Monday, April 04, 2011

I'm in Disney World!


Gotta love Spring Break. Get to visit the in-laws, whose internet connectivity consists of a AOL LAN connection! Mother-in-law says she doesn't use it much, but I imagine she might if it didn't take so long to load pages.

I love seeing all the cows on the side of the highways here, part of a tax scam where you get a different assessment if your land is 'agricultural', about 1/100 the otherwise rate (it's called greenbelting, preserving the agriculture). Thus, a dozen random cows in property ready for redevelopment, rented for the minimum time needed for the zoning.

Strangely, I note that everywhere I go there's the option for 'debit' when you ring a transaction that does not work on my debit/credit card so you have to push 'credit'. But then, why the choice? This little bug has been persistent in my Minnesota Home Depot for 10 years, and seems a nationwide issue.

Anyway, vacation reminds me that the happiness available to any man is available to everyman, as really all one needs are G-forces and water, and those are pretty accessible anywhere. But...the princesses here are a surreal treat for my 3-yr old Isabel, whose conception of reality has now been pushed back a couple years. experience.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

As a student of the law, I would prefer to call it tax "efficiency". The only way the flaws in the legal system are improved is by exploiting the boundaries of it's functions. If a rented cow suffices, this is no problem of mine :-)

E Hines said...

I wonder whether the debit/credit item might be due to the difference in fees charged. I get the Debit/Credit choice all the time, only to see an immediate "charge" to my credit card (I have to sign a credit charge receipt). However, the charge ultimately winds up against my checking account, where it should be as a debit charge.

The credit card companies typically charge the merchant a smaller fee than do the bank debit card issuers, so the merchant works the system to be charged a credit card fee, and since I said to make it a debit charge, the charge itself winds up on my checking account without my seeing anything on my credit card account.

Eric Hines