Happy News!! It's a Girl!

Hogle Zoo's baby elephant has arrived!! Watch the video below. You can go to the Hogle Zoo website and see a list of possible names. I think they should name her KHARI (CAYR ee) Meaning: queenly; joyful song; born to bring joy. She will be ready for everyone to see Friday September 11!!

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

The President's Speech

I hope that all of us can find the tolerance in our hearts and the common sense in our heads to hear and allow the President's speech to school children. The President will not be indoctrinating anything other than telling children that they can succeed and will succeed if they set goals for themselves. I don't want to offend people, but the majority of the people that I see on my facebook that are opposing the President's speech are the very people that could have used a message like this when we were in school. Maybe then they would have learned to be smart enough to use some common sense and be able to think for themselves.

I hope that all of us will respect the President for his role even though we may not agree with his political agendas or his personal habits. After all, I think most of us would agree that as a community "we believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things." (Joseph Smith)

When I was a kid I asked my casually republican father what he thought of Bill Clinton. My dad sad that he didn't agree with the things that Bill Clinton may have done or believed in, but respected him as the president anyway. He said he learned that from his mother who cried at the death of President Kennedy even though she didn't vote for him. I just wish people would set aside their false rumors and paranoia and use a little common sense.

More about shopping

Last time I was together with all my siblings, we shared (or bragged) about our best shopping trips, i.e. where we spent the least amount of money and due to the diligent use of coupons came away with the most food.

Albertsons was having a sale last week where you buy $30 of certain products and then you get $15 back for your next purchase. We did this last night with OK results but not the best because I think it was the last night of the sale and a lot of the good food was gone. We ended up getting over $202.38-worth of food for $49.45 (before tax on both). I prepared extensive shopping lists with item descriptions and attached coupons fer every item. We didn't buy anything without using a coupon on it.

Not too bad and we still have $15 to spend on our next trip. Megan really wants to spend the coupons on a gift card to a nice restaurant but says the responsible thing would be to spend it on diapers. A fancy dinner without kids sounds really nice these days. Who knew that three kids crying/whining at the same time could be so loud?

Shopping

Megan will tell you that I am surprisingly one of the most opinionated, difficult and pickiest shoppers you will find. When it comes down to it, there's some stores that I love to go to and others that I loathe and would drive way out of my way to avoid. Recently my list of places to avoid has seemingly common themes. I will tell you the stores, and you tell me if you can relate to what I think they have in common...

The stores I hate shopping at are:

1. Wal-Mart
2. Lowes
3. Walgreens

SUDDEN DISCLAIMER: If you or anyone you deeply and lovingly care for works at these stores and if you are easily offended, please don't read past this point. I have a lot of inner grief that will be relieved through this post.

What they have in common:

1. Unhelpful Staff
2. Unfriendly Staff
3. Never quite the right item
4. Cheap crap from China (identical items across the stores)
   
5. A million cash registers that aren't open
6. What I need is always in the far back corner of the store
7. Bad reputation

Since they have so much in common, it is a common misunderstanding that Wal-Mart owns Lowes and Walgreens, but I guess they don't.

Though I find shopping at theses stores extremely frustrating and un-enjoyable, I make it a point to go there one or twice a year so I don't forget why it is that I don't like going there. In fact, on Saturday I was really worn out from doing sprinkler work but needed more parts to finish up and since the Lowes is closer than the Home Depot, I thought I would go there. This is what ensued:

1. As I parked the car some other person in a whitetrashmobile was trying to leave the parking lot by pulling straight through my chosen spot. It was awkward, but I didn't back down cause I totally got there first.
   
2. I entered the store and was immediately surrounded by a barrage of ugly and worthless seasonal lawn decorations. There was so many, I was suddenly overcome with bewilderment and fear as if I was being entertained by a group of angry clowns that were closing in on me from all directions, closer and closer...
3. I regrouped my thoughts and then said OK, I know where the sprinklers are at Home Depot, they are near the front and very easy to find. So I walked toward that area of Lowes, but no, there were no signs indicating sprinklers in that area of the store. I quickly turned around and walked toward the clown mob, thinking that sprinklers are somewhat seasonal and they might be near the rest of the seasonal garden equipment.
   
