My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on March 26, 2017

Two years ago, Intuit’s Turbo Tax software tried their "money grab" in attempted to strong-arming their long-time and new customers into paying substantial more to use their software to file their 2014 taxes. The CEO took to the Internet and made an apology and stepped up to Intuit’s greedy "mistake." One would think that competitors might have learned from such "mistake" … NOPE, not in the case for TaxAct (the company I switched to after the gouging attempt by Intuit). This year, there has not been the same outrage, likely because it impacts only their download products and TaxAct is a smaller company, but a quick glance shows me a similar money grab (click image right – which doesn’t even include an additional $19.99 state filing for 2016!). For those comparing … it will cost me nearly twice as much for the same packages as last year!

To be fair, TaxCut has lowered prices on their online offerings, so IF you are able to use them, you may save a few dollars, but if you want downloads and prefer working off-line, look out! 

I double checked to be sure I was comparing "apples to apples" and that the prices have been jacked up … and below was their 3/25/2017 email answer … in short "YES":

Dear TaxAct® Customer,

As part of our continued efforts to provide you with the best possible products and experience, we’ve made a few changes for the upcoming tax season; which affected the pricing of our current products. These changes have resulted in some customers paying more than in prior years, many also pay less or nothing at all. 

TaxAct offers what we and our customers feel to be a quality product at a very reasonable price when evaluating comparable packages. Our products are fairly priced when considering the features and services provided and as such, we are unable to match the price of products with different feature and service offerings.

While we encourage our customers to evaluate a number of products available in order to choose the one right for them, we are confident that after comparing TaxAct products and features to other products, TaxAct will emerge as a great value for the price.
 
Keep in mind, you may receive a brief email survey to submit feedback regarding the support provided to you as well as our TaxAct services. We would appreciate it if you would take a few moments to complete this survey, once it is received.
 
Jon L.
TaxAct Customer Support
HC-329

Category: Business, Financial, Marketing, Software | No Comments »
Tags: filing, income, intuit, irs, pricing, Software, taxact, taxes, turbotax

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2017

Just when you think you’ve heard and read it all when it comes to sailing and telling the story … Guirec Soudée and his chicken Monique goes one step further. Crazy.

Category: Blogs, Human Interest, Sailing, Social Media, Video | No Comments »
Tags: chicken, facebook, french, liveaboard, sailing, sailor, video

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2017

Just a few photos from Thursday and Friday after the first week of kitchen demolition and construction. A few more prior to the cabinets below to archive the project.

Dent in our new refrigerator  

Category: Misc, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: building, construction, kitchen, project, remodel

Posted By RichC on March 24, 2017

A couple years ago I backed Seymour Segnit’s ThingCharger project and was very pleased with the “plug-charger” gizmos. After learning from his previous launch, the sharp marketer is giving a new “system project” a try. Take two, if you will. This time he has added and improved the earlier design and added a “kit” worth of component products that should offer a variety of ways to charge your “things.” He calls the new system MAGFAST … since it used magnets I presume?

As a previous buyer and backer, I attended the launch party and live video in an attempt to attract pre-production dollars for the start-up his new company. I knew it would successfully raise the low threshold of $300,000 just by the prep Seymour and his family put into the launch hype … and within an hour surpassed the goal. As of this writing there are nearly 2000 backers and $700,000 in pre-order pledges. Hopefully the production cost, business overhead and inventory issue can be managed a little more efficiently than the last time?

Yes … I’m backing again and looking forward to regular progress reports, something Seymour is excellent at … along with his desire to be ecologically responsible. As a consumer, many buyers/investors are happy to spend a few dollars more for a quality, premium product IF they know the company is doing it part to minimize its environmental footprint. They have started already by planting trees.

At the 24 hour mark, your support has helped us to plant 24,218 trees! Thank you for making a difference, MAGFAST friends! pic.twitter.com/CYjCmMQB01

— Ⓜ MAGFAST (@getMAGFAST) March 22, 2017

Category: Business, Cellphone, Financial, Innovation, Marketing, Tablet, Technology | 4 Comments »
Tags: backer, charger, crowdfunding, magfast, Marketing, tech friday, techfriday

Posted By RichC on March 23, 2017

This content is restricted.

Category: Misc, Personal, Photos, Shopping | No Comments »
Tags: annalyn, construction, family, house, kitchen, project, remodel

Posted By RichC on March 22, 2017

Well the FTC has some simple advice for those "still" receiving robocalls even when on the Do Not Call List or Registry. Most of us continue to receive unwanted calls on landlines and cellphones, even we are on the registry (and have renewed). It is illegal unless you have giving the caller written permission. Many robocalls nowadays are likely scams and intend to harvest bits of information. Information can be as simple as just answering the phone (a working number).  Other are happy linking a name to a phone number or maybe getting your addresses, including email. The most aggressive will attempt to verify numbers, like social security, bank accounts and credit cards. No doubt they will be sold on the dark web or to other marketers.

