Kind of off-topic for this blog, but since it is tax day, I thought I’d share this handy tax tip that I found at the IRS website in a document titled “How long should I keep records?”

For all of you folks out there that file fraudulent returns — if you want to do it strictly by the book, you ought to hang on to that return indefinitely. You know, just to comply with IRS recommendations:

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a video about their polygraph testing, which was critiqued by AntiPolygraph.org, and recently reported about on Slashdot. In 1991, while still a college student, I applied for a summer internship with the NSA, so I got to take one of these tests myself. The official results were “inconclusive”, but I think they suspected that I was secretly gay.

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Despite the fact that I earn a living with technology, and that even many of my leisure hours are spent in front of a computer, I’m feeling especially consumed by technology lately. By “consumed” I mean more of the “waste or burn away” sense.

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Antivirus System Pro is an irksome piece of malware that holds your computer hostage until you pay a ransom. It is nothing short of extortion. I just spent a few evenings removing it from a friend’s computer, and the dozens of articles on the web (and even YouTube videos) were all wrong about how to get rid of this instance.
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If you say “segue” while attempting one, you’ve already blown it.

I’m a man of few words. Well, vocally anyway. My wife has teased that I must have a fixed daily allotment of spoken words, and on evenings when I’m particularly quiet, I must have used them up already. I’m not sure if she buys the “still waters run deep” explanation, but not being much of a talker comes in handy for getting cheap cell phone service.

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On December 3, 2008, Logitech (my employer) announced that it had shipped its billionth mouse. While I didn’t contribute much to that as an employee (I work in a non-mouse division), I have helped as a consumer: I think I personally own four Logitech mice.

As part of the company internal celebration, there was a video contest with fairly liberal rules: One minute in length or less, something to do with mice.

Here is my prize-winning entry:

Watch the Video

The current stock market makes the title generally appropriate, but I’m specifically talking about Microsoft Money here. I used to use Quicken pretty heavily, but I got tired of forced upgrades so I’ve been using Microsoft Money for a little while. Now I’m happy to be done with both of them.
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