4. I searched row after row of foul cheap imported garden decorations and by then I could smell the clown halitosis and I got dizzy.
5. Just then I saw someone carrying forth sprinkler parts from the back corner of the store. My beacon in a sea of grossness, I headed toward thence he came.
   
6. After passing light bulbs, vacuum parts, shower inserts and toilet bowls, I finally found the sprinkler parts along a dark aisle in the back corner of the store.
   
7. The selection was very disappointing. I found some of what I needed. What else I needed was a RainBird rotary head (part number 22SA) that is interchangeable with the 1800 series bodies that I bought a few weeks ago. After diligently searching I found they had the rotary head already connected to a body. But all I needed was the head!!!! I was getting frustrated.
   
8. I picked up the head+body and walked around 25% of the store looking for someone to help me. No one. Not a soul.
   
9. Finally, I met an "associate" that was heading toward the back break room or something. I asked him if they sell just the head. He said, "if we don't have it over there then we don't." Oh c'mon! What kind of a stupid answer is that? I told him again that I had looked all over and not seen it, but I wanted to know for sure because I didn't need to buy the body and just wanted the head.
   
10. So he did what must be basic "Hello, I-work-at-Lowe's-and-I'm-an-idiot" training and he radioed for backup.
    
11. Another "associate" came after a while, who knows where he was hiding, and I told him my same predicament. He had to look at the shelves but then told me it came in the head+body package only. I told him Home Depot had it as a head only and he didn't care. He didn't even offer a price match. At Home Depot they will do that and they will take Lowes' coupons.
    
12. Then I walked all the way back to the front of the store, past the toilets, shower inserts, vacuum parts, light bulbs and hideous garden decorations to find that all 35 cash registers were closed except for the self-checkouts. I hate self-checkouts. Have you ever tried to buy a lot of tiny, seemingly weight-less sprinkler parts at a self check-out? I hate those scales. One time only the self check-outs were open and I was buying really heavy bags of gravel and I was so mad that a real person wasn't available to help me that I totally piled all the gravel on those stupid bagging scales and I jacked that machine up good. Next time I will sit on it and jump on it if doesn't work good. HA!
13. Anyway, I am angry.
    
14. The lady that was helping the self checkouts was scary looking
15. I left the store and came home and finished my sprinklers and stayed out working on them under some big halogen lights til midnight. It was like a football field, it was so cool. Then I was really tired. While I was doing that Megan went to Walgreen's to get a prescription and they were closed before the closing time listed on the door and then she got really mad and she swore.
16. then today we went to Wal-Mart, but we decided to go to the new one in Cedar Hills and that one was not ghetto like the others. It was ok but the price check scanner in the middle of the aisle wasn't working so I unplugged it and after a few minutes it worked again. It was an OK Wal-Mart visit.
    

So now we don't have any more money, but it's ok because we don't like shopping at those stores.

END OF RAMBLINGS

fhe

We went to Liberty Land to play mini golf for family night. It was a ton of fun. Liberty Land is an amusement park like a mini-Lagoon except Liberty Land actually has a theme where Lagoon just makes me think of sad teenagers doing bad things. Anyway, it's right by our house and Monday night is half off after 6:00 so you can do lots of fun stuff for pretty cheap.

I thought I would make a video to show something pretty cool inspired by tonight. Check it out. Turn up your sound and go to full screen if available:

Clark Howard?

The other day I was driving home from the grocery store and the Clark Howard radio show came on and I was captivated. I was completely enthralled. When I got home I sat in the driveway, in the dark and listened to his show. Most of his advice is pretty simple, but is so smart. I love it!

And I've been craving a Subway sandwich for like 2 weeks.

