Hugh's Worthless Blog

During the presidential election there was a lot of discussion on helping the "middle class" while increasing taxes on the "upper class" to boost the economy. But how are these class differences defined? One interesting metric I heard about was that the middle class was defined as being two-thirds to twice the median household income. In 2010 that number was $59,127 which gave a middle class income range of $39,418 to $118,255 . However, this one number was being used to represent the whole country when we all know the median household incomes vary substantially throughout the country. Therefore, I decided someone needed to create an online " middle class income calculator " based on the median income data which is publicly available . My calculator lets you enter a household income amount (your own, or whatever number you would like to compare) to see which tier this income level would be in any metropolitan area or state in the country (based on 201...

The local weather folks had predicted a foggy morning, and boy were they right! I brought along the cheap little Sylvania video camera I received free from Swagbucks to record the very foggy weather here in St. Louis as I commuted to work on campus this morning. First off I parked at the Richmond Heights Metrolink station and started walking to the platform. I could not even see the platform area from my car! Once I was on the platform I had to pan around to look out at the fog covered nearby synagogue and also down the track. I was hoping to get the train as it appeared out of the fog, but I was not able to capture that. The other people on the platform must have thought I was an insane tourist or something. Finally I made it to the Skinker Station and started to walk towards the lovely Scott Rudolph Hall on the picturesque Washington University Danforth campus . I grabbed some footage across the parking lot towards the art school and then in front of me as I walked by Wh...

Today was Election Day which meant two things for my teenage son: 1) No School in his district and  2) Halo 4 was released! Combine those two facts and he thought it meant one thing for him - a full day at home playing Halo 4 with the millions of other young males celebrating democracy together on their Xbox 360's. However, he had made one fatal mistake. He pre-ordered his copy of Halo 4 at Amazon.com using their "release day shipping" option. If he had read the fine print , Amazon states that their shipping agent (namely UPS in this case) does not guarantee delivery at any specific time, only that it will arrive on that day before 7:00 pm. And when did his copy arrive? The UPS truck finally showed up at 5:45 pm which meant he only had 3 hours or so to immerse himself with Master Chief and company. And he had actually paid extra to receive it that late, when he could have paid less and just picked it up at GameStop  hours before, like the location less than a mile away...

Being a responsible citizen, I was all ready to vote for the St. Louis County Proposition L  in November to help update the county library system when I realized we cannot vote for it. Even though we are active County Library users, because we live in Richmond Heights and they have their own library, we are being taxed for the Richmond Heights Library . Therefore we do not pay any taxes on the county library system. Since we are not taxed for the county library system, the proposition will not be on our ballots when we vote on November 6. In reality we prefer visiting the County Library with its huge headquarters on Lindbergh (which we visit weekly) since it is still very close to us and almost as quick of a trip as the RH city library. Since we are still country residents we can use either library and we prefer the county system with its much larger selection of offerings. But just because I cannot vote for the proposition, does not mean I will not do my part to help pr...

I finally heard back from the Saint Louis County Board of Equalization to see if I would have my home assessment value reduced. Unfortunately they decided their assessment valuation was just fine and they would not budge on the number. I was hoping to at least get it down by 10% or so but they must not have liked my data that I supplied with my appeal request. I included my report from ValueAppeal.com which I spent $99 on back in May, along with the county's decision on my neighbor's house which is assessed almost $50,000 less than ours and the sales data for a larger house up the street which sold for almost $20,000 less than our assessment just last year. There is now another house for sale on our street which has a sales price only $15,000 over our assessed valuation, but which will never sell for that much. That house has a floor plan this is an almost identical mirror image to our own but the kitchen is still from 1950 and the basement layout leaves a lot to be desir...

Yesterday I was one of the select few citizens in the St Louis metropolitan area who was able to make a difference in their government; I was able to vote on a Monday! It was the special election between two incumbent Democratic state representatives who shared almost identical voting records, Stacey Newman and Susan Carlson. Since their one vote difference primary election in August was too close to call after some voting errors were discovered , the county decided to have a special re-election just for our district to allow for a definite winner to be cast. In the past few weeks I have been heavily bombarded with postal mailings, automated phone calls and then finally real human phone calls (one from the actual Stacey Newman herself) asking me to go and vote. So yesterday I did my civic duty and spent an extra 5 minutes while going home from work and voted. I was expecting that after such a close election before and so many mailings and calls the voter turnout would be much high...

Last evening my wife and I were taking a leisurely walk around our lovely tree lined suburban neighborhood, knowing full well that just a few weeks ago a woman was kidnapped and abducted just a mile away at Brentwood Square. And several days after that Megan Boken was murdered in the middle of the day in the heart of the Central West End, and several medical students robbed nearby , and  then some people robbed outside Busch Stadium. And now just yesterday we heard a woman was abducted right here on the Danforth Campus of Washington University at 9:30pm and another woman was attacked outside Saint Louis University. These assaults in unexpectedly "safe" places have a lot of people alarmed, and we were discussing what can be done about it. It is especially scary that the criminals seems to like to target young college aged women, who they probably think are good prey. With the semester just starting at Wash U and other colleges, it is again open season on and near campus....