to transfer the title.  To my trusty utility trailer: You were awesomely helpful.  I had a number of adventures with you and will never forget you.  You would always be there, blocking my parking spot when I got home, gathering dust and welcoming me with a smile.  You will be missed.  Even though I probably spent over $700 on you and assorted accessories, and only got 250 for you, you will always be worth more than that to me.  Good bye, and may you serve your new owner well.

Adventures in tax land, or first world problems, if you prefer

In the past, I've had issues with my taxes.  Mostly because I was so eager to file and get some money back, I would file right when I got my W-2, not anticipating the other documents that tended to come in later.  And in what's fast becoming a yearly tradition, I'd have to go back to the tax center and file an amendment.  This year was no different.

At the end of last year, I said to myself that I'd wait to file until I had ALL the documents.  I mean, I wasn't hurting for money.  I didn't have any debts that needed to be paid off, or any large purchases I needed to make.  This year, I'd do the adult thing and wait until I had all the right papers before filing my tax return.  I was expecting my bank, USAA, to send me a bunch of documents all at once at the beginning of the year, and true to form, they dutifully did.  By the way, this has nothing to do with the post, but I absolutely love USAA and have everything with them: banking, insurance, investments, everything.  Just wanted to throw that in there.

Anyway, I also knew to expect a late-comer to the finish line this year, another W-2 for the money I had received due to my move cross-country.  So I finally got that straggler, and made my way over to the local H&R Block on a Saturday morning at the beginning of February.

This was a tax filing day of many firsts.  This was the first year that my life circumstances were making me feel lost and alone, and my usual crystal clear vision of the future was hazed over with fear and doubt because of what I'm currently going through at the hands of the military (they're just doing their job, but my life kind of sucks right now, and I may or may not share the story with you when it's all over).  This was also the first time I had ever paid for a tax return.

Now, normally I just take my return to the military tax center on base and file for free, but this year I had all kinds of complications, such as stock dividends, interest, and living outside of my state of residence for part of the year, so I figured I'd let someone who had been playing the game for years take a look.

They ended up getting me about $4800 back, which more than made up for the exorbitant $236 fee they charged for filing with them.  Now, $4800 may sound like a lot, but most of it was from a re-enlistment bonus, of which the government had helpfully held on to like 40% so I wouldn't spend it all in one place and would be able to pay the taxes I owed at the end of the year.  About 2 weeks after filing, I received my expected federal refund, and waited patiently for the state refund.  I'm still waiting.

It's been 2 months and still no word.  As of this post, I have yet to receive my money, probably because California is broke, or because my tax return paperwork was a complete clusterfuck of state-to-state movings and me trying to deduct stuff like rubber bands, inflatable sheep and flamboyant kilts as 'business expenses'.  The window-lickers at the IRS never knew what hit them.  Probably.

Anyway, that's not even the most frustrating part of this angry white boy rant.  Last November, when the stock market was taking a dysentery diarrhea shit all over everyone, stocks were sliding downhill at an alarming rate due to said shit's viscosity.  Fearing a repeat of the 2007 debacle in which people lost half their net worth, I sold about a third of my equities, and crossed my fingers.  And, my luck being what it is, whadya know, I sold out at the worst possible time, and 2 days later, the stock market started climbing back up and never looked back.  But...even though I'd lost money, I had still made some over the year, and would have to pay taxes on those earnings.

So about a week ago, in fucking March, my bank sends me another dividend statement saying I owe taxes on like 900 dollars in stock gains.  This is like 7 weeks after I had prudently waited and got all my papers in order before filing.

So, tradition dictates that I'll have to go back and file an amendment, damn it.  I'm going on Friday.  Wish me luck.

The End.

Last night sucked

I had no less than 4 shitty things happen to me yesterday that just made it one of the worst I can remember. The day started at the crack of noon, and I shuffled around the house for an hour or two, trying to remember the things I'd told myself I would do that day. There were the usual, going to the gym, doing homework, and the like, always present but not immediately concerning.

Suddenly I remembered I had to go get my transmission flushed out. I usually go to the same car shop to get everything done, because they're very reasonably priced, honest, and do good work. These people have never overcharged me for anything, and never tried to extract money from me by coming up with unnecessary repairs. During my last oil change, they informed me I would probably need to get my transmission and radiator fluids flushed out and replaced, with the cost of $130 and $80 respectively. I talked to a friend of mine who is a mechanic and he said that was very low.

A few days ago I heard an ad on the radio that a car dealership was offering half-off service specials. So any repair they do on your car would only be charged half the usual price. I know dealerships tend to overcharge on repairs, and I hate dealing with the hives of scum and villany that are the domain of pushy car salesmen, but I thought even with all that, the 50% off would make up for it. I called and asked about pricing, and they said usually the transmission flush was $200 and the radiator flush was $160. So I'd get the first for a hundred, and the second for about the same as the other place. I decided to go ahead and do the transmission, thinking I'd save $20 or so. Boy was I wrong.