Economics by Dan

I want to blog, but then I think about how long it will take to write a bunch of stuff out and then I think, "No, I'm too lazy to spend that much time finding and referencing sources to make myself sound smart". So here is a quick thought with no proof of real founding:

Sometime last week Warren Buffet, who apparently knows a lot about money, said something like that we are not yet out of the recession and it will take a little while longer, but things will be better than ever when we come out of it.

I started thinking about that and I agree. I think that we can look at the car manufacturing industry as an example of what he means. The following explains my hope of how this will happen.

To this point in my life I have been a Toyota and Honda guy. I've owned 3 different Toyotas and 2 different Honda's and I loved every single one of them. But you know what car we had that we hated? It was a Saturn. That thing was too cheaply made. Sure it got decent gas mileage but that was only due to 90% of it being made plastic (that's an exaggeration), having a tiny engine and being a 5 speed manual.

When we were done with the Saturn we could only get $500 out of it. My Toyota truck died in the same fashion and we got more than 6 times that much out of it. Then our Honda Accord died and we got $1,000 out of that one. The resale/scrap value is one example of why it doesn't make sense to pay big bucks for an American car when you can pay the same amount for a nice foreign car.

Additionally, in my experience, ALL the Fords/Mercury's that I have driven or had family members that drove had electrical system problems. The seats in most Dodge's seem to be molded for short, fat Americans and they have issues with transmissions, steering mechanics or overheating. General Motors vehicles are cheaply made with bad plastic trims and are ugly. Any General Motors car that is decent looking gets horrible gas mileage. If anyone's interested, ask me, and I can explain my personal experience with these problems.

So back to how things are going to be better than ever… For Dodge and General Motors to come back and thrive, they need a restructuring much like pushing a master RESET button to wipe everything out and start all over. It seems in the past people bought their cars because their deceased grandfather was a steel mill worker and if they bought foreign he would haunt them from the grave. The car companies can't rely on stuff like that anymore. Consumers have to be smarter when the economy is tough and being ”American-Made” now envelopes many more manufacturers including Honda and Toyota.

Once Dodge and General Motors have a completely clean slate, they need to create cars in comparable quality to Honda and Toyota and then they need to develop the technology to have the absolute best gas mileage. If they can do that, people will want their cars for the same reasons they buy foreign. The foreign auto makers will then have to develop the same technology for even better cars and the race will go on. Pretty simple, but I think this is the exact kick in the pants that this industry needs. And that is why I believe that things will be better than ever when we get out of the recession.

Excuse me?

I have a feeling that some people are trying to make me look bad. Well, as you all pretty much know, I have an explanation for everything (or can come up with an excuse that sounds legit though I have no idea what I am talking about).

Megan keeps talking about how well the kids can play her penny flute. And then I got jealous, so yes, I spent a good hour researching the interwebs to learn how to do it. Who knows? Maybe some day I can play it in church. I'm that good now.

Then a couple of weeks ago Megan was frustrated that I have a lot of stuff that takes up closet space, which is pretty limited in our house. Then the inevitable happened; I realized that the untouched boxes and boxes of Atari games and decomposing 8-tracks need to find a new home.

Well, depending on who you are and how you came to own nearly 150 Atari games, you can't just give those away. I mean, I spent hundreds of weekends in high school scouring all the DI's and occasional yard sales to gather as many Atari games as I could. I fought tooth and nail to buy at lower prices and I am pretty sure that during the economic slow down of 1998-99 my Atari/8-track funds single-handedly kept the struggling Centerville DI in business, which was then able to get a really nice face-lift a couple years later.

That being said, the only reason I was playing the Atari games was to make sure they work before I try to sell them. You have to understand, there is only so much I can write about dirt. I mean, we all know that it is usually black or some odd-shade of brown and it can smell bad or good and we shouldn't eat it. Can't I just make a thesis that says that? I guess not.

