The taxman has come yet again. I’m especially proud of myself this year: my taxes were completely finished by April 13, which certainly beat last year, when I had about two hours left. I fared quite well and, considering I didn’t work that much, will even be getting a slight refund! My state tax was especially interesting: I wasn’t sure how Oregon should treat income earned while I was working remotely from another country, so I reported it rather than rely on my own interpretation. It seemed like a situation best handled cautiously.

In other, somewhat unrelated news, I’ve purchased my ticket to Hong Kong for The Big Trip. I will be travelling through Southwest China, Tibet, and Southeast Asia on my next journey, and it all starts in Hong Kong. I found a great deal, but the site was in Chinese. I worked my way through it and was finally able to purchase the ticket. Almost everything worked flawlessly except for one little dropdown menu. It wouldn’t appear in Firefox, so I had to run IE under Wine. It was a pain; I do not like sites that require IE.