It was just a year ago that I wrote my initial rant about the price of gas. May 10, 2007 to be exact.

At the time, it was $3.19 per gallon in my neck of the woods.

Media reports preached that breaking the $3 mark would change the driving habits of Americans.

I didn’t see any difference.

So, today, we officially hit the $4 mark in Connecticut.

I’m not complaining though.

When they’re not covering the typhoon in Myanmar or the earthquake in China, the news reports have been exactly the same as they were a year ago with catchy titles like “Pain at the Pump”.

It wouldn’t be shocked if they’re just recycling old archived stories — they could, few would notice.

Sure, the price has risen 81 cents for me in 12 months, but as with May of 2007, I still feel the same way:

…even with the price rising, it’s not affecting my budget at all. It’d have to raise at least another $2/gallon before I’d even have to reconsider my driving habits…

I went back and did a little research on my gasoline expenditures over the years. So far, in 2008, from January 1 thru May 15, I’ve spent $483.14 on gas. That works out to $24.87 per week. Not a budget breaker.

               Gasoline Expenditures 

          Year     Total        Per/Week
          2008    $483.14        $24.87
          2007    $402.11        $20.85
          2006    $403.29        $20.91
          2005    $463.27        $24.02

So, you can see, the upswing in the price of gas isn’t as significant as they make it out to be on the news — at least for those of us who don’t drive for a living.

A four dollar per week increase shouldn’t cripple your finances — I wish these folks they interview on the news could see the actual difference. For those smokers out there, that’s far less than a package of cigarettes. Think about that for a second…

I understand that the price of gas causes the price of food to go up as well (along with countless other consumables), but really, we’re talking very small amounts in the grand scheme of things.

So, again, I’m still not anywhere near the point that I’m about to change my driving habits. In fact, we’re planning a cross country driving vacation right now.

And I’m not even sure I still agree with my guesstimate of $5.19 per gallon being my limit. Hey, if the daily doomsday predictions in the media are correct and on target, we’ll see that price by Labor Day.

I’m not happy about it, but I’m also not about to cry poverty over it either.

A guilty pleasure of mine is the television program Survivor.

This season I think I may have missed one episode — and it only snuck by me because of some wacky scheduling on CBS because of March Madness College Basketball.

Last night was the finale where they crowned the winner — Parvati outlasted Amanda to take the $1 million prize.

For those that aren’t familiar with the show, when the game gets down to the final two contestants, their peers (and former rival contestants) are permitted to directly ask them a question (or in some cases, just vent).

Based on the contestant’s answers, these eliminated players get to determine who wins the game. Usually it’s just a fluff/spite fest full of uncomfortable moments. If anything, the final episode of each season is usually the worst (not to mention the least climactic). It’s just not great television.

But on last night’s episode, one of the contestants, Eliza, really ripped into both of them by saying things that I think a lot of people feel, but rarely express.

For the record, Eliza was never a popular player (this was her second run on the show). She’s one of those people whose face can be read in an instant — she doesn’t seem to have the ability to be subtle, it’s all out there all the time. Not exactly a great character trait.

So when she gets her chance to speak to the remaining two players, she vocalizes her feelings. She calls Parvati a “mean person”. A person who very openly insulted her, put her down, talked behind her back, and was, in essence, downright rude for really no reason.

Essentially, this was the unpopular girl telling the popular girl, “You know what? You might think you’re so awesome, but you’re a real jerk. You hurt me, and I want you to know it.”

I know people like that. There was a guy in middle school, Rick, who would just walk right up to me and say out loud, “Why don’t you have any friends?” It was bizarre. I didn’t have a real answer, other than a befuddled, “What?” But he kept doing it. Day after day.

I was embarrassed.

Why was I his target? I mean, how do you answer that? I had friends. Did I have to justify it to him? Why should I have to justify anything to this prick?

At the time, I just couldn’t figure it out… He sat at a lunch table of sports losers. You know, the guys that could recite the 1927 NY Yankees batting order or tell you how much Charles Barkley weighed on any given day. Real important stuff.

At the same time, these were also the guys who always wore sweatpants in gym class and never actually participated in any of the “sports” we were forced to play. To them, talking about sports was what mattered, not actually participating in them.

They threw like girls. The kicked with their toes. They couldn’t sink a foul shot.

In the grand hierarchy of social order in our school, I was easily 200 seats ahead of this guy. What was his problem?