So I did a lot of research and am trying to sell some of the games. There's not much of an audience or market for selling 1980's video games, but who knows? The clothes seem to be coming back into style which is a good thing. Check this side story out: So I was at work when Megan called me to tell me I had to thin out my closet. I told a 35+ year-old co-worker about some of the fun junk I had and he told me that I just needed to get it out once a year so that Megan could see that I was still interested in it. He then commenced to tell me that he does that with his old high school clothes or his wife will throw them out. And sometimes he has to pull them out of the DI pile. Well, I will be the first witness to testify that she should get rid of those clothes in a more definite manner and that he wears them more like once a week than once a year. We had a fun time this winter placing bets on how outrageous his sweaters would be day to day.

Anyway. If anyone wants atari games, see some of what I have at KSL.com in the classifieds. Just search "atari". I think there's still some time to play some of the games too. Come on over, we'll have a blast!! Maybe we can get out the projector and play them on the big screen!!

Back to the Grind

I must apologize for the recent slump in posts. Here I was getting all excited to go through the list of topics and I got really busy working on my thesis, but the thesis was stressing me out so bad and since I don't smoke, I had to start a new hobby to calm my nerves. Well the new hobby became an obsession and then I missed my thesis deadline (again). Then I became more and more consumed by my new hobby, so entranced that this morning as I couldn't get out of bed after staying up way too late for no real reason I realized that I need to write on my blog. So here I am.

OK. the next topic of discussion was supposed to be my kids, but I love them so much and there's so much I want to say about them with so little time tonight, that I will have to save that for the weekend.

Then I was supposed to talk about Bajio, well I am still gathering info on that one. I went to Bajio today for Cinco de Maio, and it was OK, but wait till you hear all the dirt I will present when I am ready for that.

Next was the retaining wall. I started the wall this past Saturday and I like it a lot. I was too busy and dirty to take pictures, but I will get some up soon and with all the details and instructions on how I like to build a wall. I promised an old friend I would send him info on building a small wall, so I will have to get to this one soon.

What I will write about today is the seventh place topic (recent paypal purchases came in 7 out of 10) because it highlights my new obsessive compulsive hobby that you are all so interested in knowing. It is true, I have revived my old coin collection with vigor! It's pretty awesome. I am not a coin expert by any means, but in these tough economic times, I think a coin collection is a great way to have a hobby that makes you save money. On top of that, older coins are made of silver which is a precious metal that will forever retain value as a metal long after the US treasury collapses and all the paper bills disintegrate.

So, my most recent purchase:
two old coins from Brazil :(Click to enlarge)


I bought these with my allowance because I think they are pretty cool and I love the Brazilian national seal that is on the back of the 1901 coin (which might be silver). I have that same symbol on my wallet.

before that I bought this:

These are some expensive pennies but they are special because in 1943 all the copper was needed for the war effort and so the pennies had to be made of steel.

Prior to the penny purchase I thought I might invest in a little silver:

I may have paid a bit too much for this silver, but it sure is cool and old! We've been discussing a lot at work how much of a seller's market eBay is. You have to be careful to not become competitive and senseless when you buy stuff there.

I started the coin buying rampage with this little ditty:

I think it is for kids and it's old and kinda outdated, but had some cool stuff in it. Maggie likes playing with me and the money.

At the beginning of April we bought a new cell phone from a website in China called chinavasion.com . Interesting lot of products.

It took a few weeks but the phone came about a week and a half ago, and it's definitely no blackberry, but we like it. We decided to buy new phones instead of renewing the contract wherein we'd have to pay some for new phones and pay additional fees. Cell phones are ridiculous but we can't live without them. Bad news. This one's cool because you can put two sim cards in it such that me and megs can share the same phone or I can consolidated my personal and work phones.

A few weeks before the cell phone I bought a new video card for my computer so I could do the double monitor thing. It helped me be more efficient in working on my thesis. Obviously not efficient enough, but still is pretty sweet.

before that Megan bought some cupcake toppers off my account. They were cute. maybe her blog talks about them :)

This is probably getting kinda boring. Everything else this year came from buy.com. It included a wall charger and a car charger for my iPod touch, a portable speaker thing for Megan's iPod, and some A/B audio splitter things that I got ripped off on because shipping was supposed to be free but wasn't.

