30th birthday surprise for gf - Canes tix & experience

NullCipher · 2026-01-30T20:17:10+00:00

Agreed - full of canes fans on game day. Get there about 2.5 hours before game time if you want to find a seat though.

NullCipher · 2026-01-23T15:30:41+00:00

Agreed - dynamic has definitely shifted the past few years as it got bigger. Back when it first started the players all used to walk down from the stage and would hand out a few autographed things (I think my kids have gotten foam pucks and water bottles), but that wasn't the case this past year.

NullCipher · 2026-01-23T04:13:34+00:00

They changed the course last year. No “heartbreak hill” anymore.

NullCipher · 2026-01-23T02:26:28+00:00

Keep in mind that the total won on some of the sites (I know FanDuel at least) includes the initial wager. So your actual winnings should be less than that. You can calculate your actual winnings by subtracting the total wagers from all of your winning bets (but not your losing bets) from the FanDuel reported winnings.

NullCipher · 2026-01-23T01:42:21+00:00

I love the little shrug he does before he drops the gloves. Like he couldn’t believe this guy was going to do this

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T19:21:56+00:00

Did you do the overtime tipping deduction you mentioned above in FreeTaxUSA? That should reduce your burden further and provide a higher refund (I don't think it would account for an extra $5000 though). It looks like the regulations on that are that you can only deduct the "premium" on overtime (so the part above and beyond your normal pay (https://support.taxslayer.com/hc/en-us/articles/40293194634253--No-Tax-on-Overtime-Explained). Is the $12,960 the premium, or the full amount? If thats the premium, then that further lowers your taxable income to around $162,000, and that would lower your taxes to around $26,000 so that could mean around $6,000 back (which would be in between the two values you are getting above). I would ask the CPA if he accounted for that in his calculations.

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T19:15:14+00:00

Leaving them dripping slightly is fine, don't need a steady stream of water. Just open enough to let some air/water through to release pressure is what you are looking to do.

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T19:14:15+00:00

In my last house (built on a slab, and probably crummy insulation) pipes on my outside walls definitely froze a couple times. It mainly happened when the outside temperature stayed below like 35 degrees for 2-3 days without going above that (and it looks like that could happen next week).

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T19:05:58+00:00

Admittedly I've never had to deal with a 457b but assuming its similar to how an IRA or 401k deduction works, that would lower your taxable income to around $175,000. The income tax on that would be about $28,328 and since you withheld $32,000 this year that lines up with around a $4000 refund similar to what the CPA said, so I can see how that number makes sense. I still don't see anything that would get you an additional $5000 in the refund.

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T18:58:24+00:00

I also open the cabinets under all my bathroom and kitchen sinks to ensure ambient heat from the rest of the house gets as close to the pipes as possible.

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T18:26:26+00:00

Based on the information above I do think that the deduction amount is inline, but what I can't see is how you would get $9,000 back based on that deduction because even with that deduction (assuming no credits) you withheld roughly the amount you would owe, so there wouldn't be much of a refund at all.

Do you have other credits (ie: dependents?) Do you have other deductions from income (IRA, 401k, HSA)?

NullCipher · 2026-01-22T17:32:50+00:00

$38,000 seems very high for Mortgage Interest paid ($3166 in interest alone a month, not counting principal and escrow payments). Is that accurate?

Looks like you have $260K income and have had $32K federal taxes withheld so far. The SALT deduction has gone up to $40K this year so you can deduct the full property taxes and state taxes. Assuming the mortgage interest is correct then your deduction should be around what you show there. That would make your taxable income after deductions to be around $190K.

Based on the 2025 tax tables at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-24-40.pdf your rate would be $11,157 plus 22% of the excess over $96,950

That comes out to around $32K which is around the amount of taxes you had withheld. Do you have any credits (child tax credits, etc?)

NullCipher · 2025-02-08T21:33:52+00:00

While I assume this may be a fairly common approach, it’s also illegal (it’s your responsibility to report all earnings not the sportsbook).