Plain and simple, he was a prime example of a mean person. He carried it into high school even — at which point we were segregated and herded like cattle based on our academic, athletic, and artistic talents so thankfully we never really crossed paths again.

Back to Survivor — for the second remaining contestant, Amanda, Eliza calls her really disingenuous. You know, the type that smiles at you, moves in for a hug, and says something like “Oh, it’s so great to see you!” with a slightly ‘off’ tone of voice.

There’s being polite, and then there’s going over the top, and that’s called insincere. Amanda was the type that would turn on the tears to get a reaction. She’d bat her eyelashes and frown. On a genuine person, both would be very meaningful expressions, but on her, it was so openly fabricated. And Eliza called her on it.

Relating, again, to my own experiences, I can’t stand when kids say “thank you” like robots. You know what, if you don’t mean it, don’t bother saying it. I’ll be a lot less offended — and I don’t think I’m alone.

Even better, most cashiers these days… I know that they have a “script” to stick to, but please, don’t bother saying “Have a nice day” if you’re going to say it like you really couldn’t give a crap how the remainder of my day goes. Just don’t bother.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I find it more polite to say nothing rather than saying something I don’t actually feel. A slight smile will do. No, not a smirk. A smile. Thanks. Oh yeah, no eye rolling either…

In the end, it was Eliza’s vote that determined the winner of this season. I’m sure the show was edited heavily to make it look like Eliza debated longer and harder than she actually did on whom to award with the million dollar prize — the mean girl or the phony girl — but in the end, she chose Parvati (the mean one) to be the winner.

In the same situation, I think I would have done the same. Rick, from my middle school days, certainly wasn’t fake. He was just a mean-spirited loser. Sad that someone like that could be rewarded for it. Society… ugh.

That’s the part that sucks about many of these reality elimination shows… When you get right down to the end, you’re left with two people who don’t really deserve it. Erik and Cirie should have been the final two, at least I like to think so, but between them, there wasn’t enough meanness or fakeness to get it done… Hey, even Eliza would have been more deserving…

The plumber came out yesterday morning and did his thing to fix our basement sewage problem.

When I arrived home, after the bank incident, I took a trip down to the scary basement to see the fine workmanship.

Eh, it looks alright.

He tucked the new pipe real high and tight among the floor joists, which was nice, and he connected to the main sewer line in a convenient spot — all he had to do was unscrew a cap on the cast iron pipe to make the connection so I don’t think they’ll be raising the estimate any either.

Speaking of the estimate, I think they should actually lower it.

See, what is blatantly apparent to me is that they went out of their way to unnecessarily remove as much copper piping as possible — all the way up to the kitchen sink trap. They then replaced it all with plastic.

Hmmm, think that has something to do with the fact that scrap copper commands over $3.50 per pound these days?

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, we’ll be out of town this weekend for a wedding, so the sludge clean up will have to be put off for another week.

Hopefully, by then, the standing water will have evaporated and clean-up will be less of a project…

Can I just say that I hate contractors?

Seriously, is there a reputable contractor in existence? It’s really frustrating.

Over the past couple of years, we’ve done some pretty major renovations to our home. Back in December of 2005, we had our roof done. The original roof had two layers of the asphalt shingles and these were on top of a layer of cedar shingles which were likely original to our 100+ year old house.

Basically, it was a pretty big job simply because of all of the stuff that had to be removed and all of the additional material, like plywood, that had to be added before the re-roof even started. Total bill was around $14k.

It started off great, a HUGE dumpster was delivered and dropped right in our yard and work began. After a few days though, it was as though the dumpster was an afterthought. They were just letting the debris slide off the end of the roof. I can understand that — it would be a lot easier, but they dumped probably half of the roof onto decorative shrubs right in the front of our house?!

It got worse though. I didn’t mind that the debris had ripped probably 80% of the screens in our windows, whatever, but one evening I came home and found the window on our detached garage (which was not being worked on) was broken.

I went in, and noticed some finger dust marks (the car was in storage for the winter and it gets pretty dusty) over a deep scratch on the hood of my BMW?! No broken glass anywhere on the floor. Very odd. My wife and I went all CSI and came to the conclusion that they somehow managed to throw a brick from the chimney on the roof, through the window of my garage.

From there, they went into the garage, probably crapped their pants when they saw the car it hit, and they tried to clean up the evidence. I wanted to barf. Profanity was used.

