Bypassing buy.com sales tax in NY

Recently, the powers that steal your money started forcing online retailers that have any kind of office in NY to charge sales tax. The reason behind the move is that it will help NY retailers. If people have to pay tax online, same as in a store, they would go to the store instead. This was done not to force us to pay even more taxes, but to help the local economy. Apparently people, if both stores charge tax, would rather pay for gas and parking rather than get free shipping. Two of the stores affected are newegg.com and buy.com. The only one fighting them is amazon.com.

Buy.com currently has a printer that I want on sale. As was going through the checkout process, I noticed that while I'll get free shipping, I'll have to pay $8 tax. I don't think so. I went to amazon.com and searched for the printer model. Guess what, buy.com uses amazon.com as a portal for sales. Add to cart, go to checkout. Free shipping, no tax, and 3% back with my amazon visa. Take that you blood sucking parasites.

Tisha B'Av - Those who know history are doomed to repeat it

My shul skips some kinot in favor of recounting stories of crusades, pogroms, Polish, Ukrainian and Nazi actions during WWII and other fun stories. Most of the stories are about religious Jews getting killed or committing suicide to sanctify G-d's name. Most stories are the same as the year before.

Every year I get really pissed off. Not just by the stories but by the "moral of the story" at the end of Shacharis. The "moral of the story" is that in these times, all we can do is pray. Most of the stories are about religious Jews. They prayed. Where has that gotten them? All of them were killed because they shared responsiblity for everyone else.

It says "don't rely on miracles." People have no problem applying this concept to work, food, marriage, etc. When it comes to defense, it's not what a good Jew supposed to do, he should pray and all will be well. All will not be well because it never was. Especially in New York, martial arts, guns, knives, etc. is a stigma. In Chaim Berlin, a classmate of mine asked the rabbi if a Jewish cop is allowed to carry a gun on Shabbat. The answer, "a Jew shouldn't carry a gun ever." Just once, I want to hear a Rabbi finish his speach with "in these times, all we can do is pray, and get a gun, and maybe get some combat training." Then again, working is also becoming something a good Jew shouldn't do. And when it comes to marriage, all you gotta do is say tehillim all day and you'll miraculously wake up next day married.

Tisha B'Av is for remembering, but what's the point of remembering if you don't do anything to prevent it from happening again. And even worse, what's the point of remembering, if you're going to move back to Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Austria, etc.

Cafe Press - McCain 2008 and Political Haiku

I just made two new designs. McCain 2008 - Say no to BO and Political Haiku - Alternative energy. Check them out and if you like them, feel free to buy one for yourself ;-)

A chance encounter

Last Thursday, July 17th, after dropping off my son at day care, I went to Apple Bank to deposit a check.  As I headed for the exit, I heard a bank employee, who was walking in front of me, say that someone's window shopping and she's wondering what he wants.  I assumed she was talking about some hobo. I walked out of the bank and imagine my surprise when I found out that the aforementioned window shopper was, in fact, a goose.

The goose was walking up and down the sidewalk and looking into the stores.  What I wonder is where did he come from.  I've seen birds other than the rat with wings pigeons flying around, but they never landed on the sidewalk and they definitely never went for a stroll.

I didn't have time to hang around to see what happened, so I headed home.  As I was walking away, I heard a woman say that someone should call 911 or something.  How about calling a shochet.

In retrospect, this would be great advertising for a meat store.  "Our meat's so fresh, it'll carry itself" or "Our meat's so fresh, it's still alive".

Cafe Press - Ookami Kanji, Neko Kanji

A while back I created a couple designs and created free stores on cafepress to sell them.  I forgot about them and haven't checked if anyone made any purchases.  Today, for some reason, I decided to see what's going on.  Imagine my surprise when I found out that people bought six items.  Because of cafepress' sales report's limit of viewing only three months at a time, I'm not sure what sold.  I was able to find two sales, both were of my neko kanji on a cat's paw design.  Neko is cat in Japanese and kanji are Chinese character used in the Japanese language.

I made five designs.  Two Japanese designs, kanji for ookami (wolf) with a wolf's paw print as background and kanji for neko (cat) with a cat's paw print as background.  I also made three computer baby designs, one of which needs to be updated, if I ever get to it.  The three designs are "baby" in binary ASCII and year 2006 in binary in the form of a pacifier, "baby" in binary ASCII with hex code for blue at the bottom and "baby" in binary ASCII with hex code for pink at the bottom.

I've been thinking of several other designs but never got do to creating and uploading them because I thought nobody was buying my previous designs.  Maybe this will be the incentive I need to finally put them on "paper".

Kamen no Maid Guy ringtone

I find Maid Guy's laugh from Kamen no Maid Guy anime absolutely hilarious.  I've finally gotten around to making a ringtone out of it and here it is.  Enjoy, ku ku ku.

Driving Lessons

I was talking with my friend yesterday and he mentioned that he was taking a driving lesson that day.  There are driving, highway driving and defensive driving lessons.  I got an idea for a new driving course.  The Drunk Driving Lessons.  Drunk drives cause a huge amount of accidents and deaths in America and the government is always trying to minimize drunk driving.  The problem is that they'll never be able to get rid of the problem.  Since they know that people will drive drunk anyway, they should offer drunk driving lessons where people will be taught to drive safer while intoxicated.  The government's reason for teaching sex in school is that since the kids will do it anyway, this way, they'll be at least educated about it and hopefully, if they do have sex, will use condoms.  Drunk Driving Lessons are the same, people will still drive drunk no matter what penalty they may face, why not educate them to drive drunk in a safer way.