Richard’s Personal Blog

A six-week project finally complete, I successfully transmitted our income tax returns last night at 10:01 PM. Amazingly, less than an hour and a half later, at 11:22 PM, California’s Franchise Tax Board accepted the state return, and just a few hours after that (2:50 AM), the IRS accepted the federal return.

In all the years I’ve been filing returns electronically with TurboTax, I’ve not experienced that kind of fast response. Usually it takes several days of waiting to see what unknown issues may be lurking. Now it’s down to hours. At least the government is doing something right.

Of course, that same reduction in speed and increase of efficiency is used in the process of deciding who to audit — thanks to one of the largest databases in the world.

I canceled 7 of my 50-something domain names today. I either got tired of them or knew that I’d never get around to creating whatever I may have had in mind at the time I registered them: actinglikeanimals.com, bloginthenude.com, enrichopaedia.com, enrichopedia.com, rdlsigning.com, voteforyourteam.com.

I sort of regret having to cancel oursoapbox.com, a blog written by family and friends — it was a nice idea for a couple of years, but then it just went away when everyone went their own separate ways on the Internet. No point in paying for something that isn’t used.

Went bowling a few days ago, something I rarely do and haven’t done for many years.

The first time I had bowled was while I was still in high school; it was during a company get-together at Los Gatos’ Wolf Computer way back in the summer of 1984 or 1985. Those first ten frames set a pace I have so far never been able to match — I managed to eke out a score of 170. The one or two subsequent games that afternoon didn’t fare as nicely, but still earned me the reputation of being a closet bowler. No one believed that I could get 170 on my first game ever.

Sidenote: It’s funny thinking back, trying to remember the people that worked there. There was, of course, owners Don and Anita Wolf who ran everything. Their son, Don Wolf, who ended up being VP of something or other. David Schaefer, VP of Sales, who now runs his own car-top carrier company in South Carolina. I remember when David got the company’s first million-dollar month — in a single order to the federal government! There was the accountant, Rick. He was my boss during my last year at Wolf, and took credit for me finding several tens of thousands of dollars of inventory discrepancies regarding HP LaserJet printers, then went on to fail to correct the problem, eventually leading to discrepancies of over a million dollars which led the company to close a few years later. Sales guy Jeff. Every company has their hotties: Synden (sales) and Tiffany (accounting). I wonder where they are today.

Anyway, my next time bowling was in the year 2000 at Zoho Corporation. It was an afternoon event to celebrate the release of some version of the e-commerce platform. I was late for some reason. I won’t even begin to try to rattle off all the employees there — way too many. Scored in the 130s fairly consistently over maybe three games.

This past Tuesday, my third time bowling, was for yet another release celebration at yet another startup. Played three games. Managed to squeeze out 146, 141, and 143. Not bad for someone who hasn’t knocked down a pin in about eight years. Not quite ready to quit my day job and join the bowling circuit, either…

I’m a bit stressed out right now and have been way to busy to keep up with my lame blogs (this one and the really stupid one). Sometimes it’s good stress, and other times not. Earlier tonight, it was good stress; now it’s the not good stress — most of the change stems around the details of the loan closing costs that I just received via email. Nice loan agent, but she’s way overcharging me, and my options to turn elsewhere are rapidly dwindling. Feeling forced to pay 1000s for the “convenience” of a closing in less than three weeks. Trying to juggle purchasing two investment properties and all the insanity that requires, and still stay sane at home and work. Very hard. Signing out.

Oh, and I’m still sick — which, I’m sure, is part of the problem.