New blog

As previously announced, I’ve moved my blog to its new home at http://blog.johnmilner.com. I’m starting fresh on the Posterous platform as it look to be pretty dead simple and should make quick posts and media posts much easier. Moreover, I’m looking forward to changing my posts from more long form to short tidbits and pulling in other content I find interesting.  Rather than try to import over my prior posts from this blog. I’m going to leave this wordpress version as an archive for the time being. I won’t be updating this blog, but for as long as it makes sense I’ll keep the archives here on johnmilner.com. So go ahead and check out blog.johnmilner.com, if you subscribe to the RSS feed it’s been updated for you by feedburner. Someday, I’ll find something to put up here on JohnMilner.com

Moving this blog

You may have noticed the last of blog posts recently. Frankly, I’ve sort of gotten tired of the long form blog posts. With tiwtter, RSS, facebook, et all, so much of my time spent consuming content and communicating has shifted to these other platforms. Now, more than ever, sharing pictures, links, or quick posts is my preference. Sure, i could rework this wordpress install to be more flexible for how I’ve changed (one of the great things about word press) but in the interest of time, i feel like starting fresh. I like my existing template, but its slow sometimes, it’s gotten busy with everything on the side bar, So I’m going to go a more minimalist path, something simple, fast, and viewable on a mobile device. Moreover, the admin side of Wordpress is so feature rich it’s become cumbersome to use and I actually want to avoid it, I feel I’ll post more often without it. I’m still debating between Tumblr and Posterous as platforms, right now Posterous is wining, it’s just dead simple and they’ll move over my old post from here (I think, if i want to). Only problem is I’ll loose all the comments from Disqus

Stay tuned for an update on the move. I’m debating whether to move over the archives from this blog or not (if I’m going to move the domain over, i really should or else the history will basically be lost), but if you’re subscribed to the RSS feed that should remain the same.

The other area of my social media life I’m deciding how to handle is Flickr.com. Right now a lot of photos get posted to my account (mostly from my mobile as an alternative to twitpic.com). If i go to Posterous i can still have my mobile photos posted, or i could remove them from Flickr and leave Flickr for more refined pictures and albums.

If you have any suggestions, let me know.

“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint”

Sadly, I spend a lot of time making PowerPoint slides, and I fully agree with the theme of this article. Sadly, I spend a lot of time making PowerPoint slides, and I fully agree with the theme of this article. We have become too dependent upon PowerPoint, and it’s over used and almost always inappropriately used.

Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War – PowerPoint – NYTimes.com.

Tax day

Today is April 15th, which is tax day here in the US. I’m not going to start a discussion over what is a fair amount of tax, we all need to pay our share for the services we use everyday. However, income tax compliance is extremely costly and time-consuming.  First, I am not a tax professional. I do spend a bit of time working with corporate taxes in my profession and generally consider myself somewhat intelligent with some financial and accounting matters.

That said, I belive our system needs a serious compliance overhaul. I just wrapped up and filled my taxes earlier today. I have a fairly simple tax return. It’s probably more complicated than the average americans but no where near a “complex” return. In fact, my returns have gotten easier since I no longer work for myself. however, this year, even with the aid of tax filling software, I still spent hundreds of dollars on tax prep and in aggregate approximately 12 hours of my time preparing my return. It’s absolutely ridiculous for my fairly simple situation. To make matters worse, the rules for things like capital gains and losses are so complex I’m not even sure if everything is correct (I hope it is).

There are very few things I hear in everyday conversation that gets so many Americans as worked up as the complexities of our tax compliance system. It’s time our country simplified the income tax compliance burden. Income tax prep is such a burden Mark Perry estimated the cost of income tax compliance to equal the “state of Utah’s entire annual output“.

Radio silence

Sorry for the lack of recent posts, the recent pick up in M&A activity has kept me very busy lately. One hopes it’s a sign of building economic recovery. I’ve got about a dozen half written posts  (including a fairly in-depth update on a few of the web services I’ve been using in my personal metadata experiment) that I’m hopping to get through at some point.

Fun with fortune cookies #3

Another good fortune cookie. If only it wealth were that easy.

Work hard and you will become more wealthy.

Hit up the tag “fortune cookies” for other fortune cookies.

The power of time off

Another great TED clip I watched the other day. The power of time off. While taking time off to recharge is something that is often thought/ talked about by employers I get a feeling most people believe it’s “the man” preaching to “look good” to their employees. I’ll admit, I’ve felt that way before. Historically, I have not thought such an amount of time off is warranted in most positions (including mine, despite how much I may  want it), however I have see how powerful it can by through my aunt, Helen Milner, who is a professor. That said, maybe Stefan has a point, as people are working longer into their lives in modern western society maybe it makes sense to consider breaking up those 40+ years of career work with a sabbatical year every so often in return for fewer retired years.

I know I’ll start thinking about planning a sabbatical year in the next decade.

Fun with fortune cookies #2

Another fun fortune cookie. I am wondering what the thrilling time is going be.

A thrilling time is in your immediate future.

Fun with fortune cookies #1

Starting a series on comical fortune cookies I receive. Here’s a good one. I still don’t even know what this one means. Any thoughts?

Confucius say: lovers in triangle not on square.

My FitBit finally arrived!

It’s been a long time of waiting (not as much as some, thankfully), but I came home this evening to find my new FitBit waiting for me! Setup was a breeze and now I’m headed out to relax after the week. But I’ll post more details later. I got the FitBit to add to my personal data tracking which I’ve been drafting a series of posts about, hopefully I’ll be able to at least introduce the series in the next few days!