log entries of timotheus

This is a rant.

A couple days ago my good friend maiki twittered about listening to his iPod via a bluetooth headset, and how much he enjoyed it. My response was “I fricking hate bluetooth headsets”. And we are talking the white fury pumping through your veins hatred. It was such a strong response I was a little surprised. I thought I’d sit and talk about bluetooth headsets, and why I am not a fan.

My biggest grievance with bluetooth headsets is I feel they are a waste of electricity and lithium. A corded counterpart will work just fine, but we don’t want to deal with that. After being used for, lets say 300 recharges the inner rechargable battery will be fairly shot, and you’ll have to replace it. I can reconcile using materials like this for devices like cellphones, because they need to be portable. But to use some of our limited resources to make batteries for wireless headphones, just because we don’t want to hassle with cords seems wrong to me.

I am not saying people should throw their bluetooth headsets away; the material has already been used to create it. When it comes time to replace your headset, maybe think about just going the corded route.

That is all; rant is over.

Wow, turn your head and there goes 19 days since the last update. Since my last entry I have probably eaten at least 100 cookies, since they are being baked in massive quantities by family and friends. I have yet to meet a cookie I haven’t eaten. It just seems impolite.

I have most of my holiday shopping done with, there is just one more present I need to order for my Dad. I know what it is, just haven’t made the order yet.

Speaking of my Dad, him and my Grandmom are coming back to visit on the 29th, so I have under ten days to get the house clean. It isn’t bad, the only part I would consider needing the most help would be the back room, and that is because I use the dinner table to hold all my papers, books and stuff. I need to go through and get rid of what I do not need in the pile.

Monday I am going to go to Loch Raven library, which I haven’t been to since I was ten. They are open 0900 to 2100, and I am hoping to get there when they open and put down some serious word count.

I hope everyone had a good wrap-up of their semesters if they were in school, and are looking forward to the winter break.

Things are moving very quickly for me now. There is a sense of urgency in all my projects I’ve been working on that wasn’t there before. Listlessness is at an end.

I’m not sure how this change came about, but it was definitely a mix of several things. I’m not ready to explain it, because I can’t. Maybe I will one day.

I have so many things I want to do, and the future is uncertain as always. If I can work on these things that I feel are important, and also bring me joy, then why postpone their creation?

Also, I made a pretty big decision a couple weeks ago. In this decision’s aftermath, there has been a sense of peace that I rarely feel. It is similar to when I decided to move to Baltimore one year before I actually did. As soon as I made that decision, it always felt exactly like the right thing to do, and I never second guessed it. It is the same with this decision. Also, I’m running into little things everywhere that reinforce that it was the right decision. It is very calming. I feel like it is a permanent change to the makeup of my character.

So, quick background on this so people don’t think I’m going too nuts. I was in Towson University’s library, doing some Alan Watts reading. Out of the blue, the weirdest idea flew into my head. I don’t know what it was, but it was one of those “where the heck did THAT come from?!”, and then I thought a poem on weird ideas might be different. It just kind of happened in 4 minutes of writing.

Weird Ideas
by Tim Habersack

Weird ideas are entering my mind,
Weird ideas are beginning to find
a foothold in my fragmented thoughts,
and starting to erode my old mental locks.

Weird ideas are bouncing around,
Weird ideas have loosened the bounds
of the madman residing within,
he’s testing his freedom and starting to grin.

Weird ideas are changing my views,
Weird ideas now alter what’s true.
I’m doing things now that make no sense,
Running towards madness, I’ve crossed the fence.

Weird ideas are all that remain,
Weird ideas have made me insane.

Saturday was my sisters wedding. Everything went fine, nobody tripped or anything! Here are some of the pics, more to come soon.

Hope and I before the wedding, I for some reason look like a mob boss.
Doing the Vows
Group Picture

I will try to link to the sites that I received information on. A lot of this info came from my Mom, who is an accountant and who I grilled for thirty minutes last night.

First off, if you earn more than $433 from your self-employment, then you should be paying the Self-Employment Tax and Estimated Taxes. (See the IRS site on Self-Employed Individuals Tax Center page for more info) Failure to pay Estimated Taxes quarterly can result in fees.

Next is something that needs to be explained, but the easiest way to do this is with an example:

Tom designs a website for Underhill Associates. Tom isn’t very good with graphics, so he has his two friends, Bert and Bill help with that part. Tom gets paid $1000 from Underhill. He turns around and gives $250 to both Bert and Bill.

(Queue Sesame Street-ish music) What are the tax implications?

Tom has to declare all $1000 as income. Now the good news is he can say the $500 in labor he paid to Bert and Bill was an expense. (And you pay taxes on your net income; income minus expenses). But lets add to the scenario a bit..

Tom does two more jobs at the same rate, with Bert and Bills help. They each get paid $250 per job, so now they have recieved $750 from Tom this year.

What are the tax implications?

Since Tom is paying over $600 to the subcontractors, Tom will need to give each of them a 1099-MISC form at the end of the year. (See this great article)

Now Tom is thinking, what if I turned to stone or something, and couldn’t carry on the business. All the billing is coming from my account, and in my name. Could I just set up a seperate checking account or something that all the billing is attached to, so if I was stone, Bert and Bill could carry on the work?

Sadly not without forming a corporation. A bank account needs to be tied to an entity. This is either a person, two people (joint account), or a corporate entity like a business.

I hope this has been informative!

Today is another glorious day in Soviet Maryland! I was supposed to take my great aunt to brunch and grocery shopping, but last night one of her front teeth fell out. I told her to stop playing hockey. Instead I went to the library, dropped off a book and donated two others. Then I dropped off a bit of post, after which I went to my local Mars grocery store. Nothing like shopping at 09:15 with all the senior citizens. They always give me dirty looks too, like I’m screwing up their universe by being there. I love it.

