Don’t know ‘bout the rest of you, but I’m all done with my taxes for this year. Being that I only held down 2 jobs last year (as opposed to between 15 and 20 in years past), I already had all the info I needed to get started. At least that’s what I thought. I was all ready to go about a month ago, but a couple surprises came my way. First one is that I made some stock purchases last year (all of them dismal failures) and wasn’t sure if I had to pay taxes if I bought or if I sold (which I didn’t). Called TD Ameritrade on the phone and they said I didn’t have shit to worry about. Only if I sold over 600 bucks worth of stock would I have to report shit. I’m avoiding the stock market like the fucking plague now.

Another surprise was my 401(k). I just started my first one a few months back and wasn’t sure what to do as far as filing. Right when I was about to use my last paystubs as a reference, that’s when I got my actual W2 with the info on it. It showed the 401(k) nontaxable amount. I do my taxes online and I filled in the corrected amounts. I was like, “Fuck yeah! More money!” You gotta understand this was all new to me. The next surprise was my savings account income. Unfortunately, any interest you earn is taxable. I wasn’t sure if I had to report it or not. I called WaMu to confirm and they said wait for a 1099-INT. Got it in the mail, put in the amounts, and that 401(k) bonus disappeared like illegal Mexicans from the back of a pick-up truck after crossing the border. That was a major downer. Get all that interest throughout the year only to give it back to the Fed. Bullshit.

And the last surprise was my method of e-filing. IRS has the Free File system. In years past, I used H&R Block with no probs. But in ‘06 their shit wasn’t free so I used some other company. I got an email from H&R telling me I could use them to file for free this year. Clicked the link in the email and they wanted to fucking charge me. Free to fill out the form and shit, a charge to actually file the damn return. Fuck that. So I used TurboTax instead this year. Thought they were free too. Got to the end of the return and they’re trying to charge my ass. I’m like, “What the fuck is up with this bullshit?” Went to the IRS page to see who offered free filing. Both companies were on the fucking list. So what the fuck?

Clicked the link for TurboTax and they were still trying to charge me cuz I already started a return with their bitch asses. Clicked H&R, and turns out I could actually file with them for free but only from the IRS site and meeting their requirements, which I did. Now I know better for next year. Have all the shit I know I’m gonna need and then do my taxes with the right company. Saves the headaches. Got my bread about a week later via direct deposit and it’s sittin’ in my savings account collecting interest right now. Interest that’s eventually gonna get taxed, but I’ll take what I can get for now. I’m sure the next rate cut is gonna drop everyone’s APY again. Us savers are the ones who suffer for that shit. Helps in some places, hurts in others.

I’m all ready for Megacon this year. Got my ticket already. Going the whole weekend for sure. Gonna try and enjoy it more this year than last. Probably gonna take less pics and vids to accomplish that. I’m mainly going to get the comics I didn’t manage to get last year (mainly Civil War, Supremeverse, and House of M). Of course, there’s other shit I’m gonna want, but the priority is to complete my current collection. If I can manage that, I’ll see about getting the DC stuff I’m behind on. Like Identity Crisis and the big crossovers that resulted from that like Infinite Crisis and 52.

Yep, I’m behind and not complaining. Why pay full price for a fucking comic book? You can pay 50 cent (and sometimes even less) for something that costs 3 fucking bucks. Shit that supposedly sold out and got all these 2^nd and 3^rd printings and all these variant covers and garbage ass shit to get your money, you can get at cons on the dirt cheap and get the first printing…for 50 fucking cents. I’m not a hardcore comic fan like some people. I love ‘em to death. Love reading a great story. Plan on writing and publishing one of my own in the future (The Masked Guardian). But you ain’t gonna see me hangin’ out at no comic shop with a store subscription that entitles me to a tiny little discount. 10%? 20? That’s nothing. 80%? 90? Now that’s more like it. I can wait a year or so to get caught up on my comic reading. I won’t go broke supporting my habit.

