devmorgan.com

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything, I am still alive. Hopefully I can get some time to write again!

Being a dad takes up a lot of that free time! ;)

life, rambling

Everyone has probably heard about the $8,000 in tax credits that are available to first time home buyers, right?

Right.

Ok, so I am a first time home buyer. I would like to get these tax credits, right?

Right.

I filled my amended tax return in June, do I have the $8,000?

No.

Let me start from the beginning…

We bought our house at the end of May. It needed some work (namely a completely new roof and new electrical line coming in), but we were ready to tackle it. We got a little bit of a discount from the previous owners (in the form of seller concessions), but we had to pay a good portion of it ourselves. The roof was going to be the worst part, it would turn out to be about $5,400 out of pocket.

Alright, sounds fine. Especially when there is this great tax credit being offered by the government for first time home buyers. We don’t have the money right now, but we can get this 0% loan (for 6 months) to cover it now, and we can make those payments until the money from the government arrives.

The roof needed to be done, it leaked, and it needed to be replaced a few years ago. We didn’t want to spend all of our savings/emergency money to cover it, so we opted for the loan.

A couple weeks after we bought the house (June 9th) I filled out the IRS amended tax return - Form 1040X - and the First Time Homebuyer Credit - Form 5405. I sent it in a week later (around June 15th) - the IRS received it around the 22nd.

Sounds all good, right? Wait a little while, and I should get a shiny check for $8,000. I could pay off the rest of the loan, and a bunch of stuff we had to buy in preparation for the baby.

Except, no. I received a letter from the IRS a few weeks later (letter dated July 6th).

“The First-Time Homebuyer Credit is not available until a home has been purchased.  The date entered on the Form 5405 indicates you plan to purchase the home in the future.  We cannot allow the credit until after you have acquired the home.  Please resubmit your claim at that time.”

Shit! What? Did I fill out the form wrong?

I immediately looked at the PDF copy of what I had sent in (and boy am I glad I had that copy), and I became pissed.

Part 1, Section B:  Date acquired: 05/29/09

Well, Since I didn’t even send the paperwork in until mid June, I have no idea why they said I was in error. I read the rest of the letter and called up the 1-800 number they provided for if I had any questions.

I was on hold for a long time. A very long time. For those of you who don’t know, the hold music at the IRS is pretty shitty. It’s classical, but it skips.

Anyway, eventually I got through to a very nice man. Lets call him Bob from Oakland.

Bob listened to my explanation, and did a little digging. He was able to bring up a copy of the forms that I submitted and agreed with me that the IRS was in error. He put me on hold for a little while to figure out what to do.

When Bob came back, he had a game plan. He told me that they had screwed up, and he would like to refer me (I still don’t know exactly to where), but I didn’t make the credentials that usually warrent a referal - but he would try. He recommended that I submit my paperwork again, with a note explaining the error the IRS had made, just in case his manager kicked back the referal.

Bob was a very nice guy. To be honest, I was actually extremely impressed with the customer service I received while on the phone.

So, the next morning I printed out the PDF copy of the form I had, hand wrote a note saying something to effect of “I own the house, the date has always been right. It’s past May. Gimme my money you little bastards”. Ok, maybe not that last bit, and I sent it in - again, with the proper paperwork included.

I got a response from them so quickly from the first submission, I figured I’d hear something pretty quick for the second. I waited til August. No news.

I decided it was time to call the 800 number again, and figure out what was going on.

This time I got Steve. Steve was also a very nice guy. I started off explaining that I had called before, I had filled a return, and I was wondering what was going on.

Steve looked into my file, and said “Well, we only got your amended return a few weeks ago, you’ll need to wait a while before it will be totally processed”.

Hold on a minute Steve. This was my SECOND submission. I want you to look some more at my file.

He did. He looked into it some more and noticed that my previous submission file had been closed out by some woman (not Bob). He realized that shouldn’t have happened, and put me on hold so he could figure some more things out. When he got back, he told me that he linked the two claims, and got approval from his manager to pass it on to the Taxpayer Advocate System. Fancy title.  They would be getting back to me within 7 business days.