I just looked at my shopping list, and I’m proud at how healthy it is:

-Wheat Bread
-Grape Jelly
-Carrots
-Bananas
-Salad
-Orange Juice
-Frozen Veggies

Thanks for the input on the naming situation. I think I’m going to go with the folders / subfolders idea, because everyone who is familiar with computers at all understands this. I came up with a neat way to show it though. If you look here, you can see what my idea is. I realize the colors are horrible, but the layout can definitely be done with CSS I think. Obviously the real one would have different subfolders in it, and each main folder would show the actual total of it’s subfolders. And the header/menu was just a mock up. I’m going to leave the design to the design peoples. But I think having the subfolders inside the main folders like that makes it really easy to see what is going on.

Ok, now I need to stop talking about it and work more on these function conversions.

So, dreams.

In my copious spare time, I’ve been allowed to ponder various.. ponder-worthy topics. One that has been stuck in my head for a while is concerning dreams.

Some people say dreams offer insight to the subconscious mind, others say they are just random synapses firing. I used to hold to the latter theory. After watching an episode of Stargate Atlantis where a person is stuck in a dream, and it’s the sci-fi staple of “Is she really awake or not; what is real”, I had an idea.

It would be fun to play a prank on someone where they think they are dreaming. The scenario isn’t important, but what would cause real confusion would be to replace all written material with the dream letter jibberish that is in most dreams. (Reading things in dreams is very difficult for most people to do. Often you can read it, but as soon as you read it you are forgetting what is said.)

Then I started thinking bigger. What is another explanation I can come up with that allow dreams to make sense? And it came to me. The theory of infinite parallel universes says that every time something can occur, all possible outcomes do occur and are branched out as a separate universes. So, there is a universe out there for every possible outcome of every decision, since the birth of time. So, a whole bunch of universes.

What if dreams are really your brain interfacing into one of these other universes, tying into the ‘you’ in that universe? That would explain why many times things make no logical sense, because maybe the laws of physics or anything can be different in a different universe. Also, having problems reading things makes more sense when you consider it’s another universe.

So how can I explain lucid dreams, you may ask. Well, in a lucid dream you realize you are dreaming, and can change things to your will. I say in that universe, maybe you have mental powers. Or, your counterpart could be mentally unstable, and so you’re seeing things that aren’t ‘real’.

Maybe the connection isn’t exact. So it’s not like you see what your counterpart is seeing at that exact moment. It could be in the future in that universe, which could explain dejavu. (you tapped into a parallel universe that is fairly close to your own, and the time index was off.)

It’s fun to try and fit all the aspects of dreams into this model.

I found this musician on Magnatune. All her stuff is mostly cello arraignments. It’s all pretty neat, kind of has a Myst/Riven vibe to it.

Her song “Maenam” on the album “Hidden Sky” is especially good. You can listen here.

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/sieber-hidden/hifi_play

I’ve also listened to this album and it’s pretty good.

http://magnatune.com/artists/albums/sieber-second/hifi_play

Magnatune is neat because you can buy the digital versions of the albums, and you choose the price, from $5 up to $18. Half of the purchase price goes directly to the musician. It’s all DRM-free of course.

I hope you like.

So, today is Saturday. I’ve got a stomach bug or something, not feeling 100%, or even 70%. My body is receiving a failing grade right now. Going to try to be productive today, but when you’re feeling rough it’s not always easy. What do I mean when I say ‘be productive’? Well, that’s easy. I’m basically trying to psyche myself up to do either some web coding, writing, or getting things done around the house, like cleaning.

The last ten days I’ve been doing a lot of reading, which is good. I consider reading to be partially productive, in the sense that I’m adding to my mental codex of writing skills, and I’m learning things to boot. I looked back at June, and I think I only read like two books! That is a travesty of epic proportions. Next up in the book pile is a biography on Freud, “Battle Royale”, and Naruto. I’m to the point now in Naruto where I think I need to watch some of the anime. Oh, and speaking of books, Neal Stephenson has a new book coming out September 9th called “Anathem“. I hate buying new releases in hardcover, but I just don’t know if I can wait for this puppy to be in the local library system.

I’ve been thinking a lot about our current form of government, and I’m putting together a new way of running a government of any size. I might use a wiki to explain how the system works, not sure yet. Right now it is filling up my Moleskin Cahier notepad.

I also brought five books on Calculus down from my upstairs storage, and I’m going through them again. I really am enjoying it, and thinking back to all my school I’ve done, it’s the math in everything that I always liked the most. If I had sacks of money, maybe I would go back to school to get a second degree in Mathematics.

I’d like to take a second to talk about LOTRO, and my absence from the game. First, I think it’s a great game, and a lot of fun. I’ve just been having a problem with video games in general lately. I play them, and I think, “This is cool, but my universe would be better because of this..”. Essentially, why play in a gaming universe when there are dozens of universes in my mind that I want to share with others. Yet, I think books are a fine use of your time, so maybe that is a double standard. I think when my life was more involved with my office job I enjoyed video games more since it was an easy way to escape. Now, I go hiking and exploring for reals! Also, the MMO thing just seems to be bent on taking as much of your time as it possibly can. A game of “Battle For Westnoth” or “Armageddon Empires” seems ok, because there is an end to the game within an hour or two.

I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but it does to me.

I want to blog more, but I’m not promising anything. Ideally, I’d like to update this at least twice a week. I think that is doable. Once on Wednesday, once on the weekend? Maybe.