I plan on buying some toys too, but I get the feeling they’ll be massively overpriced. Good toys are hard to come by these days. Especially for action figure collectors like me. I don’t just buy any and all versions of a toy line. It has to appeal to me. I love my Transformers but I ain’t buyin’ all these repaints and rereleases. Not even the new toys. They just don’t look good. The Masterpiece line is the exception. Love those. Still gotta get MP04 Prime with the trailer. But that’ll come later. Last toy I bought was on eBay. The 20^th Anniversary Voltron I posted about before. Can you believe I still haven’t had time to open it up, put it together, and bask in all of its awesomeness? It’s sittin’ here on my fucking futon just waiting for me to molest it.

There’s not any other toys out there right now that I care for. The Japanese stuff is cool but expensive. The Turtle toys are ridiculously overgimmicked. The Avatar toys don’t look right. I wanted Marvel Legends Namor but can’t find it anywhere at the bnm’s. The new Icons line should be coming out soon too. But other than that, nothing tickles my fancy. The Legendary Superheroes Conan set and the Unleashed 360 Green Goblin were tempting, but I opted out. A toy has really gotta be on point to get my money. I used to make toy runs every Friday. That got slimmed down to every other Friday. Now it’s just once a month? Why? Cuz the same damn toys that were on the shelf late last year are still on the shelf right now. That goes for KB Toys, Toys”R”Us, Wal-Mart, Target, and Kmart. Pathetic and sad all at the same time.

Comic shops that sell the direct shit charge way too much. They even have toys that are still sitting on bnm shelves but mark the shit up to double the price and profit. C’mon now, I ain’t no sucker ass motherfucker like that. Statues and busts don’t appeal to me. The other toys are too small and overpriced. Oh well. Here’s to hoping Megacon has some good deals on good toys.

Slowly but surely I’ve been getting some tv watched. As far as new shows, I gave The Bussey Bunch a chance. Thank god that got canned already. Why do people greenlight certain shit? I don’t get it. I really don’t. I figure the powers that be thought the show would reel in the wresting crowd but fellas, this ain’t 10 years ago. There ain’t that many wrestling fans around no more. Besides, the show was uninteresting and unentertaining. Just another run of the mill reality show. Very boring. Nothing new, nothing special. They shoulda called it Seinfeld 2.0 cuz it truly was a show about nothing.

The Osbournes was interesting. Blow Out was great. Why? Cuz the people involved all had unique personalities that made them stand out from the crowd. And because of that, unique situations arose. There was conflict and comedy, all wrapped up into one entertaining package. You actually gave a shit about the people and their lives and that’s what made you watch. The Bussey Bunch? What a bunch of crap. Good riddance. TLC, you need to learn how to pick ‘em. Boring garbage like this, you shoulda known it wasn’t gonna make it. I did.

The other new show I watched was Eli Stone. Started out great. Lots of laughs. Turned kinda serious with a light tone in the middle. Then the third act was all serious. Huh? I wasn’t aware that the writer, Marc Guggenheim, was a comics writer till I read something about it on Newsarama.com. The writing was good enough. But the tone, placement, and arrangement of scenes could’ve used some work. You can’t go from funny as hell to drop dead serious and there not be a problem. You can be funny as hell and drop dead serious and keep that mix running throughout the whole show though, but a complete shift in tone just didn’t seem to work in my opinion.

Scenes where some comedy would’ve worked, and was expected, didn’t happen. When Eli was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, it was all serious. No comedy. A missed opportunity is what it really was. Then there’s the flashbacks. They were relevant but seemed to be missing some info and they weren’t very well arranged or placed throughout the show. It kinda relied on them a bit too much in some places. I think the show tried to do too much too soon. Tried to tell too much of an origin story in the short amount of time it had. A comics writer. Go figure. Yet some details were still left out and there was no real cliffhanger to entice viewers to return for a second episode, which I’m not. You know, it reminds me of that show Journeyman. Yeah, it’s cancelled and there’s a reason for that.

