After All That, I Still Had to File an Extension

I thought I was doing so well!  I finished both Federal and New York joint tax returns Monday afternoon.  Today, I started to recalculate them as married-filing-separate so I could do the NJ and VA state returns.  Fortunately, I subconsciously noticed something curious after I finished the MFS version of the taxes, and looked them over carefully to find out why they seemed different from other years.

I discovered that this year, we'd actually save over $2,500 by filing MFS instead of joint.  This has not happened before, and I really wasn't expecting to file our 1040s separately.  I have to fill out an annualized form 2210 to avoid underpayment penalties.  For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this, it means I not only have to add up the annual totals for each tax line item, I have to go through my records to discern the totals for each tax line based on the transacations from 1/1 through 3/31, from 1/1 through 5/31, and from 1/1 through 8/31.  In order to save the $2,500, I now have to do this not only by date, but also by ownership, allocating each item of income or deduction to either Terry or myself.  We have both joint and individual accounts, and our earnings fluctuate throughout the year, so there's no quick and easy way to do this.  Plus based on the whims of the allocation factors we fall into and out of phase-out ranges, and all this must be calculated on a spreadsheet.  TurboTax is helpful, but when you have taxes as complicated as ours, there is only so much that can be automated.  So despite being very close to finished with the taxes, I had to go off to the post office armed with only my application for an automatic extension.

Now don't get me wrong, this change wasn't odious, I knew it would only take me a couple of hours to break out the additional data.  It seems like a very good trade-off for me, to add another half-day of work in order to net another $2,500.  I spent an extra 30 minutes thinking about how to maximize the distribution of our itemized deductions, I saved about $80 from that.

I actually did file Terry's NJ tax return on time today; the parts of the MFS returns I changed this evening didn't affect the NJ allocation so at least that one is put to rest.  I'm ready to file Fed & NY tomorrow, but I might hold off until I do just a little more checking into the 2006 amended return I've nearly completed.  There might be a new carryforward credit I could apply to 2007 if I file the amended 2006 first.  But I'm not sure, it's probably nothing, but to me it's worth me spending a few hours investigating the tax rules to find out for sure.

When our refunds finally come through, I think I'm going to buy myself a treat.  The tax returns for the past few years have been horrendous.  I've probably averaged 100 pages per year since 2005.  Terry is lucky he married a CPA, otherwise we wouldn't really be getting a refund this year, since the entire amount would go to pay accounting fees if we sent our returns out.

Carville as Stewart as Carville

I'd like to see James Carville and Patrick Stewart impersonating each other in a debate on a late night talk show.

Macbeth!

Terry and I stayed up late to watch the the talk shows, and Patrick Stewart was on Conan. Apparently, he's starring in Macbeth at the Lyceum Theatre, and is a phenomenon. It was discussed how the NYT reviewer said something like, "if you see Patrick Stewart in Macbeth, you'll understand why this play has been causing a sensation for 400 years" or something like that.

Ahh, the benefit of having a few drinks and a credit card at 1:15 am. The only "regular" seats available were on the mezzanine on the extreme left side of the theatre. Bleh, the theatre was built in 1903 which seems charming and historic, and it is, but having lived in NYC and gone to lots of shows, I know I prefer better seats. I'd only want those seats if I had gotten them for half price in the TKTS line, not at full price. BUT, there were some sweeet premium seats still available for the Thursday night Terry and I will next be in NYC. So we splurged and got them. Terry was all balking (they are 2x the regular seat price), but I peer-pressured him into acquiescence. C'mon, the best performance in 400 years? Let's spring for the good seats. Eight rows back, center stage, baby. One of the benefits of barrenness is no college tuition to save for. Maybe I'll make dinner reservations at Le Bernadin to round out a night of extravagance. . .nah, they're no good pre-theater. Maybe for Saturday night, our anniversary is approaching and what, are we going to go to Clifton Inn or Fossett's yet again? Our years in Manhattan really have ruined us for the rest of the world.

Number One Elite in Cake?

This morning I was ranked 32nd in portfolio performance among platinum market timers. Imagine my surprise when I logged in tonight and saw that I was the number one elite member on the website! And for performance, I've moved up to number seven among the elite market timers.

