I got my new camera two days ago. It is a late birthday present. I finally gave in and admitted that my camcorder was not good enough for the job of taking horse pictures. The biggest problem I faced was low light auto focus. I had far too many fuzzy shots of horses in low light. I also could use more pixels so I bought a Sony DSC-F717. Here is an example of my test shots. Our model is Sassy, our house cat. I had to do a little Photopaint magic to fix the flash reflection in her eyes. Otherwise, what you see is what you get.

One of our student leaders was out of town at Ichthus. My curiousity got the better of me and I looked it up on the internet. It is a Christian Music festival in the Kentucky countryside. One of the student pastors told me it was Christian music's version of Woodstock. I guess he has different memories of Woodstock than me. Woodstock was a lot of things but I have a real tough time seeing it as a model for a Christian music festival.

I am still working on medical issues. The surgeon wants to be paid before he does any work. I asked for an itemized bill so I can do some financial planning and they said they would send me a letter.  I found out that there are a variety of patient's bill of rights out on the web. Ohio does have a statute that requires hospitals to provide an estimate of customary charges. I asked the hospital for an itemized list and they said they would comply. This is slightly better than when my son was born. My biggest concern is that they are charging me the highest rates. I have no way of confirming my suspicion.

I finally got around to paying my wife's medical bills. She had a fuzzy thing on her mammogram. Boy, was I surprised! For a ten minute office visit she got charged $254. By my math that means the doctor is grossing about $1500 per hour. I wrote checks that totaled $1600 and we really haven't done anything.  We paid $600 for a test but the rest is office visits. My wife told me they wanted to do a second test but she told them no. It's kind of funny in a morbid way. I am beginning to look at mammograms as part of a health scam. I know I should try and look at from the health professional's viewpoint, “Better safe than sorry”. At this cost I cannot help myself. I see doctors as greedy and I now I question their motives for everything they do. I do not think they care. I think they are just part of a much larger process that went wrong several decades ago and has not gotten any better. I was shocked with the health care process when my son was born twelve years ago and from my recent exposure to the modern version of health care management I know it has not gotten any better. I can see where many people without health insurance are avoiding routine diagnostic care because it is too expensive.

Unknown. “He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.” [Quotes of the Day]

Donald R. Gannon. “Where facts are few, experts are many.” [Quotes of the Day]

I installed the QuickBooks Lightning Beta tonight. Everything went smooth. Thank goodness!

It was a nice day to be outside. I finally got some more composted manure spread in our summer paddocks. This compost provides a little fertilizer and a lot of organic material. If I can get four more loads of compost spread tommorrow and it rains as forecast on Sunday, we can move horses out there the following week. Then I can start to work on re-seeding and fertilizing the winter paddocks.

I'm back! I tried to get everything done early but Murphy won. I am getting a little annoyed with Taxcut for Business. I file several 1065 partnership returns for the LLCs and they are pretty simple. The program had a problem calculating the contributed capital and was flagging errors on the M2. I had to overide to get the numbers correct. Taxcut for Individuals bit me when I tried to file my mother-in-laws return. The return passed the local error check but got rejected with an error 52 when it was sent to the IRS. Error 52 is one of those errors that says we don't know what the problem is but we will get back to you. I tried a couple more times and then printed off the paper return and mailed it in. That was disappointing! She is getting all of her tax payments back so they will be delayed a couple of weeks. At least its done!

This weekend was pretty cool. The weather was beautiful and the celebrations at church were great. I got some nice pictures of the foals today. The only drawback is that I have not completed the tax returns. The good news is that I should be completed tommorrow.