The Core Dump

Oh yeah, that time of the year is upon us.

For the last several years we’ve been hit with significant tax bills. In a way it doesn’t bother me, as all it means is that we’ve had the money to do with as we wish with instead of the government. But it does make tax season a bit stressful to all of a sudden end up with an expense of, say, $5K.

So last year we cranked up our withholdings quite significantly to what we thought would land us around a nice, even zero.

Swung by the accountant today and picked up our paperwork, and it turns out my tax math stinks—we ended up with a hefty refund. Whew.

Huge sigh of relief.

Soundtrack: “White Unicorn” by Wolfmother

Indeed, this is legal US tender:

I’m dropping Chases.

The ten thousand dollar bill bears the picture of Salmon P. Chase, who served as treasury secretary under Abraham Lincoln.

And yes, the eponymous bank was named after him…

Source: Yahoo!

UPDATE: After I drop some serious Hamiltons on a new hard drive, one of the fans starts sounding like a harvester. Oh, woe is me. /UPDATE

My file server celebrated the new year with some catastrophic hard drive corruption, and since there’s no way I’m going to fly naked without backups, it was necessary to spend some quality time buying a new hard drive and reinstalling FreeBSD.

Apparently the computer gods were wroth with me for some reason. Hopefully the sacrifice of a few hours of Saturday time will be enough to appease them for a while. If not, I guess a goat is in for some unhappiness…

My file server with it innards exposed. Dig the vintage case.

Soundtrack: “Elegi” by Lars Winnerbäck

The eternal quest to sink all of our disposable income into the house continues at Casa Core Dump.

One of the things that have annoyed us ever since we moved in was the range—it’s one of those cheap jobbies like you get in an apartment, with the loathed heater coils that are such a pain to clean. Urgh. But now it has met its demise, and sits outside in the driveway depressing neighborhood property values while we wait for it to be picked up and hauled off to wherever old stoves go.

The old stove. Not quite sexy enough.

It has been replaced with this stainless steel wonder of kitchen pr0n:

So shiny.

Oh yeah, glass top, baby. This is the way to fly. We have now achieved 100% stainless steel among kitchen appliances.

And yes, that’s a “Powered by Red Hat” sticker on the toaster next to the stove.

Soundtrack: “Feeling So Real” by Moby

At the tail-end of last year’s Festival of Pain (a.k.a. summer) we noticed that water was dripping from ceiling. Not a good thing. Air conditioning company was called and determined that both the pan and the coil had rusted through and were leaking.

For those blessed with ignorance of the world of air conditioners, the coil is the piece that sits in the ceiling and cools the air through magic and freon. Essentially a refrigerator. This generates quite a bit of condensation, which is drained off. The pan sits underneath the coil and catches any overflow drainage. Except in our case, for some reason, both of these had rusted through. Which, in a nine-year-old house, should not, repeat not be happening.

The leakage wasn’t bad enough to cause any damage to the drywall, but left alone it would get there. This being late summer, the air conditioning company suggested waiting for things to cool off before performing the repair. So they patched the pan and coil as a stop-gap, which took care of the immediate symptom, but would of course not last.

Time marched on and it was time to bite bullet and get this taken care of. So today two merry men came by to replace the pan and the coil, so that it would be taken care of before we have to start running the air conditioner non-stop again.

Huge and expensive operation. Total cost: $991. Yes, American dollars. Took them four and a half hours. The coil alone cost $750, and is a beast of a thing.

So why, pray tell, had the coil and pan rusted out? Because of the criminal incompetence of the home builder, that’s why. The coil has to be installed at a slight angle so that condensation will run off through the designated drain hole. This had not been done, so the coil literally had standing water inside it and was rusted out like a beached Soviet submarine. Nice.

But there is good news. Apparently, the science of air conditioning has progressed over the last nine years, and the new pan and coil have plastic bottoms instead of rust-prone steel. What a concept, eh?

Soundtrack: Stream from Groove Salad

Speaking of computer design, if you happen to be sitting on a huge pile of money you don’t know what to do with, AVA Computers will be more than happy to help lighten your load.

These people build completely custom cases to whatever specification the customer can dream up. Want solid gold? Done! Want Luis Vitton leather on your monitor? Done! After spending an obscene amount of money on a custom rig, you do get free support for life, so, hey, value!

In an awesome display of the power of freedom of information and massive database crunching, Fundrace.org displays contributions to political parties sorted by area and searchable by neighborhood. It even lets you search for contributions by name.

This is why we have the Intarweb.

A quick search of my neighborhood revealed two interesting tidbits: 1) Quite a few Deaniacs around here; and 2) Contributions to Bush tend to be more high-dollar than contributions to other candidates.

I can’t even imagine the fun I would have with this site if I was still a journalist.

So go ahead and check out what’s happening in your neighborhood.

Music: Stream from Secret Agent