There you have it: a YTD review of paypal purchases.

The Fence

In doing a bit of research for this post I came across this story from here:

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence. The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the ! day came when the boy didn't lose his temper at all. He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper. The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone. The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence He said, "You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger,they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out.It won't matter how many times you say "I'm sorry", the wound is still there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.


Interesting and wholesome until that part about stabbing which is kinda creepy.

OK. so maybe what I did to ruin our fence wasn't out of anger or non-anger, but more just stupidity on my part. One day I thought I could take down a section of fence that separates our front yard to the back yard so that I could drive a truck into the backyard. It seemed like no big deal since I knew the fence section was about 8 feet wide and that the truck was only 6 or 7 feet wide.

Well, I forgot to account for the big bush on the left side that ate up about 18 inches. As I tried to come through, I could tell I was very close to the fence post on the right. I folded in the side mirror, passed it and all appeared to be well. I inched forward and then CRACK! the fence post fell over on top of my little brother Ryan, who was able to catch it as it was falling. I know he has quick, cat-like reflexes, but the way he caught the fence was a little too good. It was only later that he told me that he could see the side of the truck scraping on the fence post the whole time. I was like, "Oh, thanks for saying something." Not only did he not say anything, but he stood right where the thing was about to fall on top of him. Anyway, I might need some putty to fill the holes that my glares left on him that day.

We went through this past winter with no fence on the south side of our house. It wasn't that big of a deal, but the house looked funny and stuff in the backyard seemed a little less safe. Plus we need a place to contain the kids when we're tired of having them in the house. So fixing the fence became our first outside project of this year.

I started by digging out the old post. It came out easier than I thought. Thence I set up a string line and figured where the new post would need to sit.
The fact that the post needed to be replaced presented the opportunity of engineering a removable post system. I remembered that I had some L-shaped scrap metal things at my mom's house, so I used those as a sleeve to facilitate pulling the post out so more vehicles can come to the backyard if ever needed (I want to do a drive-in theater sometime). I wanted a tight fit so that the post wouldn't be too wobbly. As shown, I taped the metal to the post, but as not seen, under the metal I included some asphalt shingles to be spacers.
Realizing that good drainage is key in all earth projects, I planned to sink the hole to 4+ feet below the surface and backfill with gravel before concrete. I got to use the shop vac to get the loose dirt out when I couldn't reach anymore. The soil at about 3.5 to 4 ft below the surface seemed to be somewhat cemented and fairly brittle as if shallow groundwater was once up to that level, which is not all that good considering a mapped spring is fairly close to our house. I will have to do more exploration to see where groundwater really is.

Once the final depth was attained, I set 1-foot of gravel in the bottom of the hole. Similar to laboratory procedures for determining the dry-rodded unit weight of aggregates (ASTM C-29), a tamping rod was used to pack the gravel in.
I thence set the post and placed and rodded another foot of gravel around the post. This step was to aid in drainage and to squeeze the post in place while I prepared the concrete. I mixed 180 lbs of dry concrete mix to a fairly stiff composition and filled up the rest of the hole. Megan and Maggie came out and pushed their hands into the concrete. Maggie was not so sure about it at first but then a couple of hours later I spied her trying to do it again on the other side. She is so cute and a good helper even though she loves to raid my field bag and hoard my tire gauge and markers.
We let the concrete cure for a week and then came the fun part. Holy Sword in the Stone. That post did not want to come out!! So I drilled a big hole through it near the base. I drove a large diameter metal rod through the hole and then grabbed the jacks out of the cars and started forcing that thing out. I had to raise the post about 18 inches before it finally came free. The asphalt shingle spacers worked great. The post was snug, but not too tight and was straight as could be.

