My accountant friend Marnette informed me yesterday that I may not be able to deduct my losses from the sale of my house off my taxes. According to her, I *may* be able to slide them through as move expenses, as it was a forced company move, but otherwise, I'd have to eat the loss. Conversely, had I actually made money, you can bet I'd have been taxed on the gain.

As if being an accountant wasn't despicable enough, Marnette has gone and pursued a law degree. Still not feeling detested enough as a lawyer, she informed me that she's going over to the dark side, and taking a job with the IRS later this year.

I figure next she'll tell me she's shutting down the Budweiser plant.

In yet another example of political correctness/zero-tolerance gone awry, a Sacrament liberal has successfully sued to have the Pledge of Allegiance declared unconstitutional.

Pledge of Allegiance Ruled Unconstitutional

June has been a horribly stressful and trying month. If I was rude or despondent, I do apologize. Proving that bad things do come in threes, my grandfather died, followed a week later by my uncle, followed two weeks later by a friends suicide.

During that time, I was negotiating a relocation settlement with my company, and trying to sell my house. I sold the house Monday for a loss, and moved all of my junk up to Ohio where I'll be working. I'm glad to have it all behind me.

For July, I have many things to look forward to. Currently I don't have a mortgage or utilities payments due. My relocation settlement should be approved and disbursed in the coming month, and I no longer have to fly back and forth to Atlanta. This will hopefully give me some time to visit friends and family more often.

Well, June is almost over, and all I can say is good riddance.

Well, I have completely emptied my house in Atlanta. I have a few last minute things to grab, but otherwise, I am ready to hit the road. The buyer is closing on the house on Monday, and I'll be leaving for Ohio immediately thereafter.

Thanks again to all my friends and family for coming up with good excuses for not helping me move.

Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, my vacuum cleaner broke while I was vacuuming the carpets before turning the house over to the new owners.

I know you are just dying to send me email, so I added a feedback form.

Feedback

See if you can figure out which one is the terrorist..

I added a few new pictures..

I've made a few changes to the way the pictures are viewed. I am arranging the pictures into tables to make the layout more efficient. The tables are optimized for a 1024x768 screen, so if you use 800x600, they may be too wide for you.

I also added some java scripts to make the pictures open in small java windows. I've gotten some positive feedback on the changes. All but 3 or 4 of the pages are complete, and I expect to complete those over the next day or two.

My friend Kenny's dad likes to collect and restore WWII aircraft. Here he is flying around in his A-26 Invader.

It looks like I'll be sleeping with earplugs from now on. The AP reports that a woman in Greece had a spider nest in her ear.

I had a big belly-laugh over this one. A Beijing newspaper has republished a bogus Onion story thinking it to be real news.

Reuters reports that "Beijing's most popular newspaper has unwittingly republished a bogus story about U.S. Congress threats to skip town for Memphis or Charlotte unless Washington builds them a new Capitol building with a retractable dome."

The Onion article quotes Dick Gephardt (D-MO) as saying, "Look at British Parliament. Look at the Vatican. Respected institutions in their markets. But without modern facilities, they've been having big problems attracting top talent." Most people in the US wouldn't have any trouble identifying The Onion as satire, but apparently the Chinese missed the boat.

To top it off, Reuters reports that when informed that the story was not true, the Chinese editor said "We would first have to check that out. If it's indeed fake, I'm sure there will be some form of correction."

There has been a lot of hubbub lately around the theory of Global Warming. Apparently some people think that we humans are the cause, even though the problem was clearly identified years ago as being caused by cow emissions. (yes, cow emissions)

Just check out this BBC article on how the EU was preparing to regulate such bovine flatulence.

I am adding pictures from our party in New Orleans in May. These are just the first set of pictures, more should be added a short time later.

New Orleans

We must be getting back to the slow news days of 2001. The AP had two stories today, neither of them seemed to be newsworthy. First, we have another shark bite. Some surfer was bitten by a shark in California. Reporters seem to forget the old adage that dog bites man stories are not news, but that man bites dog stories are. The AP should take the Reuters approach and not refer to this as a "shark attack". After all, one man's shark attack is another shark's lunch.

Second, there is this story about how much money the Supreme Court Justices are worth, and how they "are richer than all but a small percentage of Americans". I guess the AP doesn't realize just what it takes to become a Supreme Court Justice. You'd think that people that had put themselves through at least seven years of school, worked as a lawyer, law professor, and judge long enough to be appointed to one of the nine spots for Supreme Court Justice, might just have a bit of cash stocked away. Not to mention that only one of the justices is under 60 years old. It sounds to me that they have worked harder, and made better life decisions than all but a small percentage of Americans. That should be rewarded, not criticized.