Frustration and Taxes, the new promise

Hopefully this does not end up being too long. Frustration and Taxes. The component that I found last week turned out to be a dud. Frustrating in that I had gotten focused on going down that path only to find it blocked. Even though it is open source, it is written in such a way that I cannot even debug and fix the issue. The example they provided did not work. Sometimes free stuff is worth nothing or in this case a negative amount.

Taxes are frustrating.  But probably not in the way you think. I pay taxes every month. I file forms every month, every quarter, and several times every year. But even that is not the point I am speaking of. People want to get the most value for their money. During a recent trip to Target, the cashier said to me that there was a $5 coupon for the item I was buying and did I want to use it? Realizing what they had just said and that I did not have any coupons, we had a good laugh about it. Of course I wanted to use the coupon they were offering me on the spot. Here we have the same item either for $30 or $25. The same exact item.

Taxes are just like that coupon, except in reverse. 30 years ago, I had it explained to me by a well off person that the goal to having more money was to pay less tax. People with money tend to know how to do this. But think about this a bit. What this really means is that anything that is taxed is something you will less want to use when compared to something not taxed. Let this sink in: Tax something you do not want done.

In a broad sense, any money a government collects is a tax. They do not call them taxes, but they have all the attributes of taxes. MARTA fares as taxes? Think about it. If MARTA was free, you would be more likely to use it. Of course, the government does not actually give free stuff. Anything given for free is paid for by taxes of another sort. Including MARTA or State Parks or Welfare. The government does not create money. It taxes something to pay for that free service. Police officers are paid by tax dollars. Public schools. Roads. But there are a couple taxes I want to point out specifically: Sales Tax, Income Tax, Employer Tax, and Commercial Tax.

Sales Tax says don't buy it. Or if you do, buy it in a way that you pay less tax. My parents reminded me this past week that this is a real objective. They were visiting, but only bought the bare minimum amount of gas while here. They preferred paying a cheaper price in a different state. So Georgia lost out on some tax revenue because our gas prices are higher because of taxes. Those of us that live here do not tend to notice. This is especially true for those in the Atlanta metro area, where gas prices tend to be more competitive and cheaper than the rest of the state. So don't buy gas in Georgia, because we tax it. National sales tax means those with the means will buy stuff from outside of the country to avoid taxes. If there is a way, someone will abuse that way.

Income tax says pay people less, but give them some un-taxable benefit.  Consider two jobs, one where you get paid $5 an hour and another paying $6 an hour. The $5 an hour lets you work from home so you have no commute. The $6 dollar job requires you to commute for 2 hours a day. Take the $5 per hour job as you save on taxes, fuel, and most importantly time.

Did you know that companies pay taxes for each employee they have? This is beyond the taxes taken out of your check. Employers have to pay extra amounts for Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. So these employer taxes say two things: Pay workers less and hire fewer workers. The Federal and State governments by their taxes want less people employed and those that are paid less. Think about that. Raise the minimum wage and even fewer people will get hired to offset the additional tax cost to companies. Sure people deserve a wage that allows them to be comfortable. But as long as you have employer taxes, companies are encouraged to do as little as possible.

Do you remember the Boston Tea Party from history class? The lesson in that was this countries aversion to double taxation without representation. Some corporations are structured such that the taxes on the earnings are paid by the investors (owners) of the company. Other companies pay taxes on their earnings, then the owners pay taxes on the profits. This is why Walmart does not pay a significant amount of corporate taxes, because that tax is paid ONCE by the investors instead of twice. Yes, corporations hide money. If given the opportunity, would you like to hide your wages from taxes? Especially if you could use that hidden money without restrictions? This is why company’s setup offices in Ireland and other foreign tax havens. Corporate taxes compel the companies to do so. It is not a problem of the companies avoiding taxes, but a problem of the investors not paying taxes.

So our current tax agenda would have you not buy anything, not get paid to work, and hide any money you do have in your mattress.