I was upset about the car. I was upset they went into my garage. I was upset that they tried to cover it up. I was upset that they killed my bushes. While the did a nice job on the roof, in the grand scheme, I wasn’t at all happy with the contractors.

Making matters worse, the dumpster remained in our yard for an additional 3 weeks — on Christmas Day, yes, we had a 40 cubic yard dumpster along side our house. It was very festive. Adding insult to injury, the construction company was stopping by a couple of times a day, driving right up on our lawn, and dumping more into it.

Sure, the neighbors probably thought we were also having our kitchen remodeled, based on the additional debris from other projects piled high above the walls of the dumpster, but in actuality, we were just the contractor’s personal landfill.

The next project was the siding project that I detailed on the site last summer. The contractor we selected had a seedy sales team, you know, were the one guy just goes on and on and on about how beautiful your wife is (while it’s obvious he’s just a dirty pig), and how she’ll love this color siding (I hope so, she picked it…), and how he was a star baseball player for the Red Sox back in the day. I looked him up. He wasn’t. Besides, I hate baseball. Nice try there, bro.

Anyway, the cost of that project was over $26k. It was supposed to take 2 weeks to complete and work began on June 14 — two weeks earlier than it was supposed to.

Things looked good — everyone was happy. And then it took a turn for the worse. They ordered the wrong window for our attic. They put another window in the wrong place. They lost an employee so they couldn’t do any work. They put the wrong header on the front window of our house. They started begging us for more money?!?!

Then the siding on one section of the house wasn’t level — and it was obvious. They put the handles on incorrectly on our front door — and the locks didn’t really work. They even chipped a piece off of the trim on the new front door. They called it a thousand dollar door — though at Home Depot, they run around $300. Either way, they didn’t hang our door correctly.

At that point I just wanted them out of our house, I didn’t care. I’d go out and buy another $1000 door just to make them go away.

In the end, the project was finally completed in October. Hardly a 2-week project. It was a 5 months of hell. Just thinking about it makes me angry.

Making matters worse, have you ever found it funny how all contractors like to take pride in how they clean up after themselves? This specific contractor still highlights that “feature” it in their ads in the weekly paper. Hmmmm… my yard still has 100’s of cigarette butts that I’m still picking up, not to mention thousands and thousands of nails that my lawnmower will surely choke on this year.

Roofing shingle fragments are everywhere, vinyl slivers, styrofoam insulation pebbles, just crap everywhere. And did I mention all of the indentations in the lawn from all of their driving around they did in our yard? No, I probably didn’t. They ruined our yard. Then littered all over it.

So what makes me bring all of this up today? Well, remember that basement plumbing problem I mentioned last week? The one where the plumbing company was coming out to give us an estimate on Tuesday?

Well, they came out and said that they call us with the estimate tomorrow. That “tomorrow” was 3 days ago now.

They haven’t called. And our house still smells like sewage.

Can you understand why I hate contractors now (or again)?

You’d think that after spending in excess of $40k on renovations that your house would be better off for it — but in reality, I’m not certain that it is…

Over the weekend, I came across an AP report regarding the blue prints for the NYC Freedom Tower that they’re going to build in place of the World Trade Center:

Report: NYC Freedom Tower plans found in trash

By Associated Press

NEW YORK - A homeless man has come forward with two sets of confidential ground zero blueprints that he says were dumped in a Lower Manhattan trash can.

The man brought the Freedom Tower plans to the New York Post, which says the 150-page schematic is marked: “Secure Document — Confidential.”

The documents are dated October 5, 2007. They contain plans for each floor, the thickness of the concrete-core wall, and the location of air ducts, elevators, electrical systems and support columns.

The agency that owns the World Trade Center site, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, calls it a serious security lapse.

Spokeswoman Candace McAdams says mishandling the blueprints would be “cause for serious disciplinary action.”

Now, other than for the company who designed the blue prints (it is their product, after all), what is the big deal?

My inadequate engineering skills can tell you where the support columns are for the building I work in. The elevator shaft is, well, just walk into the lobby, you’ll see it. Push up a ceiling tile and guess what? You can see all of the duct work and much of the electrical wiring too!

Do these specific Freedom Tower blueprints expose a weakness, you know, like a ray-shielded thermal exhaust port along a heavily fortified trench that could lead to the destruction of the entire building?

