Eddie On Everything

How to use Washington, DC’s Metro Train Transit System

The DC Metro connects DC, Maryland, and Virgina. If you’re visiting DC as a tourist, there is a good chance that the Metro can take you where you need to go.

Metro Map
A map of the Metro system can be found in every station and in every Metro train car.

It is important to know that the map is not drawn to scale. As an example, take a look at the following stations located along the Red Line - the Metro Center and Chinatown stations are a mere 2 blocks apart. The Cleveland Park and Woodley Park stations are 1.1 miles apart.

Doesn’t look that way on the map, does it? Tricky.

The fare is based on the distance you travel
A ride on the Metro can cost as little as $1.35 or as much as $3.90 - the fare varies based on the length of your trip. There is a handy chart hanging inside every Metro station that will tell you how much your trip will cost.

Payment options - Farecards and Passes
Visitors to DC have 2 options for paying Metro fares, the Farecard and the Pass.

A Metro Pass will allow you to take unlimited trips on the Metro for a set amount of time - a daily pass, for instance, costs $6.50 and lets you take unlimited Metro rides for one full day. Check the WMATA website for the latest price information.

A Farecard is a pay-as-you-go method for using Metro - you load any amount of money onto a paper farecard and the cost of each ride is automatically deducted. As you exit the Metro station, your new balance will be printed on the Farecard, so you’ll always know how much money you have left.

You can purchase both farecards and passes using one of the handy machines located inside each Metro station.

Entering the Metro
Most Metro stations are below ground, and are entered by taking an escalator beneath the street. Once you’ve entered the Metro station, you’ll have pass through one of the turnstyles marked with a lit-up green arrow. To operate the turnstyle, insert your Farecard or Pass into the slot located in the front. Your card will travel through the machine and will pop out on top of the turnstyle. Take this card - you will need it to exit the Metro!

Exiting the Metro
When you get to where you’re going, you’ll follow the same procedure to exit the Metro. If you’re using a Farecard, the new balance will be printed on it as you pass through the turnstyle.

If you don’t have enough money on your Farecard to pay for your trip, the turnstyle will not open, and you will not be permitted to exit the Metro. There are machines located near the exit that you can use to add more money to your Metro card.

Ecalator Etiquette - IMPORTANT
When using the escalators in Washington’s Metro stations, be sure to remember the rule “Walk left, stand right.” That is, you should only stand on the right-hand side of the escalator, leaving the left side open for people who wish to walk past you. If you forget, and stand still on the left-hand side, a busy DC resident will not hesitate to let you know that you’re in the way.

Strictly Tourist Stations
You’ll see the “walk left-stand right” rule in action at every DC Metro station, with the exception of Arlington Cemetery and Smithsonian. These are stations used only by tourists, and most of them don’t know any better. Aren’t you glad that you have the inside scoop!

Do not get off at the Pentagon stop
Tourists often get off here thinking that there is something to see. There isn’t - there is nothing for you to see at the Pentagon stop. The only people using it are the thousands of people who work at the Pentagon.

Getting to the Airports

National Airport - This Metro stop takes you directly to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA).

West Falls Church - From here, you can take a bus to Dulles Interntional Airport (IAD). The bus costs roughtly $7.

Union Station - From Union Station, you can catch an Amtrak train to Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI). See Amtrak’s website for more information.

Useful Links: WMATA - The Metro’s Website

When do you pay tax on a CD?

Thanks!

Answer: You hit the big ones - the tradeoff between liquidity and rate security. In addition, there may be tax reasons that you’d prefer one instrument over another.

Interest from both certificates of deposit and savings accounts is classified as income. Generally, income is taxable in the year in which it is received. Many CDs pay interest in one lump sum, when the CD reaches maturity. Savings accounts, on the other hand, generally pay interest each month.

If you have a large income this year, but expect to have a much smaller income next year, it may behoove you to choose the CD over the savings account - you would delay the taxable event (your receipt of the income) until next year, when you’ll be taxed at a lower rate. Alternatively, if you expect to have a large income next year but have a much smaller income this year, you would likely come out ahead by choosing the savings account.

The above holds true for CDs with terms of 1 year or less, but things get a little trickier when the term is over 1 year. Depending on how the CD is structured, you may have to pay tax on a portion of the total interest due. Forbes offers the following bit of advice in a January 2006 article:

If you buy a CD with a maturity of more than a year, you must include as income each year a part of the total interest due. This applies to similar deposit arrangements, such as time deposits, bonus plans, savings certificates, deferred income certificates, bonus savings certificates and growth savings certificates.