Here's the link to the page on the Cake website, but if you don't click it within the next 24 hours I'll probably be back off the list. I was promoted to the elite level once before, but it was only for one day before they knocked me back down to platinum. I bought some DXD yesterday, I guess that was just what my portfolio needed to give it a little boost. But I think it must be a bit of a fluke that I'm listed so high, probably due to the fact that several Cake employees have to link to my profile since I joined their advisory team. My returns really aren't all that impressive. I do keep a low-risk profile which seems to elude many Cake members.

What was especially sweet was when Terry saw how my performance is compared to other investors. After dinner when I told him I bought DXD he gave me a lecture about how he hoped when I lost money on this ultrashort it would be enough for me to learn my lesson and stop choosing such high-risk securities. But when he saw how high I was ranked, he wanted to see what the other top performers were invested in. Not many have DXD, admittedly, but they have been buying various other short ETFs. Hey, I'm diversified in my shorts, too, since I've got SDS. I'm hopeful that in time, Terry will stop second-guessing my investment decisions so I can do my job without feeling like I'm letting him down.

Cake Elite

I was on my first "Cake Elite" conference call this afternoon.  They are smart to be involving the users early in the process.  There were some things they plan to roll out that involve summarizing user activity, but it hadn't occurred to them that the information would not be particularly useful as they planned to present it.  Sure you could list the securities with the highest buy or sell activity for the day, but so what?  I pointed out that just because a stock is wildly popular among the day-traders in Cake and is at the top of the list doesn't mean it's a good investment for people looking for securities to buy for their retirement fund.  I also suggested they include some tutorials to help inexperienced investors interpret some of the data and other advice.  I mentioned it was a pet peeve of mine when the media present financial information as universal when in truth it is only relevant from a particular perspective.  The other panelist is a new investor, and I enjoyed listening to his comments also.  Completely different perspective than me, he wants a lot of personal interaction with other users (which I vehemently want to avoid).  But there were plenty of things we both agreed would be useful (if perhaps for different reasons).  I think it was a productive call.  Cake is rolling out some new features on Thursday, I'll be sure to check them out.

Both Mother and Daughter

Does anyone else feel like this?  Last night I had to box up the wii guitars and hide the boxes behind our A/V cabinet so I would stop playing Guitar Hero III.  It was actually quite effective, I'm sitting in the TV room now and have little urge to play since nothing is sitting out tempting me.  But having to hide toy guitars so I won't miss the tax filing deadline? 

On one hand, I feel like I'm some sort of truculent teenager who is irritated that I can't blow another week just playing video guitar, that I'm being unjustly oppressed.  But on the other hand, I feel like an adult since no kid that I know would be expected to do the tiresome work of preparing and filing Federal, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia tax returns sometime in the next seven days.  Plus filing the 2005 & 2006 amended returns I prepared last month, and amending the states for those years within the 45 days or whatever the rules are.  And I don't have kids, but I imagine that hiding the video game in order to help your kid focus on a more pressing task is a standard parenting technique.

The definition of multiple personality disorder from wikipedia is:

Dissociative identity disorder, as defined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental illness in which a single person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities, each with its own pattern of perceiving and interacting with the environment.^[1] The diagnosis requires that at least two personalities routinely take control of the individual's behavior with an associated memory loss that goes beyond normal forgetfulness; in addition, symptoms can not be due to substance abuse or medical condition. Earlier versions of the DSM named the condition multiple personality disorder (MPD) and the term is still used by the ICD-10.

Well, I seem to have that thing about perceiving and interacting with the environment in distinctly different ways.  But I don't have the memory loss.  All my personalities know what the others are up to.  My inner teenager knows that my inner adult has financial responsibilities, and my inner parent knows the teenager can't help but play the video guitar if it's just sitting there by the TV.  So do I have a non-psychopathic form of DID (although that seems like an oxymoron), or am I "normal"?

If this is normal, we should all be aware how close we all are to a padded room in Bellevue, shouldn't we?  Just a few misfiring neurons affecting our memory and it's all over, we're mad as hatters.  How depressing.

