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Archive for January, 2006

Tax Fun

January 31st, 2006

I attempted to do my taxes today and hit a snag. I used H&R Block Online again this year for federal filing. I do state on my state’s website. It was supposed to be free “online taxcut premium” and efile. I got to the very end and was ready to efile when I’m asked to pony up $19.95 for the “taxcut software use”. Uh, no.

So I called them while also waiting in their online chat queue. On hold for around 40 min my call is finally answered. I’m basically told a load of junk. Not impressed. After the call my chat session was answered. Same thing. I got basically canned responses.

I called again an hour later and this time got someone that seemed helpful. Now my case has been escallated to the taxcut online technicians for resolution. I’m supposed to get a call in 24-48 hours. I really wanted to get fed and state done today but now that won’t happen.

I just hope this is resolved before April 15th :)

General

What happens when something travels FASTER than the speed of light?

January 14th, 2006

Cerenkov Radiation is when high velocity particles travel faster than the speed of light in a medium.

read more | digg story

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Time Flies

January 8th, 2006

The last 4 weeks just flew by.  I return to class on Tuesday at 8am and look forward to see how this semester will pan out.  I’m taking the 2 advanced level classes, Adv. Solid State and Adv. Electrical Circuits Analysis.  It’s with the same instructor I had last semseter for Power Supplies.  8a-11 and 11-2p, 6 hours of fun.  After this semester I just need the Pre-Calc class in the summer and I’ll be graduating.  I just hope there will be work in the field I chose.

Next Sunday we go back to the early am shift at work, 4am-12:30pm.  For Christmas we went back overnight 10pm-6am.  That was the original shift before the am change Jan 2005.  I’ll miss it, I like it better then the early am shift.

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Webalizer on Dreamhost

January 2nd, 2006

Poked around the Dreamhost Wiki some more and found this post for installing the Webalizer statistics package.  Another straightforward install.  Now I have analog, webalizer, and awstats at my disposal.

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AWstats on Dreamhost

January 2nd, 2006

Dreamhost comes with Analog 6.0.  Quite minimalistic for my liking, I summoned Google for a search for “dreamhost awstats” and the first result was from the Dreamhost wiki.  AWStats.  There was also an alternative method, which is what I used, AWstats Alt.  Very straight forward.  I also used the wiki author’s awstats config generator.

I now have awstats working and it was effortless.

General

Happy New Year

January 1st, 2006

Happy New Year. It’s already 8:28 pm but I was working on other things since 4pm.

Last night I got out of work at 10:30pm and attempted to call my friend. I talked to him at 7:30pm and he was just about done moving. Well he ran out of minutes sometime after that because calls now just say he’s unavailable.

Undeterred, I headed over to a local bar. I wasn’t about to go home just because I didn’t have anyone to go with. I called someone else who was already out but said they might stop by.

I had a good time, except on trip 3 to the bathroom I returned to find someone took $14 I left under my phone at my seat. O well, at least my phone wasn’t taken. So a lesson learned.

I got home around 3am and went straight to bed. I woke up around 11:30 and still felt like crap. I returned to bed and woke up at 4pm felling like a million bucks.

Even though my $ was taken it didn’t totally ruin the night. Going out for New Year’s Eve for the first time in like 4 years was worth it.

General