…8 business days later…

I called the 800 number back. This time I got Billy. I asked if I should just give him my information so he could bring up the file, but he said I should just tell him the story. 5 mins later: “Ok, What’s your information?”

(insert facepalm here).

Now, Billy turned out to be one of the best guys I talked to. Billy told me much of the same, but let me know that my file is one of the most poorly handled ones he’s seen. That made me feel good, almost proud.

Billy was about to say he wasn’t going to be able to do much for me, but I mentioned for the first time that this was causing me financial difficulty.

Immediately Billy decided to refer me again to the Taxpayer Advocate System, but this time he also gave me their number. Told me it was probably too late to call that night, but I could try Monday (it was a Friday). I told him I’d call after we hung up to at least find out their hours.

Billy apologized to me several times and wished me luck. I hung up and called the Taxpayer Advocates.

PS: The Taxpayer Advocates have the same shitty hold music as the IRS Customer Service people.

I actually got through that night, and I talked to a guy, we’ll call him Mike. Mike was a nice guy, and I told him my story. He asked for my information and I gave it to him. He was able to give me a pretty good background of how my file had been passed around. Mike said I might just have to wait a little while longer before an advocate could help me, since now the filings were taking 3-4 months to complete (previously 6-8 weeks), and mine wasn’t outside of that window yet, since my second filing was the date considered.

I decided to say the magic words - in fact I said them randomly, and not even in a sentence.

“Financial Hardship.”

“Excuse me sir?”

“I don’t know, but I was told if I say those words you’ll listen to me.”

Mike started listening, asking for how I was having a financial hardship. I explained that the money was going to help pay for the repairs on the house that I had a loan taken out for. I explained that we had made our budget, and we were ok for now, but without that money we would start to go into the red.

By the way, apparently financially planning, and knowing that you will be going into debt a month or two ahead of time isn’t “Financial Hardship”, you have to go into debt first before you can call it that. Yeah, fuck you government.

Anyway, Mike did say that if I asked him to - he could get me assigned to an Advocate immediately, even though he warned that I don’t make the qualifications. He said he felt I was not being handled well, and it could help, but at the same time the Advocate might not agree. In the end it was the Advocate’s decision, not his, to determine if they could help.

I told Mike, that I had send in the paperwork in June - the 2nd filing was because I was told to by the IRS, and that it wasn’t fair for my second filing date to be considered as the date. He looked more into it and said, that he felt maybe it would be worth the Advocate taking a look. An advocate should be in touch with me within 3 business days.

…4 business days later…

I hadn’t heard from the Advocate, so I called the number I was given by Billy again. This time I got Joe.

Now, at this point I was not a happy camper. I feel bad because I was a little short with Joe, but he was also a little short with me. Eventually I got Joe looking at my file, and he told me that I was assigned to an Advocate, and I should be getting a call shortly. Joe also apologized after looking at my file, saying it was poorly handled. Joe decided to give me my Advocate’s name, and his number.

Thank you Joe.

Joe told me my advocate would be in his office 7:30 - 4:30 Monday - Friday.

I called my advocate, we’ll call him Jimmy. Jimmy didn’t answer at first, so I left a voice mail explaining the situation. I thought I was screwed, but it turns out Jimmy actually called me back. He got information from me and told me he would look into it. He read parts of my file to me, and he said he would need to get copies of some paperwork from various IRS offices around the country (mostly places that I had called previously). He told me the whole process would take a while, since there was something still being transfered to the Fresno office. I asked him how long this would take, he told me it depended on if they audited me or not. Since I made less than $10,000 last year (yay being a grad student), my file would likely be flagged for closer examination for fraud. But, he told me, he would get back to me by the end of September.

End of September? ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS. FUCK YOU JIMMY.

I politely asked if there was anything I could do to speed things up, and he told me no.

