Changelog

Oops. I’ve trying to reorganize my RSS subscriptions in Bloglines so I’m better about staying up-to-date. Well, in the process I accidentally deleted a group of feeds. Fortunately, I have a backup of my blogroll, so I imported it back into Bloglines. This created a bunch of duplicate subscriptions. So I deleted everything and tried again. Well, it worked — mostly. Unfortunately now all the items in all 250 feeds I read are marked as unread. This about 20,000 items I think. I guess I’m going to just mark everything as read and learn to leave well enough alone.

TV Torrents is gone for good. This is very sad. I’ve been addicted to TV Torrents for quite some time now. There are alternatives of course, but the loss is still meaningful.

Since discovering TV Torrents (I think I was looking for old episodes of Enterprise?) it has been the way we watch TV (well, we also have the Simpsons and Futurama on DVD). I could use RSS to download shows when they were available, we could watch them when we wanted, the shows didn’t have any ads, and we didn’t have to put up lousy reception. If we missed a show it was always available, we didn’t have to wait for reruns or the DVD set. All of a sudden we were watching more TV than ever. I guess Tivo can do many of the same things, but I don’t want to pay the monthly fee (I pay enough of those already).

Well, maybe this is good. Maybe now we won’t watch so much TV. Or maybe I’ll build a MythTV box.

You can always tell when class deadlines are approaching… I start making tons of little updates to the site.

• changelog notebook – An experimental blog relating to my geekier interests. I have some doubts about the wisdom of multiple blogs, but I’m going to try it this way for a while.
• movie reviews – Updated with the new look, and with a better layout.
• reading list – Also updated with the new look and now driven by WordPress (like the movie page). I still need to copy over the old list to the new one.
• I fixed a bug that kept Internet Explorer from viewing the site due to a bad content-type header.
• I’ve updated the URLs to be http://zeppox.net instead of http://jackson.zeppox.net. The old ones (all of them) will still go to the right places.

Ack. I’m supposed to working on my Management project, several NeoRef projects, a Knowledge Management project, my master’s paper, or getting caught up on email. Instead I feel like ass, am wasting time reading Bloglines, playing with wists and thinking of going to bed early.

You know, I promised myself I wouldn’t get a souvenir t-shirt after UNC won the NCAA tournament, but I may just have to get one of these:

via TUBA CITY

This is a little stream-of-consciousness, I’m too irritated for a coherent narrative.

The Feds

I used HR Block the last two years, I’ll use them again.

Much data entry happens

Wow, the price for state filings seems to have gone up, guess we’ll do that by mail this year.

Hmm, that’s odd, I’m being charged for e-filing.

Let’s look around. Oh, it turns that you have to use the link from the IRS website to access the free version of the HR Block tax service. Crap, maybe I can get my account fixed.

Use their Live Chat service to get help

So, it turns out they can’t fix my account. I have to create a new account. Which will not have the last two years of tax information already filled-in. See, this is what I get for being a good customer. I get screwed.

Hm, it turns out TurboTax has a neat looking service called SnapTax. It doesn’t do much besides let you fill out the forms online and e-file for $6. Well, I already have my 1040A filled out thanks to HR Block, so I’ll try SnapTax. Drat, I can’t report scholarship income, otherwise a really cool service. Maybe next year.

Looks like we’ll have to create a new HR Block account if we want to e-file this year.

I don’t remember having to jump through so many hoops last year in order to get free e-file.

Lessons for today:

• If you want to e-file for free, you must use the links from the IRS website
• e-file isn’t worth the hassle
• I’ll be using anything other than HR Block next year

For Google: Free HR Block online tax preparation service

Oh yeah, and their help links don’t work in Firefox.

The State

Turns out you have to pay taxes on out-of-state purchases that were purchased for use in NC. Hmm… Like Amazon maybe?

Hey, the PDF just crashed Acrobat for Linux!

Last night we gathered friends (and family, my brother is visiting from DC) to make pizzas and watch the NC teams in NCAA tournament. First we watched Michigan State give Duke the heave. We then switched to the last few minutes of Wisonsin beating NC State. Finally we watched UNC battle Villanova to the last seconds of the game.

For a little while it looked like all five NC teams were going to be history (Wake Forest and UNC Charlotte had already lost). Things were looking up when UNC pulled ahead by 10, only to watch as Villanova came within one point in the last few seconds. Mitch and I were pretty much on the edge of our seats, but I think Erica had fallen asleep by then.

Now, normally I’m not a huge basketball fan, but it was a ton of fun to watch the games with friends. I easily can see how new comers to the Triangle eventually get sucked into the basketball obsession around here.

I had all these cool projects in mind for spring break. Of course, I didn’t finish any of them. I did however, manage to come up with a new design to liven things up.

Also, you should check out the new movie reviews, Erica is adding her thoughts in the comments.

Also, you should check out the new movie reviews, Erica is publishing some of her own thoughts on the movies we watch as part of the Great Oscar Project.

A preview of things to come (those projects I mentioned)

• Revisiting Posts From the Stone Age (2000 to 2003)
• Opinionation

And yes, the new design has some bugs to work out.