It's tax time. That means pain and suffering. For the first time in quite a while, however, I don't feel like it's my fault.

I tried using a service called TaxAct Online. They (allegedly) offer a free service, as well as add-on services for a fee.

I decided to use the free service, because my 2007 taxes should be simple (I didn't do anything fancy with my money in 2007, so the taxes shouldn't be difficult).

Here's my big complaint about precedent-based law: if a party of a lawsuit is incompetent, an unreasonable verdict can be reached that sets a precedent that's difficult to overturn.

Based on this article which contains the entire text of a legal "finding of fact", performing zone transfer could be considered illegal. This is complete nonsense.

When it becomes illegal to access publicly available information, we start to live in a scary world. In points 8, 9, and 10, the court correctly found the purpose and nature of zone transfers.

This is the second Saturday I've spent with Pete Butler and the other two assistant editors, grinding through the slush pile to find stories for Triangulation: Taking Flight. I've already learned a lot about what it's like to be on the other side of the editor/writer wall. Here are some thoughts to help writers come up with stuff that we'll like. I expect that a lot of these points apply to getting your work accepted by most markets:

Pittsburgh Worldwrights is looking for writers.

Worldwrights is a "critiquing group", which is to say that we're a group of writers who aspire to be better writers, and thus submit our work to each other for suggestions on how to improve our writing and storytelling.

The group has lost of few members recently, and is looking to restaff a bit. The magic number seems to be around 10 people, which means we could use 4 more right now to hit the sweet spot.

I was going to see "I am Legend" this weekend, but I thought better of it. Instead, I'm going to find something entertaining to do that doesn't involve crossing the picket lines of the writer's strike.

My 1995 Toyota Celica died this past Wednesday. Those who know me can imagine my insufferable grief at the loss of this vehicle, which I've been driving for so long because I absolutely love it.

This morning's commute was enough to make me want to put a bullet in my head.

People seem to think that computers should be easy to use.

No. No. No. No. NO!

There's a very good reason that computers should be difficult to use, and there's lots of evidence to back this up. The reason is that life is hard. Computers can make your life better, the can not make it easier.

It's pretty simple really. There are only two ways to make life easier:

1. Have the person get more skilled at living life.
2. Take their life away from them and give it to someone who's more skilled than they are.

We're constantly worried about the generation of power. This is because we're constantly coming up with new and cool things to do with that power, but it's also because we (as a society) are becoming increasingly aware of the negative impact that power generation has on our environment.

A friend of mine just sent me one of those fun invitations to join facebook.com.

I guess I don't make this site and blog well enough known, as nobody seems to know that it's here. It makes me sad, but I'll get over it.