Irrsinn.net: taking joy in human unreason

taxes tag

Weekly Linkage: Google, Politics, and Bees’ Knees

This week’s internet cruising:

  • Coding Horror: Trouble In the House of Google – Jeff isn't the first to point out the problems with Google's search results lately (the content mills are clearly winning, and I swim through a lot of mess to get good results anymore), but he's done a lot of due diligence to try to improve Stack Exchange's rankings over the content scrapers, with mixed results. Excellent post.
  • Sphinx – A better way to write your docs – This looks like an awesome doc writing/management system–I struggle with how much documentation to produce for the internals of a system (i.e. not a publicly exposed API), but I'd definitely play around with a system like Sphinx.
  • Buttersafe – Flowers – Bees’ knees!
  • Baptist Press – N.C. court voids same-sex adoption – What? What?! (Warning: Christian news source)

    "'Many homosexuals and their sex partners may sincerely believe they can be good parents. But children are not guinea pigs for grand social experiments in redefining marriage, and should not be placed in settings that are unsuitable for raising children,' Dailey noted in the article. He cited a study in the Netherlands that found the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be 18 months and that 'committed' homosexual couples have an average of eight other sexual partners each year."

  • Gay former service members praise Senate vote on ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ – latimes.com – "Carpenter, who comes from a family with a tradition of military service dating back to the Revolutionary War, thought that he would make a career in the Marine Corps. But when he fell in love with another Marine pilot, he decided he "couldn't continue living a lie" and left the military as a captain."
  • Hawaii-bound, Obama signals his opposition to gay marriage ‘evolving’ – Key quotes:

    "I still believe that it doesn’t make sense for us to provide tax cuts to people like myself who don’t need them when our deficit and debts are growing."

    "With respect to the issue of whether gays and lesbians should be able to get married, [...] my feelings about this are constantly evolving. [...] At this point, what I’ve said is, is that my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protections and the legal rights that married couples have. And I think — and I think that’s the right thing to do."

    Keep reading >>

Weekly linkage

This week’s internet cruising, in which I was evidently trying to make up for lost time.

  • A Vegan No More | Voracious – This woman went through a struggle to find her health as a vegan… and found that she needed to go back to eating meat. Her journey is well-documented and heart-breaking, although I found her dogmatism rather creepy. She believed very strongly in veganism, and now believes very strongly in omnivorism.
  • Vegan Defector Talks Back | Voracious – Part 2 of the no-longer vegan story.
  • To Teach Your Kids Money Management, Start Your Own Bank – A cute take on teaching kids how to save. I'm still divided on the whole "give an allowance for nothing (chores are a family duty)" or "give compensation for chores" debate, but the bank idea is cool.
  • Keep reading >>

Daily tasteeness (2008-01-20)

Organize & Prepare: Do Your Taxes Quickly | My Dollar Plan
The title says it all. This seems like a good way to get organized to make taxes simpler.

Single Guy Money: Save Money on Auto Insurance
I just ripped Progressive a new one for how much I’ve been overcharged for my car insurance. If you have the money to do so, Single Money Guy has some tips to get discounts on insurance.

Time To Call The Credit Card Company
“If you are trying to get out of credit card debt, you might want to think about giving your credit card company a call.” Get your rates reduced, increase your limit, waive balance transfer fees… Make it easier to get out of debt. Argue well.

Benefits And Drawbacks Of Spending Cash | The Happy Rock
I mentioned previous that I was using cash to help with my budgeting/spending issues. This post lists some of the pros and cons of spending cash.

Keep reading >>


Recent Posts

So Out of My Comfort Zone

One (of a thousand) things I’ve let slide in the last year of struggles is one of my most favoritest: dance.

I haven’t been to belly dance class since at least last summer, haven’t learned any new moves or choreographies, and have barely practiced on my own.

I told myself that “when everything was more under control”, that I’d go back.

Well, that “everything” got under some sort of “control”, but then recovering from that was exhausting, and then healing stuff that’s been askew in my life forever is too all over the place.

The thing is I know not to wait for life to get to back to “normal” before living it. I’m already living it, however it comes. Live it like I want it to be.

So when a buddy said, “Hey, let’s try this West African dance class,” I said, “Sure!”

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May 13th 2013
Tags: On Life and Love, 2 Comments

I’m Going to Iceland!

My passport has arrived. My Amazon cruise fell through due to concerns of sketchiness. Where was I going to go for my first trip out of the country?

My colleague has picked a marathon… in Iceland. I need no such excuse–I’m just going to Iceland because it’s Iceland.

End of August, five nights, right before DragonCon. Lagoon and coastal tours are already planned, and restaurants are being picked.

I can’t even read the street names on the maps of Reykjavik. This is going to be awesome!

APW 2013: (Mental) Ableism

(This is fourth in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)

Now for a downside of my APW 2013 experience: ableism.

I didn’t perceive very much physical ableism except for an awkward-as-hell “lame” reference in the closing ceremonies. I don’t think anyone even laughed. Then again, I know I’m also less sensitive to physical ableism than mental, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more.

For the mental ableism… it was everywhere. Therapists there used the word “crazy” and people talked about their “crazy, bipolar” exes. One person even said their ex was so crazy “they shouldn’t have been allowed to date.”

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APW 2013: Codependency and Identity

(This is third in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)

I was utterly delighted at how many panels and discussions touched on questions of identity and codependence. I mean “identity” here as a self-discovery and self-listening process, rather than the external application of labels.

I’m early yet in my own exploration of codependence and the unhealthy behaviors I’ve harbored for many years. One of the things I’m focusing on is (re)discovering my own life patterns and identity. It’s a large component in why I moved into my own apartment.

When I saw a 5-7 adult family (with kids!) at APW, my first thought was, “Holy fuck, how do they stay themselves?”

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APW 2013: Degendering

(This is second in a series of posts about Atlanta Poly Weekend 2013.)

Puck: Hi, I’m Puck.
Me: I’m Melissa.
Puck: What’s your preferred pronoun?
Me: Um? “She.”
Puck: Mine’s “they.”

I’ve never been asked my preferred pronoun before.

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APW 2013: Opening Ceremonies

Jackie and my APW 2013 Badge

Jackie wished she could have gone. She’s poly, too: she loves everybody.

APW–or “Ay Pee Dub”, as the kids say1–is Atlanta Poly Weekend (SFW), and I went to it for $50 and half a hotel room.

Holy. Shit.

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Pleasant Mobile App: Guidebook

I’m going to a conference this weekend, so I’ve been preplanning all my time slots (double- and triple-booked, of course, as I do). My last conference was DragonCon, and it used a DragonCon-branded mobile app that was built using Core-Apps’ EventLink and FollowMe platforms. It really struggled to keep up with the heft of DragonCon–every load of or task-switch to the app checked the servers for event info and friends’ statuses, I don’t think Twitter postings worked, and the app crashed pretty frequently on my iPhone 4, particularly when network conditions were bad.

I really, really hope DragonCon switches to Guidebook this year.

The conference this weekend is much smaller than DragonCon, but Guidebook is already a much smoother experience just for preplanning. The UI is clean and unbranded by the con itself, I can have multiple cons (or museums, or schools, or associations) in my guidebook without having to have separate apps for each. It’s quick and easy to see my personal schedule, and the app is fast and feels lightweight.

I want to see more apps this cleanly designed.