With only a few hours til the tax filing deadline, I was having problem with TurboTax.  It reported no errors so I proceeded to file it electronically, but it kept saying it couldn't do it because there were errors.  So I went back and found that some field in California tax return was not supposed to be a negative number and it should be greater than the number above.  Well, the number above came from the federal side and was negative.

After an hour of going back and forth which TurboTax really sucks at (why can't it be more like a browser and let me spawn new windows and navigate back and forth?), I finally started ripping out forms and wiping out deductions until the damn thing filed without complaining.  I am paying a bit more tax than I would have otherwise, but at least it's done and over with until next year.

If I could make a wish come true to make my tax time headaches more tolerable, it is the ability to dictate where my tax money goes after I file my tax return.  I want to be able to use a nice GUI application to swoop in, to see how others have allocated their tax money and where it's lacking, and divide up my tax money into areas where I think more money should be spent.

Concerned about the homeless or unemployment?  Drag and drop part of your tax money to the homeless or economic programs.  Angry about the Iraq War?  Don't spend any money on it.  Want to see more tanks?  Drill down into the army budget and spread your bucks on the armored divisions' purchasing budgets.  You want to reward or punish the job FCC has been doing?  Squeeze their budget until they do what you want.

UI-wise, you can select from a large selection of budget configuration packages from political parties or even influential individuals so you don't have to micromanage the federal budget.  So you would select one or select a few and average to start with and then make fine adjustments on the programs you feel strongly about.

If implemented, the tax I have to pay every year becomes money I have to spend every year.  Why stop there?  If one has the money, why not pre-spend tax one has to spend in the next ten years at once in public programs that I care about and needs funding?  This way, I can pitch in hundreds of thousands instead of few thousands at once, superboosting cruicial programs and increasing the chance of seeing some good results early.

Instead of voting on politicians, judges, and policies, direct budgetting allows us to vote with our tax dollars.  Whether the system will work in real life or not, the vision is definitely a satisfying one.  If successful, politicians will be on their knees begging for money for their favorite program as April 15th nears each year.  Who knows?  Maybe everyone will act responsibly.  If you like this idea, just drag-n-drop some donations to the Don Park's Daily Needs box.

Given that more spams originate from certain countries than others, I wonder what would happen if total bandwidth capacity of each country is choked by percentage of spam in outgoing e-mail.  For example, if Korea's bandwidth capacity is X and 70% of e-mail originating from Korea is spam, then Korea's bandwidth is limited to 30% of X.

My guess is that choking at the national level will encourage each country to choke at the network level which will subsequently encourage ISPs and broadband operators to choke at the connection level.  This will encourage spammers to use zombies at other countries which will in turn encourage that country to crackdown on spams.

Hopefully, spammers will eventually run out of places to spam from.

Today is a big patch day for Windows users.  Microsoft released many patches, mostly critical, today.  If you have auto-update turned on, you probably have them downloaded and ready to install.  If not, Windows Update site is overloaded so it will take a while to get them.  If there aren't any updates, try again when the site is not so busy because network timeout seems to be interpreted optimistically by Windows Update scanner.  I installed 4 patches on Windows Server 2003 and 5 patches on XP.  On top of all that, I installed a script debugger patch from Office Update.  Damn those 17-inch PowerBooks are looking good today.

I got back yesterday but was too tired to post anything.  Everytime we go camping, we forget something and we forgot the air mattress this time.  Two nights without the luxury of air mattress was bad, but not being able to sleep thanks to noisy neighbors was even worse.  They were rude beyond comprehension.  Chopping wood at 3AM?

If you like tranquil camping experience, don't go to Spanish Flat Resort.  We had such a terrible time that we are never going anywhere near the damn place.  Yeah, it was that bad.

BTW, Comcast's e-mail server is not working today so I have no e-mail.  If you need to contact me until it's working again, leave a comment.

I am one of those people who just can't seem to catch a fish so I stopped trying long time ago.  At the campsite we are going to is supposedly a good phishing, oops, fishing site so I guess I'll give it another go.  See y'all Monday.

Speaking of safety, here is a gadget that offers safety of a more enjoyable kind for callous geeks like me looking for a good place to rest our wrists (via Gizmodo).

They should offer versions for those who prefer to rest their wrist on a male chest.  I'll provide a mold of my chest for a reasonable fee.  While my chest is not as good looking as Brad Pitts', I think I have more professional looking nipples.  Besides, I am internationally respected where Brad is only internationally ogled.

Design quality-wise, I give the left one a B but the right one gets a C because the gel bumps are not symmetric.  More advanced design could allow a picture to be 'slipped-in' like those promotional mousepads and control buttons to inflate the gel bumps.  BTW, I see no obvious security vulnerabilities in these products.