Day Two

I went into the office so I could sit and do nothing for four hours or so. Not bad work if you can get it, I suppose, but the office is already behind goal on the number of returns completed and it's two days into tax season. Not looking good for the end-of-season bonus. At least I was able to finally get my hands on the tax booklet for Vermont before I needed to actually do a Vermont tax return. There are a number of weird quirks and it doesn't look like the tax software handles most of them. I need to poke around the software Monday; I'm really hoping I'm not going to end up filling out forms by hand.

Not much else going on, as usual. We both have tomorrow off, so we are planning to go out and about with the camera and such while the weather is good. It's been up in the 40's and sunny the last couple days and it's supposed to last until Sunday evening. Yea, right. At least it's a chance to get out of the house for a couple hours.

And I really thought Castle was on NBC. Huh. Nice to know that Zucker can auger NBC right into the ground and the effect on me personally will be zero.

I also did some link cleaning today. Some were blogs I was just trying on for size, others had fallen into disuse when the author discovered Twitter and/or Facebook, some had died, some I just lost interest in. It was mostly a time management thing. If it feels like a chore or an obligation to simply click a link, then it probably shouldn't be taking up real estate in my sidebar.

Here's a little thought experiment: You're in a tight political race for what some think is a critical seat in the Senate. You're scrambling for every vote you can get. Would you say something stupid and pointless that would piss off around a third of the people who would have otherwise voted for you? No? Then you're probably too smart to be a US Senator.

There is nothing a bureaucrat hates more than a group of people who think to themselves, "You know, we're all adults here and can manage our own affairs, thank you very much." It's amazing anyone can make it through a day with utopian thinking like that. But never fear, the FCC is here! Ye flippin' gods.

It's official; our government is no longer about governance and is purely a spoils system for those in power and those who put them there. This cannot possibly end well. Read history. Oh, sorry; I forgot that history was done away with to make room for fisting lessons.

There are a great many things that the US is not good at. Some of those are things we shouldn't be good at, like empire, but we try our hand at them anyway. Some of those are things we used to be good at and seem to have forgotten how to do. But Haiti will once again demonstrate one thing that we are unparalleled at: compassion. We were the first on the ground, we have taken responsibility, we will be blamed for every failure, we will get zero credit even as our technology and expertise saves thousands or tens of thousands from death by famine and disease, and we will still be there years from now when the rest of the world has forgotten all about Haiti.

The rumbly in my tumbly tells me it must be dinner time.