I hung up, and decided I would call him again in about 2 weeks (which was the 7th), he told me paperwork was being looked at in the Fresno office, but nothing had been figured out yet. He told me he would get back to me by the end of the month with any information if any came by.

So, here I wait. I still don’t know the real status of my filing, and nobody really seems to care. It’s frustrating because I know if I owed THEM money, things would be moving a lot faster. I also am frustrated because THEY screwed up, and are taking their damn time fixing it.

Look, I know I’m not financially as screwed as many other people in this country, but it shouldn’t take this long to get this figured out. I am counting on that money to make sure I don’t run into financial problems in the next few months (the roof payment alone takes a big chunk out of the money we have to spend - and that was supposed to be paid for by this credit). The fact that I’m not already in debt means the IRS will take its damn time sorting this out.

The only good part about all of this is that apparently I am supposed to get the $8,000 plus interest. We’ll see if that actually happens.

As nice as that interest would be — does anyone have any ideas on how to make this get sorted out sooner?

house, life, rambling

I got an e-mail this morning from a site that linked to me.  I got the 99th slot for “100 Best Blogs for Career-Minded Students“. Kinda cool I guess. I jumped to the site and read the little blurb about me.

Heh. Almost completely wrong.

A student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, this blogger is a computer science major with aspirations of being a programmer.

Not a big deal. In fact, I won’t even tell them to correct it, but I am not a computer science major (I am an Information Technology major). I am also an actual programmer. I do have a job, and I code things.

At least they got the RIT part right ;).

However, this e-mail kinda caused me to revisit a lot of things with this blog and with my life. So, lets start with the tagline to the blog…

Code Monkey and Grad Student Extraordinaire

I still like to consider myself a code monkey. So, thats still fine. Also, technically I am still a grad student… but that is only because I haven’t finished my capstone yet, but I am done with my coursework (although they do let me teach every once and a while). So that’s cool, but there is now a lot more.

I now work as a Lead Integration Analyst for the University of Rochester Medical Center (PS: Nothing I say on this blog reflects their opinions, or any other legal mumbo jumbo). This is a new direction for my career - a step away from web development, and a step towards back end programming.

Another major change is now I am a home-owner. What a crazy change! I spend my spare time fixing up the house or cleaning or changing things. It’s a very different process than what I’ve been used to.

Of course, the most major of changes coming up (not here yet!) is that I am a father. In the next few weeks we will have a newborn and that will take up most of our time. I am excited, and so is Jess. It’s going to be one hell of an experience.

So, I guess what it really comes down to is, I am going through a career change. I am no longer “just a student”, I am a Father, Programmer, Academic, and I guess: Adult.

coding, education, life, rambling, technology

So, this past week has been one of painting - not so much of coding like usual…

Lots of painting.

I would like to thank Jess’ parents for coming up and helping us by painting our family room, office, and nursery. Having the help made getting so much work done possible.

This post however, is less about that particular bit of painting, but more about the amazing work that my sister Michelle was able to do when she came up this weekend. Now, my sister is artistic - but I never imagined how nicely our Dr. Seuss nursery would turn out.

First things first, we had to start with a blank canvas.

Now, this beautiful blue base was painted by Jess’ parents, and it came out great… but it doesn’t look much like a Dr. Seuss themed room, does it?

Read more…

house, life, technology

So, I’ve been gone for a little longer than I would like to admit. What it really comes down to is being busy. Of course. I have a real excuse though! I’m going to be getting married. I’m going to be a dad. I just bought a house. I just started a new job. Things are moving fast and I haven’t had time to write.

Now, I have more pictures - but they are on my camera, and well, I haven’t had any time since we closed to really do anything except work at U of R, travel, and work on the house. So, I can only share the ones that are on my phone.

I have gone from programmer to “house guy” lately, so I promise to update when I get some time. Maybe I’ll post details of some of my projects here.. hmm..

house, life

I wasn’t able to get this post up yesterday, but I wanted to make sure I got it up today. Sorry for the interruption of the DyDL stuff. It’ll come out more soon.

