2009 Estimated Taxes

Are you a small-time independent contractor or sole proprietor?  Then you need to, assuming you live in the United States, file estimated taxes like me.  Well, I did my due diligence and plowed through all the worksheets to arrive at a number that was promptly thrown out.

If you know you’re going to make significantly more than you made last year then just divide your 2008 tax amount (1040, line 61) into quarters and send them a check every three months starting with April 15th.  Just attach the payment vouchers that are part of 1040-ES (2009 version of course).

Essentially the work sheet just helps you figure out if you’ll owe less, so knowing that’s not true you will end up doing all that crap unnecessarily.  Ugh.

Programmer Rage

You’ve probably heard of “nerd rage“, but right now I’m suffering from programmer rage.  And rather than bloat my base blog with insignificant negativity and frustrations, I plan to air my dirty laundry here.  This is a good space for it, especially with the somewhat ironic title inclusion of “anti-chaos” when here is where I’ll document the chaos.

Miss Katima?

What a weird spam email. I don’t understand the point of it …

from: miss katima <misskatimav15@msn.com>
reply-to: miss_121katima@yahoo.ie

Hello , My Name is Katima Timbo from Sierre Loene in west Africa presently residing in Dakar senegal. I was impressed seek for my soul mate, and also i like to establish a long lasting relationship with you. In addition,i will like you to reply me through my private email so that i will give you my picture and more about me.Thanks waiting to hear from you soonest. Love From, Miss Katima,

Weekend Project: S3Arch

My tender typing appendages will brook no rest this weekend, I’d like to write and release something.  Here I will write a plan in order to accomplish the effect completely without wallowing in unremarkable dank corners of coding.  S3Arch initially began as a replacement for JungleDisk and thus included more functionality than my daily needs require.  Hardly anything of use came of said desire, not an unusual end for most of my hobbyist technological pursuits.

First, the three major points it must deliver:

1. Single script / command-line name.  I drop to a prompt or just execute “s3arch” (no extension, no parameters) and it uploads new files from my local arch to S3.
2. Configuration run once to specify S3 id/key, local path, and remote path (including bucket). Data is written to a “global” file accessible only to the current user, but not encrypted (I’ll get to that later).
3. Traversal of local folders outputs their names and uploads any files not already on S3.  Existing files are left alone and not shown in the console.  At the end, like robocopy, it will print out how many files were uploaded, skipped, and how much approximately how many bytes.

Development Points …

• Written in .NET on Windows but runnable on Ubuntu using Mono.  This shouldn’t be terribly difficult, I achieved it with my date-setting utility.
• Using Visual Studio because I’m already familiar with its write/debug/test/deploy functionality.
• Calculate MD5 hash of uploaded files.
• Use HttpWebRequest directly rather than library (output must be a single executable!).  I know enough about S3 and .NET to make this happen.
• Give files public-read ACL.
• File name delimiter is forward-slash.
• Content-type based on extension and only known ones allowed (otherwise file is skipped).

I hope that’s enough detail to help me avoid problems.  Immediate features after this will be configuration encryption, checking for text errors, and mirroring to FTP since I need the files on my web host.

Let me talk about text errors for a moment.  I currently have my arch folder persisted on my ReadyNAS at home as well as mirrored to neilstuff.com/arch/.  Recently I found out that a demo I had made was not working and further investigation revealed that the text files had all been corrupted.  However many line breaks there were, that many characters from the end of the file were repeated again.  Thus all XML/HTML was completely fubar.

My guess is that somewhere along the FTP path, I had file transfers set to AUTO, and it totally screwed up the line breaks since I switch between Linux and Windows (especially for hosting) all the bloody time. Thus I’d like a utility part of S3Arch to validate XML files, look for the final HTML tag, and possibly do some other sugar.  It would merely warn me and refuse to upload the files rather than uploading broken ones.

Torrent Watcher / Scheduler

One thing TiVo did/does which relying on torrents does not, is allow you to schedule something which has not yet aired and download it when it does.  Searching for a “torrent scheduler” through various phrases didn’t turn anything up, but it’s something I would use.  For example, I will be away from my computer tonight when Lost airs and be unable to start downloading it right after a torrent appears.  As an additional nicety, I would want to restrict the torrent source/author/group/etc. and possibly even scan TPB to make sure it doesn’t have a negative rating.

Lost in Lost

Libby’s Crazy

What’s Libby’s story? She, with red hair, gives Desmond her husband’s boat after his death. Later she appears in Hurley’s past in the mental hospital, but he doesn’t remember she was there. What happened between those two time periods?

Non-People Characters

Who are these “people” that aren’t who they look like, on the island? After listening to Echo’s confession, the man he thought was his brother says, “You talk to me as if I am your brother.” Then there’s Hurley’s invisible friend who dropped a slipper. Additionally we’ve seen Jack’s father but he actually purports to be that person to Locke: “Tell my son …”. Then there’s Walt who appears now and again, soaked in Seasson 2, and then “taller” in Season 3 where he tells Locke to get up, move his legs, etc. In Season 5 when John finally meets Walt again in real life, neither of them mention the encounter which makes me wonder if that is Walt.

Walt Dizzy

Also, in regards to Walt, Season 2 implies he is special in some way and his step-father tells Michael: “things happen when he is around”. Ben also tells them that he has been a “more than they bargained for” and multiple snippets of dialog imply he teleports about. That would explain why he appears and disappears, but no one asks him about it and he never volunteers any information on it.

Chaaaaarlie’s Mistake

Charlie’s death was dramatic but unnecessary and practically suicide. He had plenty of time to pop out and shut the door, saving them both. Presumably he died to get Claire rescued, but Desmond’s vision said he saw her and Aaron get into a helicopter. Another explanation would be he saw a woman (Kate) take a/the baby into the chopper. As is usually the case, none of the characters approach this topic despite having been off the island for three years.

Monster Light

Locke sees the monster early in season 1 and is the first person to survive it, though of course he lies about encountering it. We can only imagine it is the smoke monster, given the same sounds being made, and the height at which it approaches him (we see through its eyes, not his). Later, in reference to this, he tells someone (Sawyer?) that he saw a “bright light” but anytime the audience glimpses the beast it is merely black smoke and little lightning bolts. However when Kate and Juliet are running from it and hide in a group of trees we do see a bright, white light shine onto their faces causing them to close their eyes but we don’t see the source of it.

Exit

If Whitmore knows where the island’s exit is, why didn’t he capture Ben? Or did he only figure out that was the exit after Ben came out of it? Ben tells Locke that “whoever moves the island can never return”, but he plainly has returned. Is that a source of contention or a forgotton plot device? Was Ben lying as usual?

Lamp Post

Daniel’s mother apparently now lives in a church at a Dharma station called the lamp post which can accurately predict where/when the island will be and how to get to it. Given Whitmore’s resources, how has this remained secret especially considering it’s a Dharma thing? What is her interest in it, how did she get there, why is it she knows so much about time travel, why isn’t she back in England selling jewelry, etc. ? Pendallum?