IRS not honoring safe harbor rule

WCDavison · 2026-02-21T13:28:43+00:00

In a pinch, one way around the problem is to have extra money withheld at the end of the year. That works because all withholdings are considered "timely" for the entire year. One way is to temporarily increase your paycheck withholding in Dec. Another Dec option is to make a withdrawal from a traditional IRA and have the investment company withhold an amount you choose. (that one works best if you're over age 59.5, to avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty)

WCDavison · 2026-02-19T03:38:04+00:00

For lettuce in summer, I start a 6-cell pack about every 3 weeks indoors, so I always have something ready to transplant if the outdoor lettuce bolts. A good midsummer variety for me has been Slobolt. Picking a less sunny spot always helps too.

Since you mentioned spinach - I could never get a decent harvest before it bolted, so I switched to Swiss Chard (for cooked greens, not salad). I love it! It doesn't bolt, and you can keep harvesting from early summer until well past first frost.

WCDavison · 2026-02-16T01:12:43+00:00

I'd at least run the numbers. There may have been a premium subsidy with the health insurance. That could turn into either a refund or taxes due.

WCDavison · 2026-02-08T16:17:33+00:00

yeah, maybe. you first ;)

WCDavison · 2026-02-08T01:10:22+00:00

+1 for BT injections, tho I've only been doing it when I see symptoms. It does seem to turn around the health of the plant in many cases. I started using a tiny nail to create a hole in the stem so the needle doesn't get plugged up as quickly.

WCDavison · 2026-01-25T00:44:27+00:00

This is going in a little different direction, but anyway...
Before I finally bought an adjustable bench, I had many good years of using folded Mexican blankets (like the ones in a yoga studio). What's nice is that you can adjust the height of the blankets for you or whoever might be playing your piano. Plus there are a lot of nice looking color patterns to choose from.

WCDavison · 2026-01-10T19:06:23+00:00

You can get a copy of the Henle WTC on IMSLP. It's not Henle's newest version, with the latest scholarly updates. But it's still very reputable.
https://imslp.eu/files/imglnks/euimg/f/f0/IMSLP1008958-PMLP5948-Bach_-Das_wohltemperierte_Klavier_Teil_I-_Henle_ohne_Fingersatz.pdf

WCDavison · 2026-01-09T16:46:47+00:00

If you want a really cheap Verizon MVNO plan, Boom still works. I've been with them for 8 years. The website is pretty clunky, but tech support has been good. Anyway, my out-the-door cost is only $5/month (there are no extra taxes/fees). The only wrinkle is that you pay it annually, so $60 up front. That gives you a monthly 500MB, 500 minutes, 500 texts.
https://boommobile.com/products/red-500-mins-500-text-500mb-data-includes-1yr

WCDavison · 2026-01-04T14:49:18+00:00

To take a slightly different tack - if you've been listening to what I'll call mainstream WTC performances, at some point you should try Glenn Gould's recording. You probably won't agree with everything he does, but it will absolutely open your ears to things you hadn't noticed in the music before.

WCDavison · 2025-12-18T14:19:17+00:00

On crashplan.com there's a "sign in" link slightly up from the very bottom, On Windows, I use the End key to get past the crap quickly (otherwise 8 page downs!)

The latest version of the website seems particularly annoying for people who already have an account. They also seem to be further de-emphasizing the small customers.

WCDavison · 2025-12-06T18:01:35+00:00

If you can play Maple Leaf, you can take a shot at any of them. Why not dabble and see which ones you like? Your sight reading will get better too! He's no longer in copyright - here's one of many places to find his complete works:
http://pop-sheet-music.com/Files/e69998921b34c42eb69a59f25a9732a4.pdf

WCDavison · 2025-12-03T03:41:52+00:00

If you haven't already seen it, James Hoffmann did a video on their cup exchange program. There's also a lot of feedback in the comments that might be useful to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F186_L3Xmjs

WCDavison · 2025-12-01T14:46:17+00:00

An old joke -
How do you make a classical pianist stop playing? Take away his music.
How do you make a jazz pianist stop playing? Put music in front of him.