This year we had another successful April Fools. Zack and I were able to pull off 2 fairly successful pranks. The two pranks this year were new course offering and course cancellation posters and implementation of upside-down-ternet.

So, lets start off with the simple one, the posters:

Each one of the posters by themselves were mildly amusing, but when taken together, it provided for some hilarity. One thing that was requested last year was a list of all of the name tags we made, so this year I am providing a list of all the posters and where they were located (to the best of my reccolection).

Course Offerings:

Introduction to Hygiene (Men’s Bathroom Door)
(4002-039-01)
Course Description:
Learn about hygiene and why it affects you as a professional. Course is restricted to Computer Science majors until 4/13.

Advanced Googling (Posting Board)
(4002-501-04)
Course Description:
Students in this course will familiarize themselves with the advanced search functionality of google. Prerequisites: Introduction to Googling (4002-005) and Introduction to the Internet (4002-006)

Introduction to DOS gaming (Posting Board)
(4080-001-01)
Course Description:
An introduction to developing games for the new DOS platform. Topics include Virtual Memory management and writing BASIC

Introduction to the Internet (Posting Board)
(4002-006-01)
Course Description:
This course will discuss usage of applications such as Web Browsers and Chat Clients, and topics such as pr0n, games, and LOLcats.

Inventing Incomprehensible Jargon (Posting Board)
(4002-009-01)
Course Description:
BC IDK, WTF. People L2Talk. LOL Internets.

Gold Farming (Gaming Lab Door)
(4080-003-10)
Course Description:
Develop an understanding of the economics behind gold farming, as well as nurture skills in gold farming. Students must be taking less than 12 credit hours to take this course.

Introduction to ASCII porn (Posting Board)
(4002-002-69)
Course Description:
Topics include subjective determination of ASCII characters to their genitalia similarity, arranging multiple characters for genitalia, and using characters to describe sexual events.

Daemon Summoning (Airgapped Security Lab Door)
(4002-009-01)
Course Description:
Call on the powers of Rut and Baash to control first your machines, and then the world!  A working knowledge of Linux and lesser daemons like the Oracle is helpful but not a prerequisite.

CAT5 Basket Weaving (Posting Board outside of Networking’s Main office)
(4002-007-01)
Course Description:
This trade skill course will train students in the fine art of basket weaving using only CAT5 cables.

Fundamentals of Notepad (Posting Board in Lobby area)
(4002-004-01)
Course Description:
Topics include: Creating a new file, Opening an existing file, Saving a file you just opened, Saving a file you just opened as another file, and Printing.

Advanced Topics in Notepad (Posting Board in Lobby area)
(4002-200-01)
Course Description:
Topics include: Copying text, Pasting text, Cutting text, Printing to a non-default printer, Word-wrap, Changing font, and using the Find command.

Designing VCR Programming Controls (Posting Board)
(4002-008-01)
Course Description:
Make VCRs not suck. Because you’re tired of your parents calling for help.

Course Cancellations:

Advanced Molecular Computing and Informatics (Medium Database Lab Door)
(4002-023-01)
Professor Thireos has been talking to someone for the past hour, and we don’t think he’ll make it to class on time.

Advanced Programming for New Media Kids (Media Lab near Bridge Door)
(4002-018-01)
Not enough interest.

“Alternative Medicines” to help Coding. (Lecture Room Door South Hallway)
(4002-021-01)
Professor Sonstein’s class will not be held until more snacks are available.

Cooking in a Digital Age (Lecture Room Door South Hallway)
(4002-017-01)
Professor Perry’s class has been canceled because there is not enough interest. Most students only eat fast food, pizza, and drink jolt or mountain dew anyway.

Being Big and Tough (Media Lab near Bridge Door)
(4002-016-01)
Professor Bogaard’s class has been canceled because his minivan broke down and he fainted and broke his chin.

