JBSilBlog

Well, if you’re here, that means you’ve found my new blog. I mentioned a long time ago that I would be migrating to WordPress form LiveJournal, and now I’ve finally done it. No, it didn’t take 5 months to work properly. In fact, I started this afternoon and I’m now finished, so it only took a couple of hours.

A lot has happened since I last blogged actively, so I will have to play catch up at some point soon. For now though, be sure you register an account on this site. I’ve copied over all of my LJ posts, and made many of them private. As you will see in About and Private Posts, you can still read my private posts, if you make an account and I give you access to that category of posts. I believe that the majority of what I write will end up being non-public, as it was on my LJ.

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It’s tax season. Normally this doesn’t bother me because I do my taxes online and it’s over in half an hour. This year, my father convinced me to go to H&R Block to have a professional do it, to make sure I was doing it correctly online. Basically a one-time thing so that I could go back to doing them online next year.

What a friggin waste! My first (of THREE) appointments at “The Block” was on Friday and was over 2 hours long. 2 hours! He only scheduled me for an hour, and ran an hour over. Good thing I didn’t have any other pressing matters to handle. At the end of it all, he e-filed my returns, then offered me a coupon for a free Second Look Review of my 2007 return. Free? Sure, why not.

I went back to the Block on Saturday for my Second Look. Thankfully the guy I selected for the first day was out, so I got someone else who … I don’t want to say knew what he was doing, but he knew more than the other guy. I came in with all of my forms from 2007 and printed copies of my returns. In 2007, my NY State return came out dead even. No balance and no refund. This convinced the “tax professional” that I had done something wrong.

An hour later, the first time he previewed the forms, the Federal came out exactly the same, and NY State came out with a balance of exactly $100. We looked at the form that I submitted, and saw where the discrepancy was: a $100 contribution to the WTC fund. “Oh, did you do that?” He had skipped over the entire section, simply assuming that I hadn’t made any charitable contributions. Once he corrected that mistake, NYS came out exactly the same: no balance, no refund.

Because it came out exactly the same as what I had already submitted, I got the H&R Block guarantee on my 2007 return without having to pay anything. Cool. Whatever that means.

Considering the point of going there at all was to make sure I could do my own taxes online, I decided to redo my taxes from scratch on TurboTax.com just to see what it would come out as, and obviously not submit them. Upon finishing, I noticed that the NYS balance due was within $1, so that’s close enough, but the Feds owed me an extra $38 compared to the Block return that was already filed.

Okay, so what did I screw up? Where would a random $38 come from? Looking at the form, it showed me directly: Foregin Tax Credit: $38. Oh, well that’s convenient. So I looked at my DIV form to make sure, and it’s right there- Foreign Taxes Paid: $38.  I went back and double checked the inputs for that section in TurboTax and it still came out $38 higher. So, I called up the Block and told them they missed $38 on my refund.

Today I had to go back in for my third appointment and show my original moron tax “professional” what he missed. “Oh, yeah. Looks like I missed that.” Gee, thanks. Then he spent the next half an hour in “practice mode” in the system, trying to figure out where it should have gone, and got it wrong the first few times. Finally he went into Amendment and changed it, and printed out my amendment. He then signs it and hands it to me, along with an envelope, and tells me to mail it in before April 15th.

So, I paid you over $200 to fuck up my taxes, then I showed you how to fix them, wasted 3 hours of my time here, and now you won’t mail in the amendment for me? You can’t afford the $0.42 out of the $200 I already spent? Granted, it’s only one stamp. I’ll live, but that’s not the point. YOU fucked up. YOU should fix it. Completely. For free.

Anyway, taxes suck. And I’m surrounded by incompetency.

In the future, I will obviously be filing my taxes online for $35-$40 rather than spending wasting any time or money at The Block.

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First off, I know I haven’t posted anything in ages. I’m not sure why exactly, but I haven’t been in a blogging mood. I’m going to try and change that. However, it’s not going to happen here. I’ll be relocating my blogging action to a WordPress site, and likely hosting it myself. If I get too lazy I may just get a pre-fab one on WordPress.com. We’ll see. Either way, I’ll post here once I finally set it up. And I’ll even make a LiveJournal syndicated feed for it if anyone requests it.

