Author Archive
Monday, January 30th, 2012
Baltimore Sun continues its series focusing on Baltimore City's property tax system with a interesting side look at how the state's assessment office made mistakes undervaluing a specific property belonging to a son of a prominent real estate developer. There are several important points that jump out:
1. The state does ...
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Thursday, January 26th, 2012
Dear Senator Gladden, Delegates Rosenberg, Carter and Oakes, and the honorable chairs of the State Senate and House,
I am writing to you today as a resident of the 41st district to oppose the proposed bill titled "Budget Reconciliation and Financing Act of 2012". Specifically, there are three things in this ...
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Sunday, January 15th, 2012
As an owner of a small business it is always surprising to me to find out when speaking with other small business owners about how unaware they are of some of the free and cheap tools available out there to make their business better. In this post, I will list (in no ...
Posted in Personal Finance, Technology | No Comments »
Sunday, January 15th, 2012
Many have heard of the TLC show "Extreme Couponing" which shows people basically paying nothing for groceries with creative use of coupons. There is also bloggers like the CouponMom and The Krazy Coupon Lady. The problem with their approaches is that they take a lot of time, and tedious work, ...
Posted in Personal Finance | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
As a good counterpoint to my previous two negative blog posts about Baltimore City government (here and here), here is something positive. For various reasons, local elections in the city have taken place in really odd years, like 2011 when no other state or federal election was held. The result ...
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
One of the recurring questions that comes up among those that are follow city politics is how many city employees actually live in the city. Common belief holds (correctly or incorrectly) that city employees like police officers, planning officials, etc. can do their jobs better if they shared affinity with ...
Posted in Politics | No Comments »
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
One of the things that keeps coming over and over when I read about city politics in Baltimore is a false sense of entitlement by city officials, both elected and non-elected. For some reasons, they feel that they are entitled to tax breaks, perks and employment benefits that an average ...
Posted in Politics | 3 Comments »
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
IMPORTANT: The source code and all future development of this application is now moved to GitHub. Please use that page in the future:
https://github.com/shaftekbiz/android-language-settings-app
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One of the interesting aspects of the new Kindle Fire is how much Amazon had customized or simply overrode the default UI, including some of the settings pages. ...
Posted in Programming, Projects | 41 Comments »
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
Earlier today my spouse dragged me away from the comfy computer chair and screen into the somewhat frigid outdoors for a trip with the kids and a stroller to the Inner Harbor. To avoid traffic and expense of parking we decided to take public transportation, and being that all three ...
Posted in Politics, Website | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
Just some brief notes on my voting experiences with absentee ballots in Maryland.
The instructions for requesting a ballot appear on the state's Election Board website. There is a PDF form to print out and return, but interestingly you can submit the form via email or fax, and you can request the ballot ...
Posted in Politics | No Comments »