Somber Programming (IMM Lab Door)
(4002-053-01)
Professor Jacobs is still sad he didn’t have a name tag last year, so in that memory, class will be postponed until tomorrow.

Flash Physics at the University Level (New Media Lab Door)
(4002-057-01)
Professor Kurtz was busy determining the rate at which a falling body falls. He should be out of the cast next Monday.

How to attract the opposite sex for INFOTECH (Lecture Room East Hallway)
(4002-100-10)
Has been canceled because no professors with course knowledge are available.

Fighting Shortness (IMM Lab Door)
(4002-023-01)
Professor Lawley and Oyzon’s team taught class will not be held today. Class will recommence  when platform shoes become fashionable again.

Using Documentation for Programming (Big Database Lab Door)
(4002-067-01)
Professor Kang is out sick today. Apparently his friend, the javadoc, had the flu.

Drinking for Programmers (Medium Database Lab Door)
(4002-050-01)
Professors Whittington and Zilora have already decided that it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

The second prank was much more involved. We implemeneted Upside-Down-Ternet in all three of the database labs. This prank took us late in to the night to try to figure out how to do it. We used a combination of ARP poisoning and DNS spoofing to make it happen.

We ran into a few problems - that really show us how caring of pranksters we are. We had to modify the scripts we were using to allow for the students to continue to connect to class resources without disruption. It took us a while, and we had a few bugs, but we pulled it off.

We had it running on and off for most of the day. During peak hours, having everyone redirected through our server bogged down the internet - so we had to turn it off, but we were able to turn it back on later. Towards the end of the day, Zack turned it into a Burleson-Net (a famous Oracle blogger) to make some of the database classes laugh.

Overall, a great day. I was able to see many student laughing, and many professors laughing as well.

life

I have heard this word a lot lately. It partially explains why my writing has been more sporatic lately. So, for that, my apologies.

So. A few big things have happened in my life, some of which geekier than others. First things first: I’m engaged! This is very exciting, and well, pretty much awesome. For the record, I didn’t do anything too fancy, but I did do the one knee thing.

Now on to the geeky things! I have been working on a research project for about a year now, involving Data Mining and Data Warehousing. Dr. Jai Kang, his son, and I have written a paper based on the research, and it was accepted to a conference! In Italy! So, come May, I will be heading out to Milan to present the paper with Dr. Kang. Very exciting time indeed. I will likely make a copy of the paper available here after it is presented.

I am also working on my capstone. I am staying pretty quiet about it online right now, but I can tell you it will be really cool. It will involve a visualization, and will be available as a web application, and of course, I will allow access it from here.

I also have had several interviews, hopefully I’ll be getting a nice development job in the coming months.

I guess the long and the short of it is, I will be posting more soon I hope. I just need to catch up with everything that is going on in my life. So, until then, adios.

life, relationships, travel

Sure. I didn’t get this post up before Christmas. Big deal =P.

Happy Holidays to everyone. Right now I am spending some time in the Philadelphia airport waiting to catch my flight to head to Cincinnati. After that I’ll be heading to Boston for new years. I got a busy week ahead of me.

The point of this post is simple, last night I was asked to say grace at dinner for my family. What I said was simple: Lets be thankful for this past year. I did not mention any God, I did not mention any faith. I simply asked my family to reflect back on the past year and be thankful and proud of everything.

My family has two new members this year, one comes in the form of a canine that my dad loves to death, and the other is my nephew Cole. We have a lot to be happy about over the past year, and a lot going for us. I just want to remind everyone to take some time during this holiday season to think about the year and be thankful for what has gone well.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year.

life, travel

Several months ago, there was an XKCD comic called Morning Routine. It is the original inspiration for this comic. I started to think about when I end up sleeping with my laptop in bed. It’s when I’m alone, and usually only when I am feeling pretty lonely.

It’s kind of a painful reminder, isn’t it?

comic, life, relationships

I want to let you in on a little secret: Technology doesn’t solve every problem.

