Launch Day

Still trying to compute my federal withholdings. Here’s another gem from the worksheet: “G) See Pub. 972, Child Tax Credit, for more information.” Ha. So what now?  I’ve look on both sides of this W-4 form, I don’t see any Pub. 972 Child Tax Credit. Do I make a visit to my local library to look up the mysterious Pub 972 to determine the answer for G? Do I google for Pub 972 Child Tax Credit and wade through 4 million quote “hits” on way to becoming my neighborhood’s foremost expert on child credits as they related to Question G? Do I shoot myself in the face?

To know the answer of how best to respond, please see Pub. 8280Qw!Niner-Alpha “Typical Responses to Random References Embedded in Questions On U.S. Governmental Forms.”

Don’t worry, though, no stress. If you get the answer wrong on your W-4, however, men in black suits from the IRS will appear on your porch and drag you away in a dark towncar, and you’ll never be heard from again. “I wonder whatever happened to that guy,” your neighors will one day ask. “Got G wrong …” with a knowing nod and tsk.

Taxes are tough for the regular guy. I’m trying to change my federal withholdings which led to a number of forms with very important sounding questions such as “Enter the number from line H, page 1 (or from line 10 above if you used the Deductions and Adjustments Worksheet).” And that’s just the first question. There’s about 40 more. Picking another at random, “Divide the amount on line 7 by 3,700 and enter the result here. Drop any fraction.” Dude. Come on. What does ‘drop any fraction’ mean to the regular American? It means nothing, because the regular American doesn’t know what a fraction is, let alone Line 7. Speaking only for myself, if the math goes beyond “large,” “extra-large” or “extreme supersize,” I’m lost.

Aren’t you glad that at Launch Day headquarters, there is no math in our debates.

Just be sure to drop any fractions.

New studio computer build is done. Thanks, slickdeals.net, newegg and microcenter! Between slickdeals and a friend/wizard at work, this beast came together relatively pain free. Warning – we hear at LD headquarters rarely speak of something as base as money but we include prices below because let’s face it the build and associated price tag is awesome and better than anything you or anyone you know has ever done. Here’s the scoop, so get your geek on:

* Processor – Intel I7 Quad core 2600k at 3.4GHZ. Smokin’ fast. And since 7 is higher than 5 or 3, clearly the I7 is better than the I5 and I3 processors. Right?? Right!! I liked the quad core because Ableton, our recording software, works with it, as I’m sure everything else does too. So looking forward to some better response times during those mad LD recording thingies. I’d never installed a CPU before, I was surprised how easy it was. Is there anything you can’t learn on youtube? 

* Motherboard – Gigabyte Z68XP UD3. Mainly for the 8 USB ports and the firewire port, which our Firepod FP10 will plug into, plus the two SATAIII ports, one of which I hooked up the SSD drive to, and a handful of SATAII ports. Has the 1155 socket, which is clearly the superior socket thingie. Thanks to some ridiculous deal at Microcenter and a mail-in rebate (yes, even at launchday headquarters we do mail in rebates) I got this board for right about … 65 bucks, which made me feel smug and happy for several minutes. Here’s a giant picture of it:

* Drive – a 60GB solid state drive I picked up through a slickdeals post for 67 bucks after a rebate. Yup, rebated up again. SATAIII connectors, nice and fast. I had been told an SSD machine would boot in about eight seconds but of course that was by a liar. I push the button and about 15 or 20 seconds later Windows 7 is up, which is just fine. I’ve been wanting to give SSD a shot but didn’t really feel like putting a couple hundred bucks into one. For 67 bucks, no problem.

* Case – Antec 300. Great. Big, quiet fans won’t bleed into the mix like my current ones do. You know why I picked this case? There’s a ton to choose from. Because it had 2,500 reviews on newegg and an average of 5/5 stars. Who am I to argue with 2500 geeks? That and some deal combos I picked it up f0r 40 smackers. Seems like the standard goto case.

Considering I’ve put the last 60 songs together on an ancient Dell with … wait for it… 800 MB of ram, Im pretty pleased and can’t wait.

I threw 8GB of dual-channel DDR3 Ram in that slickdeals tipped me off two for 40 bucks. Picked up a 500W power supply and a DVD/CD burner that does the lightscribe thing, which will make it a little easier to print demo discs labelled all nice and purty without having to mess with the stickons. Oh speaking of dvd burner, I picked one up at Best Buy first, big mistake, found the same product on newegg for exactly half. Big surprise. Took it back and ordered from newegg. If it was a mom-and-pop sure I would have let it ride, but bestbuy? Nawww, no Karma points there.

There you go, ladies and germs. The new computer. Welcome to the family. Let’s go spill some diet coke on it to test it for strength.

