Normally, this is the kind of thing I might post about at my freelance writing business blog, and I might do that in the future. But, today, I’m looking at my bank statement and realizing how much of a bummer it is that every quarter I have to send a big chunk of my savings away to the IRS because I am self-employed. And, since I have a “positive-only” type mindset for things I post about my freelance writing business, I’m posting a vent here.

I know that the only reason I have to pay estimated taxes is because there is no one to be withholding money from my paychecks, since I don’t get one. Still, it seems like a pretty big burden to put on a small business when both parties frequently claim to be so supportive of small businesses. I guess I’m luck since my earnings are relatively straightforward through the year. Otherwise, I can imagine the calculations must be pretty rough.

Since my income typically grows a little bit each year, I use the rule that just allows you to pay 100 percent of the amount of tax you paid last year and then divide by 4. If you can’t do that, then the tax tables don’t exactly look like fun.

Ok, back to work…

To make the no parking requirement minimally intrusive on the people who live on each street, they enforce the no parking regulations on only one side of the street at a time. Since the street sweepers hit each route monthly, the no parking is only enforced on one day each month in the form of a sign that says,

Street Sweeping

No Parking

This Side

1st Tuesday

Apr – Nov

As you can imagine, each month some poor soul who lives on the street forgets, or someone who doesn’t usually park in that neighborhood doesn’t notice the signs, and they get a parking ticket.

The really interesting thing, however, happens each April, when everyone from residents to visitors has dropped all pretense of vigilance toward the signs that are always there, but have been unenforceable for the past four months. On the first Tuesday of April I drive up the usual street on the way downtown, and down one side of the block, each and every car has a yellow parking ticket sticking out from between the frame and driver’s side door.

I imagine the city makes more parking ticket revenue the first week of April than at any other time of year as residents suddenly become aware, albeit too late, that it is street sweeping season again and the ritual of moving your car to the other side on one day each month begins.

A Story?

Each year I think that this event would make a good story somehow. I don’t know if it is the perverse beauty of row after row of yellow paper flags sticking out of each car, or the vision of drivers come out, each in their own time and noticing their ticket, and those of those parked around them. Picturing the inevitable anger and conspiracy theories that must accompany the sight of mass governmental enforcement.

Whatever it is, I never really come up with much of a story to tell and the concept fades from my mind as the pleasant sights of Spring, and the duties of my freelance writing business, overwhelm my attention, at least until next year, when it as inevitably as the end of Winter, it happens again.

The follow up goes into just what the company offers once concluding that they definitely are not charging you any money. That article is my review of Credit Karma. You can follow a link from there to my thoughts on their latest monitoring offer.

Another free credit score type of outfit is Quizzle.com. Again, I checked them out to see if there was anything going on beyond a clever Quizzle scam. Turns out that they also are not charging any money or signing anyone up for a trial offer, at least not for their main offering. They do have some add-on service that they are very up front about charging for.

Finally, I took a look at Credit Check Total. Turns out these folks aren’t quite so legit. While they also offer free credit reports and scores, they are signing people up for a free trial offer that automatically renews and charges the credit card that you signed up with to pay the $1 fee. Better make sure you cancel that offer as soon as you can, because it’s only a 7-day trial.

In all, it’s been a fun couple of months over on FinanceGourmet. Feel free to drop by and get the frequent updates that I post there. I’ll also be continuing on with my effort to make it a world-class encyclopedia of financial information.

As always, thanks for stopping by.

Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 is out and following closely on its heels is the Small Business Server 2011 Best Practices Analyzer which is a powerful tool for optimizing any SBS installation.

Next up is an informational bulletin about the new release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 SP1, which brings Microsoft’s VMM in line with the features and functionality that were improved in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Most noticably, SCVMM now supports the Dynamic Memory feature on the latest release of Windows Server.

Also recently published was this piece about System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta that was released by Microsoft recently. There is a lot of new stuff going on in SCCM 2012. You can actually see the product maturing as design decisions that once looked like good ideas have been reworked in order to avoid the issues that arise when you actually have to use a management tool in an enterprise environment on a relatively large scale.

You can check out my writer’s profile on the Train Signal Training blog for links to more of the techie articles I’ve written for Train Signal, or if you prefer, check out my freelance technology writer page on ArcticLlama.com, the home of my freelance writing business.

Have a great day writing everyone!

If you want to see a freelance writer answering questions on Quora, please feel free to drop by.

Brian Nelson, Freelance Writer and Owner of ArcticLlama, LLC