Hi. The person who sent you this link is a friend who likes you a lot but who wants you to respect their email address, their privacy, and their time.

Chances are, this person asked you to visit this page because you did one of these things:

• Forwarded a funny story, a virus warning, or a photo that you enjoyed
• Sent email to lots of people using the “To:” line (instead of the “BCC:” line), thereby exposing your friend's email address to strangers
• CC’d your friend unnecessarily on something you had sent primarily to someone else

In any case, you might want to go back and have another look at the email they’re replying to. They asked you to visit here because, while they love getting one-on-one, personal messages from you, they really don’t want to receive more messages like the one you just sent. Cool?

You’re not a bad person, and no one hates you, but it would be valuable to learn the very personal preferences of your friends, family members, and co-workers before including them in unrequested email or choosing to expose their private address to people they don’t know.

Thanks for understanding, and if this same thing ever happens to you, feel free to reply to an email you don’t want by pasting this in

It is provided in the hope it will be useful, but it is offered on an as-is basis and without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

My daughter's speech teacher was killed this morning at 3:30 am.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is investigating a fatal accident that took place on I-275 south of SR 125 in Union Township, Clermont County, early Sunday morning.

Police say Kathryn Haumesser, 27, of Amelia, was driving a 1997 Saturn in the northbound, right lane of a construction zone around 3:30 a.m. when she was struck by an oncoming pickup truck head-on.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/2006/local/02/26/275_fatal.html

Not sure what we tell our daughter.  very tragic.

Well, today is the Chinese New Year.  2006 is the Year of the Dog.

According to Wikipedia:

“People born in this year are loyal, honest, and trustworthy, but can also be stubborn and selfish. Dogs get along with Horses, Rabbits, and Tigers.”

Some famous people born during the Year of the Dog:

• George W. Bush, President of the United States
• Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States
• David Gilmour, guitarist & vocalist of Pink Floyd
• Andre Agassi, professional tennis player
• Madonna, singer, actress, author
• Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States
• Michael Jackson, singer, actor
• Donald Trump, Real Estate Tycoon, Host and Executive Producer of "The Apprentice"
• Steven Spielberg, director, producer
• Sylvester Stallone, actor
• Elvis Presley, singer
• Winston Churchill, former British prime minister
• Herbert Hoover, Former President of the United States
• Mother Teresa, Albanian Catholic nun

 That's a pretty diverse crowd...

I have been reading through the Narnia books.  I am now on "The Dawn Treader" which is pretty good.  To my amazement, I came across the phrase "do the needful."  I immediately had flashbacks from a project I had worked on last year in which two guys constantly used that phrase.  I have never heard of anyone using that phrase before...nor did anyone on my team.  With a little Google Foo, I found out it is a little more wide-spread.  This guy goes into a long dissertation and analysis about the saying.  He thought this was just common among people who use English as a second language.  My theory is that it is a British English thing because of the use by C.S. Lewis.  And specifically many people from India learn British English vs. American English.

Today marks the 20'th anniversary of the Challenger explosion.  I was home sick that day and remember watching it live on TV.  I was in the 6th grade.  I imagine this was the first national tragedy that I remember.  I remember flipping through the channels and nothing was on except soap operas and this was in the days of 12 channels.  So I decided to watch the launch.  I recall that these were very frequent and routine.  I remember that these became some anti-dramatic that many stations stop covering the launches.

Later in life, I went to college to become an engineer and joined my fraternity.  As a freshman, I remember learning our history and learned this:

Ellison Onizuka colo69 flew on Discovery as a mission specialist in January 1985 and lost his life in the Challenger accident in January 1986. The United States Air Force's Onizuka Air Station was located in Sunnyvale, CA. (The station is now closed). An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation mentions a (fictional) shuttlecraft named after Brother Onizuka.

Pasted from <http://www.triangle.org/about/notable/index.cfm>

Last night, I had a wonderful time attending my third Father-Daughter dance.  It is always very special time.  It was held at the school that my daughter attended pre-school last year.  Her current school does not have one.  I think my wife will organize one next year.

Interestingly enough, it was renamed from "Father-Daughter Dance" to the "Sweet Heart Dance"…an obvious turn towards to politically correctness.  However, I didn't see any Mother-Son couples.

This year, they added some balloon hung from the rafters of the gym that were to be set free during the last dance.  However, a malfunction (broken strings) reduced the dramatic effect.  They had to get some ladders out and swing at them with a broom or something in order to set them free.  I immediately thought of the "balloon malfunction" during the Democratic Convention:

Don Fischer, DNC Convention Manager:

"Go balloons, go balloons! Go balloons! I don't see anything happening. Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons! Standby confetti. Keep coming, balloons. More balloons. Bring it- balloons, balloons, balloons! We want balloons, tons of them. Bring them down. Let them all come. No confetti. No confetti yet. No confetti. All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. All balloons! All balloons! Keep going! Come on, guys, lets move it. J*sus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, g*dd*mmit. Go confetti. Go confetti. More confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. We need all of them coming down. Go balloons- balloons? What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There's nothing falling! What the f*** are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down, more balloons. More balloons. More balloons."

Yesterday, I got my 1098 for my mortgage and decided to do my taxes.  I typically do them early…mainly, because I typically get a refund.  My taxes are very simple and easy to do. 

The first year that I did my taxes, I did them manually.  It wasn't that bad but I wouldn't do them that way every again.  Ever other year, I have always used TurboTax.  Each year, the software got incrementally better. 

This year, I used H&R's TaxCut.  The day after Thanksgiving, Staples ran a special where if you purchased TaxCut + State for $30, you got Microsoft Money 2006 Deluxe for free and also a free shredder.  I couldn't pass up this deal so I gave TaxCut a chance.  I figured it doesn't really matter and all of these packages are about the same and after I used it once I would never use it again.

I soon found out how immature the product it was.  I also found it confusing the message that H&R was sending.  It seems like they were always encouraging you to complete your taxes using the application and then bring them into one of their regional offices.  I guess I am using the application so that I can just get them done.  If I wanted someone to do them for me, I would bother with the program.

Also, I was constantly getting lost in the app.  Usually in a "next, next, finished" application, you can hit back and go back 1 step.  Actually, this one would take back to the previous section or somewhere else.  Also, they had "sub" screens that sometimes only available by hitting "begin" instead of "next" ….kinda unpredictable. 

It prompted me to update the program multiple times in the same session.  I found this irritating.  I did the update right away and it worked.  But then it said, I need to download a patch for Money 2006 separately.  Considered these were bundled, I found this disturbing.  Why couldn't this update automatically happen within Money or Taxcut.  It instructed me to go to the website.  I finally found the link by searching their FAQ's.

Something else peculiar was this warnings that it found on my taxes.  It didn't like my FICA and SS withholdings.  It said that they were too low and should be a specific % of your wages.  I did the math my self and my values were a penny below.

When I finished, I was very surprised that no save as PDF option was available.  I guess I took this for granted.  When it printed the returns, it would print directly to your printer instead of giving you the print dialog box.  In order for me to print to Acrobat, I had to change my default printer.  Finally, they give you the optional of printing supporting documentation.  The forms spanned pages and layout and page breaks were all messed up.

At least it's over and I am getting a refund.

My wife tried to do an opinion survey yesterday but was unable to.  She got this error:

Our word filters are having difficulty with the last name Your. If you’ve made a mistake, please correct your last name and try again. If you feel you have received this message in error, please contact us at help@winfreestuff.com.

Sometimes it doesn't help when your last name is a noise word.