Of course, that’s not to say that work in the accounting world isn’t a completely different ballgame anyway. We’re slammed to the max from January to mid-April, stress runs high and you tend to spend some late nights in the office.

I, thus far, have been spared this death sentence. In fact, today is quite a slow one in my department, which is a shame given that I’m essentially a one-man department. Few people pick up their tax returns on days they don’t get paid, and I’m a good enough tech that the network hasn’t been acting up. I could probably get away with not being in the office, but the bills wouldn’t get paid so here I am.

I’ve always learned a lot by the work I’ve done. When building a web site for a wheel and tire store, I learned more about rims than anyone probably could care. When building a dealer portal for a distributor of cabinetry, I learned a lot about cabinets. This time around, as a staff member at an accounting firm, I can finally learn about something that affects everyone and that everyone generally thinks about a lot – accounting and taxation. Not that I aspire to be the next big-shot tax and accounting master or anything (I am just fine behind the scenes where I am), but it helps to know a little something about everything you handle on a daily basis. I am fortunate to work with seven CPAs who are knowledgeable and can help me help them. Sometimes, I’m the only communication link between them and the software vendors.

I ramble a lot…

This didn’t sit well with the bossman, to say the least. He gave me the contact info for our sales rep, whom I promptly told, “bullshit”. Here’s the email I wrote– names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Good afternoon SALES REP, here’s what we have going on.

One of the main forms we use in APPLICATION is “KY Owensboro NP-1″, which is the Net Profit License Fee return for the City of Owensboro and Daviess County Fiscal Court. This is available online at http://www.owensboro.org/sites/default/files/finance/Net_Profit_Return.pdf. In APPLICATION, this is just one page, but the version available on the City’s web site also has several worksheet pages attached before the instructions section meant to be linked back to the first page.

If you take a look at “KY Owensboro NP-1A” (Amended Net License Fee), you will find that it is the same as the worksheets after the first page of KY Owensboro NP-1, with the word “Amended” added where necessary.

I have called APPLICATION support twice over the past couple of weeks and everyone I have spoken to has been very helpful. The editors insist these additional pages are not part of the return, but rather the instructions, and the one page already in APPLICATION is current and correct. No one at this firm disagrees with that, but the return form is nigh useless without these additional sheets. The impression I get from the editors’ response forwarded to me by SUPPORT REP this morning is not what I would expect from professionals who are there to help us and make our jobs easier. A lack of an update to this form is negatively impacting our firm’s productivity and greatly diminishing the value we see in APPLICATION.

If you could help us get an updated form into the software, I and many of my colleagues here would appreciate it very much.

Today I received an email telling me the form would be updated next week. Moral of the story: if you’re unhappy with something, talk to your sales rep. It’s their ass on the line and they will get shit DONE.

This is pretty much all you get. You can see your News Feed, your own wall, and you can upload photos from your phone. I hate to say it, but Android users once again get the short end of the stick. (Compare Facebook for iPhone.) That said, there are some features thrown in there that I do like.

Home screen widget

I will admit, this is very nice. It updates ever so often and lets you scroll through recent status updates. You can post new statuses yourself from here, and visit other walls, comment, et cetera.

Phonebook live folder

This is probably the coolest feature of the app. You can place a link to a live folder on your home screen of all your friends who have phone numbers saved on the site. Open this folder, tap a contact, and you get a choice of phone numbers to call or text.

I’ve been waiting for a Facebook app for a long time. Now that I finally have it, I feel like Facebook is not paying as much attention to the Android sector as it should be. They’re leaving the door open for a potentially poorly-implemented third-party app to take away all the glory. Even the most horrible trainwreck of a social networking site has a decent, actively-developed, and above all usable Android app. I’ll be waiting for the next version. I can only hope that Facebook changes my opinion.

This does not sit well with me. Giving government the capability to control a public, open and free network is where I draw the line. I do like the idea of having a federally-recognized cybersecurity certification program, as this will establish one standard for knowledge on the subject and clear a lot of hurdles for aspiring network security analysts. Everything else is bull. This is the first time I’ve seen the EFF call out something introduced by a non-Bushie. I took issue with the NSA in the Bush years because the same thing happened: government took too much liberty with the public internet, and spied on its own citizens in the process. If a threat emerges, let the government deal with their own networks. Any sysadmin who has completed the proposed federally-sponsored cybersecurity certification program would predictably be able to take care of those under their control.

