April 1, 2025

I called Senator Booker's office and left a message of thanks.

Then I decided that wasn't enough and went to ActBlue to make a campaign contribution. Then I decided that wasn't enough and made it monthly, even though it's a small amount. I wish ActBlue had a way to leave a thank you note. I've been doing that with as many people and organizations as I can afford lately. I think it's a very good use of my funds.

March 26, 2025

Has nobody posted this?

https://m.

March 14, 2025

I've been trying to leave a message of protest with Senator Schumer.

It's impossible. I started with his DC office, and worked my way through three or four local offices before I gave up. Not one of them will accept a voicemail. They just give me their message and hang up on me. My god, even my Republican senators in Texas let you leave a voicemail.

February 26, 2025

I'd love it if somebody could talk me down.

Hopefully I won't be here immediately to see it, as I'm going to try very hard to go back to sleep, if that's not a contradiction in terms.

I've been having panic attacks since the inauguration, although I've been able to get them under control so far, thank goodness. I just woke up with another one and realized it was because of a gut feeling that we're going to wind up with our own nukes pointed at our heads. Any good reasons that my gut feeling might be wrong appreciated.

February 4, 2025

What in the hell good is legislation going to do? Isn't this already illegal??

Chuck Schumer
‪@schumer.senate.gov‬

Follow
If the Treasury Secretary does not remove DOGE’s access to the Treasury payment systems at once:

Congress must immediately act.

That is why Rep. Jeffries and I will work together on legislation to stop unlawful meddling in the Treasury Department’s payment systems.

https://bsky.app/profile/schumer.senate.gov/post/3lhcp5iaz7s2s

February 3, 2025

Here's the deal as I see it.

Even if Congress comes to its senses and puts a stop to the worst of this garbage, a lot of virtually irreparable damage has already been done. Trump is no doubt vacuuming up every bit of classified material he doesn't already have. Musk is vacuuming up all our personal data. We will never fully recover from that, and recovering even somewhat is going to take a long time.

January 22, 2025

An appropriate forum for my question may not exist.

This looks like it's more for minor repairs and cleaning and stuff, but it's the closest I could find so I'm going to ask

My Amana heat pump system that I got during the pandemic because it was basically the only thing I could get for a reasonable price has always been fine except for not heating well when the temperature gets low. It has an auxiliary radiant heat panel, but I've always been convinced it didn't work, or didn't work right.

I've been just putting up with it but I recently called a technician out to look at it, which was an interesting experience in itself as people don't seem to want to work on Amana units, or heat pumps at all. But I finally found someone.

He wasn't very good at explaining things, whether on purpose or not, so in frustration after he had messed with it a while I bought a thermostat that allowed me to turn the heat panel on manually, which my current thermostat does not. It was a Honeywell that both Amazon and Lowe's carry and that was listed as compatible with heat pumps with auxiliary heat panels. Oh, and with two stage units, which mine is.

Well, he said that one would not work with my system. He said I had to have one that cost $650 plus installation, but he did a lousy job of explaining why the one I bought wouldn't work and exactly how the one he proposed to sell me functioned so that I could determine if it would do what I wanted. He didn't even so much as show me a picture of it.

So I'm hoping somebody here might know enough about heat pumps to help me, or possibly someone here has an Amana unit and can tell me if they've used just a regular heat pump thermostat purchased from Lowe's or Amazon. I really don't understand why my unit should require a special thermostat, and, as I said, the one guy I found so far that would even work on it is no good at explaining.

TIA

January 20, 2025

Elon's kid spills the beans?

This is from a month ago so it may have already been posted. I found it in a reply on BlueSky in response to Trump's either confession or senile maundering, who knows, but I am personally going with confession, regarding Pennsylvania.

https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingiswrong2024/comments/1hflnxp/the_fbi_needs_to_investigate_this_kid_wtf_does_he/?share_id=f4Ac0kwyWFV9juIiNetAF&utm_content=1&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1&rdt=44752

January 18, 2025

A thought just popped into my head regarding Hegseth.

He's obviously totally unqualified for the job, and anything he does on his own will just be flailing around. So I think the real question is who actually is going to be running the Department of Defense.

I've got no expertise or background for reaching the conclusion that prompted me to ask this question. It just kind of seemed obvious to me.

November 29, 2024

Roth IRA conversion tax reporting. I am so confused!

Make that confused and frustrated. You'd think this would be simple.

I want to convert my entire traditional IRA into my Roth IRA before the end of this year. The question is not whether that makes financial sense. I want to do it because I don't want to be forced into required minimum distributions. That's my only reason.

What I'm trying to figure out is what form or forms is or are required to pay the taxes on the thing by the deadline for paying estimated taxes.

The company that holds my IRA was of no help, as the form they referred me to said it only applied if you were converting part of it. They told me to consult a financial professional. I see no reason to pay for that when all I need to know is what the heck form do I fill out to report the conversion and pay the taxes.

Googling was no help either. It kept wanting to tell me about a backdoor conversion, which does not apply to me. It was no good at just telling me what form to fill out either.

In hindsight, I should have increased my withholding on one of my sources of retirement income at the beginning of this year and then I wouldn't have had to worry about it. Hindsight is 20/20.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even need to report the conversion until I do my 2024 taxes. All I really need right now, I think, is just to send in the estimated taxes on the thing.

Help?