They promised to have me in and out in about 45 minutes, but actually took 2 hours. Not only that, but when I grew tired of watching reruns of "The Parkers" on BET (Blaxploitation TV at its finest) in their waiting room and decided to inquire about the status of my vehicle, they informed me that my cooling fan had an issue. Repairs would cost upwards of $150. I smelt bullshit, and told them to just finish it and give it back. It ended up costing $132 (about 30 more than promised), but I was too tired and in a hurry to argue. My squadron was holding a charity poker tournament, and I had promised to participate as well as lend them my poker chips, table and cards. I was already running late by the time I got out of the dealership with my car.

At the game, I ended up being the second person to lose all their chips, and while it was predictable, I was still disappointed, and it just added to the day's crappiness. I went back home and decided to go to a BBQ get together at a friend's house with my roommate's 2 friends that were visiting from out of town. One of them happened to be 16. About half an hour later, my roommate called, freaking out that I had brought an underage person to a house party where there was alcohol. He was probably right, though I didn't see the issue, as she wasn't actually drinking, and it was more of a quiet get together than a party, but he was adamant that I'd go to jail if the police showed up.

So I drove them back home, and then returned to the party. I had the misfortune of parking too close to the neighbor's mailbox and accidentally knocked it off with my mirror. I left a note apologizing and informing them I'd pay for the repairs, and then went back to the party, where my friends alternately gave me crap about it and worried about the consequences, ranging from being prosecuted for tampering with the mail, to having to pay $200+ to replace it. By this time I'd had enough and decided to just go home before anything else happened.

So to recap:

- shitty expensive car repairs
- rushed all day
- starving
- lost a poker game
- got yelled at by a number of people
- Damaged my car and someone else's mailbox which I will probably have to pay for.

Worst day in a while.

Fatty McBouncerface

I went to a bar the other night with my roommate and his girlfriend, and as we went in, the obese lady sitting behind the front counter asked to see our IDs.  My roommate and I both presented ours without incident, but the girlfriend had hers in one of those clear plastic windows some wallets have, which displeased the meat wagon, who snapped at her that she needed to take the ID out and give it to her. 

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the reinforced bed this morning

I had already turned away, and didn't catch what happened next, but a few seconds later, I saw Her Ponderosity give the ID back and ask combatively if there was a problem.  With a puzzled expression, the girlfriend said "no?" and the butterball said "I didn't think so," as if she dared girlfriend to say something.  The malice in her voice was unexpected, and pissed us all off.  Of course, since there was a corpulent female cop sitting next to her, we weren't about to say anything, because we wanted to avoid any trouble.

Both of you

When we were out of earshot, we tried to figure out just what the hell she had done to anger the Beast.  We came up with no logical explanation and resorted instead to insulting her.  The insults ranged from everything from base name calling (all revolving around her figure) to questioning the reasons for her attitude:

Me: Well maybe she was abused as a child and resorted to stuffing her face to dull the pain.
Roommate and Girlfriend: I fucking hope so.

Girlfriend was still fuming a few minutes later, until I told her:

"I may die alone, but she's going to die fat and alone.  Does that make you feel any better?"

Girlfriend: Wow, surprisingly, yes, it does.

And all was well with the world.

eBay sucks

In recent weeks I made two significant purchases on eBay.  A trailer and a motherboard.  Let me give you a bit of a backstory.  As you may or may not know, I'm a linguist in the Air Force, and I got them to send me back to school for a year-long language course in California.  This means that instead of doing a job that I kind of hate for 10 hours a night, I will essentially get to go back to college in California for a year with almost no military responsibilities.  Awesome, right?

Armed with the knowledge that I'm currently in Georgia, you will agree that it is indeed relentlessly awesome

Anyway, I tend to procrastinate on most things, but anticipate excessively on things that get me excited.  This trip was one of those things.  I'd been wanting to learn a new language ever since I went through the langauge school the first time over 6 years ago.  Let me put it this way: when I found out I was getting the Farsi class, I popped a woody that could break a lesser man's spirit. 

The military is pretty awesome when it comes to taking care of you.  People often complain that the pay isn't very much, and soldiers in combat don't get paid "nearly enough for this shit," and all that is true, but I'm referring to the benefits.  Free medical care.  Housing and food allowance commensurate with your location.  Education paid for (if you do it right).  And a litany of other things.  Granted, there's a lot of bullshit you have to put up with, and there are horror stories about the medical care.