I guess my point is that not every one is a terrorist — it’s just paranoia run amuck. And this is hardly the security lapse they’re making it out to be.

This is like when that women offered the recipe for Coca-Cola to Pepsi. Actually, that story was more of security breach — these blueprints weren’t even stolen…

Look, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine how a building is constructed — what, are the going to drape the entire project, right downtown, in thick black canvas and a sign that reads, “For National Security’s Sake, Please don’t Peak Behind the Curtain?”

Will they go so far as to do background checks on every single contractor working on the project and give them security clearance to work on the project?

They obviously didn’t go that far building the new Yankee Stadium, another high profile site, and that one could arguably be considered an equally “guarded” NYC construction project.

Reading an article on CBNC today, I came across a bothersome quote from an analyst in reference to the rising number of people “walking away” from their mortgages:

“I don’t know where the tipping point is,” Wachovia chief risk officer Don Truslow told analysts on a conference call. “But somewhere when a borrower crosses the 100 percent loan to value, somewhere north of that…their propensity to just default and stop paying their mortgage rises dramatically and really accelerates up. It’s almost regardless of how they scored, say, on FICO or other kinds of credit characteristics.”

Yikes?!

So let me get this straight…

If the value of my house drops below what I paid for it, I should just consider walking away cause it isn’t worth what I’m paying for anymore?

That *is* what it says, right?

That really says something about American society these days, huh?

Yep, I have good credit, so you let me borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars and I signed a contract saying that I’d pay you back. Thought I was getting a deal, but then it didn’t turn out to be such a great deal, so I’m going to ignore the contract and screw you over…

I can’t fathom doing this. I just can’t.

How many of us have continued making payments on a car that was worth less than we owed? I’m pretty sure most all of us have — but we still made the payments, because that’s what we’d made a commitment at the time of purchase to do.

Pay back your debts! It’s the right thing to do.

I guess the right and honorable thing to do isn’t important anymore.

Where did this sense of entitlement come from?

Personally, I hope these folks walking away in situations like this never recover. Ever.

They don’t deserve it.

Since it was first announced that we’d all be receiving an Economic Stimulus Payment in the mail back in January, I’d been hearing varying numbers. For us, at first, it sounded like we’d automatically receive $1200…

I was pretty excited about that news.

Then the media made it out like it would be only $600 or perhaps even nothing, because of our income. More recently, I read elsewhere that it would be $1000 based on our situation. There didn’t seem to be a real concrete number — a hazy gray area.

Don’t get me wrong, even on the lower end, $600 for nothing is pretty nice. $1200, though, is a totally different game.

Our plan is (was?) to use the $600 to buy my wife a new computer. She’s never had a new computer — always one of my hand-me-downs, overloaded and customized with all of my personal crap.

We’re going to get her a new one and she can set it up as she likes. It can even come with a pink keyboard and fuzzy mouse if she likes — this one won’t be mine.

So this morning, I ventured on to the IRS’s website to see if they’d posted any new information on the stimulus checks…

I’d visited before, but all they had was a bunch of hard to understand legalese. Even their “rebate calculator” was a hassle (and for the first few weeks, it would error out).

Now though, it appears they’ve got some pretty solid info with easy to understand examples:

Examples of ways the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 may affect taxpayers who are married, file a joint return and are either childless or do not have children who qualify for child tax credit payment:

1) Married couple with no children, wages of $4,000, no federal income tax liability.
Rebate is $600

2) Married couple with no children, no wages, veterans’ payments of $2,000, social security benefits of $2,000, no federal income tax liability.
Rebate is $600

3) Married couple with no children, no wages, no social security benefits, veterans’ payments of $4,000, no federal income tax liability.
Rebate is $600

4) Married couple with no children, no wages, no social security benefits, no veterans’ payments, AGI is $20,000, federal income tax liability is $250.
Rebate is $600

5) Married couple with no children, AGI is $25,000, federal income tax liability is $750.
Rebate is $750

6) Married couple with no children, AGI is $60,000, federal income tax liability exceeds $1,200.
Rebate is $1,200

7) Married couple with no children, AGI is $160,000, federal income tax liability exceeds $1,200.
Rebate is $1,200
Phaseout reduction is ($500)
TOTAL is $700

If I’m reading it right and I’m sure I am because, for once, they give real life examples in plain English, we’re going to receive the originally advertised $1200 sometime during the first week of May. That is uplifting news.

