Well, hopefully the tax deadline came and went without any major distasters for everyone, and hopefully everyone filed their taxes (or an extension) so that they can get their stimulus payment.

I’m wondering if anyone has any tax deadline horror stories? Feel free to share in the comments!

The government has been nice enough to offer us stimulus payments this year in order to give our sluggish economy a boost.

All you have to do is file you taxes.

The IRS will do the rest, including calculating the stimulus amount and determining if you’re eligible or not.

But you have to file, even if you don’t normally!

Some people don’t have to file every year, such as some people on Social Security. But to get your stimulus check, you have to file! Make sure your low- or fixed-income friends and family members know this. It would be a shame to pass up free money because you didn’t know or couldn’t must the gumption to file. Do it! Several hundred dollars is waiting for you, free!

How much can you get?

$600, $1200 if you file jointly. Each eligible child you have under 17 gets you another $300 per child.

To determine your eligibility and calculate how much you’ll get, go the IRS’ Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator.

If you make too much or too little, you may not be eligible. Check to see if you are or not.

If I have questions about the payments, where should I go?

The IRS website, of course. They have a useful FAQ that should answer most of your questions.

One bit of disinformation that I heard from a money guru (my wife - she’s real good at spending money) was that you wouldn’t get a stimulus check if you filed an extension. According to the FAQ just mentioned, that’s not true:

Q. If I’m filing a tax return this year just to get a stimulus payment, by when do I have to file?

A. The IRS encourages everyone to file by the normal April 15 tax deadline: The sooner you file the sooner you can receive your stimulus payment. But if you have obtained a valid six-month extension to file or if you are filing to establish your eligibility for the stimulus payment, filing by Oct. 15 means the IRS can process your return and issue a stimulus payment before the end of the year. [New 3/5/08]

But, I urge you not to dally. Get it done and in and get da money!

I am not a tax expert, nor do I play one on YouTube. Assume every thing I said here is wrong, and find out the real deal directly from the IRS or your accountant.

This is one crazy contest.

You’ve probably already heard about the Winning the Web’s huge contest, now with over $8000 $9000 $12,000 $13,000 in prizes. If you haven’t checked out the contest lately, it’s one sweet pack of prizes to be given away. Since I wouldn’t mind winning one of them, I’ll go ahead and toss my entries into the contest (this post gets me 5 entries).

Besides a pile of cash from several sponsors, there’ SEO service packages, design packages, internet marketing training, affiliate training, and heckuva lot more. Pretty cool, I must say, even if I wouldn’t have a use for all of the prizes. But there’s something for just about any webmaster/site owner/blogger/marketer out there, so you better enter!

Just be sure to check out the contest ‘clues,’ because there’s additional steps to take to win some of the prizes. If you want to win any web design related prizes, for example, you’ve got to provide a fair bit of information (Pimp My Blog):

If you want to win any of the web design related products and services in this contest, leave a comment here stating what you want, why you need it, how you think it’ll help you with your blog or site, and your site’s URL. At the end of the contest I’ll select 2 winners for their desired web design prizes based on the quality of the comment and the potential of the site provided.

It’s a great contest, crazy as hell, so be sure to check it out.

Where, oh where, have my newest releases gone?

I really like Netflix, don’t get me wrong. But for some reason, they’ve removed a feature that I used almost exclusively to select my movies for what I wanted to watch. It used to be that you could browse New Releases by a section called Released (releasing?) This Week. Every monday the list would be updated of the movies that were just coming out on DVD, and every monday I would go through the list of movies and pick which ones I wanted to watch and add them to my 100+ movie queue.

I’m happy, life is good, and I get the movies I want to watch.

The only problem I had was when my wife would go and buy the DVD for a popular movie from Wal-Mart the second it came out, and the very same movie is already being trucked around by the Post Office because it was at the top of my Netflix queue. Such a waste.

