Recent Goings On

So.....the good news is I'm still employed.  Somewhat surprisingly, it looks like my job and what I'll be doing won't change that drastically.  There is a large reorganization going on at work, and the communications were made yesterday to the individual contributors about whether they still had a job or not.  Some of the people who were let go were a bit of a surprise - they let some good, experienced people go.  And we haven't seen all the details yet of what the new organization looks like.  Moods are a little tense at work.

On a more interesting and less depressing note, last night was the end of the robotics build season.  We bagged the robot at 11:57 PM last night.  It was a mad scramble to the end, and the robot isn't completely done, but we think we got it "close enough" that we can finish it in the 11 hours we have before competition.  Plus we have a practice robot built to do some practice on.  I'm feeling too lazy to download a picture from my phone, so I'll save that for some other time.

Speaking of robotics, I think this video is a good description of why I do it.  Besides robots being kind of fun in general.  The video is also a good reminder of how to interact with kids.  My favorite quote from it is, "Kids spell trust T-I-M-E."  I'm thankful I had some good examples in that.

Miscellaneous January and February

I've probably been remiss on keeping you up to date on my current life what with all the old/past posts I've been doing.

Robotics is in full swing.  The robot gets bagged on Tuesday next week, so we're furiously working on it, especially since we have a practice event on Saturday.  We had driver tryouts today.  We're building a second "practice" robot, so even though the official one will be in the bag, the build and practice season won't be completely over.  The game this year is called FIRST Stronghold.  Check it out.

I saw this on facebook today.  I think I need one of these.

During the robotics season, as a way to save time traveling to and from the Y and as a way to try to improve my quickness during racquetball, I've been doing the T25 workout series.  I'm on the 5th week of the Alpha round - the last week before going to 5 weeks of the Beta round.  I think the start of Beta might be delayed by a couple weeks, but we'll see what happens there.  I only missed one day of workouts in the 5 weeks, and that was because of having a cold last weekend.  And because I chose to go watch Home Free live and in concert on Friday night.  I highly recommend seeing them if you get the chance.  They did their popular songs, but then the beat boxer also did a solo similar to the one in this video.  It was pretty awesome.  If you watch the video, be sure to watch the middle part.

Long Anticipated Tax Review

So I went to look at my 2015 posts to see what I posted about taxes last year.  And I found that.....I didn't post anything! What?!?!  I deprived my readers of all those graphs and stuff?  What is the world coming to?

You'll be glad to know that I finished my taxes yesterday and got all gung-ho consolidating and analyzing my graphs, so I'm able to post 2 years' worth of graphs in this one post.  FYI, pretty much all of this data comes from my pay stubs and my tax returns.  Your individual results may vary from the ones graphed here.

First, let's talk about pre-tax benefit costs.  AKA insurance.  Most of the costs have been flat except my medical insurance as illustrated below.  Now I can't blame all of that on the Affordable Care Act, but I think the steady 7-8% increase in the last 4 years is due to that.

 

Well.....you might say.....what about keeping up with inflation?  Can you show that as a percentage so we can see how that compares?  See the graph below.  Note that most of the other insurances rarely changed more than 5% in the positive or negative direction, although vision insurance did go down significantly one time.  I think that must mean that dentists and eye doctors either make their money on something else besides routine check-ups, or else they haven't been giving themselves many raises.

My tax software likes to give my effective tax rate.  It actually went down this year, mostly because the corporate bonus multiplier wasn't as good in 2015 as it was in 2014.

The tax software also tells me how the government spends my federal income tax.  See the graph below that compares 2012 to 2015.  Do you believe people when they say the Baby Boomer Generation is retiring?  Well, these graphs seem to support that claim.  The only category whose percentage of spend increased was Social Security, Medicare, and Other Retirement.  It went from 36% of federal spending to 43%.  Everything else stayed the same or decreased.  Yes, even national defense decreased (as a percentage of spending anyway). 

While in federal spending research mode, I looked up some statistics.

                  Spent                   Revenue              Deficit
2012          3.537 trillion       2.45 trillion         1.087 trillion
2015          3.688 trillion       3.249 trillion       439 billion

I'm happy to see the deficit we incurred last year was much less than what it was in 2012.  However......a $439 billion deficit still isn't anything to brag about in my book.  How did the government reduce the deficit?  Ding ding ding!!!  That's right folks, they increased revenue (and did not reduce spending)!  And what method does the government use to increase revenue?  That's right, taxes and fees!!!!  (And maybe selling some military weapons to foreign countries.)

And now, a look at how my gross income gets distributed.  If you look at things as a percentage of my income, the graph looks like this:

You might wonder why there was such a big difference in state and federal taxes between 2012 and 2013.  Well, I think this graph helps explain it a little better.  You can clearly see the huge jump in income that occurred.  I graphed it by dollars instead of percentages.  If you look back at my 2013 analysis, it notes that the large difference you see there is mostly due to a very bad corporate bonus multiplier in 2012.  In fact, I got the highest performance rating possible that year, but it couldn't compensate for a poor overall multiplier.  The additional rise in 2014 was partly due to a promotion that year I think.  And it looks like the bonus multiplier may have been a little better.  I know in 2015 the possible multiplier was looking good until the 4th quarter when things took a dive.

So that's it for this year.  I hope that's enough graphs to satisfy the two year drought you had to endure.

