I have been listening to Pandora on my laptop for a few months now as a way to avoid the many other forms of obtaining cataloging and dealing with music. It does tend to repeat itself on channels but that is probably my fault for not investing more time in defining my tastes. But that's not the point. I bought a blue tooth headphone/headset at the airport a month or so back as part of my "get fit" campaign inspired by the biggest loser. Note that I don't really want to exercise or get fit as much as I want to play with gadgets but that the desire to come-up with overly complex reasons not to exercise does improve my life anyways. So I bought the blue tooth head set and hooked it up to my Blackberry Curve figuring that I could use it for 5 hour car trips and similar functions. It did work but I then decided it wasn't that useful since most of the time I can just talk on my cell phone. But I was using Pandora while doing my taxes and I noticed that they finally offered Blackberry support. Since it was already 3:00 AM when I finished fighting with TurboTax I figured it was the perfect time to invest some quality time with my gadgets. So I downloaded the Pandora application to the Blackberry. I wasn't about to excercise at this hour! It warned me off the bat that this was a very data intensive application. I pondered the brief description that I had gotten the "unlimited data plan" with my Blackberry when I got it at the Sprint office and thought to myself... glad I don't care about that. On turning it on it blasted some music out of the phone that I thought might wake the kids. So I figured "NOW is the time to test my blue tooth headset as a preliminary act prior to using my phone as a music device while working out on my overpriced elliptical runner in the basement. So I paired the devices and am listening to a crackly "Sweet Surrender" by Sarah M. I walked away from the phone to see how far the blue tooth stuff reached and learned that I wasn't about to get orange juice in my house without the music cutting out. But hey... I got Pandora to work on my Blackberry with a blue tooth set of headphones and I'm going to sleep well tonight (for 2 hours)!

Posted by Dan Housman at 03:17 AM | Permalink

So as usual I am attempting to do my taxes online. This year my catch-22 is that I am unable to get rid of a "phantom rental property". For some reason Turbo Tax online is convinced that I have a rental property despite my never having told it so. Maybe they know something I don't. The problem isn't that they do this but that in doing so they generate a form called an E-1 form. This form is error checked prior to filing electronically to the state of massachusetts. It checks to make sure that there is a real address for the property entered. I agree with the logic but that is where things start to get ugly. So in order to enter an address you are supposed to return to the Federal return to enter the property address. Now that is what I tried. But since there is no rental property the answer either yes or no on the Federal return doesn't show said phantom rental property generating the form. So the next option offered by the helpful community is to delete the form itself. Now the fun thing here is that there is a button for deleting forms. It allows me the option to delete an odd named form called a Pg 2 Schedule E. Doing this warns me all sorts of stuff and then after accepting to delete the E-1 pg. 2 thing it proceeds to do absolutely nothing. The form is still there. So I looked online to find I am not the only Mass resident stuck unable to e-file because of the loop condition of having a form that shouldn't exist that can't be deleted that can't be ignored before filing. Entries include the stuff below. So I believe I am stuck and need to kill a tree to mail this sucker through the postal service. It's not the end of the world but annoying since TurboTax cleverly charges you for the whole eFiling before you get to the "validation" screens. Now if my time was not worth anything I might spend a few hundred hours in principle to get my $40 back from them for providing a product that is unusable for the stated task. But for now it is probably easier for me to use the trusty postal service and try again next year to use the wonders of the Internet and computers to do this seemingly computerizable task.

BTW: The final winning piece of advice came from the following gentleman..

"With Turbo Tax Online, you can't delete it, but you can work around it. I went back to Federal and filled in some mumbo jumbo for the information for my non-existent rental property, and then when I was done, I clicked on "revisit" in the rental income section, and then deleted the property. I then filed my Federal. After that, I went back and created a rental property, and just wrote something like:
Property type: I have no rental property. Turbo Tax won't let me delete this form
Address: No rental property
City: None
State: MA
Zip: 00000."

As long as I didn't say I had any income from the property, no rental income form appeared in my state taxes to file, so it looks like MA is just going to see zero income from rental property and no worksheet or form or anything.

"
I have the same problem and i havent filed my federal yet--my federal shows correct info and I am also unable to delete schedule E-1 I don't show a delete form selection anywhere
( Posted 02/16/09 06:04 PM ,Views by community 98 )
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fzhu99 commented same problem to delete a form for MA Schedule E-1!!!!!!
Poor software!!!
No answer ????
( Posted 03/16/09 03:24 PM ,Views by community 45 )
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Ben78 commented I have the same damn problem
( Posted 03/31/09 08:41 AM ,Views by community 23 )
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E30 commented I have the same exact problem! Their software is messed up! And I call turbotax people and they are clue less as to what to do! And I already paid them too!
( Posted 04/05/09 12:40 PM ,Views by community 18 )
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Jeremywh commented I'm having the same issue as well. I could delete the E-1 form on my Federal Taxes, but that didn't delete it on my State taxes.
( Posted yesterday 10:18 PM ,Views by community 4 )
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Posted by Dan Housman at 02:44 AM | Permalink

I finally checked out Hulu after getting in trouble for posting a status update on Facebook about Kal Penn getting offed on House due to pursuit of a political career. Hopefully this is not also a spoler. In doing so it was good to see some shows are free on the Internet although a lot of ones that would be nice were not free. What looked interesting to me was that Where the Wild Things Are has been adapted into a movie. http://www.hulu.com/watch/64652/movie-trailers-where-the-wild-things-are

Passover seder number one was a good experience this year. Zachary wasn't ready to wait through the whole seder. He did use his limited vocabulary to communicate his thoughts on the pace of the seder by repeatedly saying "Awww Done" once he was done eating his pretzels and yogurt. A friend of the family brought their two kids who are the same age as Zach and Madeline. It took the 3 year olds a couple of hours but then they discovered there was a person they could play with to accomplish tasks like dueling with trash can lids.

My dad brought a copy of a graduate student haggadah which added some good humor for us MIT folks. My favorite part was about the hiding of the centrifuge rotors.

I seem to have been abandoning my web site slowly for the lures of the social networks. I put little updates into Facebook for my status and load all my photos onto Flickr. It begs the question of why I need my own web site but there is this lack of a home base on the Internet so maybe I should get back to this site and start blogging again. Zach is sleeping through the night. Madeline is too although she mysteriously appears next to me when I awake each night. As long as I am not overcomitted at work I ought to have some hours to sleep each night and that must mean I am near the level of time to be able to jot down some thoughts.

Posted by Dan Housman at 05:28 AM | Permalink