In the case of Journeyman, not enough was explained. In this case, not enough happened. It was all linear and textbook. Open but not open wide enough. You gotta hook people. We’ve got tons of other entertainment options and shows available to us. Why should I watch yours? Why should I give you preference over all this other shit I got to do? You can’t just have a stand alone first ep. That shit just ain’t gonna fly these days. You gotta make me like the lead character first, his situation second, his supporting cast third, and most importantly, make me care about all these things enough to continue watching again and again. The main plot point, that he could be a prophet, wasn’t nailed into my forehead enough. No reason to make me wonder what’s gonna happen next. It just ended with no definite lead in to the next ep, considering the story.

Practically everything was wrapped up in that single ep. And yes, I’m well aware it was a pilot. But this ain’t a Saturday morning cartoon. That formula just ain’t gonna cut it these days. But I did cut this show from my sched. Lots of potential but just not good enough.

Nope, I didn’t watch the Stupid Bowl. Didn’t go to any parties even though I got invites. I stayed my ass right here at home, chillin’. Didn’t feel like dealin’ with rowdy drunks and drunk drivers. Crazy traffic. All that noise. Puttin’ wear and tear on my car. Wastin’ time and gas and money. Home was the best place for me. Ate some good food. Got some things done. Had a good night’s sleep. Most importantly, didn’t spend a single penny. With my computer costing over a grand and the motherfucking fed slicing rates like pizza (resulting in my savings account apy getting sliced too), last thing I need to be doing is spending money.

Not that I don’t like football, but a long time ago I was piss ass poor (shit, wasn’t but a few years ago really). Actually, several years ago in my 20’s, I didn’t know who I was or what the fuck I wanted to do or be. I had no money what so ever. I was clueless, job hopping, and just basically wandering aimlessly trying to discover my true self. They say (or used to say) “a mind is a terrible thing to waste.” That statement is true as fuck. I was wasting mine like a motherfucker. During that time, some sacrifices had to be made. Football was one of those sacrifices. Basketball was another.

My favorite football team is the Buffalo Bills. But I haven’t seen them play in years. Basketball is the Orlando Magic. Haven’t watched a game in forever. Used to be I watched all of their games on tv and even used to go the arena here to catch some b-ball occasionally. I just don’t have that kind of time anymore. I’ve got new priorities in life. Not that I wouldn’t love to get reacquainted with both teams. Time just doesn’t exist in my schedule for either. But when all the dust settles years from now, I’m damn positive I’ll see the Bills on tv again, maybe even take a trip up north to see a game someday. Maybe if I’m feeling spontaneous one of these days, I’ll catch a live Magic game again. All good things in due time.

But anyway, buying all the parts for the computer was easy enough. I’ve never once had a prob with Amazon. It’ll be my second time ordering from Newegg. First time from ChiefValue (same company). With the latter two, you gotta have a verifiable shipping and billing address. I had to call my credit card company and put my home addy on the card as an alternate cuz I have a po box as a billing addy. My bank is WaMu and I used my Visa card I have with them. They’ve got some new security system (just searched and it’s called WaMu Secure Shopping) where when you buy something with it online, you have to use your WaMu card website login username and password and I think use your social to verify you are who you claim to be. Supposed to be to my benefit and seemed simple enough. But it sure as fucking shit wasn’t! Idiots still have the old Providian name in the url.

My Amazon purchase was fine since it only cost me less than 200 bucks for what I bought from them (wireless keyboard/mouse and ups). My ChiefValue purchase was over $400 and Newegg over $700. I processed ‘em all and thought everything was cool. I got an email from Newegg telling me my card wouldn’t go through. I was like, “Bullshit!” I tried to log into the WaMu card site and got an error message telling me to give ‘em a call. I was like, “What the fuck is goin’ on here? What is this bullshit?” As if staying up till 4 in the fucking morning wasn’t late enough. Now I had to call these motherfuckers to clear shit up. They said the purchases looked fraudulent since the amounts were so high and they went through so close to each other. What the fuck?

