renehollan's Journal: Strange Journal stuff

Funny... looks like some of my entries got edited. Not that there was anything controversial in them, but whole paragraphs are missing. Oh well.

I got my income tax refund last week, so I can now fix the A/C in my wife's car. I found out that, yes, you can kill tresspassers after dark, but it must be "justified", i.e. they're armed and endangering your life, or they're trying to make off with your property, and the only way to stop them is shooting them.

Wierd Texas Law: purple lines eight inches long, one inch wide, on trees or posts, with the bottom three to five feet off the ground serve as "No Trespassing" warnings. I guess that solves the language problem (i.e. "No habla english"), or does it? I'm still debating surveillance camera types, but am leaning toward fixed cams (no pan-tilt-zoom) with IR illumination. I also want to raise a fence to discourage crossing my yard to the alley behind as a shortcut to the middle school -- I don't really mind kids doing that, but if one of them gets hurt, I'm liable. The trouble with the fence is that it would have to cross an easement to the utility company, and would have to be shared with a neighbor (two gates with locks, maybe?... with a removable centre section across the easement?)

tax refund

[Saeger]

I got my income tax refund last week, so I can now fix the A/C in my wife's car.

If you hadn't been overtaxed in the first place you would have already had access to that money + interest. Talk to payroll about getting your witholding adjusted; ideally you shouldn't be owed anything.

(And even more to the point, IMO, no company shouldn't be 'garnishing' your wages for Uncle Sam at all. You should be in charge of every penny until Ass-rapel 15th.)

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Re:tax refund

[renehollan]

If you hadn't been overtaxed in the first place you would have already had access to that money + interest.

Well, yeah. And, as a Libertarian, I share your other sentiments.

But, since I itemize, I prefer to overestimate my tax burden rather than underestimate and be stuck with penalty interest, and all the other nasties that go along with it. Still, my refund was significantly higher than normal (I usually get my witholding +/- $500).

I changed jobs in the middle of the year, so I had way more SS (you, know, the old age Ponzi scheme) withheld than the max. And all that came back.

As for the lost interest, lesse: I was refunded $2000, at 6% (rather generous these days for a deposit account), that would be $120. Taking into account that the excess was paid over the whole year, the average amount invested would be about half the $2k, so we're looking at $60 in lost interest. The time it would take to get my withholding so close as to make up that $2k would be worth WAY more than the $60 earned. So, I don't sweat the opportunity cost that much.

government intervention

[cipherPoet]

I enjoyed your response to the "A good argument for government intervention" [slashdot.org]. I was looking through your journal and found that you may be a free-software proponent. I was wondering how you think libertarianism and the free software movement are compatible. . . . I see them as fundamentally opposed to one another. But perhaps that's because libertarianism, as it is, lacks a consistent and systematic philosophical base.

You can respond to my email (cipher & Poet & at & hot & mail & dot & com -- remove ampersands and do obvious substitutions) or to my message board [apt7.com] if you wish.