British Virgin Islands
I finally got around to putting some pictures together of our trip to the BVI last November. Of course, I haven’t written much about the trip, but you can see part of the trip stuff here.
January 22, 2006
January 15, 2006
Taxes!
So I’ve got to tell you that I really don’t like paying all of these taxes for school when I don’t even have any children. What burns me up even more is the fact that people who decide to have children actually get a tax BREAK for each kid they have, even though they’ll consume way more services than me. I just don’t understand how I should pay MORE than somebody with a basketball team of kids for the services that they’re consuming and I’m not.I feel very strongly that people who decide to have kids should certainly pay more since they consume more things like public education. For every kid somebody has, they should have to claim another NEGATIVE 1 on taxes and pay more housing taxes. Certainly more than somebody who is consuming very little.
Yeah, yeah… sure, I don’t necessarily mind paying a little here and there to enable people who are less fortunate to send their kids to school, but a normal family should definitely be pulling more weight than me – not getting breaks.
January 6, 2006
Quite Brief 2005 Recap
Wow, it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve done anything with this. I’ve been busy busy! Between all of the travel and work and relationship stuff, 2005 flew on by. I started dating Karen back in May, and I’ve been on a whirlwind tour ever since. I only get 3 weeks of vacation, but somehow I managed to make it to Key West for my friend Scott’s wedding, a week sailing in the “out islands” of the Bahamas getting my Bareboat Charter Certification, a trip to Las Vegas to finally meet some of my online gaming buddies, a trip to Connecticut to meet the parents, a week in Boston for a conference which was a lot of fun, a couple of trips to the beach in Florida, a week sailing on a chartered yacht in the British Virgin Islands with a night in Puerto Rico on the way back, and a very long weekend in Jamaica. All in all, I’d have to say this was a great year!
Work got a lot more interesting, too. I got to do some engaging work with AJAX this year on several projects, as well as some much more interesting DHTML interactive user interfaces. It looks as if future projects will also be much more interesting to work on, assuming all goes well with the next release of jazzy interface stuff.
My roommate and I (okay, mostly my roommate – I have NO skill) have been adding another room onto the house, which will eventually consume a totally renovated kitchen and dining room. New hardwoods and all! We’ll be removing two load-bearing walls to open up the space a lot more, which will be great for hosting even more grill nights. The outside is more or less complete so the exciting inside part will begin very soon. Now I have to climb around the ladder to caulk the siding and paint (the lesser skilled tasks, of course). Hopefully we’ll have some warmer weekends soon!
So that’s more or less it. I’ll try to be a little more verbose in coming months