Measure 66: Tax increase on households earning over $125,000 (single filers) or $250,000 (joint filers)

Basically, this measure creates extra tax brackets for earners over $125,000 and raises taxes for those people. The tax rate is higher for the first 3 years, and then lowers a bit in 2012.

My View: While this tax affects a few S-Corporations (businesses whose profits pass directly to the owner), most affected by this tax are wealthy individuals, who can afford to give back to the community that helped make them wealthy.

VOTE: YES

Measure 67: Increase business minimum tax and profits tax, and expand list of businesses required to pay. Increases filing fees.

Currently, some businesses pay a profits tax of 6.6%, but if that is below $10, they pay $10.  This measure increases the profits tax to 7.9% for income over $250,000 (which changes in 2013) and changes the minimum tax to a bracketed sliding value based on revenue, from $150 (revenue under $500,000) to $100,000 (revenue over $100,000,000).  Generally speaking, it’s about 0.1%.  In addition, partnerships, S-Corps, and LLCs will be required to pay the minimum tax.

My View: I’ve emphasized a few words above, profits and revenue.  Profit is income minus business expenses (including paying employees) where as revenue is just income.  The new minimum tax is based on what a business takes in regardless of what they pay out in expenses.  For example, if a business does $2 MILLION in sales and has $2 MILLION in overhead (employees, rent, merchandise, etc.), it has profits of $0.  They would have to pay $1500, which is the minimum tax based on revenue.  To meet this they will have to either reduce spending, either by cutting benefits, wages/salaries, or workers, or increase prices.

On a different note, while the amount in comparison seems trivial, that can add up over a business’s supply chain.  An example is a grocery store who buys bread from a bakery who buys flour from a mill who buys wheat from a farmer who buys fertilizer and seed, etc.  This “sales tax” will either increase the cost to consumer or encourage conglomerations, cutting out the smaller businesses.

In the end this is a sales tax and a sales tax is the “third leg” of taxation that Oregon has fought against for many years, but desperately needs.  Personally, I don’t like the price changing at the register, so this type of sales tax, where the tax will be built in to the price the consumer pays, is one that I can get behind.

VOTE: YES

Following are the photos of the process and some commentary.

Soldering the lead wires:

Looking at the small ribbon connecting to the controller board, I noticed that it only had four leads.  Since this is how many wires are in a USB cable, I made some assumptions about which leads were associated to which USB functions, namely that the left one that connected to ground, the right one to power, and the other two were the data cables.  Since there was no way that I could solder to the leads themselves since they were so small, I needed to find which test points (the gold spots on the board) connected to which lead.  I used a combination of tracing the circuit board and guessing to find the match, then used a digital multimeter to verify my guess.  Once found them all, it was time to solder.  Since I did not know for sure which of these leads connected to which USB function, I decided to solder lead wires instead of directly to the USB cable.  I prepped some multi-colored wire and fired up the soldering iron.  I was using an iron with a small tip, but even smaller would have been better.  I have seen reference to a “needle tip” which probably would have been just right.  I melted the solder onto the lead wire, then used the iron to melt that on to the board.  Several times I had to unsolder a wire because it was touching multiple test points.  Suffice it to say that it was a nerve racking ordeal.  Next, I twisted and taped the lead wires to the USB cable’s wires, having to guess which data wire went to which lead.  Luckily enough, I guessed correctly the first time, because when I plugged it in to my keyboard, it just work.  It shows up in System Profiler as “Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad” and I can use the default trackpad preference pane to set the gesture functionality I want.

Cutting and folding the case:

To get this to a usable state, I knew that I’d have to cut the case down to size.  My plan was to use tin snips and a sheet metal bender to form the metal in to a nice little case (photos 9 and 10, and redesign at 11), but I quickly ran into problems.  When cutting, the tin snips were curling the metal, so I had to cut at an angle so that the excess case got curled, and not the track pad itself.  After a few tests, I was able to get this down, and snipped out the trackpad with little damage.  I wish I could say the same for folding the edges.  The sheet metal bender was too large and I had no way to keep the rest of the trackpad from flexing when trying to bend it. I reverted to slowly bending bit by bit with pliers, but in the end, I bent the trackpad enough that the button only works when pushed firmly in the center.

Conclusion:

I’ve now been using my trackpad for several days now instead of a mouse, am still getting use to it, but I think it’s going to stick.  I wish that I could customize what the gestures do, but for now will have to be satisfied with having them at all.  If you are considering making one of these, my number one suggestion is that unless you know what you are doing, DO NOT FOLD.  Cut the case and use a Dremel or something to smooth the edges, and use something else, even metal from the excess case, to support it.  This is my only regret since the button is not wonky.  My second suggestion is get a small soldering iron tip, it will just make life that much easier.

New features in version 1.2.0:

• Change interface to tabbed style.
• Added Setting to disable rotating background color.
• New icon.
• Now compatible with iPhone OS 2.1

Loan-U-Later is available on the iTunes App Store

Loan-U-Later’s support forum

1. Changed “rel value” options to support a variety of overlay options.
2. Made CSS an editable setting in Gallery Plus Options.
3. Added caption/title source options.
4. Added adhoc shortcode (see above).
5. Minor code changes.

The update is uploaded and will show up at Wordpress’s leisure.

Plugin’s Wordpress Page | Download plugin

For goal #1 I installed Twitter Tools on this blog, which, with my settings, should post a tweet whenever I post a blog entry. I specifically chose not to have my tweets create blog posts.  What I’ll find out shortly is how much of that post is tweeted.

For goal #2 I installed the Twitter application on Facebook, which will cross post my tweets/status updates. What I’m hoping/expecting is that this app will also update facebook when a tweet is sent from the blog post.

So, did it work?  There should now be a tweet and a Facebook update linking to this post.

Coming soon: amortization tables!

So don’t waste any time, go and get it at the iTunes App Store

The app’s website can be found here.

Yes, I wrote an iPhone app, a game called Wirez.  Here is the pitch:

Light the lights with Wirez! This puzzle games has you turning and swapping tiles to connect matching colored power cells and light bulbs.

Wirez has three game modes to challenge you:
- Timed Arcade: Work fast because these power cells are running out! Complete a circuit and another will pop up.
- Untimed Arcade: A more leisurely version where the power cells don’t run out.
- Untimed Puzzle: Complete all the circuits to go to the next level.  While simple at the beginning, this can get pretty tricky the more and more circuits there are.

All games are randomly generated, so there’s no end to the amount of fun.

So don’t waste any time, go and get it at the iTunes App Store

The app’s website can be found here.

The following pictures are instructions for how to add a cuff to pants to lengthen them.