Mark Carroll's Journal

Having already complained about the IRS expecting expats to file taxes but often requiring them to have a US telephone number, I should note that I was lucky enough to set up my EFTPS account before allowing my US cellphone plan to lapse and I have remained able to use it since.

An interesting aspect of US taxes is how individuals have many options for how to file. Some of those choices affect and may even constrain future years. In my limited experience, this is in marked difference to the UK where, as an individual, if I must file at all then I just tell them what happened and they go away and figure it out for me and explain what they did.

As a US expat, a particular set of choices is how to handle my employment income. I can try excluding it using form 2555, I can try to get credit for the tax paid using form 1116, I can try deducting that tax on Schedule A, etc. (I itemize because I can deduct my mortgage interest.) Furthermore, I can combine these: e.g., excluding part of the income then applying another form to the pro-rated remainder. Then, I get to try out different form 1040 tax worksheets to see how it works out in each case. So far, I've not needed form 1116 but it's always worth checking. Annoyingly, a few years ago they changed the law such that I can't deduct UK council tax, though at least my reading of the US-UK tax treaty suggests that I can deduct my payroll-deducted pension contributions. (There's also a social security treaty that can be useful for self-employment tax.)

In my migrating servers from one provider to another, rather than to the first provider's new platform, it turned out that the first somehow missed that I had ended my services with them and thought that they were all continued into the new platform. Fortunately, they seem to have readily corrected their records, cancelled further invoices, etc. On learning that they had thus overbilled me, they assured me that a refund had been issued. After pressing them a couple of times on this refund's absence, it turned out that actually, there had been another mistake. I did get my refund in the end but, goodness, it helps confirm my decision to migrate.

When we were moving between the Philippines and Singapore, it was amusing that we would have to switch side for standing on an escalator. Perhaps this mirrored the difference in the side of the road on which one drives.

No such excuse within Britain, though: in London I am used to standing on the right of an escalator but, in using Glasgow's Central Station today, I stood on the left as the signs instruct. For extra dilemma, two different trains were leaving from the same platform at nearly the same time, fortunately they mark their destination on the sign at the front. This is in good Glasgow tradition, given that, as previously noted, local buses with different routes, operated by different companies, can bear the same route number and leave from the same stop.

I was taking a look at what reasonable but cheap telescopes exist these days. Some of the marketing is funny, e.g., the SkyWatcher Evostar range is probably better for objects rather nearer to us than stars. Among the first things I noticed in looking at Celestron's products was how many modern telescopes now come wireless-enabled with apps to control them. I would be less sure of finding them still usable decades later, compared with say, my father's refractor from the 1960s.

I would also be sceptical of software quality partly because, back when I worked on software used by professionals who pay many thousands of pounds for their microscopes, it was clear that the microscope hardware was often of far better quality than the software with which the manufacturers lumbered their users. Goodness knows I am not easygoing when it comes to user experience, hence my grumbling ever since smart telephones and televisions became dominant, so I am cautious when it comes to buying software-dependent products.

Some comment following the US election seems warranted. Since the results became clear, I felt some loss of hope. We have not been much following the news, and I am putting this entry mostly under cuts for those who would similarly like to skip politics for a while.

( I am unhappy with the US Republicans and UK Conservatives. )

( I am disappointed by many voters and I worry about the coming administration. )

( It is good that we settled in Scotland instead. )

The city seems to be repainting markings on roads which is great but somewhat overdue, plenty more to be done yet. It can be hard to see where the boundaries are and what the arrows are, making it difficult to know exactly where to drive and when to stop. It is also awkward to discover which lanes are now for turns or not only at the last minute, one thing some US states get right is plenty of advance warning about which lane to get into.

One kind of lane usage I am undecided on is those where there are two lanes in each direction, the inside lane being for buses and taxis except near a junction. The normal cars all occupy the outside lane, get stuck behind people turning right at junctions, so cut into the end of the bus lane, cross the junction in the inside lane, then move back over as the bus lane resumes.

I don't much get why taxis are typically afforded driving privileges, they basically do what cars do except for having a driver who doesn't want to go to the destination then parks more obstructively once they arrive, but I am all for making bus travel a priority. Still, I don't know how much buses benefit from their separate lane, as balanced against the safety issue of causing all these lane changes at many intersections.

I had to dodge a driver this morning, one of these who wants to move into a lane they can't currently see the traffic in, so crosses their fingers and noses out into it anyway. The last accident I was in, years ago back in Ohio, I was proceeding forward in my lane and the other driver tried to cross it without being able to see it was clear, at least their insurance company folded easily and it didn't affect my premiums at all.

Student pickup around our youngest's high school is absurd. The roadside already has plenty of parked cars so parents just stop their car out in the main carriageway and wait for their child. I can understand a momentary pause in the road to pick them up but blocking the traffic to wait for some minutes seems very selfish to me.

I had previously mentioned our city library system's openly shelved books being but the tip of the iceberg compared with the stacks, the science fiction sections being small indeed when judged against some branches from other Scottish library systems.

I had a further surprise in visiting our modern art gallery. Not only is there a decent library branch in its basement but many of the books borne by its small science fiction section are the same as in some other branches, including my nearest. This isn't a surprise for classics, like The Forever War, but was more of a surprise for, frankly, books that have rather less reason to be commonly shelved. For instance, the system lists a whole eighteen copies of Humans, Bow Down, which isn't exactly the kind of book to leave one thinking about it for months afterward.

To put those eighteen copies into perspective, consider examples of books that I would expect large library systems to carry. Fairly randomly: for Stephen King's The Stand we seem to have no borrowable copies at all, and for Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose there is but one (currently on loan).

Initially, I had wondered if they have a broad selection and just choose oddly and uniformly what to shelve but, the more I probe, the more it seems that what they choose to buy and hold is not in the proportions that I might have guessed.

Now we have our energy supplied by Octopus who indeed do not insist on direct debit. What I had not realized initially is that they are to fine me over five pounds per month for not using direct debit. This seems absurd to me: as things stand, typically I pay at least as much as what is outstanding, some days early, by bank transfer with the correct reference. Such payments are handled entirely automatically by other businesses, judging by that they promptly send an acknowledging e-mail. I assume that Octopus are penalizing me for the people who pay unreliably, late or with the wrong reference or by posting a cheque or whatever. I will stick with them for a while, at least, this is only their second strike of the traditional three, so still better the devil one knows, especially in the domestic energy market.