While that sounds fairly straightforward, it’s not quite as simple as Forbes would have you believe. IRS Pub 550 covers investment income and expenses. According to Page 5 of that publication,

“Certificates of deposit and other deferred interest accounts. If you open any of these accounts, interest may be paid at fixed interval of 1 year or less during the term of the account. You generally must include this interest in your income when you actually receive it or are entitled to receive it without paying a substantial penalty. The same is true for accounts that mature in 1 year or less and pay interest in a single payment at maturity. If interest is deferred for more than 1 year, see Original Issue Discount (OID), later.” (emphasis added)

So, it would seem that according to the IRS, you need only claim the income if 1) you are “entitled” to receive it before the instrument matures and 2) there is no “substantial penalty” for early withdrawal. But it doesn’t stop there - even if you think that you’re in that situation, you may have issues to work out with the OID (found on page 14).

Confusing, I know. Which is probably why the Forbes article fibbed a bit.

It seems that a good rule of thumb is that for CDs with a term of less than one year, no tax is due until the CD matures, so you may safely use the above strategy when choosing between a CD and a savings account. If you’re looking to buy a CD with hopes of delaying a taxable event for more than one year, though, you might want to talk to professional first.

Good Luck, and Happy Investing!

Is there any advantage to putting money into a CD rather than a regular savings account if each pays the same rate?

Thanks!

Answer: You hit the big ones - the tradeoff between liquidity and rate security. In addition, there may be tax reasons that you’d prefer one instrument over another.

Interest from both certificates of deposit and savings accounts is classified as income. Generally, income is taxable in the year in which it is received. Many CDs pay interest in one lump sum, when the CD reaches maturity. Savings accounts, on the other hand, generally pay interest each month.

If you have a large income this year, but expect to have a much smaller income next year, it may behoove you to choose the CD over the savings account - you would delay the taxable event (your receipt of the income) until next year, when you’ll be taxed at a lower rate. Alternatively, if you expect to have a large income next year but have a much smaller income this year, you would likely come out ahead by choosing the savings account.

The above holds true for CDs with terms of 1 year or less, but things get a little trickier when the term is over 1 year. Depending on how the CD is structured, you may have to pay tax on a portion of the total interest due. Forbes offers the following bit of advice in a January 2006 article:

If you buy a CD with a maturity of more than a year, you must include as income each year a part of the total interest due. This applies to similar deposit arrangements, such as time deposits, bonus plans, savings certificates, deferred income certificates, bonus savings certificates and growth savings certificates.

While that sounds fairly straightforward, it’s not quite as simple as Forbes would have you believe. IRS Pub 550 covers investment income and expenses. According to Page 5 of that publication,

“Certificates of deposit and other deferred interest accounts. If you open any of these accounts, interest may be paid at fixed interval of 1 year or less during the term of the account. You generally must include this interest in your income when you actually receive it or are entitled to receive it without paying a substantial penalty. The same is true for accounts that mature in 1 year or less and pay interest in a single payment at maturity. If interest is deferred for more than 1 year, see Original Issue Discount (OID), later.” (emphasis added)

So, it would seem that according to the IRS, you need only claim the income if 1) you are “entitled” to receive it before the instrument matures and 2) there is no “substantial penalty” for early withdrawal. But it doesn’t stop there - even if you think that you’re in that situation, you may have issues to work out with the OID (found on page 14).

Confusing, I know. Which is probably why the Forbes article fibbed a bit.

It seems that a good rule of thumb is that for CDs with a term of less than one year, no tax is due until the CD matures, so you may safely use the above strategy when choosing between a CD and a savings account. If you’re looking to buy a CD with hopes of delaying a taxable event for more than one year, though, you might want to talk to professional first.

Good Luck, and Happy Investing!

How to delete a search engine in Firefox

Ahh, Firefox - so customizeable.

Unfortunately, it still has a way to go in terms of intuitiveness of design.

Case and point: it’s a breeze to add search engines to Firefox with a single mouse click using the Mozilla addons page. Unfortunately, it’s not so easy to delete old or unwanted engines from the list. Not only can you not right-click on an engine to get the option to remove it, but an option to edit the list of engines doesn’t appear anywhere in the entire interface!

Here’s how you remove those unwanted engines from your list:

• Browse to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins
• Delete the 2 filenames that correspond to the engine that you want to remove. There will be both a .src file and image file. (either a .png or .gif)

If you can’t find any applicable looking filenames, the engine may be installed in your profile area. If so, do this:

• Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\edward\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\[PROFILE ID]\searchplugins (where [PROFILE ID] is a random string of characters used as your profile identifier)
• Delete the 2 filenames that correspond to the engine that you want to remove. There will be both a .src file and image file. (either a .png or .gif)

After you remove the files, restart Firefox and voila, the engines are now gone.