Government services have to be paid for somehow. Taxes that are fair, unavoidable, and minimize the negative impact are what we need. I do not know what that is, but I know this: The current proposals do not work. Want companies to hire more people? Keep income tax, eliminate employer taxes, and give companies a corporate tax break for wages paid. Want a National sales tax? Tax goods brought into this country at a higher rate than buying them locally. Unfortunately, that violates several trade agreements. Want companies to stop hiding money? Start taxing the movement of U.S. Dollars to other country, regardless of means. Forget double taxes. We already pay taxes on the same thing more than once. Give tax breaks for keeping the money here.

Is that all fair? Probably not. But think about it next time you see someone spout off a tax plan or spending plan to fix this countries problems. How can someone avoid that tax or how is that free thing paid for? Meh. Back to my hole.

A Tool of a Different Color

Every now and again, I get asked the question which computer technology is better X or Y? Usually X is Java and when X is Java then Y is most often C++. Typically this is a baiting question. Most Java or C++ programmers firmly believe their language is the best. To me it is comparing two things that are not the same. Each has its place.  This is true of many computer technologies. Java used to be the language of choice for writing something portable. C++ was the language for fast code. C was the language for small code, i.e. device drivers.

It seems that each new project I have started for the past couple of years both professionally and personally has required learning a new language or framework. Very few have reused a significant portion of an earlier project. Most programmers do not seem to do that. I seem to get drawn to new languages and technologies constantly. I attribute this to my ability to learn rather than my enjoyment of learning something new. There is a distinction there, because it has more to do with wanting to use an appropriate tool for the job rather than fitting the job to the tools I have.

Ever tried using a flat head screwdriver on a Philips head screw? Depending on the size and configuration, it can be done. It is rarely effective to do so. I have used a hammer to get a screw out by turning not pounding. I have used a screwdriver to pound a nail into a board. Having the right tool or at least a more appropriate one is so much better.

Over the years I have learned many computer languages/technologies: Honeywell Basic, Applesoft Basic, Integer Basic, 6502, 8080, IBM Basic, Microsoft Basic, C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, Visual C, Objective C, Python, Jython, Bash, PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Ruby on Rails (vomit), 8086, 80186, COBOL, FreeMarker, and probably a bunch of others that I have totally forgotten about. That just covers what most would consider formal languages. The frameworks for each only serve to make the list even longer.

For the past couple weeks, I have been trying to determine which of three projects is the one I am going to work on next. Part of the problem is the technologies that are available to complete each. I would really like to use something that could be reused for all three projects. Learn once, use thrice. It has turned out that finding a technology that satisfies any one of the projects by itself is proving to be a challenge. The time is not wasted, just filled with learning new technologies enough to judge if they have the required functionality for any of the three projects.

And now it happens. Writing this caused me to search for something that did not make sense and I find what something viable for one of the projects, that probably also works for one of the others. I doubt it works for the third, but that is okay. I am happy just to have a technology that works for one of them. Meh. Back to my happy place.

Going back to my hole now

The past week plus have been a little random and all over the place. I had issues getting the iOS version of Maze Pseudo through the review process. It is all good now. Apple TV and iOS versions of Maze Pseudo 1.2 should be available in their respective app stores. So the rest of this are random minor thoughts to go with a random period. Some of these may get future longer blatherings.

Last week saw the second abandonment of a project, Catalog Pseudo. I'm thinking Good Reads is what I am going to use as a replacement. Now if I just had time to do that. Meh. Back to my hole.

When I was a single dad, I made a grocery list that had all of the items I usually bought at the store. I would print a copy, mark off the things I already had. The list was organized by store isle. That was the basis of one of the projects on my list. It is out of the running for the moment. Even though it has the most potential, it would require the most work to complete. Meh. Back to my hole.

Two of the projects on my working list turned into one. Then they turned back into two. Meh. Back to my hole.

There were 6 times more Android devices sold last year than iOS devices. I still like my iPhone and iPad. Meh. Back to my hole.

