Struggling
May. 20th, 2009 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI may be posting a bit less often in the near future, for the mere reason of lack of inspiration. Nothing of interest is happening to me, nothing of much interest is going on in world economics (in the sense that things are all progressing roughly along predictable lines) and writing up poker hands is just a bit of a bore.
Geoff emailed me to inform me that he had now received four tax codes on me from HM Customs (I knew this, as I filed all four of them at the weekend) and that "the most recent is the most crap". I assume that I should be glad that they are under-taxing me AGAIN, but it's all debt being built up for eventual payment. Let's hope they get round to collecting it before I retire.
On a different continent, the IRS is overtaxing me, in the sense that Schwab has decided to ignore the W8 form that I sent them, thus leaving me subject to US withholding tax. It's only pennies, so I haven't bothered writing to them, but I really ought to get my act in gear. Need to renew my AA membership this evening as well. It's just such a pain phoning them up, because the AA person at the other end is determined to offer you everything else available via the AA (I seem to recall that last time they actually asked me when my car insurance expired...) before hanging up. So you patiently have to say "No" 5,000 times. Perhaps this evening I'll pretend that the Chinese takeaway delivery boy is at the door.
Smile is quite smiley as a bank, despite its attempts to get you to switch to services that offer you stuff you don't need at a higher cost. But for some strange reason it insists on sending me two tax invoices for my savings account, and none for my current account. It does this every year.
I've had four losing days on the trot at poker, with no loss greater than $78 (i.e., hardly registering on the Ricvhter scale of poker losses at more than 2.8). But it does get tedious. Oh, and I've been running bad those four days as well. You know, there might be eight or nine all-ins against a short-to-medium-stacker (about 50 times you get them to fold, but sometimes you don't, and you need to get lucky) where you need to hit an eight- or nine-outer to win. You expect one or two of those to come up, but I haven't smegged a thing. I then managed to lose an all-in with 77 against QQ on an unthreatening 237 board, without a Queen appearing on either the turn or river. "Standard" the experienced poker players will say, while it might be a bit of a poser for the more casual player...
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Geoff emailed me to inform me that he had now received four tax codes on me from HM Customs (I knew this, as I filed all four of them at the weekend) and that "the most recent is the most crap". I assume that I should be glad that they are under-taxing me AGAIN, but it's all debt being built up for eventual payment. Let's hope they get round to collecting it before I retire.
On a different continent, the IRS is overtaxing me, in the sense that Schwab has decided to ignore the W8 form that I sent them, thus leaving me subject to US withholding tax. It's only pennies, so I haven't bothered writing to them, but I really ought to get my act in gear. Need to renew my AA membership this evening as well. It's just such a pain phoning them up, because the AA person at the other end is determined to offer you everything else available via the AA (I seem to recall that last time they actually asked me when my car insurance expired...) before hanging up. So you patiently have to say "No" 5,000 times. Perhaps this evening I'll pretend that the Chinese takeaway delivery boy is at the door.
Smile is quite smiley as a bank, despite its attempts to get you to switch to services that offer you stuff you don't need at a higher cost. But for some strange reason it insists on sending me two tax invoices for my savings account, and none for my current account. It does this every year.
I've had four losing days on the trot at poker, with no loss greater than $78 (i.e., hardly registering on the Ricvhter scale of poker losses at more than 2.8). But it does get tedious. Oh, and I've been running bad those four days as well. You know, there might be eight or nine all-ins against a short-to-medium-stacker (about 50 times you get them to fold, but sometimes you don't, and you need to get lucky) where you need to hit an eight- or nine-outer to win. You expect one or two of those to come up, but I haven't smegged a thing. I then managed to lose an all-in with 77 against QQ on an unthreatening 237 board, without a Queen appearing on either the turn or river. "Standard" the experienced poker players will say, while it might be a bit of a poser for the more casual player...
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-20 11:28 pm (UTC)We obviously need some more economic madness to keep you posting.
Apparently a huge amount of PAYE tax codes are wrong. I mean come on, how difficult is PAYE to operate? That said, I am burying my head in the sand over my employers failure to notify HMRC about my company car. If you don't tell them, I won't...
PAYE codes
Date: 2009-05-21 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 08:05 am (UTC)Am hitting some neat Sklansky bugger-ups at the moment and was very pleased to win money yesterday despite them. Pokerstars doesn't show the all-in holecards until all of the board is out. So with AK on a board of xKxxx I was quietly confident against a late-position shove from a short-stacker. Needless to say he had AQs to give him the flush.
I got away cheaply from hands where I flopped a bottom-end straight and shortly after that a weak flush, both from the big blind where I got in for nothing. In both cases I bet 75% of the pot on the flop, got called in either two or three places, and knew that I was toast when the turn card came.
Fortunately it all came back when the button shoved his shortish stack ($60 in $200 buy-in) to my $8 "steal" from the cut-off. His Q7s amazingly failed to defeat my KK. Then another lag decided to squeeze play from the big blind at $100 BI for $37 after I had raised to 3X in MP1 and had been cold-called in two spots. I snap mini-reraised to $75 with AQo and it held up against K2s. Ship it.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-21 06:20 am (UTC)Job of Chancellor will be up for grabs in a year or so anyway so get your skates on and select err.. the party most likely to. In fact the job of Speaker would be better and didnt Mandleson get back on the gravy-train without a constituency? What odds have William Hills got on an ex-bookie taking the role?
Keith S
I read your material everyday
Date: 2009-05-21 06:35 am (UTC)My blog is much less interesting than yours, not least because much of my non-routine work is also confidential to the school.