Since I get cash back on all purchases I use with the damn thing, that means I use it for damn near everything. I buy so much shit and pay all my bills with it and have never had this prob. I had to fucking answer all these dumb ass questions (that I had to create in the first place) as security measures. Like I didn’t know the fucking answer to ‘em? Since I passed all the stupid tests, they made my card active again. Believe me, I was pissed but I didn’t take it out on the csr. I’d done so much research to make damn sure I was buying all the right shit. Staying up late as hell to make sure of all this bullshit. And when I finally make the purchases, I gotta deal with more bullshit. Ridiculous. I know now it was for my own good, but goddamn man, I hate that “all of a sudden” bullshit. Why now of all times you decide to freeze my shit up when in the past I had free reign?

Newegg kicked me another email tellin’ me they was gonna try and charge my card again but if it failed to process this time, they were gonna cancel my order. Oh, hell fuck no! That shit wasn’t gonna happen! Not to me! Not after all that time I invested. Their phone services were obviously closed that early in the morn, so I did that online chat thing they have. Told the rep to charge my shit right fucking now (not in those words). Soon after, got an email from ChiefValue and Newegg that everything was fine and processed. Next morn, checked my email, damn dear everything was shipped already. Gotta love that. One prob though: if Newegg didn’t process my shit and sent me an email letting me know something was wrong, why didn’t ChiefValue? Especially since they’re the same company? I ain’t sweatin’ it though. Slowly but surely this week, everything’ll be pouring in.

Here’s some good news for all you regular visitors and even you newbs. I’ve finally figured out how to create a flash video xml playlist. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for the longest time and after staying up late as hell yet again, the payoff was worth it as starting this Friday (barring any unexpected bullshit), all video content will be played in the Jeroen Wijering flv player. I was using a much older version from a code generator but now that I’ve done my homework, I can use the current version which has much better features, like the playlist and full screen video.

That means I won’t have multiple players for multiple videos. Let’s take Blue Seed for example. I’m currently streaming that in two players. Now I can put both eps per week in just one player. In my exclusive video section, none of the tv shows play cuz the player is old and doesn’t work. Now I can take those and slap the ones with similar content in one player. It’s a better situation overall. Pages will load faster, I can bring more content, and I may even experiment with higher quality encoding. But that’ll be completely dependent on file size and the full screen quality of the current content. It’ll be just as new to me as it will be for you to see how things look when the new stuff goes live this Friday.

You’d think finding the code for the xml playlist would be easy, wouldn’t you? Fuck no, it wasn’t. So many forums talked about it, pasting overcomplicated code. I even took a tutorial online. Waste of time. I searched and searched and kept on searching till I finally found what looked like the right code. You’d think Wijering’s site would be easy to navigate and search to find this, but it wasn’t. I found it on another site. Then I referenced Wijering’s site to confirm what I found to make sure it wasn’t some bullshit code. And it wasn’t. I substituted my own info in place of the already there info, used the wizard, and it worked! Simple as fuck ass code was so fucking hard to fucking find. I did learn that the .swf file had to be in whatever folder the video was in. At least I think that’s the case. I’ll have to do a little more research on that.

Regardless, I’m just glad I can use the new player. I’ll be a busy bee in the coming weeks, moving some things around on the site, changing old code for new. It’ll be time consuming. Plus I’ve got some things sittin’ on my hard drive (external one since the internal one is maxed out) that have been waiting to be put up on the site for months. The next few weeks are looking damn good for the site. I’m pumped about the changes coming up. Just gotta get the new computer up and running smoothly (yeah, I’m well aware of Vista SP1), take care of things on the site and at home, then I can finally move into the next phase of my plan and that’s to start publishing my damn book.

Speaking of Vista, I’ve discovered that with the right codecs installed, Windows Media Player 11 (and possibly any other media player installed) can play .flv files with the right settings. Just thought you’d like to know. But for right now, I’m still 2 weeks behind on tv. So I’m gonna go try and make some space on my dvr. Believe it or not, my computer didn’t freeze up not once while I typed this up. Oh shit, hope I didn’t just jinx myself.