If you haven’t noticed already, I’ll go ahead and say that my problems with this are solely practical rather than political, as the internet is a big part of my life and work, so naturally these are the issues I care most about. (I’m working on an essay-type thing detailing my positions, in which I proclaim that Republicans are evil and Democrats just don’t care anymore.) I’ve seen a lot of people online throwing harsh words at the president for this, which is stupid because he has nothing to do with it. These people are crossing the line. They’re probably overzealous Glenn Beck fans. Anyway, case in point:

This has nothing to do with “protecting” the internet.

It has everything to do with the power drunk, dicatorial 0bama engaging in an unprecedendted, unconstitutional power grab, orchestrated by his psychotic. lunatic fringe “czars” like Van Jones.

After siezing the auto companies, siezing the banks, setting up a snitch line at flag@whitewhite.gov for Americans to report anyone who doesn’t agree with 0bama’s evil health care bill, , ahile ammasing a fedrel deficits of a staggering $1.6 trillion, and sending “stimulus” money to murderers in US jails, this communist wants to grab control of the internet too does he?

Really? Really? I suppose the fact that Jay Rockefeller is coming up with this thing rather than the White House does nothing for you. You probably think President Obama has exercised some sort of mind control on this poor fellow to perpetrate this communist, Kenyan, Bill Ayers-esque, Orwellian, Illuminati, unconsitutional, and overall, evil, evil, evil power grab that will turn everyone gay, make the divorce rate skyrocket, take away all your guns and direct the government to demolish all churches.

To this I say: Really? What are you smoking?

When all you have in your medicine cabinet is a bottle of Lonelyt (spell it backwards) PM, and you have the choice of taking it and sleeping for a few more hours or just dealing with the headache, you will take the Lonelyt and sleep if the headache is bad enough.

I’m up doing laundry now. Folding clothes still does wonders at clearing your mind. Maybe I’ll clean the house next.

This stumped me for months and I eventually arrived at the point where I just didn’t care anymore. I blamed it on my computer’s NIC, and then just left it at bad signal levels from the cable company when I found that all the other computers on my network were almost as slow. A couple of nights ago, in a fit of disgust I decided to go downstairs and plug my netbook directly into the cable modem. The speeds were fast as lightning, as things should be. What device on my network could have caused such a bottleneck?

The culprit was an old Intel 16-port switch I had thrown into the mix when I mounted a small contingent of servers and networking equipment in the basement. Back then I didn’t have enough ports on my Netgear wireless router to support everything, so I had everything going to that switch. Over time things kept getting slower and slower. Now that I use one of my servers as the router, I can take the old switch out without impacting the network.

Lesson learned. I’m getting acceptable speeds now.

So much has happened this week and I am surprised I made it out alive. Check it out.

Monday
I was working on billing stuff with Boss #2 in Henderson when his wife left to take one of the kids to grandma’s and grab food at Arby’s, if I remember correctly. She backs out of the driveway and B2 and I hear a horrible grinding noise. “That didn’t sound good,” I said. We emerge from the back yard and she’s back in the driveway. My car also has a nice little bit of damage done to it. My driver side door will open only once more after this happens, more on that later. We notify the police and get an accident report, and I drive home with a disabled vehicle, entering through the passenger door. On my way home from Henderson, a Subway bag in my car decided to empty itself of its contents and begin flying around the car. This startles and distracts me enough that I run off the road and have one hell of a ride trying to get back on the road (successful) while staying in my own lane (not successful) traveling at 60mph. I left the highway and had to sit off on a side road for about 20 minutes to gather myself, then decided to make the rest of the way home.

Wednesday
Wednesday was my 21st birthday. I know I promised last year on this blog that I’d have a party but needless to say that never happened. I actually had to work that day, for the second year in a row. B2’s insurance company gave me a check that day for the damage to my car from his wife backing into it. I still have not visited the other former customer I planned on visiting that day. How exciting, huh?