Follow FTC attorney Kati Daffan’s advice:

1. Hang up
2. Don’t press any numbers
3. Block the number
4. Report to the FTC … and maybe update the call on the National Do Not Call Registry.

Category: Advice, Cellphone, Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: donotcall, ftc, ID Theft, phone, registry, robocall, scams, security

Posted By RichC on March 21, 2017

Finally, our long awaited kitchen project begins in earnest. Monday was what Fixer Upper’s Chip and Joanna Gaines call "Demo Day." Our long and drawn out updates and upgrades are finally starting and have grown in both design changes and cost as the weeks have grown into months … if not years!

We really started the upgrade process 7 years ago, back in 2010, when we replaced our Kitchenaid Dishwasher with a Bosch. At that point we new we would soon be upgrading several of our aging appliances and going from white to stainless. Oh we delayed time and time again with painting and new faucets and valves until we bit a bigger bullet in 2015 and bought a new stainless Samsung refrigerator. Two appliances down and definitely a step closer to doing the full upgrade and transition from our "white" 1990s builders grade, well used 20 year old cabinets, etc to something we wanted. When I mention our existing kitchen to someone, they look at it and tell me it looks fine. Well it does from a distance, but the thermo-molded cabinet doors and drawers are starting to peel, the white Corian has scratches and seems yellowish … besides, Brenda and I were both ready for a change.

A couple of the major changes are removing the cooktop and downdraft vent from the island and converting it to a fairly large combination eating area and granite worksurface island (replacing the kitchen table entirely).

The desk area is gone (it only collects clutter) and we’ll lengthen the counter space as well as add a pantry cupboard area with roller drawers as we love the one at my daughter’s house in Wayzata MN (really a second pantry for us). The existing electric cooktop is great, but the trend is to convert from electric to natural gas, so since we have gas, we’ll add a Bosch 5 burner range with the oversize center burner and smaller BTW warming burner. We’ll hopefully accessing the gas line under the cabinets (in basement) and then mount a Bosch commercial vent hood above it.

We really love the existing GE Spacesaver Microwave so plan on keeping it the same since they make an upgraded stainless model. Brenda wanted a second oven and we’ll replace the existing one with a Bosch double-oven ($$$ particularly on that one for those of you keeping score). Hopefully our planning has gone well and we won’t run into any major snags.

My final update may have to wait until all the cabinets are in, but I would like to wire the cabinet above the refrigerator for a flatpanel 4K TV — pull the new doors and replace with a removable 40" panel (ie. Visio D-Series 40" Ultra HD Full-Array LED Smart TV — Without Stand: 21.27 inches H x 35.97 inches W x 2.68 inches D). My wife is not quite on board with this yet – I’m working on it.

So let the construction begin!

Category: Archive, Misc, Personal | No Comments »
Tags: building, construction, house, kitchen, project, remodel, upgrade

Posted By RichC on March 20, 2017

It was dark for a panoramic iPhone5 photo, but while doing my "last bag" garbage run this morning, I couldn’t resist a photo of the sunrise while the lightning was cracking to the west. Within an hour it was pouring rain and became a dreary, damp day.

On a social networking technology note, it is amazing what a higher profile "re-tweet" can do for an average tweet. I generally post a few things to Twitter each day, often while I eat my lunch. It has been my habit for almost a year and over 1000 of over 20,000 tweets to use a personalized URL shortener; it is easy to know when a media personality re-tweets something that I’ve shared. Generally a tweet gets between 30-50 clicks from my followers, but it can go close to 1000 if someone high profile comments or retweets it. Here’s 4 hours worth of clicks on a couple of today’s tweets.

Category: Cellphone, Photos, Social Media, Weather | 1 Comment »
Tags: iphone, ohio, panarama, pano, storms, sunrise, twitter, weather, west chester

Posted By RichC on March 20, 2017

This content is restricted.

Category: Audio, Music, Video | 1 Comment »
Tags: 1970s, album, dance with me, john hall, mp3, music monday, musicmonday, orleans, songs, still the one, twofer

Posted By RichC on March 19, 2017

Although using a leaf blower may be more fun in cleaning the gutters, it can make a mess of everything below. I generally use rubber gloves, but in the end always slice them up and end up with a bare hand anyway.

Here’s a great idea: Cut an anti-freeze or similar shaped plastic gallon jug in the shape of a scoop and dump the debris into a bucket or plasitc garbage bag.

Category: How-To, Tidbits | No Comments »
Tags: cleaning, foxnews, gutters, hack, home, house, tip