In fact, it sometimes creates some.

My friend Elvis wrote an article about a conversation we had a few weeks ago. We were talking about communication mediums. The article he wrote is a much shorter distillation of what we discussed, leaving out key points (editors and word counts! Ha. Who needs ‘em!). So I wanted to touch on some of the discussion as well.

The first thing we have to talk about is hyperconnection. In reality, we have a pretty sweet deal right now with technology. If we want to get in touch with someone, or send someone a message… we can. Send a text message or an instant message. Done. Want to set up plans for tomorrow night? Done. What an excellent ability to have! There is only one problem, it’s a horrible method of communication.

In fact, I text and IM constantly. We don’t even need to get started about how much I use Instant Messenger and GTalk, but on any given day, I’ll send and receive over 40 text messages. For some, that’s a lot, for others, that’s nothing. To each their own. However, even though many communication tasks in a given day are similar to the ones I just mentioned and they are perfectly fine remaining asynchronous. Others are not. Others require synchronous communication.

Asynchronous communication isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sure, it’s ok to shoot off a message and not have to care about the response being timely. In fact, a lot of times you don’t even need to worry about if the message was received at the same time you sent it. “Hey - see you tonight at 8″ isn’t a problem. The problem is when you use an asynchronous communication method when the communication clearly needs to be synchronous.

I suppose we should go over what the difference is:

Asynchronous communication includes text messaging, emails and instant messaging.

Synchronous communication includes telephone calls, video chat and meeting in person.

Do you see the difference? The first set lacks what is most important in communication: an implicit expectation of immediate response. When you stick to conversations that can be done asynchronously, it doesn’t matter at all. However, if a conversation turns to something that requires responses and is actually meaningful you must be wary of the asynchronous methods. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to hold a conversation with someone that isn’t paying attention. Using the asynchronous methods that is exactly what you are inviting. The reason they are so damned convenient is because you can do them while doing something else. This is only the start of your problems though, because unfortunately the mediums that are asynchronous also lack other required communication features.

I don’t know about you, but my thoughts can not be expressed in 160 characters. Text messages are short. Sure, you can link messages to send a longer one, but, in reality, you are typing on a keyboard smaller than your hand - you aren’t going to be saying much. The same can even be said for instant messaging and emails. Once you turn to these mediums, the accepted practice is to put as much information into text as humanly possible. Again, for some communications this is perfectly fine. You can say exactly what you mean by using a few words. However, if you want to have an important, meaningful conversation with someone, you will be out of luck.

Written word is one of those tricky things. Determining tone and meaning from a particular piece of text can be very difficult. In fact, its very easy to misread a particular message and interpret a very different meaning.

For example, one of my most hated words in English (but, actually one of my favorite in ASL): Fine.

What does “fine” mean? Just the way it sounds in your head can be different.  When reading the word, it’s  tone is ambiguous. You need to take other cues to try to understand the meaning behind it. Does the person mean “everything is fine” or “things are… fine“. Responses to requests can be met with “…fine.” which has a much more negative connotation than “fine.”, but is still not as great as “fine :)”. Things can be “fine with me.” or “fine with me!” and they have a different meaning. All of these different versions need some context, some clue to help explain what they are really meant to mean. This is where textual mediums fail. Sure, I’ll use over my fair share of emoticons to try to express meaning, but you just can’t get the same effect as using verbal and visual cues from conversations when using the telephone, video chat or actually physically standing to chat with someone.

So, we have new communication mediums that are great in certain situations. Sending short messages, or trying to get a message to someone that may be busy has become easier. However, with these new mediums, it becomes more and more the norm to attempt to use them for what they can’t do: real, deep, valuable conversation.  You simply can’t depend on a text message to consult a friend about life decisions. Just as much as you can’t call someone 3 times an hour just to tell them something random that just happened. There is a time and a place for each medium. The really important part is deciding which to use when.

life, rambling, technology