Tricare, the medical insurance company that the military uses, loves to prescribe Motrin for everything.  Vitamin M, we call it.  In fact, the doctors are so used to giving that shit out for everything, that I had a friend who went to the hospital with a broken leg, and who was in intense pain.  The doctor automatically gave him a bottle of the stuff, and then, after my friend gave him an "Are you fucking kidding me?" look, snapped out of his trance, scratched his head and mumbled "Oh yeah, you're probably going to need something a bit stronger, huh?" 

I imagine this is the look that crosses everyone's face when dealing with military doctors

I personally know 2 people who went to the hospital with acute abdominal pains.  Anyone with the least bit of medical training (and yes, episodes of "House" count) will recognize this as a possible case of appendicitis, which can be serious if left untreated. They were sent home with a bottle of Motrin, and intructions to come back in the morning if the pain got worse.  Essentially, they were told to "walk it off."  Of course, the pain did get worse.  One of them actually burst in the night, and had to be rushed to the hospital.  He almost died.  The joke about military healthcare is as follows:

Q: What do you call a med school graduate who got all A's in class?
A: Doctor
Q: What do you call a med school graduate who got all C's?
A: Captain.

For those who don't get it, his rank is Captain

But I digress.  Apart from some slip ups, the military treats their people very well. They want everyone fully fit for duty, be it physical fitness, mental fitness, social fitness or emotional fitness.  Basically, if there's anything bothering you, it can affect you ability to do your job, and they don't want that.  Financial distress is a big one, and for that reason, there is a housing allowance, which you get on top of your base pay.  If everyone got the same pay nationwide, people in some areas wouldn't be able to afford to live.  If you live in Tennessee, for example, a decent 2 bedroom apartment plus utilities may cost $700 a month.  Take that same apartment in Hawaii or California, and you're out $2000 a month.  At least.  The housing allowance reflects that.

Now you may be asking what the point of all this is.  I'm getting to it.  When you PCS (permanent change of station) to another base, the government pays to move you, your family, and your household to that new location.  Normally they'd buy you all plane tickets and pay a moving company to ship your stuff.  The government, being the government, tends to overspend, because it requires a certain level of uniformity and quality.  That's why you hear about them buying chairs for $400 a pop or spending millions to renovate a habitat for feral children.  You or I may be able to spend time looking for deals at Office Depot, Craigslist or Goodwill, and pick up the same chair for $20.  However, the government doesn't have the time or resources to troll yardsales, so it resorts to contracts, asking a number of companies which one of them can provide 5,000 chairs for the cheapest.  And they tend to overbid.

True story

 To save money on PCSing soldiers, the military offers its members the option of moving their stuff themselves, a do-it-yourself (DITY) move.  They pay you up to 95% of what it would cost them to hire a moving company.  You may see the benefit here.  Get a U-Haul, load your stuff, and drive out there, and you end up pocketing a few thousand dollars.  Everyone wins!

So back to me planning for stuff well in advance.  I started thinking about the move a few weeks ago (it wasn't for another 5 months), and decided I'd like to make some extra cash on my move across the country. I briefly considered a rental truck, but decided the gas cost would be astronomical, and could save a few hundred by putting my stuff in a trailer that I'd tow behind my car. 

My car

Obviously, this car wasn't designed with towing in mind.  However, where there's a will, there's a waiver, and there are aftermarket kits you can buy.  I got one from Auto Zone, and it was relatively simple to attach.  It just took me the better part of an hour because it's cramped under my car (my driveway isn't equipped with a lift), and I couldn't figure out how to hold up one side of the towing hitch while I bolted the other side to the car's frame.  I tried a stack of books, but after a half hour of no luck, I ended up using my car jack.

Shut up, Picard

My car can only tow 1500 lbs, including the driver, and every pound the trailer weighed would subtract from the stuff I could carry.  U-Haul offers trailers for rent but the lightest is 900 lbs. YEEEAH... not gonna happen.  I ended up going with a bare bones frame on wheels which weighs 250 lbs, and folds up so you can put it in your house.

The cheapest I could find it was on eBay for $450 including shipping.  It took a few weeks, and arrived in a 52' truck which could barely navigate the narrow roads of my neighborhood.  I immediately started putting it together.  The basic frame took about 6 hours over 2 days to assemble, mostly because I kept screwing up and putting stuff together upside down or backwards.  A few days later, I installed the axle, and a few days after that, I went for the wheels.  This is where the problem presented itself.  Something was wrong with one side of the axle, and wouldn't let the wheel hub on, even when I tried to coax it on with my foot.

