Month: February 2005

I did my tax’s Saturday. I was torn between buying the Turbotax software, using Turbotax online or H&R Block Online. I ended up trying an online tax prep (not telling you what one, tax’s are a personal and private thing:). Man was it easy. I have to say if you have a relatively simple to moderately complicated return I would suggest this. I am not an accountant. I hate math. My accountant even told me for simple stuff to use software. He of course is a friend of the family trying to save me money, and it worked. I did the return early and now I hope to get a nice return early. Nightmare is over, for another year!

Friday Jayson and I had to leave work early to goto a wake.  A friend of ours mom died.  It was very sudden and very sad.  It was scary how similar a situation it was with my Uncle Berny.  We ran home to get our respective suits for the service.  I was thankful that I had just bought a brand new suit and gotten it just a week ago.

After showering and shaving I put on the suit.  I was kind of surprised at how it fit.  When I tried it on in the store after the alterations it was tight but it fit.  When I put this on the paints would barely stay on my waist.  What the hell happened I thought for about a half a second.  The dumb-ass’ at the store gave me my Dad’s suit.  We went together, bought the same style suit and have the same last names.  They gave me his.  At that point I needed to wear something for this thing, so I put the paints on and cinched the paints as tight as I could with my belt.  The paints were fine except they were a bit longer than they should have been.  I spent most of the evening pulling them up when I walked so I wouldn’t mess up the bottoms.  The jacket fit, but was a bit longer than it normally should have been.  It was really funny.

I ended up calling my mom on the subway and asked her to have my dad try on the suit that he had.  REALLY LONG conversation later it was confirmed that a switch had been made.  Thankfully I was able to get throughout the night with the EXTRA large suit.

As my sister put it, the craziest thing about this situation wasn’t that I had the wrong suit, but that I could put my dad’s suit on and actually wear it at all.  Now I love my dad, but he has gotten to have a huge belly.  The last time I think he exercised without being forced to (he did have physical therapy a few years ago) was the 60’s.

The service was really sad.  I hate those things.  not because of reasons you would think.  I didn’t go out of obligation like I do with tons of family functions.  I went to let a friend know she wasn’t alone.  And she wasn’t.  A ton of us showed up.  But what I can’t stand is not knowing what to say.  There is nothing you can say that will make any difference.  it is just awkward.  You just have to sit there knowing there is nothing you can do to help.

I am a little depressed after checking out the Baby Name Wizard. No I am not having a kid, but this was too cool to not check out. It maps out the popularity of the most common names in the US for the past 100 years or so.

I was depressed to see that the name Scott peaked in the 60’s with a rank of 15th most popular boy name. In the 70’s it was ranked 17th. That was when my parents jumped on the band wagon and named me. After that the name started a major decline. Ranked #39 in the 80’s, 75th in the 90’s, and 208th last year. Come on people, it is a good name. Use it! Why does everyone need to go for those (as my brother in law calls them) shee shee fru fru names people use now a days?

Scott, from Old English. Meaning wanderer or from Scotland. There are other good meanings for the name that I couldn’t find in the 3 minutes I tried to do research for this entry. It is a good name, trust me.

On a positive note, I know of one new possible Scott out there. Don’t change your mind Sean!!!

Rant about nothing important is now over. Resume normal schedule!

I deal with disaster scenarios all the time.  I am paid to look at a system we have and figure out where it could fail.  then come up with a way to minimize that risk, either by a fully automated redundant system or some other backup plan.

So saying I was surprised when I read that the MTA had to turn off an entire train line and it won’t be back for nine months would be an understatement.  How can a major municipal corporate not have redundant systems for minor components like switch controls?  If you have a system that is worth billions of dollars, and millions of people use each day it sort of should be a given that you have backups for critical systems.  I guess the MTA can say oops.  This article explains what happened, or that the NYPD isn’t really sure yet.  They are still investigating.

Thankfully I am no affected by this issue, but because of what I do it got me to stop and think "redundancy, we really do need that"!  I am now not sure if big companies or small ones get the whole redundancy thing right?