Happy Tax Day!

I caught a massive cold and sinus infection on my Friday motorcycle ride all over Western Missouri... It wasn't cold that day at all, and in the afternoon it was in the mid 70s, so the temperatures didn't do it...

But somewhere I got into the bad germs...

So with my head stopped up and my eyes burning, I tackled the first shot thru my income taxes....  That turned out to be more of a job of settling Loyce's estate that income taxes...

So with call after call to the insurance companies, and learning that one of them had a 1099 all messed up, I couldn't do a final tax return anyway....

Yesterday I gave up and filed extensions........  You can't really file a Kansas extension...  You just send them a copy of your Federal extension...  But if you end up owing money, its penalty and interest...  That's a catch 22 if I ever saw one...

So it behooves you to have your return as complete as you can possibly make it and calculate the Kansas tax..  Then even send in some extra just for good measure...

But I did learn that our Kansas Governor Sam Brownback had strongly supported a measure that passed last summer reducing the Kansas Income Tax rate to 4.9%  It had been 6.45% which is considerably higher...

He also thinks that Kansas should reduce its rate to Zero....  Which would put us in the economic running for RVer friendly states like Florida and South Dakota..  Oh and lets not forget Texas..  Our motorhome licenses here in Kansas are calculated on gross vehicle weight and not purchase price or value...    I think my 08 MH was under $300 last year...  That kills the property tax on a big value concept that many states charge.

I was actually pondering whether to move my home state to Arizona because their Income Tax rate is somewhere around 4.5%..  But licenses for the MH would kill that savings in a heartbeat....

Arizona also had higher insurance charges for motor vehicles as well..  Licensing the Jeep and the Goldwing back in Kansas would save money as well...  But again, where will these vehicles spend most of their time?   I have always licensed them where they were purchased and not worried about it...  But, some day that will more than likely get me..

We had snow over the weekend, so I wasn't missing anything staying inside with my cold.....   I should have stayed in Arizona.....  For sure!

Retired Rod

Shooters and lunches in small towns...

Back in the routine....  Well going on motorcycle lunch rides anyway....

Last Tuesday we went over to Pleasant Hill, Missouri...  The trip was only 31 miles from the house here in Overland Park..

We went to the old downtown area of the town....   Most of the businesses are out on the highway, but there is a nice restaurant on old main street called Glory B's.........

As I came downstairs to get ready to leave the house, I noticed it was dark outside.....    Rain........  I had just looked out and it was sunny a few minutes ago..   We had a squall line go thru, and I had to wait a while...

I followed that all the way over to Missouri getting into the back side of it as I arrived.....  It was barely 50 degrees so that makes rain kinda cold....

Then yesterday my friend Al and I along with his wife Sharon headed off on one of the Friday runs that the Romeos sometimes make...  But we were alone for that...   A place called Fubbler's Cove in Orrick, Missouri...

They have a fish fry as all you can eat on Fridays...    I didn't get a picture of that place...  But I ordered the cat fish and had a plate that I couldn't finish... Wow what a feast...  Al and Sharon shared their plate of Walleye......  I should have known by that ...

We had to take a detour around the Grandview Triangle corner over in Missouri..  This is where Interstates 435 and 470 meet with I 49 and US 50...  Its a massive corner with all kinds of over and underpasses...

Seems that in the last 30 days there have been a bunch of shootings where folks have had their cars shot at...  The aggressors then take an exit quickly, so as to escape...

Some of the people find the bullet holes in their car once they get home, and three others have been wounded in their legs and such...  No one has been seriously injured yet...  The news today reports up to 20 folks have been shot at....   Some have lost windows in their cars, and one lady had the window shot next to her 3 year old child....  News Story here

So we made a wide berth around that area of town when going to the fish place yesterday....   That isn't the best part of KC, Mo over there, but the highway is new and seems OK to drive thru...  But obviously not!

Retired Rod

More W8.1...?

I open up Rick's blog this morning and suddenly realize that he is updating Windows 8 yet again..... Say What?  I just downloaded W8.1 five days ago and it said it was all up to date.....   Well, not exactly...

Seems that yesterday they released the new updated version of W8.1  and its almost a gig long....  I would have been mad if I had paid for the 4 gig it took to update last week...  So I called up "Control Panel" and then "Windows Updater"..

On the left hand side of that screen up towards the top is a clickable blue line that says "check for updates"....  And low and behold I had six new ones on the Dell laptop....   They were all marked important...  So I put a check in each box to get them all....

In a mere hours time, it had been thru a couple of reboots and Yea.... It booted up and had the latest tile screen....   Complete with the on and off button at the top of the Tiled Start screen that most folks dislike.....

The other thing I liked, is the return of the stripe at the top of a program app that was started in W8 mode... It has the little red X over in the corner to close the app.... You have to hover your mouse on the top of the screen and swipe downward to make it show up..    In today's computers, we have so much RAM that we really don't need to close the program before starting something else....  But, old habits are hard to break.....

If you haven't read Rick's blog about this new version please go and read it...  I won't attempt to re write what he has done a good job of explaining....

Oh, you don't have to go do this update manually, as eventually they will install it for you, if you have 8.1 running already.... But some of us have to go play around early you know....

Retired Rod

Finally............... W8.1 and a fixed tire.

I just spent the last 2 hours downloading and installing windows 8.1 on my Dell laptop.....   Now that I am here in Kansas City where I have the cable connection, I am not limited to how many gigs I download...

They advertise that W8.1 is 3.5 gig for the update from W8.0...  I only have 4 gigs for all month on my verizon account when I'm away..  Sometimes I set the account up to 6 gigs when I am in Arizona, but even that wouldn't have let me do the update..

So using this computer and its new operating system to update the blog is a beginning test...  I haven't rebooted it yet, but the system reboots several times as it sets up, so I don't anticipate any problems....

Reading Ricks blog this morning, I see that he was fixing a tire so I need to report my experience...

Last fall when we were going to Des Moines for Loyce's arrangements, the last thing I needed was a flat tire.... But that was what I had... Not completely flat but down enough to turn on the yellow low tire light....  This is on the Ford that is here in Kansas...

I aired the tire and went on with the rest of the situation...  But about two weeks later....  The darned light was back on.....    I left the car when I left for Arizona, but found the tire flat when I got back at Christmas....  I have an air compressor here, so I pumped it up again....

And, when I got here again Saturday, you guessed it, it was way low again....  Of course it had been three months, so I aired it again...  Then on Tuesday when it was below freezing, I went to lunch with the Romeos...  But not with the motorcycle.... with the car...

And as I was coming home the yellow light came on ..............again............

That was it, enough of this...   I went straight to my tire shop..    Should have done that months ago...  Where they immediately found a nail right in the middle of the tread...

They disassembled it and patched the hole inside...  Amazing, for only a few bucks and more importantly   it didn't take more than about an hour waiting...

That is the most difficult thing about this new situation...  We went together and dropped off problems and left with the second car...  Now I have to wait while things are fixed...  That's a big change...

So the rest of the week here turned off rainy and then today cold....    I went out for the tax software to put on this computer today and even in the afternoon it was only 43 f...   It wasn't that cold in Arizona except in the middle of the night in January...   I have my coat on here inside the house and the heat is running...

For only about 2 cents, I would go back to the desert.....

Retired Rod