However, I would strongly suggest that you all start using Google Reader for your syndication. Seriously. It blows everything else out of the water. And don’t come crying to me about how you can’t see "Friends Only" posts through it, because you can. Just use this handy dandy tool: http://lj.abnib.co.uk/

Also, I’m going to recommend that everyone here switches to WordPress as well, because it’s a phenomenally better blogging platform. I highly doubt even a single one of you will listen to this suggestion, but I’ve got to throw it out there none the less.

K. That’s all for now.

I know I haven’t posted in quite a while, and really, don’t expect too much from this one either. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve always had really bad vision ever since I can remember. I refused to wear glasses when I was really little, so that I’m sure didn’t help the matter. In high school or so, I got contacts and wore them until I was around 22. When I was 19, I decided I wanted to have LASIK surgery, but I knew I wasn’t eligible yet. You have to have a stable prescription for at least a year, usually at least 2 years, before you’re eligible.

When I was 22, I went to get fitted for some glasses, since I was realizing that I couldn’t wear contacts at all times. I found out that the contacts had been giving me minor scratches on my cornea, which was making my vision even worse. I haven’t worn contacts since, just glasses. When the scratches were healed, I got a new prescription in my glasses, and continued with my life.

Over 2 years went by and my eye doctor never sent me a reminder card, so that was annoying. I found a new eye doctor and went in for a prescription check-up about a month or so ago. I found out that my prescription had changed so little over the past two and a half years that I didn’t even need new lenses. I immediately looked up LASIK surgeons in the area, and found Dr. MacRae, who actually invented part of the technology that Baush & Lomb use on their laser, and had a 94% rate of 20/20 in each eye after the first surgery, and 99% after the second.

His staff also host free seminars to learn about LASIK, so I signed up for one. I then found out that if you go to a seminar, you can also get a full 37 test per eye evaluation to see if you’re a candidate for free, so I scheduled that as well. The seminar was last Wednesday, and the evaluation was Monday of earlier this week. I found out on Monday that my eyes were perfect for LASIK. I had been thinking about scheduling the surgery for late next week, but they were booked next week and through the middle of September. But they had an opening for yesterday. And I took it.

Yesterday morning I had horrible, horrible vision. I was very nearsighted and had strong astigmatisms in both eyes. I went in for the surgery at 10 am. By 11 am I was heading home. They had me look at the clock on the wall before I laid down on the table, and the numbers were barely legible. When it was over, I looked again and it was as if I was wearing my glasses, but a little hazy. I’m not going to say that it didn’t hurt. For 3 hours afterwards, it hurt like hell and everything was incredibly bright. But by 3 or 3:30, almost all of the pain was gone. By 5:00, the gritty feeling was gone, the pain was gone and my vision was clear.

This morning I went in for my first post-op visit. I have 20/20 in each eye, and 20/15 combined (using both eyes). Less than 24 hours after the surgery! Absolutely incredible. Obviously my cornea are still healing, so it’s likely that my vision will continue to improve over the next couple of weeks. I may even get to 20/15 in each.

The surgery itself was actually pretty easy. The only disconcerting part is when they are cutting the flap of your cornea, so they can reshape the part underneath. The machine needs to apply a lot of vaccuum pressure to make the cornea flat. For some people, this just means that things will get dim. With my strong astigmatisms, my vision went completely black for that process. That was unnerving, but they prepared me for it, so it wasn’t too bad. The rest of it was easy as pie.

I meant for this to be a shorter post than it ended up being, so I’m going to wrap this up. If you’ve ever considered LASIK, but been on the fence, DO IT! Best decision I’ve ever made. This concludes the first post I’ve ever written without contacts or glasses.

If you read this, if your eyes are passing over this right now, even if we don’t speak often, please post a comment with a memory of you and me. It can be anything you want — good or bad. When you’re finished, post this little paragraph on your blog and be surprised (or mortified) about what people remember about you. Or, if you don’t want to post it, but want a memory from me, say so at the end of your comment and I’ll reply with one. But consider posting. It’s fun to see what comes up.

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