Category Archives: Uncategorized

Success!

Via TBogg, a somewhat popular blogger", a little bit of Fox Business chatter:

CAVUTO: Throw in a Fox News alert for you. It is being called the mother of all tax hikes. Democrats unveiling a trillion-dollar tax plan today, it includes a 4 percent surtax on people earning $150,000 a year. Now remember when a million bucks was considered rich only last year at this time? So are these tax hikes going to stop people from striving for success?

I love the idea that high taxes in the upper income brackets stops people from 'striving for success'.

As if 'success' is measured strictly by take-home pay. As if people in those upper income brackets are strictly paid in W2 wages. As if people look at the tax charts and say "well, I'm not going to put in that extra 8% effort, because I will only receive an extra 6% in pay". As if most people making $150K and up these days are doing piecework. As if salary increases smoothly and in proportion to effort expended, and isn't increased in steps, the size of which are generally unpredictable more than a couple of months from the time when scheduled pay increases happen (if they're scheduled at all). As if raises are linked only to individual effort and do not depend on overall team/division/company performance, which is affected by the market the company works in, the economy in general, the whims of customer taste, etc.. As if the worker chooses he'll get paid more for his efforts, and that decision isn't made by his employer for reasons which are often beyond the worker's control. As if salaries aren't effectively capped by job title so that no matter how hard you work at most jobs, you're never going to earn more than your supervisor.

People strive for success because people enjoy succeeding; and everybody defines "success" in their own way. I build software because I like doing it. The fact that the job pays well (and my salary keeps going up year after year) is like some kind of fantastic bonus.

Salt 'n Slug


This is an old Cartoon Network short that they used to show back in the day, between commercials. We'd see it when watching Space Ghost - Coast To Coast on weekend nights. Ah, the good ol days. Mrs Cleek and I have always loved the song... "...one's sodium chloride, the other's a bug..." and we still sing bits of it to each other from to time. It's been years since I've seen it, and happily, it's exactly as I remember.

Commemorative County Pennies

Following the success of its 50 State Quarters program—deemed one of the most popular commemorative-coin programs in American history—the U.S. Mint announced its next ambitious project: releasing a unique penny for every county in the nation.

"Located in the first state in the union, Delaware's Kent County will be the first county honored in this grand celebration of America," U.S. Mint Director Henrietta Holsman Fore said Monday. "But over the coming years, citizens all across the nation will see the best aspects of their own counties celebrated on the obverse side of a penny. Collecting all 3,143 county pennies will be a fun activity your family will enjoy for generations."

Starting in 2006, the U.S. Mint will release five new pennies per year for the next 629 years.

rest, here

No Undo? Is This Pen Still In Beta?

You know you're losing touch with the physical world when, after drawing a particularly bad circle on a white-board with your right hand, your left hand automatically tries to find a keyboard on which to do a Ctrl-Z. And it happens multiple times.

All's Fair...

Reuters:

Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.