Sunday, September 23, 2007

Quick Weekend Update

This weekend was winter come early. We had been preparing for the first Lynbrook varsity football team dinner at our house with swimming, the game itself, Nick's soccer game, Anthony's soccer game, my bike ride and Julie's art crawl - and it was suppose to RAIN!


Well, it all came off ok:) I only have pictures from the dinner and a short highlight video from the game:)



Nick's team really played well. No goals for either team. There were lots of chances but they just couldn't find the back of the net. Nick did get a chance to play some forward and loved it. We will see if he starts to play more there as the season goes on.

Both Julie and I got our activities in as well. And we managed to sneak out for a date - to see Bourne Ultimatum and have a quick dinner!!

Friday, September 21, 2007

Friday night

Friday night it was late
I was walking you home
We got down to the gate
And I was dreaming of the night
Would it turn out right?

How to tell you boy, oo
I want to build my world around you, yeh
Wanna tell you that it's true
I wanna to make you understand
I'm talking about a lifetime plan

Not at all sure why this came to mind. Well, maybe I am. What a week. A couple of fun and interesting events.
  • Met up with Chris Iglesias (a high school football buddy) in San Francisco. He has responsibility for CityBuild, and project under mayor Newsome. Check out the video. But while this is awesome stuff that he is doing, that isn't the point. We were Reminiscing about high school football. Great memories!
  • And tonight we had Anthony's varsity football team over for one of their pre-game team dinners. It was a total blast to have them here and watch them laugh and joke and do what a bunch of guys do together - get stupid. Long story short, they got into a belly flop contest off the diving board for what started out being $20 and ended up at $50 for the winner. We would have done the same (and just for kicks - Anthony won and has the welt to prove it).
  • After they left we were hanging out watching football, looking forward to Nick's soccer game tomorrow, then Anthony's football game tomorrow night.
So back to the song. I totally remember high school when this song was popular. Julie was my girl friend. We were having a good time together, talking about being together - building a life long plan. And we are living it! (ok, kind of mushy)

By way of recognizing the artists - the song is Reminiscing by Madison Avenue re-released in our high school days by the Little River Band.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

The IRS

I spent more than an hour working with the IRS to clean up an inquiry they sent me.

The all started with a letter from the IRS that said I owed a bunch of taxes from the 2005 tax year - roughly $17k!! When I received this there was a bit of panic. First was the amount, then it was a bit of embarrassment. You see - I do my own taxes, so how could I have screwed up that badly.

I went back through my taxes and found everything that they pointed out as missing with the exception of one item. So I went back, recalculated my taxes after adding this item in, found that I owed roughly $1,000. So I sent them all of the information and a check.

I then received a letter stating that the inquiry was closed. It didn't mention the check that I sent. It just said they closed it.

So I called them to ask what this meant. Did I actually calculate the new amount correctly? That seemed pretty amazing. Or did they decide that I didn't owe them anything? After a long conversation, the person from the IRS said that it looked like I owed $17. So I would either get the amount I sent less $17 or they would forgive the $17 and send me back all of my money. I was suppose to get a check in about two weeks.

About a month passed. I never received a check. So today I called them back to see what happened. The first person I talked to said (after being put on hold a number of times) that they should have sent me a check but it appears that they messed up. She said she would put a note in my file so that the check would be cut and sent. But she said no-one would read the file so she needed to transfer me to Fresno so that they would open the file and proceed with cutting the check. You can imagine wonder about where she was and why I needed to talk to someone in Fresno - but we will ignore that for now.

I then talked to another person at the IRS - this time in Fresno (how would I actually know, and why do I care ...). Anyway she said that they would need to cut a check. She would pass my file along and I should hear something in a couple of weeks. I asked her what I would be getting back. Her answer was, "I don't know." She said she thought that it would be the whole amount plus interest ... I asked her how I would hear back from them. Her answer was, "I don't know." Starting to sound like a Bill Cosby routine. She said she though I would receive a letter. I asked her what the letter would say. She said ... Anyway, seems that case has been handed to AUR Audit Recon. I did find that using google. It is Audit Reconsideration. Kind of the place where things go that got screwed up:)

What was the point of that. Well, not really much. Just kind of amazing. Seems they would be pretty good at this kind of thing. And given everything else that I have been doing with FreshBrain - really a waste of my time. And now I have blogged about it so it cost me even more.

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Lynbrook vs Del Mar

The Lynbrook Vikings played their first game of the season yesterday afternoon against Del Mar. We all have high hopes for the team, but the game didn't go as planned. After we scored on an awesome first possession - of 93 yards - the rest of the first half scoring was done by Del Mar and we went into halftime trailing 25-7. We did better in the second half, having two touchdowns called back on penalties and scoring again, but in the end it was not enough. Final score was 31-13.

On the bright side, Anthony got to play a LOT and played really well. He expected to be in on all special teams including his job as long snapper, and he knew he would be in on some offensive plays subbing at fullback. But early in the first half Ryan Tom (an inside linebacker and fullback) got hurt so Anthony played all but a few plays the rest of the way. He carried the ball three times, had a number of tackles and almost blocked an extra point.

So kind of a bittersweet first game. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Cool New Technology

Had to write a quick blog entry based on a couple of things. One is the Apple announcement yesterday about their new iPod lineup. If you haven't seen it, very cool. I think they are on fire and have come out with the best update to a product line that I have seen.

They redesigned the iPod Nano, the iPod Classic and they introduced the iPod Touch. The first two are nice steps forward for existing products. The third is basically an iPhone without the phone capabilities. But they DID include WiFi - which means you can get on the internet wherever there is open WiFi. They of course have a browser, have build in support for YouTube and nice integration with iTunes so that you can download music or video. You have to play the video and check it out. Impressive!!!

The other is the ebook. Amazon will be coming out with a new one. Sony has a fairly new version as well. Maybe this time it will actually catch on. Check out the short story on this from the San Jose Mercury News.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Back From Summer ...

How does that song go. Schools out for summer. Schools is out for ever.

Well, school is back from summer. The boys are back at it (although this is a three day weekend:)). Nick is in 8th grade. Top of the heap, king of the school - and playing soccer at the same time. And Anthony is a Junior with am impossible school schedule, football and soccer as well.

Today was the Anthony's football scrimmage as well as a soccer tournament game. He has one or two soccer games tomorrow as well. Nick has the weekend off having his normal soccer practice last night. Julie and I are just doing normal weekend stuff before we attend a pool party on Monday.

Thought that you might be interested in a few pictures of Anthony from today's scrimmage. He did well. He is playing 1.5 string running back and 2nd string inside linebacker. He also does long snaps on punts and PAT/field goals. And he is on the kickoff and kickoff return teams.

Making a tackle.

Dropping back into coverage.

Carrying the ball.

Hope you enjoy. And keep checking my FreshBrain blog as well Jujuart (Julie's blog). We are both trying to them up weekly.