Apple expects to sell 24 million latest generation Apple TV units in 2016. That is more units than either Nintendo sold of the Wii U or Microsoft sold of the Xbox One in 2015. I wish the Apple TV platform was a little less restrictive. Meh. Back to my hole.

My mother is one of the best people I know in the world. I would think that even if she weren't my mother. Good for me that she is. Meh. Back to my hole.

Purple is my favorite color. Hawkeye is my favorite comic book hero. Hawkeye from the printed Marvel comics has a purple suit. Hawkeye needs his own movie to explain why he does not get to wear his purple suit. I made my own purple Hawkeye costume back in the day. Meh. Back to my hole.

I know someone who struggles. There is nothing I can do for them. You do not know them, but you may know someone else who does struggle who you can help. What are you waiting for? Meh. Back to my hole.

Someone posted a graphic asking if you had ever been had a gun pointed at you to promote gun control. I did not respond. Yes, to the head, while on my knees, 30 plus years ago. I vehemently support the right to bare arms and would own a gun if I could afford the time. Just pissed off 90% of those that read this. Meh. Back to my hole.

My music tastes generally align with the current pop music scene except for some obscure stuff. As far as I know, none of my friends or family has musical tastes even remotely similar to mine. Meh. Back to my hole.

In my primary school years, we were told you could grow up to be anything, even President (POTUS). I do not particularly want to be POTUS, but I would though. I would be a darn good POTUS. Big boy problem: Finding a candidate that is better than me. Seriously, it is me or someone better than me this year. Too bad for the two people that would seriously vote for me that I can't be President. Meh. Back to my hole.

Emptied a cereal box yesterday. Read the outside. It said "See code inside". Looked inside for my winning code and no code. Read it again and it said "No code inside". That implied there were boxes that had codes. Closed the flat and you could still see that it said "No code inside". Figured I could go to the store and find the winning box by looking at the flaps. To bad it really said "No Code inside. Learn more at kfr.com". Thanks Dyslexia for getting my hopes up. Meh. Back to my hole.

The two non-game projects are off the list for the moment. POTUS is wishful thinking. I am still working on getting the courage to do the non-computer project. That means I am officially a game developer. Hopefully forever. I hope this isn't another childhood fable. Meh. Back to my hole.

Random enough? Meh. Back to my hole.

To Zero and Beyond

Here is another math story to tell a different story. I do have non-math stories. They just are not as relevant to my current events. Late in my high school years, a friend and I got into a discussion about if 1 divided by 0 equals infinity. I do not fully remember how, but we ended up trying to prove this on the chalkboard. It was after a test or something. Or perhaps a large portion of the class was excused for something. Mr. Hampton did not say if it was right or wrong. He let us go at it till the end of class, at which point we had filled half his chalkboard filled with work. He was encouraging and only interfered when we made a mistake, but not when we went down wrong paths. He laughed at us for what we were doing. Not in a funny ha-ha way, but in the joy that we were having a good time trying to figure it out. Here were students trying to use the knowledge he had given us for the pure joy of it.

We begged him to not erase our work. He agreed and taught the rest of the day using only the free half of the chalkboard. We had inconvenienced him, but he saw value in letting us have the thrill of learning. I remember going back later in the day, either after school or during a free period. We continued to work at it until one of us had to leave for something. Perhaps it was another class or sports practice or bus or ride home or somewhere else. We did not finish definitively proving it true or false. But that is not the point. The point was that Mr. Hampton gave us the space to try. He knew we would not be able to do it. We would have needed differential equations to even come close. We were not going to get that far in high school.

After taking differential equations in college, I remember thinking about our endeavor. I never went back and tried completing it. This may be totally wrong, but I think you can neither prove nor disprove it. You do run upon an axiom that states that any number divided by zero is undefined or something like that. Mr. Hampton certainly taught me to not be scared of math. Math does not have all the answers.