As I was reflecting upon how my inner parent felt about depriving my inner teenager of the toy guitar, I considered telling my inner teenager that, "this hurts me more than it hurts you."  But it doesn't at all.  My inner parent knows full well that the inner teenager needs to get a grip and do the taxes and it's not really hurting anyone to put the game down for a few days, despite the venomous glares my inner teenager is giving my inner parent.  So is it always palliative pap when parents feed this to their children?  Why would discipline ever hurt the parent more than the child?  The only thing I can think of is if the parent acts out in anger or frustration and metes out a totally unjust punishment then they should feel worse than the child since they know that as an adult they shouldn't have acted out.  But the appropriate response wouldn't be "this hurts me more than it hurts you" but "I'm sorry."  I don't get that one, maybe it's the sort of thing you actually have to be a parent to understand. . .

First Tournament -- Success!!

I came in 37th place out of 348 in my first Guitar Hero III tournament.  I played

• Hit Me With Your Best Shot
• Lay Down
• Ruby
• Stricken

for a total of 370,754 points.  The first place finisher got 410,031 total points for those songs.  That's almost 40,000 more points than I scored, but it wasn't distributed evenly per song.  Most of that was for "Stricken" where I could only get up to 139,836 points.  My best performance I hit only 547 of 549 notes and 10 of 11 power phrases.  Others were getting 100%.  I guess I'm not even in the top 10%, but I'm pleased to be in the top 50 contestants, and I'm in the top 15% at least.  Not bad for only having the guitar for five days, eh?

I don't think I'm going to enter another tournament again soon, though.  Despite my stated goal this morning of getting the taxes done and funding our IRAs, I did little but play GHIII.  I'm not sure if I'm addicted or obsessed.  I haven't worked on my new website at all for the past few days, and I couldn't be torn away from it last week.

I'm going to disassemble the guitars and put them back in their boxes.  That will make it harder for me to just start playing.  If I find myself still tempted, I guess I'll unplug the wii itself and put it back in its box.  I'll play again when Terry comes home on Wednesday.  I need to rest my muscles anyway, my fingers, forearms, and shoulders hurt from too much Guitar Hero.  I read about it on the forums, people suggest icing them after play and heating them before play.  I think I'll just give the game a rest so it doesn't come to that. . .

Dropped Down, As Expected

As I expected, I've dropped down as more participants finished their tournament songs.  But on the bright side, I'm still ranked reasonably high (currently in 12th place), and I'm the second highest in my experience level (Rock Star); I'm 7,662 points behind "Alitar13" the Rock Star from Canada in 10th place.  I think "Stricken" is the song I'll need to improve to move up.  From a cursory glance at other competitors' high scores I'm pretty close on three out of four of my songs, but I'm significantly lower for "Stricken".  I'm tired playing now, but I'll pick it up again sometime tomorrow.  I've got to make IRA contributions and print out tax returns, etc. tomorrow, but the tournament isn't over until 8pm so I'll have time in the evening to try to improve my scores.  I'll have a better idea where I'll actually wind up in the standings closer to the end of the tournament, also.  If I'm going to be way down out of the top 100 I might not try so hard to eke out a better performance within the time limit.

My First Tournament!

I finished playing the four competition songs for my first Guitar Hero III tournament, and went online to check my standings--I'm glad I did, since I'm in the top ten!!! Now, the tournament has only been open for an hour and a half so I suspect my position will fall as more entrants finish their songs--so I took a screen shot as a souvenir of my possibly short-lived fame.

And while Terry guessed that I would be competing against 14-year-olds, I suspect that the guitar player currently in first "dataguru1971" is probably, oh, let me guess, about 37? Some kid probably didn't use his parent's birth year in his screen name. . . Likewise, my competitors will probably guess that anyone with a screen name of "MrsThorsen" is probably not underage.