Read: I kicked the crap out of it and it didn't go on.  Somebody will be getting a swift kick to the nuts instead

After my initial exasperation passed, I decided to call the company.  A 30 minute hold later, I was talking with a helpful but clueless man with a Spanish accent who said they had no record of a sale having been made to anyone with my last name.  Normally bullshit to me is like lactose to an Asian - it simply will not be tolerated - and I was up to my neck in it by this point, but I decided to share the trivial knowledge of the item's precedence with my phone captor.  It was then that a lightbulb came on, and the murky depths of bull receded.  Turns out that since I had bought it on eBay instead of directly from the company, they couldn't warranty it, and I was shit out of luck.  To add insult to injury, the company had a store in my city, not 10 miles away from my house.  So I could have saved myself $117 in shipping.

The second part of this cautionary tale involved my desktop computer.  Don't worry, there's no drawn-out explanation here.  It stopped working, and after troubleshooting it with a friend, we both decided that the motherboard was the bitch causing all my problems.  Most techies shudder at the thought of replacing the motherboard, because it's expensive and is a hassle.  They recommend you just get a new computer.  I didn't feel like doing that, as I had programs on there I didn't feel like re-installing, and I was attached to this one.  So I went to (you guessed it) eBay, and bought a refurbished $200 motherboard.  A week later, it was at my door, and after carefully installing it, I hooked it up to my screen, and excitedly pushed the "On" button...

Nothing happened.  There was no picture.  On top of that, both my mouse and keyboard had mysteriously stopped working.  Another friend of mine, who knows a thing or two about computers, came over 2 days later, to take a look.  He pored over it, testing everything.  Eventually he said "fuck it, it's not working, get a new one." 

He also took a look at the trailer axle, and asked where I had acquired it.  Upon hearing the verdict, he intoned: "And what have we learned today?"

I learned that eBay sucks.

Adventures in maturity

A few years ago I realized that if I ever wanted to get ahead in life, I'd have to dress the part, and that ratty T-shirts with pithy quotes like "Boobies make me smile" and "I sell crack for the CIA" were no longer considered haute couture. 

"This is totally going to be me in 10 years.  These shirts are funny now and they're gonna be awesome then"
- Me at 18

So in the interest of dressing the part of the responsible adult who is cultured enough to know how to pay taxes and not confuse the salad fork with the cake fork if the occasion called for it, I decided I would get a suit sometime in the near future.  I'd be all classy and smooth and stuff.

Pictured: classy as balls

Then I started watching How I Met your Mother, and Barney's philosophy on life pretty much clinched it:

Suit up!

Well, I have yet to take that step, but yesterday, as I accompanied a friend to the mall for some shopping therapy, we happened upon the watch counter at Dillards.  I have a fuzzy memory of me looking at fancy watches behind a counter made of bulletproof glass back in the day and thinking that some of them looked pretty sharp while others seemed reserved for the old and the uncool, or people whose fashion sense was indirectly proportional to the amount of money they earned via less than reputable methods.

Derek arranged his entire collection of 'bling' around his neck in preparation for his daily stroll.  He paused for a moment, then grinned sheepishly, two fingers extended in the universal sign for 'poor fiscal responsibility'

The most expensive watch I've ever owned was a digital Casio which cost a whopping $15.  As I looked around the store, a couple of watches caught my eye due to their brilliance.  People are like fish, in that we're social creatures, and also that we're attracted to shiny things, and I'm no exception.  One watch in particular, cradled carefully between the plump fingers of the overweight salesman, whose knuckle hair curled ever so softly around the garish wedding band he was sporting, caught my eye.  It blinged extra hard at me, and I was sold.  It was an Emporio Armani (which I was assured was a snazzy brand) and cost $250, but considering a man in a nice suit with a $10 watch will always be missing something, I figured it would be an investment, and plunked down the money.  I also ended up getting a more practical everyday Fossil watch, which was a cheaper (but still fairly costly) $125.  Hopefully these two will suit my watch needs for any occasion for years to come.

The suaveness oozing out of the Armani isn't properly captured in this photo

In closing, I'd like to leave you with another T-shirt for old time's sake.  This picture and the one at the beginning of the article are screencaps from the 2007 movie "Ten Inch Hero."  I highly recommend it.

Pi Day

Happy Pi Day, everyone!

As most people know, Π is the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference, and it's equal to 3.14159265...

Today, being 3/14, has been named as Pi Day.  This morning I wondered what time exactly would be Pi time (i.e., the 159265 following the 3.14), and came up with a possible solution:

If we take a 24 hour day as a single unit, 0.159265 of 24 hours gives you 3:49:20.  So Pi time would occur around 3:49 am on March 14th.

Of course, since our measurement of time isn't based on a base-10 system (it's 60, 24, 7 and 365), nothing really corresponds, so I suppose you could say the most consistent Pi time will occur on 3/14/15 at 9:26:54

In honor of this number, have some pie!