So this week has been filled with experimenting, spinning some wheels, and figuring out that time was up and to move on to something else. I thought last week that getting Maze Pseudo for Apple TV was going to be as simple as uploading and pushing some buttons. Turns out something went bonkers with Apple's development environment. I got a strange error message that was not helpful. I emailed developer support, but they just referred me to several web pages that did not help. I got it working. My fix was not the right way. I have been working with Apple as a developer for close to 40 years. You would think I know by now that Apple does not make it easy for developers. It has been submitted. No idea how long it will take to get approval.

The next project has been derailed as well. It is the one I started almost 5 years ago. At the time, I needed a way of tracking what books I owned, wanted or had read. I wanted this information on my phone so that when coming across books for sale I could determine if I already had it. I used to use a database application on my Palm for that very thing. That is the simple description of what it was. When Apple initially released iCloud, the framework for utilizing it was not compatible with the way I wanted the data to be structured. Because of iCloud, the expectation would have been that the book data would be sharable between devices and machines. Another conflict was that I wanted the data to be available even if you did not have connectivity. That was something iCloud does not natively provide. I abandoned the project at that point.

After last year's WWDC, I realized that Apple was now providing functionality that would allow me to do what I originally wanted. When time allowed, I revived the project, modernized it, and started working integrating it with iCloud. Unfortunately, I have discovered that while what I want to do is possible it is not trivial. It will take a significant amount of work and rework to get it to the right place. Now 5 years later, there are other products available that do most of what I want. They do enough that I do not feel that spending the significant amount of time on my version is beneficial. It is still possible, just the cost outweighs the benefit.

I have learned a lot from it, so I do not look at it as wasted time. And this is how it connects to the story I started with: Sometimes you have to explore a path because it is a path you want to see. The path may not go anywhere. As long as you do not walk off a cliff, you hopefully garnered some benefit.

This is another facet to why I dislike talking about my personal projects until they are close to being something solid. The feedback I get is rarely useful and sometimes down right discouraging. Suppose you were painting a picture and someone asks you what you are painting. You reply, "I am painting a bowl of fruit". To which you might get a variety of responses: It doesn't look like a bowl of fruit. Wouldn't it be easier to take a picture of a bowl of fruit? Ever heard of Picasso, he has some wicked fruit bowl pictures. You do know that apples are supposed to be red, right? Meh. I do what I do because it is right for me. If it is right for me, then it will be right for someone else. It does not have to be right for everyone.

Now onto a much bigger problem: which of the four plus one projects am I going to work on next? Probably time to do a plus minus chart with a sprinkle of math. At least there are not an infinite number of projects on the list and no time to work on them.

Going Backward to go Forward

Yesterday I did a blog post. I did not advertise it. It just did not feel right. I took it down and this is its replacement. It was long. It was too much soapbox, although all of these have a soapbox. So the theme now is going backwards to go forward.

The day before yesterday, I finished a piece of functionality for Maze Pseudo that has been on the list for a while. I have done it before in previous incantations of the game. But this time, it worked out differently. The feature actually destabilizes the game and makes it less fun. So what am I going to do? Remove the feature for now and until I can figure out how to make it so that it does not detract from the rest of the game play. This is going backwards to go forwards. I will not delete the feature, just mask it out of the production version.  Yesterday, this was going to have the impact of I would be done with the Apple TV version within the week. That was a inaccurate estimate, because today I am done with it. I have sent the bits that need proofreading to the appropriate people. Once those changes come back, I am already to submit it to Apple.

This also means that I get to focus next week on my next project. It is the project I started years ago, abandoned, revived it a couple weeks ago, and will now try to finally finish it off. So in a sense, I am going backwards to go forwards again. I hope to finish work on it by the end of May or before heading to E3 in June at the latest. After that, I have not decided. There are still four other projects I want to do. Five if you count a non-computer related project I want to figure out how to do.

Yes, here comes the soapbox. But keep reading. It is not that bad. Two days ago was national tell a story day (April 27). I only know this because of an old friend's blog post I read yesterday. Yes, already one day late and now two days late. So my story is going backward, to show that we really have not gone forward.