I've been playing other songs so I don't bore myself with only the four competition songs, but I still have some room for improvement, so I'll go back to them. We've got 24 hours to compete and our best scores on our four songs during that time are what the rankings are based on. To pull into the lead I've got to increase my scores by an average of 13,419 points per song. Ouch. I don't see how that will be possible since I've already nailed three out of four at 100%. But I guess I haven't hit all the "power" phrases in each song, so I'll try that. I suppose at this level every flicker of the whammy bar can make the difference between victory and defeat, so I'll try better.


GHIII%20Tournament%2008%2004%2006%207th%20place.pdf

I'm in the top 131,000!

Not as impressive as my performance on Cake (where I've dropped out of the top 10 in my category since gold slid yet have picked up yet another "follower". . .), but I'm satisfied with my progress on GHII.

That's "Guitar Hero III", a wii game I picked up last week and have been playing nonstop since I got it.  It's got this feature that I didn't know about when I purchased it where you sign up to have your stats tracked online in real-time (the wii console is wirelessly connected to the internet).  I've been steadily improving, but see that I have a long way to go.  Last night I finished one song in the "easy" level at 100%, meaning I hit every note properly.  My 5-star review turned into five GOLD stars on the scoreboard, that was a pleasant surprise.  I'm in 130,643rd place for my "career" as an easy GHIII guitarist.  I checked what it would take to raise my ranking and was disenheartened to learn that I'd have to play EVERY song perfectly to even make it to the top 100.  But I'll do it, just you wait.  Top 100 is pretty good, that's like being one of the top two players in your state.  Better really since the GHIII community is international.  I don't know that I'd have the patience to practice until I was in the top 10.  But who knows, it is a lot of fun to play and I seem to have an aptitude for it.

I made it through the songs on "easy" in the first day (I played for quite a few hours. . .), and it was harder to get through the songs on "medium" but I still finished most on my first try.  "Hard" however is another story.  I haven't been able to play even one song through on the first try.  Or second.  I have to go into "practice" mode and play the hard parts very slowly gradually increasing the speed until I get it, and even then I just learn it well enough to muddle through and not completely fail the song.  I've only finished 2 out of 42 songs on "hard".  I've decided I'm going to master the easier levels first before going further into "hard".  It's better that way for tournament play; once you finish 80% of a level, you can only compete in that level or the one below it so I'd be locked out of "easy" tournaments if I worked my way through the hard level.

I play in my first online tournament tonight.  I stay at home, and have to play through a set list during the tournament hours and my highest scores are recorded and compared against my competitors.  It seems from the forum comments that several of the other competitors play the songs at 100% in easy, but I'll give it a try anyway.  I'm in the 95%+ accuracy range for most songs, so I'll just see how tight the competition is.  Whether my 95% accuracy puts me in the top 5% or in the top 75%, who knows?

The highest scorers have over 100,000 per song in the easy mode, I average about 70,000 points per song.  There's plenty of room for me to improve.  Although it is harder for me now.  When I first played through all the songs in the level I averaged about 25,000 points per song, and was ranked down below 350,000th place.  Now that I'm up to around 131,000th it is harder for me to beat my own high scores.  Terry says I need to be patient, and that in a week I'll be hitting 100%s all over the place.  We'll see.  I guess I am impatient, I have only had the game for a few days now.

Also, I now see that the career scores aren't based on the scores from each time you play the song through--I thought that was how it was calculated at first and lamented that it would a constant game of catch-up against the kids that can play the game all day every day since despite my copious free time, I still must put the game down and get actual work done from time to time.  The career score is actually just the total of all your high scores on the songs in the level.  So if say I have a high score of 50,000 in a song with a career total of 1,100,000, if I play that song and score 65,000 on this turn my new career score is not 1,165,000, but 1,115,000.  So that was encouraging since all I have to do is play very well to move up the ranks and not necessarily play a lot.  And the highest scores (something approaching 5 million for the "easy" career) aren't going to be increasing constantly since once you get 100% of the notes right, there really is a limit to how much higher your score can go.  At that point it is just a matter of strategically using your "star power" bonus juice to increase your multiplier on parts of the song that will result in the most points.  I haven't yet figured out exactly how points are doled out, the documentation is pitifully lacking in that area.  I'll have to have someone else play and I'll observe whether one gets more points for using the wiggle bar on the long notes or playing passages with many individual notes.