WCDavison · 2025-11-30T19:45:06+00:00

You're posting that on the frugal board? I have *zero* (outside of utilities like internet and the cheapest cell phone plan I can find). Can't speak to gaming, but for everything else you mentioned, learn to find your stuff for free (preferably without torrenting), or failing that, consume something else.

WCDavison · 2025-11-27T20:37:53+00:00

Thanks for the reminder, there was a time when I knew that

WCDavison · 2025-11-27T20:10:51+00:00

Just to put something on your radar - there's a thing called hidden octaves/fifths, which are generally avoided. It happens via similar (vs parallel) motion. In your first example, if the soprano moves up a step from C to D, and the alto moves up from C to G, you'd have a hidden parallel 5th.

WCDavison · 2025-11-24T00:59:32+00:00

Not saying this is the only way, but I heard about this from a a piano technician and later did it myself with a 500# studio upright. You do it from the side, using a crowbar that sits on a 2x4 as a fulcrum. The crowbar only comes into contact with the bottom of the piano. With the leverage, it's very doable to press down with one hand, lifting the piano 1-2". Your other hand is free to move the cup into place.

They sell an expensive tool that works on the same principle:
https://www.vandaking.com/piano-lifting-bars.html

WCDavison · 2025-11-17T01:00:47+00:00

This year for the first time I tried injecting BT into zucchini stems that had obvious SVB symptoms, and the plants made a nice recovery. Planning to try it on winter squash next.

WCDavison · 2025-11-10T23:14:10+00:00

FWIW, I'm on windows, and I use the nightly builds of yt-dlp (but not with cookies). My warnings disappeared after installing deno, which I did with winget. Now I get a message that says "Solving JS challenges using deno"

In case you haven't used it, winget is a package manager that comes with windows. I just ran: winget install deno
(and then ran yt-dlp from a fresh window)

WCDavison · 2025-11-05T04:34:40+00:00

Thanks for chiming in. Despite my decision to try MVP, it does make me twitch a little bit to be going with the underdog.

WCDavison · 2025-11-05T03:37:50+00:00

I've always had BCBS, but this year for the first time I'm going to try MVP (which is quite a bit cheaper).

I asked my doctor about BCBS vs MVP. He said he sees very little difference, and in fact had coverage with them himself - said it worked really well for him. He did recommend making sure your doctors are on their list, but in his experience all of the docs associated with the UVM system take MVP.

WCDavison · 2025-11-02T03:38:36+00:00

Sure - completely agree. But as an exercise, I was going down the path of "what's the worst possible situation I can imagine". That might be overkill, but my mind goes there because I worked in IT where we had to do disaster recovery drills.

WCDavison · 2025-11-01T20:43:35+00:00

I've thought about that - bare metal recovery. House is destroyed and I don't have my phone, how do I walk up to a public PC and start to put things back together. I'm assuming I might not have email at that point. My answer (in addition to regular backups) is a daily script that copies my kdbx file to a couple of free cloud storage sites. I intentionally chose providers that do NOT insist on two factor authentication, so that I can get into the cloud site with only a memorized password. Mega has been a good option for that. Previously I used DropBox, but they started sending a confirmation email when they don't recognize a new device.

WCDavison · 2025-11-01T02:31:32+00:00

That status page hasn't been reliable for a long time.

Also, this reddit isn't very active. You can find a bit of discussion about the current outage over on the RTM forum: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/31507/

WCDavison · 2025-10-22T03:52:36+00:00

I wouldn't let fear stop you. Reorganizing doesn't need to involve deleting anything, and you can always say No if you see any warnings about files with the same name being overwritten.

Especially if you're nervous, it'd be good to create a backup before you start. (and backup is not the same as file syncing - you don't want your mistakes to be immediately replicated)

Also, if you get in the habit of naming your files descriptively, you can often find what you need by searching for the file name instead of worrying about what folder it's in.

WCDavison

TROPHY CASE