For me, elementary school was grades K thru 7 and high school was grades 8 thru 12. I did not have a middle school and high school had 5 years instead of the normal 4 years. In 7th grade, the school system gave us standardized tests for the various core subjects: math, English, science, and the like. The test results were used to place us into an appropriate level core class.  For math, science, and English, I was placed in the on-level group.

In 8th and 9th grades, I had the same math teacher. She and I were definitely not on the same page. I do not remember the reason at the time, but I refused to do home work or participate in class. It was not that I did not like or respect her. I just did not want to do the work. When tests came around, I routinely got 100% on them. I think there was even a test where I got something marked wrong that turned out to be wrong on her test key and that my answer was correct. She wrote notes to my mom. She called her. I think there were even a couple discussions with councilors and principles. Yea, it was bad. Even when I did my homework, I would not turn it in.  She could not bring herself to fail me, even though the zeros for class work said she should. I obviously knew the material.

At some point, she figured out that I was in the wrong level and told me that. Unfortunately, there was no way to put me into the right level because they had already moved too far ahead. Looking backwards, I was bored; very bored and frustrated. At some point, she just let me be. A willful teenager is hard enough to manage as it is. And here all of my high school years were going to be spent in the wrong level of math. Each math teacher after that knew this. They did the best they could for me.

But all of that is an effect. As far as I know, nobody actually determined the cause. In hindsight, I am guessing that something went wrong with the standardized 7th grade math test. It was one of those number 2 pencil shade the boxes tests. I probably skipped a question or answered one twice and got the boxes marked wrong. I think that the 7th grade teachers had an impact on placement. But if I did poorly enough, the math teacher would have only been able to put me in one higher level, not two. Regardless of what happened on the test, it was the test that placed me wrong.

I hate standardized testing. The best you can hope to know is that someone is good at taking a standardized test for a particular subject. This only comes to mind as I see my teacher friends congratulating their students on getting through two weeks of testing. That is sad to me. Here 40 years later, we are still using standardized testing to determine the fate of someone's future, including teachers and schools. Parents are supposed to have the option to opt their children out of testing. School systems do not make that easy. Teachers cannot discourage the testing for fear of loosing their jobs.  It is federal money on the line.

For me, it was not until my brief period of attempting college late in life that I realized I actually enjoy learning. Why could I have not gotten that in primary school? Education should be teaching children to love learning. Knowledge will come naturally from that base.

Debunking Facebook

Yes, it's been a couple weeks. First there was spring break, where I was only working half days. Then the past two weeks have been where I have been working 10-12 hour days. No problem, just into what I am doing. That is porting Maze Pseudo to work on the Apple TV. The tasks I started with have been easy. It has been the gotchas along the way that slow me down. Like artwork. To get something already functional on iOS to work on Apple TV required me making between 8 and 18 sets of 3 images. These are the new parallax images used for all the icons. I should have done 18 sets. I did 8. Took me two days. And they are not that good. Anyway, my task list has less than two weeks left.

Facebook doesn't understand when you change your habits very well. About 6 months ago, I unfollowed most news sites. Just after the beginning of the year, I started tracking how much time I was spending with Facebook a day "Catching Up With The World". About 2 months ago, I did another large unfollowing of most of the things I was previously. I spent a week looking at what a particular feed was posting. If it was not engage me a lot, I unfollowed. Do not worry, I did not unfollow friends. In fact, it is family and friends postings that I wanted to be sure I was still seeing. I still have things that I follow because they engage me. At some point, I moved to only looking at Facebook once a day. It used to be 2 or more longer sessions.

All of these shifts have not had a dramatic impact on time spent. Beginning of the year is around 2 hours a day and now it varies more but usually around an hour. What this says to me is that I am still engaging (reading links, watching videos) for about the same amount. I have also noticed that I see more things people like or comment on than before. Those I do not want to see. I wish we still had the option to turn them off. Share something if it is worthy of sharing. Like, err React, is for communicating back to the poster. I don't really care if a million people Haha something. There is also sharing too much or being to myopic in your posts. Twenty thousand cat videos gets you none of them watched or many of your other posts even looked at.

