Flu Bug hits Wisconsin

I had the flu bug this week and missed two days of work. I was somewhat relieved to see that almost every state in the country has been reporting a severe outbreak. After suffering for a week with headache, sinus congestion, and body aches, I can report that I am doing much better now. This year I did not get a flu shot, but they said that it wouldn't have done much good against this strain of the virus. It takes a lot of vitamins, fluids and rest to get over it and you can expect symptoms to last for at least one or two weeks. It is scary to see how fast the flu can spread. If one of those really bad strains ever gets out, I shudder to think what would happen.

Hopefully next week will bring uplifting news of unexpected success or newly found money. But at this point, I would settle for good health and warmer weather.

Random Riches

One of the rules that I have in my slot machine strategy article is that you should avoid progressive slots if you are playing with your own money. It is okay to try for a progressive jackpot after you are ahead, but the lower payout doesn't make it a good bet to start with. Some casinos are now offering a random jackpot just for playing their slot machines. The problem with this promotion is that it turns every slot machine in the casino into a progressive. Last weekend I was at one of these casinos and noticed lower payouts from almost every machine I played. To be eligable for this type promotion you need to have your member card inserted in the slot machine. So a more appropriate strategy for random riches would be to play the lowest number of coins in order to prolong the amount of time you are on the machine. The mega-millions multi-casino progressives might even be a better bet if the random jackpot is still relatively low. As always, set reasonable limits and adjust your strategy for these situations.

Tax Season

Don't worry, it's still winter here. But I was thinking about warmer weather and decided to post this picture of a chipmunk that was brave enough to get a few peanuts out of my hand last summer.

I was helping my girlfriend with her taxes this past week. She uses completetax.com and an error kept coming back from the IRS when we tried to file electronically. The error said that the entity section of the state generic record was incomplete. I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what this means in plain english. After reviewing the return forms, it looks like we may have been missing a phone number. Correcting that problem did not help. So I sent an email to Complete Tax and they made it sound like the problem was on their end. I just resubmitted for the fourth time, so hopefully it will be accepted. I've been filing electronically for years and this was the first time that something like this has happened. I'm not getting a refund again this year, so I'm in no hurry to finish mine.

Another cold week

This week the weather has been unusually cold. I hate getting up at 6 AM on these cold winter days. I only have to drive 4 miles to work, but it still makes my bones ache. Now that we are into February, maybe global warming will kick in again.

I just finished rebuilding two computers that had bad hard drives. That seems to be the weakest link in most PC's. Recovering lost data is difficult when the system won't recognize the drive. I think it would be fun to work for a data recovery company. Those guys are probably in high demand. Unfortunatelly, the average person probably can't afford their services. As an alternative, I recommend that you go out and buy a portable hard drive to backup your data. Then use it at least once each month to make a copy of your important files. It wouldn't hurt to put it in a safe place when you are done using it. The only problem is that if you have it hidden away, you might forget to make your monthly backup. Just friendly advice from someone who has seen computers work fine one day and fail to boot up the next.