At Last, a Headline on This Post

Well, this week has held some milestones, albeit little ones. I finished my final lecture class at New Horizons and am now focusing on studying for the certification exams and building my Web site and that of cousin Robin. My unemployment benefits were extended for another 13 weeks, so the bills will be paid. Steve did our taxes and, instead of owing a grand or two, which I thought would be the case, I'm actually getting about $1500 back, which was a pleasant surprise.

When trying to file my state tax return, we ran into some snags. See, we're a married couple in California, but on the federal tax return we have to file as single individuals. So on one I'm a married person and on the other I'm a single person. TurboTax went schizophrenic when it tried to rectify that situation, and it wouldn't let me e-file my state return.

So we had to lie to the computer to get it to work, just like we have to patch together other parts of our lives because of this continuing inequality. And TurboTax has all the forms and stuff we need, both as domestic partners and as a married couple. It just didn't make sense to a logical system that someone is treated one way at one time in one place and another way at another time in another place.

See, we've had to keep the domestic partnership intact, even after our marriage, because some states will recognize the domestic partnership but not the marriage, so in order to be as equal as possible, we have to have both: It's kind of like having a VISA and a MasterCard just in case, even though it's all money.

I think the Daily Show did a great job in framing this with their coverage of don't-ask-don't-tell, which is the epitome of this hypocritical, schizophrenic approach to "equalitiness" which seems to suit the conservative mind to perfection.


I am so totally jazzed right now, because I just went into the code for this video and stripped out all the extraneous stuff and sized it so it would fit in this blog. It's kind of like ordering your first meal at a four-star Parisian restaurant in French and not having the waiter sneer at you. To give you an idea, here's the code that drives this video:


It started out as a string of code Comedy Central provides for blog links and such, and this is what the player originally looked like:


And here is the code of the original player layout:


Now, not only did I know what code to strip out to remove all the extra stuff and promotional links, but I also understood what all of it meant and knew what it did! You don't know how GOOD that feels after three months of pounding this stuff into my head. It's kinda like Helen Keller at the well; you know, that moment of realization: WAAAWW...WAAAWW!

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!

My head is totally trashed. That felt good. I'm going to bed now.