Friday
Friday, I planned on renewing my license to get the cool sideways version that all the people 21 and over get. I was still climbing in and out of my car through the passenger door, so I mapped out what the routine would be before leaving. I would go to the bank to deposit my paycheck, then walk over to the judicial center to get my license renewed, then head home. Apparently, I was concentrating too much on this planned routine because on my way to the bank, I zoned out, went through a red light and struck the side of a Ford F-250 going through that same intersection. My car did little damage to the truck but was pretty banged up itself, as seen in the picture at the top of this entry. The car was a complete loss and my insurance will not pay for it. Thankfully, the check I received from B2’s insurance company will just about pay off the car so I can sell it for parts or something to make up the difference. Not to be brought completely down by the day’s events, I went out with friends to celebrate my birthday. I had a few drinks; I figured that the way this week was going, I would be lucky if I didn’t die at Holiday World on…

Saturday
Yes, I went to Holiday World on Saturday with the OSMA/Twitterites. We planned this event at Texas Roadhouse during the big ice storm back in January, and I think that was the key to its overwhelming success. We had 21 attendees. I finally got to meet some really cool people (and catch up with others!), all the while being burned to a crisp by the sun. I did not die at Holiday World, so I can consider this week a partial success.

Can I sleep for about a week now?

Hey, check out that date.

• Linux system administrator and engineer. I have not been using Linux in some form or another for the past five-plus years for nothing. I have learned quite a bit; it’s gotten to the point where I’ve mounted two servers running it in my house and I’m planning on adding a third soon. I know Red Hat Enterprise/Fedora/CentOS quite well, a good-sized chunk of Gentoo and a bit of Debian. I would love to be a systems guru for a medium-sized outfit and eventually get my RHCE (as someone told me yesterday regarding people’s obsession with MCSE and MCSE only, “do you work on computers, or just Windows?”) This opportunity may be presenting itself to me now and if things work out, I will be a happy boy.
• Voiceover artist. I’ve been told by many that I would be a good fit for such a job; I would believe it if I had any post-production skills. (And attracted the ladies just by opening my mouth, but that’s a completely unintentional side effect/not what I’m pursuing.) Just about the only things I’ve done in this sort of specialty are this internet radio station ID and… oh yeah, I recorded a rap song for my own business when I was running it. (Kudos to Nathan Seaton for writing the lyrics.)
• Anything in broadcasting. Actually, I may prefer radio more. I find I do better behind a mic… or a camera (never in front).

There you have it. Not only do I suck at ending these blog entries, I suck at tagging them therefore I will forgo it this time around.

Anyway, I’m working on a few criteria to use when determining whether or not to return the favor when someone follows me on Twitter. Most people I will follow back. You must remember the key word there is “people”. Bots get the boot, obviously. Here’s a short list of surefire ways to prevent me from following you back (with some help from my trusty Twitter crowd):

• You use twitterfeed OR all you do is post a link to your latest blog entry. If I think your blog is important enough to read, I’ll subscribe and/or check it myself. You can follow me all you want, but if that’s all you use Twitter for, you may not be reading what I say anyway. Note that there are some legit uses for twitterfeed. When used correctly, it can be a great tool.
• “Keyword” followers. You do not have the slightest clue how much this annoys me. This is why. One day I mentioned that I was driving to Henderson (in Kentucky, a town about 30 miles to the west of where I live). I was immediately followed by some Nevada-based social networking group. Apparently there’s also a place named Henderson in Nevada and these people thought I was talking about that. UGH. Annoying. It’s not fun when you mention a single word and you get six new followers who do nothing but promote their services because of it. This may even earn you a block!
• You follow 10,000 people, maybe 100 of them follow you, and you’ve updated less than about 200 times. This is a big red flag. I am not blind. I see this. And it will definitely result in a block. *Thanks to @willendorfvenus, @Kendra311 and possibly @Mr_Bloggerific for this one*
• These so-called “SEO/marketing experts” that seem to be everywhere these days. This and other spam should really be called “Litter”. (If I have coined this phrase I will not only be surprised, but quite pleased.) All they do is spam links to their own web sites everywhere, follow their own kind, and occasionally the random victim who is not a “marketing expert” like you or me. It’s one huge circle jerk that does not belong online. Or anywhere, for that matter. *Aforementioned twitterers also agree with me here.*
• Last but not least, and I received a lot of feedback on this one, you have to Twitter about stuff that actually interests me. For example, if you are really into shoes that have black soles but brown tops, and that’s all you talk about on Twitter, I am really not likely to follow you back. It’s nothing against you, I just don’t care to see that crap in my stream.

There you have it. These are just a few easy ways to make sure I do not follow you on Twitter. If I think of more, I’ll be sure to add them here.