I got to use my new cordless drill to attach the hardware to the fence sections. It effortlessly drove those big lag screws. It is so nice to have a macho drill that can instantly sink screws like that. I then hung the fence sections and Voila! It is so awesome! I really like it. I was happy to see that I can complete an idea that comes from my head and still make it look good. It's a good feeling (maybe that's why I want to work at Home Depot).
These are some more pictures of the finished product.

I like the hardware shown here:

I'm a little worried because these are the biggest hinges Home Depot sells. As you can see, the tremendous weight of the big gate is causing the post to bend. This is where the summation of moments comes in handy. For example, consider the big gate to be a cantilevered load. Due to the cantilever, the weight of the gate exerts a lot of pressure on the post and makes the post bend in the direction of the weight. The moment is equal to force time distance. For simplicity the moment acts where the post is stuck in the ground. The moment cannot be greater than the post can bear. The amount of moment that the post can tolerate can be determined by the stiffness of the post material and the cross-sectional area of the post. Those factors relate to the moment of inertia and after a few more calcs that I don't remember, we can know how much moment the post can bear before breaking. Since I'm not all that sharp on my structural engineering, a quick visual observation showed excessive deformation in the post, and I concluded that the moment needed to be reduced if not completely eliminated by allowing the gate to become a span (simply supported beam) instead of a cantilever. So I screwed a block of wood to the other post to allow the gate to rest when not being used. Only problem is that the little gate and the big gate are not even across the top. Maybe that's not such a big deal.

I really like this gate and am happy that we fixed it.

Why I Want to Work at the Home Depot

This a good question. Why would I want to work at the Home Depot? Well, let's bulletize my answers below and hope my bosses don't read this (it may look like I've recently thought this through--it's all just part of having Plan B like my mission pres always taught us):

• It would be fun to have a job that lets you act like you know everything and you have no liability if you're dead wrong (BTW, I don't mean that as an insult to anyone)
• I could get lots of exercise while you work because you can walk around and play with stuff
• I could get an employee discount
• I could rub elbows with management and learn how large corporate business works
• I could see what products are missing, and then I could invent them and make lots of money off patents, etc.

mphfm, the more I think about it, I don't really want to work there. I just thought that if I need something temporary I could try that out for a while.

"Choose Your Own Adventure" - The results are in!!

At the end of this post are the final results of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" blog topic. I appreciate the attention and response of all those who have pitched in their requests.

The results are rather interesting. People voted for topics and rated them 1 through 10, with 1 being the most interesting. The topic with the lowest average score was the most demanded. Statistically looking at the results it's fun to see the multiple requests and the range of rating/importance.

I will start posting about these things tonight. I hope to get through the first 3. If readers don't agree with the average scores below, please speak up!! I will continually recalculate the scores until the list is done!

	Voters' Ratings
	MeganW	Emily	Joel	Mers	Megan D	K	Average
New Car	10	4				10	8.00
Fence	4	1	2		4	3	2.80
Active Pressure	8					7	7.50
Landslides	9					4	6.50
Retaining Wall	3	2				8	4.33
Bajio	6	6	1	1		1	3.00
Paypal	5	5		2	3	9	4.80
Home Depot	2		3		2	2	2.25
Favorite Tools	7		4			5	5.33
My Kids	1	3		3	1	6	2.80

The Future is NOW

I have been so busy doing thesis stuff and short fuse projects at work that I haven't had much time to spend with family, much less blog this week. Not wanting to disappoint my loyal readers who have come to expect quality educational reading material, I thought I would quickly ask the public what I should blog about next. 

My coworker buddy Cheetah helped me come up with the following list of subjects that have been swirling in my head.  Everybody please consider the following topics and then leave a comment ranking most interesting to least interesting (number 1 being most interesting). I will then apply a weighted average to all the scores and blog about the highest ranking. I thank you in advance for your participation. The list is long, so you can copy and paste it in the comment field and then give your ranking.