There are a couple of interesting things that have occurred. Right now, I do not have a real source of general news. I only see what people are posting/talking about. Top of that list is famous people dying. I tend to find out with a lag. But then that is all I see. Other news, like flooding in Texas is almost non-existent. Wait, there was flooding in Texas? Must not have been all that important in comparison to Prince. Prince is bigger than Texas. *nods knowingly to self*

Another interesting thing is politics. You would think it would overwhelm my feed. It actually doesn't. Most things posted are thoughtful or funny. Yes, there is the occasional spammer. I have friends that are obviously in most of the major camps. Except Cruz. I get nothing from Cruz people. Maybe Cruz people is an urban myth.

Lack of news doesn't seem to bother me. I do not stress about things I have no control over. I wish I had a candidate. I wish Facebook gave better controls over content. I want more meaningful unique commentary on the world! That or cat videos (apparently).

All The Printers Have Died

An almost funny thing happened to me yesterday: I discovered that we no longer have a working printer. That is not the funny part. I only discovered this when I was enabling some two-factor security and one of the steps required me to print a code. Yes, actually required me to print something that was equivalent to a password. Passwords are not supposed to be written down. That defeats the whole purpose of passwords.

We actually have two functioning printers. How do I know? Because I just bought cartridges for both of them to make them work. A couple weeks ago, I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 from Windows 7. Did it tell me then that the printer I had attached was not going to work? Nope. Didn't tell me anything until I tried to print to it from my Mac. Yes, the Mac speaks to that printer, but only when it can do so through another computer. That other computer, my PC, no longer speaks to that printer. The other printer worked with Windows XP and worked somewhat with my Mac. But when I went to try it, it decided that printing only some of the colors on the page was appropriate. Specifically, the color for the border and the color for the text saying you should keep this paper in a safe place. Forget anything else that was needed.

Both printer manufacturers have refused to build new drivers for the printers, despite the fact that both still sell new cartridges. Being a software developer, I wonder why it is not just someone needs to push a button to compile a new driver. Perhaps do a couple tweaks to meet new Windows or OS X demands. How much more complicated can printer driver technology get? Oh, Apple is releasing a new color, which means all the existing color printers won't work. Microsoft will shortly be scrabbling to make a faux color of the same color to keep up. Microsoft being Microsoft will make 10 shades of it that only a lithographer can see the difference between.

This all got me to thinking: 50 years ago, we were not going to need paper any more in 10 years and all the paper trees were going to be gone anyway. Maybe it was 40 years ago in 15 years. No, that does not make sense. Perhaps it was 30 years ago in 20 years. Well, shoot, so much for predicting the past. In the 1980s, computers actually caused us to use more paper than ever before.

After doing some research, I have discovered that the Paper Manufacturers have Lobbyists. Yes, Paper Pushers Pushing Paper. Apparently it is a misconception as to what the Paper Pushing Lobbyists do. It is not fighting to allow Paper Production Plants to Produce Pollution. It actually is to get congress to create a Anti Paperless Economy Society or APES for short. APES forces computer hardware and software manufacturers to perpetuate the requirement for paper. The U.S. Post Office exists only to deliver paper in various varieties. Packages wrapped in paper. Paper charging you for paper. Paper to convince you to buy more paper. Our landfills are overflowing with PAPER! Oh, yes, that is right, you recycle paper. You know what happens to recycled paper? Straight to the dump. Think of all the paperless children in China with nothing to draw on.

Meh.

Maze Pseudo has passed the App Store review, but releasing it on Spring Fools Day seems wrong. Perhaps I will remember to do it tomorrow. Does mean that I will wrap my current old project up for a couple weeks while I go back to Maze Pseudo for Apple TV next week. That and buy a new printer and new paper, since I doubt a new printer works with old paper. Can't teach Old Paper New Tricks.