Update: The SearchPluginHacks extension will allow you to delete engines by right-clicking them. The extension is only 4k, so it shouldn’t delay your load time too much. Depending on your XP skill level, this may be an easier option for you, while a more experienced user may find the occasional manual delete process more convenient.

How many calories does activity X burn?

Comcast DNS slow? Use these easy to remember DNS IPs

I have Comcast cable at home. Overall, the service is pretty good - certainly light years better than the Verizon DSL to which I previously subscribed. One problem that Comcast is plagued by, however, is notoriously slow DNS servers.

For those of you non-technical folks out there, “DNS” stands for “Domain Name Service/System.” Think of it like a phone book for computers - when you type “yahoo.com” into your browser, your computer must first look up “yahoo.com” in the DNS to find the number it needs to “dial” to contact yahoo.com. Comcast has a history of running a slow phonebook. This means that even though they offer lightning fast connection speeds, your internet browsing can slow to a crawl waiting for these lookups to occur.

When I first ran into this problem a year ago, I reconfigured my router to use alternate DNS servers (I’m fortunate to have access to my company’s lightning-fast DNS servers) and forgot all about the problem. I recently installed a new router, though, and my old configuration was lost, meaning that the new router was once again using Comcast’s DNS servers. You’d think that they’d have fixed the problem after over a year, wouldn’t you?

You’d be wrong.

It took me about 10 minutes to notice a significant lag in my browsing, due to the apparently ever-present Comcast DNS problem. I did an internet search and found that I’m certainly not the only one who has noticed the ongoing problem. Fortunately, David Bau has a solution that everyone can use:

For future reference: if my DNS servers ever go out, I will use the following DNS servers with easy-to-remember IP addresses - thanks to AT+T and Level 3:

4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

Here in Pennsylvania, these servers are all just as close as Comcast’s DNS servers to me, < 20ms ping, and they are serving DNS faster today.

Awesome - Easy to remember AND very fast. If you’re a Comcast customer, I suggest that you start using these servers if you run into problems.

Uninstalling the Ubuntu Linux boot manager

I’m a RedHat Linux guy, but I wanted to try out the Ubuntu Linux distribution to see if it’s an acceptable solution for Linux newbies (who would likely install a dual-boot XP system) or for cash-strapped non-profit groups (who would likely use it as their primary system).

I had no problems setting up the dual-boot XP/Ubuntu system using the provided Ubuntu installer - it’s a very easy step-by-step process that even installs a boot manager so users can easily run a dual boot system. When I went to get rid of the Ubuntu installation, however, I ran into a bit of a problem.

First a note about boot managers

There is no way to “uninstall” a boot manager - a boot manager is nothing more than a set of instructions written to a special place on a hard disk called the “Master Boot Record,” or “MBR” for short. The way to “get rid” of one boot manager is it overwrite it with another boot manager.

Restoring the Windows XP Master Boot Record (MBR)
It used to be that you could repair a damaged MBR from from MS-DOS using the command “fdisk /mbr“. Not so with Windows XP - apparently the Microsoft powers-that-be thought it prudent to remove any and every useful Windows utility in the XP release. In that vein, they got rid of fdisk. Boo!

Instead, the only way to restore the MBR is to use the Windows XP setup disk to boot to the Windows recovery console, which is sometimes easier said than done.

Error: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing - Status 32768
I attempted to boot from my XP setup disks, only to receive the following error:

INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing - Status 32768

Oh great - a task that would have taken me about 3 seconds in Windows 98 is about to drag into an hour long ordeal in the “improved” Windows XP. Here are some options for working around this error:

1. Got another XP setup disk? Try booting with that, even if it’s a different version. My installation is a XP Pro with SP2, and for some reason, the XP Pro with SP2 boot up disk gave me this error. I popped in an XP Home setup disk and had no problems. From what I was able to gather from the newsgroups, the problem likely wasn’t with my installation media - instead, it’s a “feature” included with SP2. Way to go Microsoft!
2. If #1 isn’t an option for you, try Creating new XP setup disks using this utility at Microsoft’s website Wow, this might be the first time I’ve ever found one of Microsoft’s support pages to be useful.

Once you’ve booted the XP Setup disk
Choose “R” to enter the recovery console, then execute the command “fixmbr“, which should get rid of the Ubuntu boot manager. Your machine should now boot right into Windows XP.

Depending on how you first installed Ubuntu, you may now have to perform some partition maintenance to reclaim the disk space previously used by Ubuntu. That, however, is an article for another day.

Cheers!

XP Setup Disk: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing - Status 32768

I’m a RedHat Linux guy, but I wanted to try out the Ubuntu Linux distribution to see if it’s an acceptable solution for Linux newbies (who would likely install a dual-boot XP system) or for cash-strapped non-profit groups (who would likely use it as their primary system).

