Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

CNN has an article detailing Warren Buffett’s ideas on tax reform. (Link via Digg)

I firmly believe that super wealthy people and corporations should have a much higher share of taxes. All too often the rich are sheltered and the burden falls on the everyday person. I had a discussion with someone not too long ago about this, and he questioned the validity of that statement. I did some number crunching to support my theory and was surprised by how lopsided things are.

Let’s use Buffett’s figures of 17.7% tax on $46 million a year. He doesn’t specify what the lower income earner makes that gets taxed at 32.9% so I’ll use $100,000 as an example. We will use the estimated living wage for a family of four in a rural area, such as Chautauqua County, of $42,000 a year. The high income earner will pay $8,142,000 in taxes. So $46,000,000 minus $8,142,000 minus $42,000 leaves our millionaire with $37,816,000 to be rich with. Our $100,000 a year earner will pay $32,900 in taxes. So $100,000 minus $32,900 minus $42,000 leaves $25,100, which is still a tidy sum but is only a fraction of what our ‘over-taxed’ rich people have left over to play with.

Even assuming the rich person pays a higher tax percentage they still end up ahead. Let’s use some more down to earth numbers. For our area I would consider someone who makes over $100,000 a year to be ‘rich’ and someone who makes $50,000 a year to be average keeping in mind the living wage of $42,000 a year for a family of four. Let’s even assume that the lower income earner only has to pay 15% and the high income earner has to pay 40%. We still see our ‘rich’ person is left with $18,000 at the end of the year while our ‘average’ person is left with $500 at the end of the year. So even though the ‘rich’ person can complain that they paid $32,500 more in taxes they still have $18,000 at the end of the year to keep themselves rich, while our ‘average’ person barely has enough money left over to cover any emergency expenses that may come up.

CNN has an interesting op-ed on why commercial wikis tend to fail. (Link via techyum)

It is interesting to me because all too often I see someone embrace a buzz-worthy concept without fully understanding what it is or why other instances may be successful. Wikis are just one instance of course. The same can be said about lots of things in the techie world. Things succeed not because they are “in” but because of the dedication of the people behind it. Technology alone can not replace that. And simply adding a bunch of technology will not make people dedicated to a project. Technology can make a project possible, it can make a project easier, it can even make a project “fun”, but it can’t make a project be.

Previously I mentioned having crappy service at two different restaurants in two different towns. Since then I filed a complaint on their respective web forms provided for such an occasion. I was almost immediately contacted by the manager of the Outback in Ohio that I had a problem with. He was very quick, friendly, and helpful in resolving my complaint. I have not heard at all from Ellicottville Brew.
Even though the closest Outback is about an hour drive away and I could probably walk to EB if I wanted to where do you think I am more likely to go eat? That’s right, the Outback where at least the managers and customer service people actually seem to care. It’s kind of ironic, since I initially thought that the small local restaurant would be quicker to respond seeing as how I am local to their restaurant so actually have a higher chance of return. But no. However, I am looking forward to going to the Outback again. Funny how things turn out sometimes.

I attended 2 Microsoft Windows Vista training classes this past week. I learned a bunch of cool things that I hope to try out at work. I had to drive a little over an hour each way to the training facility which is different for me since I usually have a 10 minute drive to work. If you ever need technical training in the WNY area, I would highly recommend CampusLinc. It is an excellent facility. I learned a ton from these classes too, so I am pretty excited about that. Now I need to find the time to implement some of the things I learned while it is still fresh in my mind.
In other techie news I am taking my MCSA upgrade to 2003 exam next Friday, so wish me luck.

Since Yahoo Photos is going away in September I took advantage of their offer to move my photos over to my Flickr. The cool thing about that is they extended my Pro account by 3 months for free! The only annoying part is that it in no way marked the photos as coming from Yahoo. I would have liked it if they added a yahoo tag or something so I could easily find them to integrate into my existing sets. But the move was very easy and it took my album names and turned them into sets on Flickr. Pretty slick.

I have been an IT Professional for over 10 years now. In the past 10 years I have read numerous articles on gender gaps in IT, many offering the reason that there are so few women in IT is because of “old-boy club” mentality or family-unfriendly work hours and policies. While those attitudes exist in IT, they also exist in most other industries as well. I think part of the problem in IT is that since there are so few women and it is mainly an industry of younger males (read: hormonal) you get things like “The Hottest Female Podcasters of 2007“. I noticed the story first on Digg and it made me mad. How is this remotely newsworthy? Why are the looks of these podcasters even relevant? I’ve only listened to Amber MacArthur’s various podcasts, so my comments are based solely on those, but they are informative and entertaining. It doesn’t matter if they are presented by a male or female or someone physically attractive or not. So it’s not surprising to me that women shy away from IT if everytime they do something it is then judged by whether or not they are “hot”.

I was born and lived on Staten Island until moving to Western New York, so I found this ‘news’ interesting. It would seem that an ice cream company has named one of its flavors “Staten Island Land Fill” causing nation-wide press coverage of this controversy. While I agree that naming something after a negative aspect of your community is not only in poor taste, but derogatory, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to eat something called landfill either. Yuck. Actually I am more offended by their racist “Upper East Side Rich White Vanilla” flavor, but that hasn’t seemed to cause any controversy for some reason.

I made a black and white shot of Gillian next.
Here’s the original:

Here’s the black and white:

I also made a wallpaper image for my dual-monitor setup at work:

When it is on my computer, Gillian is on the left side monitor and Isabella is on the right side monitor. I like the way it looks.

The last 2 times we’ve gone out to eat as a family we have had the worst service. I’m not sure if there is some rule for waiters and waitresses that says you should ignore tables with kids or what. We went to the Outback in Ohio while we were on vacation. Our waiter was very attentive up until the point we got our meals. After that point he didn’t even come by to see if there were any problems. He did stop at every other table around us, so he was actively ignoring us. Even getting the bill took quite a long time. I figured he was just a bad waiter. However, last night we went to Ellicottville Brew in Fredonia and had exactly the same experience. Our waitress was very attentive right up until we got our food. Then she disappeared. She never checked to see if we needed more to drink (we did) or if there were any problems. And again it took a very long time to get the bill. I don’t understand, if these establishments or employees don’t want you there they should at least make it easy for you to pay and leave instead of holding you hostage.

Whilst traveling home we stayed over in Mason, OH. Since we got in early enough and we happened to drive by a multiplex we went to see Shrek the Third. This was Gilli’s first movie theater experience, and she handled it pretty well. She is used to being able to move around and do other things though, but she made it through the whole movie without Karen or I having to take her out of the theater. We had watched Shrek 2 a few days before, so it was kind of neat to be able to see the third movie with the second one fresh in my memory. I have to admit that Puss in Boots is my favorite of the Shrek cast, although they are all pretty funny characters. A very good movie to go along with the series.