• Our new car
• The sweet fence I ran over with the truck and then engineered an amazing repair to stun the ages
• The topic of active pressures and what they mean to you and me
• The discussion I had this week with Dr. Bartlett regarding landslides and reliability engineering
• the retaining wall I am building at my house
• why Bajio is no longer my favorite restaurant
  
• highlights of my 6 most recent Paypal purchases (or however many you want to know)
• Why I want to work at Home Depot
• My 5 favorite tools
• More about my 3 kids

I can't wait to see what people really want to hear. I am so excited!!!

Confession

Besides going to two scout camps, I don't remember a dang thing I did during the summer between sixth and seventh grades except for hanging out in the basement, by myself, playing Wizball, a DOS-based 1987 computer game, on our Headstart PC while repeatedly listening to Kiss From a Rose by Seal. Needless to say, I am the only person I know of to have beat this game and to have timed it every time. Alright.

My Want List

Megan is always successfully posting lists of things she wants, so before I start working on my thesis, for the next 15 I am going to post my "want list". Hopefully this will allow me to vent so that I can be less distracted while I am working on my maps tonight.

1. We just bought a new car (well, new to us). It's a 2005 Honda Pilot EXL with navigation. I want to do to it what this guy did HERE. He never says how much it cost, but with the limited research I have done, I think it must be a minimum of $1,500 to $2,000. I wanted it so bad and I was so obsessed and distracted with it last week that I scared Megan. We had a nice talk and both decided it was definitely something that we don't need. Though not needed, I still want it so bad. I need help.

2. Now that we have 3 vehicles parked at our house (at least until we can sell the corolla), we have realized that our driveway is too narrow. We want to lay pavers down at least one side of the driveway to widen it. This is going to be a fun, family-bonding activity. What frustrates me about it is that we're missing some of the tools we need. We need a big chop saw suited for cutting pavers and a vibrating plate compactor. Those are the needs, now here come the wants: I want to buy my own compactor instead of renting one and I think I can just use my angle grinder to make crude cuts that are good enough for me.

Now you ask: why in the world would Dan want to buy a vibrating plate compactor instead of just renting one? The answer is a well-kept secret: for more than half my life I have dreamed of someday having my own compactor. I dare say that it is not uncommon for dirt engineers and dirt technicians alike to frequently fantasize of owning their own compaction and testing equipment.

Also, a long time I go I had a class called engineering economics. We must have done 20+ problems stating that we owned a construction company and we had to figure out if buying or leasing dump trucks was a better option. The same principle applies to vibrating plate compactors. i.e. I can buy one for a couple hundred dollars and have it to use for ever and possibly re-sale it when I don't like it any more, vs. paying a couple hundred dollars to rent one from Home Depot for a couple of days. In my mind, buying my own is totally the better option.

I have found the most inexpensive one to be here. My only drawback is that I don't know how to arrange shipping from Malaysia for something that weighs nearly 200 lbs. If there are any shipping geniuses out there, please tell me the secret to getting this imported most inexpensively (I don't care if it takes a couple of months)! My other option is from Harbor Freight, but they aren't as cool as an Asian import and cost a lot more. They must have to roll a lot of the import costs in to the extra price.

So that's my list. Post a comment to tell me what you think of the things I want. (Megan, did you notice all the new car and yard work stuff took my mind off of guns?)

Update to Post Below

I sent a comment to the programmer for the TaxExpress and he replied saying that he had talked to several "Experts" and they said that the 2008 Standard Federal Deduction for married filing jointly is $11,900. Which is fishy because my 2008 1040 says its only $10,900.

So, I guess if you are not itemizing deductions, and are not eligible for additional state tax credits, using TaxExpress might save you money if you claim a stadard deduction of $11,900 instead of $10,900. But then again, that wouldn't be honest unless some one can provide better explanation.

I also found out that you can't use TaxExpress if you want to itemize deductions. It was in the itemization of deductions that we saved the largest portion of the 80% I was mentioning below. Hence, having a good program or spreadsheet becomes even more valuable.