I had no problems setting up the dual-boot XP/Ubuntu system using the provided Ubuntu installer - it’s a very easy step-by-step process that even installs a boot manager so users can easily run a dual boot system. When I went to get rid of the Ubuntu installation, however, I ran into a bit of a problem.

First a note about boot managers

There is no way to “uninstall” a boot manager - a boot manager is nothing more than a set of instructions written to a special place on a hard disk called the “Master Boot Record,” or “MBR” for short. The way to “get rid” of one boot manager is it overwrite it with another boot manager.

Restoring the Windows XP Master Boot Record (MBR)
It used to be that you could repair a damaged MBR from from MS-DOS using the command “fdisk /mbr“. Not so with Windows XP - apparently the Microsoft powers-that-be thought it prudent to remove any and every useful Windows utility in the XP release. In that vein, they got rid of fdisk. Boo!

Instead, the only way to restore the MBR is to use the Windows XP setup disk to boot to the Windows recovery console, which is sometimes easier said than done.

Error: INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing - Status 32768
I attempted to boot from my XP setup disks, only to receive the following error:

INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing - Status 32768

Oh great - a task that would have taken me about 3 seconds in Windows 98 is about to drag into an hour long ordeal in the “improved” Windows XP. Here are some options for working around this error:

1. Got another XP setup disk? Try booting with that, even if it’s a different version. My installation is a XP Pro with SP2, and for some reason, the XP Pro with SP2 boot up disk gave me this error. I popped in an XP Home setup disk and had no problems. From what I was able to gather from the newsgroups, the problem likely wasn’t with my installation media - instead, it’s a “feature” included with SP2. Way to go Microsoft!
2. If #1 isn’t an option for you, try Creating new XP setup disks using this utility at Microsoft’s website Wow, this might be the first time I’ve ever found one of Microsoft’s support pages to be useful.

Once you’ve booted the XP Setup disk
Choose “R” to enter the recovery console, then execute the command “fixmbr“, which should get rid of the Ubuntu boot manager. Your machine should now boot right into Windows XP.

Depending on how you first installed Ubuntu, you may now have to perform some partition maintenance to reclaim the disk space previously used by Ubuntu. That, however, is an article for another day.

Cheers!

The “Perfume Robbers” Email is a Hoax

I have this gullible friend, we’ll call her “Suzy.” Even though we live hundreds of miles apart, I can always tell when Suzy is reading her email because my inbox invariably fills with exclamation mark-laden messages with subject lines like “FW: Fwd: Fw: Very important, not a joke. Please read” and “FW: Re: Getting to know you! I’d better get this back!!”

Today I received an urgent alert from Suzy about nefarious sounding perfume robbers - they reportedly ask you to smell a perfume. No big deal, right? You take a sniff, say “I liked the third one! It was like poppies. POPPIES!” You then leave, thinking everything is just hunky-dorrie, oblivious to the fact that you were just secretly knocked-unconscious by a special chemical in the innocent smelling perfume. While you were out, the uber-sophisticated thieves took your watch and your wallet, and like the schmuck you are, you come to and happily go on your merry away, blissfully unaware of what just transpired.

Now, it doesn’t take much in the way of critical thinking to deduce that that this fantastic story is complete hogwash - unfortunately, people like Suzy seldom exercise any judgment before hitting the “Send” button.

Snopes reveals that this particular hoax has been zipping from inbox to inbox since at least the year 2000, and provides a number of specimens:

Why do people like Suzy fall for hoaxes like this? I mean, she isn’t a dumb person. On the contrary, she’s pretty bright. Sure, maybe she’s a little a gullible, and maybe she’s a bit absent minded. But why she always sends stuff like this on, I’ll never know.

All I can do is smile and shake my head. And post about it here, of course. ;-)

How to disable dumprep.exe (Dump Reporting Tool) on Windows XP

If you’ve ever had to use the task manager (CTRL-ALT-DELETE) to kill a “Not Responding” program, you’ve probably been frustrated by the time it takes for the program to actually disappear from your screen. What’s going on here is that a Microsoft provided tool called “Windows Error Dump Reporting,” or “dumprep.exe,” is creating a file containing information about the error that can later be sent back to Microsoft, where it will be summarily ignored along with millions of other error reports.

You can safely disable this largely useless feature (and thus speed up your computer in crash-situations) by taking the following steps.

How to disable dumprep.exe:

1. Right click on “My Computer,” choose “Properties” from that menu.
2. Click on “Advanced tab,”
3. Click the “Error Reporting” button.
4. Check the “Disable error reporting” box. You may choose to uncheck the the box below it, “But notify me when an error occurs,” if desired.

Voila, the annoying dumprep.exe tool is now disabled!