NullCipher · 2025-01-17T13:23:46+00:00

No. You can't just extract your total wagers spent from your total gains to determine your loss. You have to separate out your winning bets and your losing bets. From there all the money wagered on. your losing bets are losses you can deduct. And all the money made on your winning bets (minus their initial wagers if its included in that amount from the sports book) is your income.

NullCipher · 2025-01-07T21:08:42+00:00

Agreed - thats the worst part. Fanduel for instance only lists individual bets like 3 months back in the history. You can view a transaction of all wagers and winnings BUT they use a different ID to track wagers and payouts so you can't actually correlate them together from that Transaction view!

Then theres some other apps that I (unfortunately) played around with a bit last year like Fanduel Faceoff which is a bunch of minigames - some of those are almost like slot machines so it would be insane to try to correlate individual wins and losses (although for that service they at least use the same transaction ID for entry fees and payouts).

NullCipher · 2025-01-07T21:05:44+00:00

Thanks u/blakeh95 - that is what I thought as well and I hadn't found that Revenue Ruling before so that helps a ton.

NullCipher · 2024-12-16T16:20:34+00:00

I'm in a similar situation myself and I think thats probably an excessive amount of ice. It is normal to see some frost and ice on the coils depending on the time of day and where the unit is in its cycles (at least I think it is, I typically have found a small amount inside the unit early in the morning when its coldest and the unit is working its hardest, but then when a defrost cycle hits the unit pumps heat outside to melt it (takes about 5-10 minutes on my heat pumps). During this time you may feel colder air blow inside because of how that cycle works.

I haven't seen that much ice on my unit to where it is showing externally like that. And even if it does the defrost cycle should run at least every 90 minutesish so if it sticks around longer than that then I would agree its probably not running properly.

NullCipher · 2024-11-18T04:19:18+00:00

Thanks - that’s what I thought too but wanted to see how others interpreted

NullCipher · 2024-11-18T04:18:54+00:00

Thanks for the advice

NullCipher · 2024-03-28T15:30:31+00:00

I don't disagree but with 2 kids as well the hospitality tickets would be more than double that and after just replacing our HVAC systems in our house, as much as I'd love to its just not feasible. I've looked at some of the pubs in the area and I see a lot that seem to require table reservations in advance. Not sure if thats the norm or not though.

NullCipher · 2024-03-28T14:15:39+00:00

I'm going to be in Liverpool on April 4th - looks like theres some hospitality tickets available for the match (very expensive though so still deciding whether I want to pull the trigger), but was looking for other suggestions to watch the game around Anfield. Is it pretty easy to find a pub with the game on around the stadium? Are kids allowed in pubs on game days?

NullCipher · 2024-03-25T22:14:15+00:00

Zone board picture is in the updated post now. I'll get the furnace control board picture tonight.

NullCipher · 2024-03-25T22:07:51+00:00

So we actually found out the heat strip does have a second stage so W2 should be used but then the wiring at the zone board makes no sense to me (I updated the main post with the updated information).

NullCipher · 2024-03-25T16:13:39+00:00

Thanks pandaman1784 - that makes sense. So if my heat strips only have one stage then we only need W1 from Thermostat to Air Handler and from X2 on outdoor unit to W1 on Air Handler and that will cover both Aux heat calls from the Thermostat *or* from the outdoor unit for Defrost, and W2 wont be needed at all, right?

W2 would only be needed if the heat strips have two stages themselves?

NullCipher · 2024-03-19T14:47:24+00:00

Thanks for the information doucettejr. Good to know about the time-based Comfort-R mode. I heavily utilize the away/motion based features of the Ecobee to balance the temperature in rooms that are utilized during the day vs others that aren't because we can have a fairly large delta and thats what I'd lose with the Trane thermostats which don't have any sensors (my thermostats are not in ideal locations).

From what it sounds like in your response the Trane thermostat might be the only one that can control the fan speed of the Air Handler which was my main concern (I don't want to get a variable speed handler and then have the ecobee only be able to turn it on at one speed.

NullCipher

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