But for some reason unbeknownst to me, THEY TOOK THE RELEASED THIS WEEK FEATURE AWAY. The new releases aren’t really the newest releases…just movies that have been released in the past month(?) on DVD. The New Releases section is broken down into Popular New Releases (yawn), New Releases by category (again, how long are they new releases?), Critic’s Picks (vomit), and Popular From One Year Ago  ’new releases.’ 

Wait…the New Releases are now consisting of movies that were released a year ago?!? Someone, please spare me. This whole New Releases section is a waste for me. Completely annoying, even. If I have to look at Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway for another week, I may have to commit seppuku.

She’s been the first thing I see when I open up this page for weeks now. I have nothing against Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway, but she just ain’t in any movies I want to watch. If I want to see Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway, I’ll get my wife’s kids’ copy of Pretty Woman Princess Diaries (and that just ain’t gonna happen).

It should also be noted that none of the 4 movies you see above are in my queue, and I dislike having my time wasted by having to view them every single time I’m looking for something else. 3 of the 4 I wouldn’t even be interested in, and 3:10 to Yuma got some bad word of mouth (that reached my ears), so I haven’t added it yet.

I think this problem has been exacerbated by a dearth of good movies on DVD, but that’s no excuse. I thought Netflix was a web 2.0 style company - Get movies delivered right to your door! - not web 1.0-style you-can-choose-from-what-I-want-to-offer-you. I suspect they removed that section to decrease demand for those truly new releases, but come on, people, FIX it, don’t diss it.

(winding down the rant…)

Ok, so am I the only one that is peeved about this? I know it’s not a huge deal (there’s global warming and gas prices to worry about), but it really was just about the ONLY way I used Netflix. If I can no longer do what I was paying to be able to do, why should I continue?

Can someone from Netflix please fix this?

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You’re probably aware that there was a full lunar eclipse the other night (Wednesday). I was able to capture a great picture as the moon was totally engulfed by the Earth’s shadow:

Hey, it was dark.

And in case you’re wondering, yes, this IS an actual picture I took of the eclipse.

I’ve uploaded a new theme (even though that default wordpress template is just B-E-Autiful!), which I really like, but it needs a little housekeeping. The title is an image, so I’ve got to edit that. Hmmm, logo time? Prolly not…That quote at the top right isn’t mine, it’s just a snarky quote put in there by the designer. I’ll have to figure out something awe-inspiring to put there. Any suggestions?

Beyond that, there’s a lot of ad spots that need filled/edited.

Oh, and that feedburner count is totally bogus, I haven’t even had that many visits, let alone subscribers…

This is a unique theme BTW, or at least, it is for now. I plan to release it for free at some point in the near future. I’d really appreciate some feedback on it, so please leave a comment!

Wordpress.com announced yesterday that they have upgraded everybody’s WordPress.com free upload storage capacity to 3,000 MB, or 3 gigabytes - for free! The previous limit was just 50 MB.

Of course, those of us that host our own blogs get what we pay for, but for those on WordPress.com, that’s a pretty good deal.

It wasn’t that long ago that I mentioned the release of the beta version of PHPLD 3.3, but the final version is already out! Good news!

Check out the release.

Here’s a cool little game you can play: NLOS Cannon Game.

The NLOS (which stands for Non Line of Sight) Cannon is the US Army’s next generation of 155mm self-propelled howitzer. If you don’t know how big a 155 is, just suffice to say it makes a BIG boom! Here’s a pic of the cannon being test fired:

The NLOS Cannon has several advantages over the currently fielded self propelled howizters:

• Reduced crew - only 2 are needed to operate the vehicle.
• Increased Rate of Fire.
• The gun is automated.
• Weighs 18 tons, which is about half or a third of other vehicles it would replace.
• Quickly switch ammo types on a round by round basis, so it could fire 1 high explosive, followed by smoke, followed by an illumination round, for example.
• Networked for quick response fire support.

Anyways, the game is fun; I actually completed all 15 levels on the 3rd try. It’s free and there’s no ads, so give it a shot (no pun intended)!