After our visit to UCLA, my family decided it would be interesting to visit a bookstore in LA. I scoffed at the very notion: Los Angelenos do not read. They watch movies, they write screenplays, but they do not read. And, therefore, I insisted, an LA bookstore is a chimera. Nonetheless, they used Yelp and…
Mr. Skeezebag is in Jail!
This blog has chronicled the shocking ease by which at least one criminal was able to scootch around the California criminal system, despite multiple felony car thefts. The felon in question, Andrew Clark Bergman, stole Peter’s car on Labor Day 2010 and was caught red-handed by the San Jose police six weeks later. If there…
Me to City Finance Department: Suck It!
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how the City of San Jose went after my son for a business license because he’d reported his modest non-employee income to the IRS and the State. Despite multiple protestations from me and our city councilman (and the opinion of everyone else who heard of the ridiculous decision),…
Dogs Need Leashes
I found myself surprisingly infuriated when yesterday a friend told me about a near-attack from a vicious dog, with an even more vicious owner. According to him, he was out and about one day when an unleashed dog ran up to him, barking and snarling. In self-defense, he grabbed his can of pepper spray, whereupon…
A Visit to UCLA
At the end of our weekend in Los Angeles, and since we’d already visited one college (Caltech), Peter decided an impromptu visit to UCLA might be in order. I mildly discouraged it — some of my friends went to school there in the 1980s, and I once visited it then, but I’d had the impression…
A Visit to Caltech
Like most homeschoolers, I’m just blundering through, hoping for the best, and being as surprised as anyone that it seems to be working out just fine. But as Neil is technically in his high school years, and he likes college, it’s been time for me to take on the role of college counselor. To that…
Continued Tales of Rapacious City Overreach
Our 15-year-old son, Neil, works once a week at the family business, and earns about $1500 each year. For this we issue him a 1099 form every year reporting his income to himself, the IRS, and the State of California, and he files a tax return and pays his 12.5% self-employment tax. In reward for…
The Creepy Elf on the Shelf
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.”…
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…