One little thing managed to jump out at me today from the neverending white noise that is my twitter feed and it was this strange little dandy of a headline:ok after spending 10 minutes looking for it I can’t find it, where are my LD minions, but something about Ashton Kutcher and tech investing on tech crunch, and I went, wha? Heh? The 70s show prettyboy dude where’s my car guy on techcrunch looking like an amish farmer with professional curls talking about tech investing? why yes, as a matter of fact he is.

And I was more or less bemused, looking out upon the world from my top-floor suite in LD headquarters, thinking what a strange world this was indeed, until I got to this little gem:

And I really think that like technology probably has the greatest potential to accelerate happiness, of most things in the world.

Excuse me? My little radar always perks up and spins around whenever anyone starts talking the great philosophical questions, and here was a dandy. Technology accelerates happiness, does it? Hmm. Beg to differ. Respectfully disagree, I do, and was, but I hung in there and then came this:

For me, if I don’t make any money but what we deliver, people love and happiness and connectivity and friendship and health and whatever it is, their education whatever it is that we can deliver that ultimately leads to people’s happiness. I’m fine losing my money, if that’s the case.

Let’s review the Dude, Where’s My Happy list, shall we:

* Love
* connectivity
* friendship
* health
* education

And I can only say, thank you Mr. Kutcher. Perhaps you are a wise man indeed, despite that silly little hat you’re wearing. There you have it kids – love, friendship, health, etc.

Love, friendship, health, etc.

Where’s fame, fortune, chicks, cars, stuff, clothes, prestige, titles, etc etc? I mean come on this is 2011, we have so many tastes to indulge these days.

Alas it was not lost on me, this cute little Ashton’s strange little fixation on chasing — nay, not chasing, providing — happiness. It’s not like he’s the first guy to wonder about that. There’s the Zappos guy, can’t forget about that peach of a shoe salesman.

And if you wanted to get all historic, let’s review our fine nation’s constitution, shall we — life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. First line or something wasn’t it? Quick, who wrote the constitution? Bzzzzzzzzz. Can’t think of it? Ha that’s Ok we’ve got Ashton Kutcher and Silicon Valley to carry the mantle for us now. Who needs old guys in wigs.

So your mission this week, Launch Davidians, is thusly – try to pry your chubby little fingers off your TV remote control and hot pockets long enough to do something, anything, to promote one of the thingies off the Dude, Where’s My Happy List:

Love, friendship, health, etc.

Hey young people. Stop being idiots and go stick 65 bucks a month into a mutual fund. Then do it again next month. When you wake up in forty years you’ll thank me for your millions.

Because we here at launchday headquarters are all about sticking it to the man. It’s basically our life purpose. And nothing sticks it to the man like keeping your money.

Let’s take a thousand bucks. Assuming you were able to forego cramming seven dollar starbucks and 12 dollar cigarretes into your face long enough to manage to actually accumulate a thousand bucks, and you shoved that thousand bucks into an account when you were 25 years of age, walked away, didnt put another dime in, lived your life, and came back at 65 when you were done working for the man, and it had earned 18% compound interest while it was sitting there, that 1000 would have become about 750,000 bucks all by its little itty biddy self.

A cool three quarters million for doing zilcho, buddy.

Your whiny irritating voice: “Oh but mister launchday, there’s NOOOooOO WAY you can earn eighteen percent anymore blah blah blah.”

Hah ha ha, you know who earns 18 percent? Remember the man? He looks a little like this sometimes:

Yeah, go check your statement – how much you paying that guy? There’s a reason banks own the tallest buildings in town. That dude earns 18%, and he does it from your dough. You know how much you earn? Well a quick check of the savings account interest rates at bankrate.com tells me about one half of one percent at “the mans” savings accounts.

So why don’t you at least stick it to the man by taking those little pieces of credit plastic out of your gucci manpurse and snip them up. That stops the man from scraping his 18% off your hide. Then stick it to the man some more — go take your thousand bucks and cram it into some noload mutual fund account somewhere. And cram 65 bucks in there next month. And the month after that. And don’t stop.

Because we here at LD headquarters know that if you give all your dough to him, you won’t be able to give it all to us. And that would be downright tragic.

You have your mission. Report back.

Don’t say I never gave you nuthin.

Boys and girls Launch Day the Live Band plays tomorrow (Saturday) night down in Garden Grove with punk rock veterans Channel 3 and a pile of other bands. So hit the pause button on the Macgyver reruns get up off the couch and come be entertained by your good pals Launch Day. And yes we’ll be donating proceeds to our friend Lynette running the Door of Faith Orphanage down in Meheeko. But even more importantly, a serious state of rock awesome shall be attained. We go on at 11.

The Can Club Garden Grove
14241 Euclid St
Garden Grove, CA 92843
Here’s a google maps link -http://bit.ly/fGJOi7