Belated Thanksgiving

Well, I hope your Thanksgiving was good.  I know mine was.  The amount of time it's taking me to post about it does not in any way speak to how good or bad it was.  The number of pictures is also a bit sparse.  So this might be a short post.  It was fairly low key, but it was still good.  The highlights:

1. Seeing family.
2. Making deluxe food trays.
3. Lots of time to read books.
4. Seeing my niece (I know she's family, but a 1.5 year old nieces gets to be in a special category).
5. Some T25 with Muggles.
6. Owie owie owie - this is what Bill said whenever she was physically hurt or if you emotionally hurt her by not letting her do what she wanted.
7. Bill loves black olives.  She ate a whole bunch of them on Thanksgiving day (like at least 15).  And the rest of the weekend we had to hide the pickles and black olives from her until she was done eating her main meal.
8. Bill is quite opinionated and knows exactly what she wants you to do.  She didn't quite have her vocabulary large enough to tell you exactly, but she was still usually an effective communicator.
9. Mole!
10. Reading the book "Love You Forever" to your niece kind of puts a lump in your throat and possibly a tear in your eye.  The ending is a bit creepy in my opinion - the part about the mom going to her adult son's bedroom at night is slightly odd.
11. Eating the most delicious apple pie I've had in years that was made by BIL-Dan's grandma.
12. Hot tubbing.  Bill loves that too.

That's all I got.  Here are some pics.

That's right - 96 hours of GLORIOUS travel by auto.  This is some amusing wallpaper in my sister's basement bathroom.

I think Muggles and I are ready for prime time on Pinterest.

It was kind of fun to make these, but Muggles was right when she said I wouldn't bother to make these if I were the one who had committed to bringing food trays.  I would have stacked them neatly in rows.  :-)

The feet on all of them are the most masterful part.

 

Bill wanting to see the picture I just took of her.

It was an engrossing webinar.  Press the paw pad to hear more sounds!

She was quite upset that her legs barely fit in the bumbo now.

Every young child needs a handy dandy step ladder.

Reading a book by the fire.

Don't worry, the next installment will probably involve even staler news.

Christmas Recap

Two of the six states I claimed to travel to at the end of last year / beginning of this year were ND and MN.  I went there for Christmas.  All my immediate family was home except Ananias.  We spent part of the time at the house of BIL-Dan and Muggles, and we spent part of the time at Mom and Pop's.  Here are the main highlights:

1. There is a parking lot shuttle guy who makes it a point to remember customers and their cars.  He remarked to me as I got on the bus how I've had the same car for a long time.  I think that's really cool how he finds a challenge in his day, but it's also slightly creepy.
2. On the way to the airport I heard the song "That Don't Sound Like You."  The song says a girl sounded like truck tires on a gravel road and doing whatever you wanted whenever you wanted.  It got me wondering.  What do I sound like?  I would think you need to define that before you can know if that don't sound like you.  And what do you think you sound like?
3. Saw Cousin Rick at the airport - we were both waiting for our parents to pick us up.
4. Helped teach my two oldest nieces how to ski.  Pizza! French fries!
5. Doing T25 with Muggles.  We did two 25-minute sessions in a row, and then later that evening I played basketball at the gym.  Uffda.  I was sore from that.
6. Many of the conversations between guys where I live now might revolve around hunting or cars.  I was amused when I went back home that young guys in their teens and twenties were talking about buying bulls, AI, and making money by selling "straws" from a bull.  I was amused and enjoyed it.
7. We were also reminded of a lesson one of my cousins was given 30 or 40 years ago when he was a kid:  "Little farm boys who don't say their prayers become veterinarians."  BIL-Dan, do you have any comments?
8. Making lefse with the nieces.
9. Taking a nice hour-long walk in the sun and 2 degree F temperatures on Sunday afternoon.
10. It probably wasn't the craziest airline story for getting home, but it's up near the top.  I check in online on Sunday night for my early morning flight on Monday, and everything is OK.  Monday as we're driving to the airport I check on my flight status, and my itinerary now says I'm leaving at 6:00 PM that day.  With an overnight layover in Chicago.  What?!?  So we go to the airport anyway, and I talk to the people at the counter and show them my e-mail about how United changed my flight at 1:00 AM that morning.  I ask why and if the flight to Chicago is delayed or not because I could just rent a car in Chicago rather than sitting in ND.  She goes back to talk to her manager, and they end up putting me on a Delta flight through Minneapolis instead.  First class on both flights.  I got to my home airport only 1 hour later than planned.  The drive home was not nice at all due to weather, but I survived.

I guess that's it - my bullet points are feeling uninspired, so here are a lot of pictures.

This amused me.

It's a santafier - a pacifier with a Santa mustache.

The new doll house Pops bought from a customer was a big hit.

Pre-Christmas dinner serenade.

Prime rib.  It's what's for Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner - south end of the table.

Christmas dinner - north end of the table.  Note the serious prime rib inspection going on in the background.

More of the north end.  I like how I caught the one kid looking like she's singing.

Yes, the chair spins.  And it spent a lot of time spinning.  One overheard comment:  "The chair is going to throw up!"  Also, snowsuits are appropriate indoor garb.

The neighbors have a really classy Christmas light display.

 

I like the facial expressions on this one.

Having fun making lefse.

Turning the lefse is serious business.

 

Look at those baby blues!

 

The sink.....another source of entertainment when the spinning chair isn't available.

The Auntie Mel jungle gym.

Pops and Mom with their grand kids.

Awwww......sweet!

The sink is like a magnet!

Me with all my nieces.

When the spinning chair, doll house, and sink don't cut it, try stacking cups.  And yes, the yard stick was used to knock them over.

 

Or go outside and play.

Brudda Jeddles' girls.

 

Celebrating her birthday a couple weeks early.  She was SUPER excited.

Opening presents......everybody wants to help.

Hey summer, wanna play me?

North Dakota landscape.

More of it.

 

Yes, sometimes I get this way.

 That's quite enough I think!