mochahochabeachside.com

...if for no other reason than my wonderful wife just saved me nearly $1,500 on my taxes.
She earned no income in 2008 (retired teacher), so when we filed jointly, I found we owe just over $200. The filing system I used (taxact.com), has an option to show the difference between married filing joint, and married filing separate. Separately, I would owe over $1,700. Damn. I really need to take fewer deductions on my paycheck. Of course, that means less money. Right now I'd rather get what I get, and have to pay an extra couple of hundred at the end of the year. Of course, when I get a raise and my tax bracket changes, that may make a huge difference.

Sometimes I think I should hang my head in shame.
I just don't understand why.
Seroquel? Why aren't you helping like you should?

I was all set to make a series of posts, this weekend. Using this new book I have to help with blog fodder, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Then, I got sick.

Oh yeah... not just sick, but siiiiiiiiiiiick...    See, the folks at my work have been tossing both regular and stomach flu back and forth for the past week.  Of course, I wound up with a bastardized version of the plain old flu.  It seems to be quite at home in my chest, so I'm coughing and hacking with bronchitis.  I'm aching and hurting, and I feel out of it and generally crappy.  Therefore, no amazingly profound update from me.

To be honest, if you're coming here for amazingly profound anything, you're barking up the wrong tree, hound.  I'm just a simple geeky guy, living with a simple geeky girl, and we've got a couple of weird-ass dogs, and I work for a web hosting company, so I post code that I use day to day.  You'll find code, book links, cPanel information, wine (and other alcoholoic beverage) reviews, some pictures, some video, and a little bit of (in?)sanity.

Cover of Anathem

I'm going to go lie in bed and be miserable, as the antibiotics are already tearing my stomach to shreds.  If you need a good book, I highly suggest Anathem by Neal Stephenson.  For those of you familiar with Stephenson's works of Snow Crash, etc... you'll understand the genius that is Stephenson. His ability to create a complete new world, so totally separate from our own, and yet so completely like our own.  Enter the Mathic world, where those that think, philosophize, and theorize in math and science are cloistered much as our religious types would be.  Follow Fra Erasmas on a journey that will change not only the way he thinks and perceives, but the very foundation of what he believes.  It may shake you up a bit, too.

On that note, my wife just called. She's on her way home from breakfast, so I'm going to see if the stomach will let me eat something.  With luck, I'll be better, soon.  I kind of doubt it, though, as I just realized I've been staring into space for nearly an hour, and don't remember writing most of this entry.