Even with payout to be double what we’d expected and planned on, I think the plan is still to buy a new computer — maybe with a few more bells and whistles than originally thought.

And I’ll probably blow around $200 on myself for something short-sighted and stupid (hey, I want something shiny and new too!) with the remainder likely going into savings.

Or perhaps we should save it to pay our property taxes in July?

Nah…

When it comes to taxes, Connecticut is by far the worst state to live in.

I know, I know, everyone knows it’s expensive to live in New England, but Connecticut takes it up a notch from Massachusetts and Vermont.

Did you know that if you live in Connecticut, you have to pay local property taxes on your automobiles?

 It’s called a personal property tax. Roughly half of the country has a similar tax.

Making matters worse, in Connecticut, is that the tax on identical vehicles can swing wildly from town to town, based on the communities’ relative wealth. It’s not a state tax, it’s a local tax.

So my BMW may leave me with a yearly tax bill of $350 right now, but if I moved one town over, it would only be $100. One town in the other direction, my bill could be $500.

In the past I’ve seen figures for a generic car, like a Ford Taurus, where one owner will have to pay around $75 while another will have to pay in excess of $200. For the *exact* same car. Hardly a fair tax.

This is the main reason you see so many illegal Florida license plates up here. Tax fraud is rampant. And it’s not enforced, much to my dismay.

With three cars in our household, each July, the city comes looking for between $850 and $1000 dollars from us. Hardly chump change.

Now word comes in that our regular property taxes will be going up this year:

The Board of Finance is briefed on the city’s fiscal situation Monday in City Hall.

Most homeowners will see a property tax hike of at least $150 this year if the proposed budget eyed by the city’s Board of Finance is approved.

The $171.5 million spending plan that fiscal overseers appear poised to endorse this month would drive the mill rate up by 6 percent, officials said.

The City Comptroller said spending requests were up more than 8 percent to $177.3 million. But revenues, he said, are flat.

His department recommended cuts totaling $5.8 million that bring the increase to a more manageable 5 percent level.

But revaluation makes the pain greater.

Because almost all the property in the city is worth more than it was in 2002, up an average of 42 percent, the mill rate could drop from today’s 34.71 to 24.95 to bring in the same amount of money to city coffers.

The budget, though, requires a mill rate of 26.45 to bring in the necessary revenue to cover anticipated costs.

The Comptroller said that means most homeowners will pay more than $150 extra this year and some will pay much more than that, if their homes rose in value by significantly more than 42 percent.

Condominium owners are going to take some of the largest hits because their assessments generally rose much faster than single-family homes.

The finance board plans to adopt a budget April 22. A joint session of the City Council and finance commissioners will put the final seal of approval on a new budget in mid-May.

The budget takes effect July 1, when a new municipal fiscal year begins.

Thankfully it won’t break the bank for us, but I have a feeling, based on our 2007 tax assessment that jumped well over 50% from the 2002 assessment, we’re going to get hit with a big increase.

Hopefully next year as a result of the proposed lower mill rate and the fact that our cars will have depreciated another year, the city won’t tax them as high. If we could only be so lucky.

Even so, we’re looking at between $5000 and $6000 in property taxes alone next year.

Good grief.

I just hope the city uses the piles and piles of extra money wisely instead of building a “skate park” for skater dude thugs — which is actually the plan. Ugh…

There’s no telling how the market will react to the Fed’s rate decision and accompanying economic statement.

Anything less than a full-point cut could trigger frenetic selling, while anything more could rekindle the feeling that the credit markets and economy are in worse shape than Wall Street thought.

What?

It’s nonsense like this that makes me wish the Fed would just let things fall as they should and stop trying to meddle with it.

Not enough of a cut will trigger “frenetic selling” and too much would be even worse???

How about no cut at all? Fake everyone out.

Sigh…

The quote above is from an article this earlier today by Madlen Read.

But it’s still a pig.

Or a recession.

Slowing economy.

Credit crisis.

Call it what you want, but let’s just put the lipstick down.

I’m sick of all of action the Fed and the government have been taking over the past few months to try and feed the ecomomy.

Save people’s houses.

Bail out the banks…

Even the tax rebate stimulus plan is bunk.

C’mon, you can’t really think it’s possible to cover this with make-up?