Signing off,
Dan, Dan The Tax Man

Government Rip-Off Alert

I have to admit that there is a side of me that enjoys conspiracy theories. I remember that one of the very few things I enjoyed at my first engineering job, which was in the dungeon basement of the Layton City Building, was that we could only get one station on our little radio (this was back in the day before internet radio- I think) and on Fridays that station (talk radio, of course) did Conspiracy Theory Friday. The show host let people call in and rant and rave about conspiracy theories. After a minute of talking, the host would make a fool of the theorists and I would get a good chuckle. I also enjoy the stories Dr. Lawton told us of his friend's Cadillac that got 80 mpg and the light bulb that lasted ten million hours.

Well, I found my own and so I thought I better warn the people.

Many of you will be compiling your taxes over the next few months. In our case, due to having ten kids and buying our first house, we will be receiving a very nice refund from the federal government. I did our taxes by hand because then I better understand how it all comes together and works out. I will try a computer program to check my results before I submit.

In spite of the nice federal return, when I did our state taxes online at utah.gov, I owed a considerable amount of tax. As I was filling out the online program I noticed several issues with the program itself that made me uncomfortable. I have always used the state's online program in the past, but this year I found a huge error on entering your standard or itemized deduction. So I researched the tax code and did the state forms by hand, and was able to cut down what we owe by over 80%. I still think it is strange that we get so much back from the federal government, but have to pay the state. I guess it is relative to typical family size, but at this time I think I would rather pay a little extra tax than have a fourth child under the age of 3. I bet Megan even more strongly feels the same way.

Also, according to an editorial I read in the paper today, Utah has a balanced budget whereas many other states and especially the federal government don't. So maybe it is a good thing that we are more significantly taxed in Utah.

Anyway, in the midst of a thousand topics, my conspiracy theory is that the state-promoted online tax submission program called TaxExpress is a rip-off. It does not accurately factor in your deductions and is too simple to allow you to apply for numerous avaliable tax credits. The state tax code is a little funky compared to the federal code. I think Utah could use some fresh blood to renovate and fix numerous grammar erros in a lot of the legislative areas.

Like I said, I did my own taxes by hand and saved 80% of what the state program required. I built my own spreadsheet program to calculate the whole tax form. Let me know if you would like a copy of the tax form to do your own or to compare your answers with other programs.

What is the best tax software in your opinion?

I Must be My Mother's Son

Today's biggest weekend adventure was our grocery trip to Albertsons. We were going to go last night while Maggie was at Grandma Williams' house, but we ran out of time. So we braved the elements and took all three kids shopping. Today's trip was not an ordinary occasion. You see, every now and then Albertsons has a deal where if you buy $30 of select groceries you get a $15 voucher for your next grocery purchase. You can buy the first $30-worth and then just keep going through the line as many times as you want. And it's not just the same boring things again and again either. I think there's like over 250 different items to choose from. We took advantage of the deal to stock up on some food storage.

In all I went through the line 5 times today. Whew, it was a work out. Megan and I each had our own carts. She would get a cart ready with $30-worth of food that we planned out ahead of time and then I would check out and take it to the car. By the time I came back she had another cart full. At the end of my 5 trips I had bought $273.82 of groceries for $51.26. That's over 80% in savings. I haven't called my mom yet, but I know she will be proud.

We spent some stressful time this afternoon clipping coupons and planning exactly how to group them together for maximum savings. In my best trip I bought $56.66 of groceries for $5.75. It could have been even better, but the lady at checkout convinced me to buy a disfigured 2-lb. block of sharp cheese for $3.00 instead of $10 because the bagger boy was too lazy to take it back to the cheese aisle. Minus the cheese I had $53.66 in groceries and I paid $2.75 (95% savings!!!-some of my coupons were doubled).

Saving money like this is kind of addicting. It was stressful because I can't think as fast with numbers these days(hopefully just due to lack of sleep and not a brain aneurysm). The deals go until Tuesday. We might sneak over on Monday and do some more.