When I first saw The Elf on the Shelf appear in stores a few years ago, I took it as a crass marketing scheme victimizing the thousands of people who each year have no idea what to get for a loved one, as well as taking advantage of lost families desperate for their own “tradition.”…
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FUTA Credit Reduction, or Deadbeat States Stick It to Their Employers
As a small business owner, I get to talk to tax agencies, a lot. Often they send me notices that I paid too much, too little, too late, or I forgot to send it a form. I then have to take a break from real work to research if they’re right or not, and then…
The Perpetual Fundraiser
It’s November, and so many fundraisers have come and gone already, I can’t keep them straight any more. Both my children participate in youth groups, and Kelly recently (re)started public school. I never realized how many fundraisers they’d be bringing home; and there’s been so many I honestly just mentally skipped out on half of…
Who is Bob Henderson?
Last year, Neil decided he wanted to design the world’s most difficult 4 x 5 sliding block puzzle. To that end, he wrote a program to design sliding block puzzles, which he called SBP. You can get all the technical details of the program, and the puzzles he built, on Neil’s blog. We also discovered,…
The Mystery of the Inconsistent Ginger Beer
Some time ago, when Neil and I were doing experiments to make our own ginger ale, Neil’s friend and mentor, Bill Gosper brought over a few bottles of Bundaberg Ginger Beer, which he said was the best ginger ale he had ever tasted. He was right, and it soon became a special treat in our…
The New Landry’s Morton’s
Yesterday, Peter and I went to our local Morton’s restaurant to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. One unadvertised fact about the chain is that they give you a lot of little unexpected perks when you go there for a special occasion (we used to just go there, so we only discovered this on our 18th…
Psycho Saturday
After leaving Peter at the hospital, I went home to catch a few hours of sleep before I had to get up at 3:30 am and rouse the kids to take them to the San Francisco airport. Neil had an early flight to catch to visit his grandparents on the East Coast, and he was…
Remembering Tom Rodgers
I had no idea that the first time I met Tom Rodgers would also be the last time. We met him the Monday evening before Gathering for Gardner 9, the 2010 version of his biannual event that united creative thinkers who like to challenge rules and perceptions. To get us there, Peter had turned the…
Our 2011 Christmas Treasure Hunt: You’ve Been Squirrel-Mailed!
This year it was Peter’s turn to put together our annual Christmas treasure hunt, and he had to come up with one that would require me, Neil, and Kelly to work together to solve. Instead of finding a gift in his stocking, Neil found a piece of paper telling us we’d just been squirrel-mailed: The…
The Downfall of Netflix
Earlier this year, Peter was floored to get a notice from Netflix essentially informing us that if we wanted to continue having the same service they’d been giving us, we’d have to pay nearly double each month. We’ve been Netflix subscribers since 2000, and until then, we’d loved what they offered. Before then, if we…