Travelling……….What to do, what to do.

Another big hoo hah today from the gathering bunch of grotty greenies moaning about people using airplanes. They say that planes are screwing up the atmosphere quicker than anything else. I’ll bet their childrens arses are expanding due to a constant diet of short school runs in the back of the car. I’m convinced that the whole thing, or at least a lot of the whole thing is a government induced guilt wave in order for el governmento to ride to the rescue bearing further taxes on those villians who dare to fly and use the ghastly gaz guzzling, nasty jets.

Odd that: just when flight got cheap enough for the commoner to use on a regular basis, the neanderthals want to go back to the horse. As I live my life and work intercontinentally and hope to do so for a little while longer, frankly, I’d prefer flights to remain cheap thank you very much, and cheap they ain’t.

Bugger the greenies, let ‘em go and eat their sodding lentils and meditate in silence, leaving the rest of us alone.

Today is Tax Day, gotta make sure we get all the ducks in a row today. Scary…….ever since I’ve known Susan, we’ve always had this nonsense of scrabbling around on the final day, trying to get a postal date of the final day on the letter. We’re not alone, the post offices are stuffed solid from morning till night.

Completely insane, because in my case, we could get it done in June and still get the supposed advantages of the extension which we apply for automatically through the CPA. Next year I am going to drag her along to the CPA in June. I swear I will:)

Tonight the internet, through comcast slowed right down to below dial up speed, for the second night in a row: can’t open any darn thing.

Emusic.com

I joined Rhapsody, Itunes and Napster when I got my first and “still” hated Ipod, and I hate them all with a passion it is not quite possible to describe.

I care a lot about music, especially ‘real’ music, that takes experience, blood sweat and tears to create and love into shape. Artists who make that sort of music require nurturing and support, only a few of them get rich and a lot of them fall by the wayside into other careers and something less demanding and exposing.

DRM is simply not required for me, because I would NEVER copy and share music to give to friends. If someone asks me for a copy, and I liked them well enough, I’d simply buy them a copy of what they enjoyed hearing out of my collection: and I’ve done that quite a lot.

However, the curse of DRM is with us and fouling up our machines and lives without surcease.

Along cometh Emusic.com who have managed to put together a worthwhile online collection and presence and they are nice, honest and the thing works with almost everything hard and soft. Extraordinary!

Perhaps they are a bit lighter on sheer content than the the behemoths, maybe, but they are heavy on indies and new musicians and that’ll do fer me.!

Sophia

[Cats]This here is Sophia, who is a very friendly cat indeed. Something which has gotten her into terrible trouble in the past. She stayed out all night and either fell out of a tree or got hit by something on the right eye, which robbed her of sight in that eye. She seems to be not too troubled by it, and is as happy as a clam when we sing to her and pet her. She comes out to greet us on arrival and rolls around in delight on the concrete. Of such simple pleasures we could all learn, eh?

This picture was taken before dawn one freezing morning when I had wanted to take a picture of Susans pepper plant in flash conditions…and I had gotten up at 02.30 hours (don’t ask, jet blag). Sophie always wants to be out and about pestering bugs and anything else in the garden, she has to be ‘doing’, so seeing me mucking about on the deck/patio decided to come along and offer whatever assistance I would need:)

Cats……..

Photography

I used to be a pretty reasonable film photographer, I particularly enjoyed the use of monochrome with some of that extremely slow 50 mono film. I also loved using Fuji Velvia film: to my eyes, it produced the most adorable rich and vibrant colour of all film.

Of course: we’re almost all digital now, using these monstrously expensive and worthless in three months jobbies which are superb, no doubt. They do require six months reading the technical manual, and endless filters, light meters, flash units, battery packs and who knows what else, but the pics are instantaneous and HUGE.

On our list this week, a new star emerged, who produced the most amazing images of Scotland I’ve ever seen, photographed in beautiful Film Velvia: Go take a look, if you enjoy beauty, go look. The most amazing work.

