Pay the Man

Gotta do the taxes today and get them in the mail. I cringe at the thought.

Pretty sure I don’t ow any money, but just sifting through all the paperwork and reading the confusing instructions drives me up the wall. I hate filling in forms. I wish there was an easier way. I’d be fine with them figuring out how much tax I owe and them take it out of each paycheck, then only if you think you should get money back should you have to file anything.

Otherwise, let them keep the damn money they already raked in and let them fill out their own damn forms and leave me the hell alone.

Whether I get money back or have to pay money in, it’s tradition in my house to not fill out the forms until after work on the 15th, then drive the envelope up to the post office as close to midnight as you can risk having to get in the long line of other last minute filers and still get the postmark before midnight. It’s tradition, and you don’t mess with tradition.

Awesome Thriller

Have to say that I didn’t expect much from this movie. I knew it was based on a Playstation 2 game and haven’s seen a movie worth a hoot based on video games yet. But this one ROCKED. If you like anything like the James Bond or Bourne Supremecy or Alias series, this movie will keep your interest with a decent storyline and deliver lots of action.

If you have a chance to see the movie, Hitman, do it.

Poor Man’s iPod

I love the Coby stick MP3 Player. It’s the poor man’s iPod.

I paid $19 for mine and it holds enough music for me to listen to a different song all the way from home to work, and from work to home again without repeating any of the songs. I don’t know how many Gigabytes or whatever that it holds, but it holds enough for what I want.

I picked up 3 of the Coby sticks and put different types of tunes on each one. They run on a single AAA battery and you can plug it directly into your PC to upload more tunes.

It doesn’t have to hold just tunes – you can use it as a flash drive or jump drive and carry home that big file you need to work on at home for the big meeting the next day. Very handy gadget – love the Coby stick.

April Fool’s

The COO played a joke on us today – it was so out of character for him that we all fell for it.

He called a staff meeting for 11:30 – which we all hate because his meetings can tend to run long and we are all sitting there with growling stomaches as the clock creeps past 12:30, then its 1:00 and we are all starving while he keeps talking. Sometimes I think he does that on purpose – but we won’t go into that.

So he called a staff meeting and we all got there at 11:30. But no COO. He’s never late, so we wondered if maybe he was stuck on a conference call or something. So we dispatched his secretary and the receptionist to go looking for him and couldn’t find him anywhere in the building.

At five minutes before noon, still no COO and we were just about to cancel the meeting ourselves and go back to our desks or out to lunch, when a guy shows up in the lobby with a hand truck loaded with boxes and bags from the deli and announces that he has brought lunch for the entire staff – compliments of the COO. He had called the meeting and then left to drive over to the deli and arrange for the lunch so that no one would know about it and spoil the surprise.

PDA

The company will be giving out new cell phones and PDAs next month and my manager has asked which I would prefer. I’ve never had a PDA and not sure I really have a need for one, but then I would like to take advantage of the offer if there are features I could use for work.

I think PDAs are great for people who are out of the office a lot and need to keep a calendar and contact list synchronized. I am hoping to travel more in my position over the next year, so getting a PDA now and setting it up so I know how to use it most efficiently might be the way to go.