Blog

I found a human. An actual real human.

I asked him about whether I need to file a tax return. Given I was in the US for 14 days of 2015, and I didn’t work for any of them, it seems ridiculous to do so. A friend of ours reckons I don’t need to.

I’d scoured the website looking for a definitive answer, rather than just interpreting various things, and couldn’t really come up with anything. So I thought I’d contact them. The online system eventually dumps you at a person who can’t actually offer tax advice, but does refer you to their phone system. So I rang their phone system.

However, after several attempts where I just got dumped out of the phone system after an automated message which basically said “This menu option no longer functions” I finally found a person. Yay!

Only no.

He informed me that “Because of budget cuts” there is “no longer a department that can answer your query”. We then spent about 10 minutes of entertainment as he searched the site, and went through the same loop of the online tax advice thing before concluding that “I may need to seek outside advice”.

So that’s fun.

So, Kathryn and I are planning, in the marginally longer term (as in not this week) to start a business. This is partly scary because we’re planning to invest a chunk of the money we made on renovating our last house in it. It’s also scary because my last attempt at running a business was car-crash-scary-bad. I spent years afterwards paying off the debts and getting the bank to chase my business partner for at least some of the money.

I’d only just reached the point where I could close the business’ bank account at the point I met Kathryn and had absolutely no desire to ever run a business again. But the concept that we’ve developed makes me want to try again.

And today we ordered some bits to prototype our first product. To be fair, we’ve ordered equipment for the business too, that was a while ago… Just before we moved. But it’s not exactly a kickstarter, more a pre-order, and it won’t be here for a while.

In contrast to the far-distant ‘will arrive eventually’ thing we’ve ordered, these bits should be here soon. As in, in a week or two.

I also need to get my electronics head back on. Which is hard, because I think I largely left it at school.

Also in the order is a LED bulb with a B22 base. Because it turns out Deal Extreme is the place to get stuff like that. Lord knows what the colour temperature will be, it says 3000K, which is fine for a household bulb, but I once got a ‘daylight drawing bulb’ for Kathryn and it was like having your eyes seared out by the sun in terms of bright-white-ness.