The Gallery is here:

http://www.pbase.com/hwatt/scotland

The most amazing image is here:

http://www.pbase.com/hwatt/scotland

http://www.pbase.com/hwatt/image/65604279

Damned religion, again.

Religion, again.

It makes people into such idiots, over complete and utter crap.
I hate _all_ religion, not the people involved, but the religion itself. I genuinely believe its a not much more than a way of keeping people enslaved and servants to other people, and being a right old socialist (lite) I hate that for sure.
Now we have the woman who interviewed to be a teacher (in front of a man) without her caboosh on, but now won’t teach the children without the face hider. We also have the woman at one of the London airport check in staff who wants to wear a crucifix, and they’ve told her to take it off: so both are now suspended. Not, thankfully from gibbets, yet.

Its a big issue, and its such crap really. I give some credence to the issue of communication if yer a teacher, but the lass and her crucifix, well what nonsense? Folks just should learn to grow up.

A Thumbs Up For Audible.com

The things I would not be without these days:

1. Audible.com

I love to read, but with advancing age and eyesight going to the dogs, its not the endless fun it used to be. I’m not thrilled about having buds in my ears a lot of the time, but it works after a fashion. I sometimes get concerned and when I’m out on the streets, or on public transport, I tend to wear just a single earpiece. One of those things that hang off the outside of the ear. Call me paranoid if you like, but I’ve always been very aware of people and things around my periphery and hearing is a huge part of that sensory appreciation, so one ear is all my audible books get when I’m out:)

Audible itself is a pleasure to deal with, they aren’t fussy like certain online music sites I will refer to later and have a real tech support with real people there to deal with the remarkably few problems I’ve had dealing with the software and site.

I am an inveterate hard disk re-imager, and I always forget to de-authorize the computer and I need to get them to rejig the numbers. Its just a tech thing for them, throw a switch here and there, and I am one of the honest customers.

I don’t share my stuff with others because I want Audible to succeed and prosper, that way they’ll keep going and I can keep getting audible books for an affordable price. They seem to be reasonable, helpful people and to be honest, they are the sort of people I’d want to work for and with.

So: in short, if you like audible books, you can’t beat Audible.com and no they didn’t pay me for this squawk.

You want to see me moan and complain, ask me about Ipods and Itunes, a group of the most worthless people on the planet…later.

Back home in Atlanta

I arrived back to Atlanta on Tuesday, exhausted from the stress and worries of working in the UK and the upcoming aggravation of putting in our tax forms with the CPA: Grand Tony. In England, on the occasions I had dealings with accountants to try and work out ones “tax planning”, I got the distinct impression that they were more like gatekeepers for the government than someone working for my best benefit.

Here in the states, it is not at all similar, our CPA is a tiger on our behalf seeking to ensure that we pay the least amount of taxes, yet remain within the law and practice of the state. Its quite a difference in emphasis.

This year I was particularly worried, after five years of losing money in the limousine game, I had to make a profit, therefore expenses were not so free: plus, nothing was clear as to which expenses would be allowed and which not. So, it was very confusing. I had also earned a fair bit of dough in the UK, and would have to pay UK taxes and USA taxes on the lot: so it could have been a very big bummer.

As it was, not too bad. Rough, and expensive, but not too bad and a much better idea as to how things will be next year, and you can be assured expenses will be well to the fore:)

This here below is “baby” cat, who is in a world of selfish, self absorbed cats: one seriously self absorbed cat:)

When she came to us, she was one of those abandoned groups of cats whose mothers just walk off and leave them. We looked after the crapping and widdling mobsters till they’d ruined my office completely and peed on everything, and parcelled them out to other carers, but for some reason Baby attached herself to me.

She’s had the best of everything and consequently considers that always it will be so, the queen of all she surveys, she is aloof and expects and generally gets just exactly what she wants. This picture shows exactly how she is, self satisfied and supremely happy.

Baby Cat Herself.