Just when I thought it could not get any stranger, first thing this morning I get a phone call on my direct line (which I will have to look into) from an obviously new "Web Design/Dev" firm's owner asking me "if I knew where to hire any employees and if any of my staff would be interested in going to work for him." Obviously intrigued, I decided to continue with the conversation and responded: "I don't know, I would have to ask, what are you looking for?" to which he replied "well I have 12 websites to build and need designs and searches done, you see I am specializing in Real Estate websites and I have enough work to employ someone for two years!"
To Clarify, I had to be certain I understood what he was looking for.
"So you are looking for someone to design and build 12 websites, do the html and styling, aggregate mls data and program their searches" ... response "exactly, would you look through Whatcom Community College or WWU?"
So, being that by then I was at work and again fully reminded how the many years of study and experience in Web Design and Development can be totally minimalized by even one of my competitors, I told him I would pass the word around.
Without going to much into how much I LOVE being taxed AGAIN and AGAIN on items that I have previously purchased and paid sales tax, I had the pleasure of going over a document today entitled "Whatcom County Personal Property Depreciated List - Equipment as of January 1, 2007 - For Taxes Payable in 2008."
As I first went over the thing with my book keeper, Heather Pavlosky, I seriously found myself wondering if John (co-owner of Mindfly) had typed this letter up and set it on my desk as a joke. All I could say was wow. How completely, utterly, without a single right ... wrong, wrong. And in so many ways.
To illustrate how complete this paper was in it's lack of correctness, I offer this image and the following excerpts:
Image
The blue strike throughs are my marks indicating I no longer own the item in question. For me the only upside to doing this exercise was to find out that the county can actually tax you on items that you have fully depreciated long ago if the determine they have value. The majority of these items were computers and software purchased between 1999 and 2003 that apparently are worth something to someone. If I only knew.
Excerpt 1
Visual Studio NET Software 2006 - Purchased in 2003 - Assessed at $527
VS.NET 2006 does not exist and if it did how could I have purchased in 2003. Ok, perhaps they meant Visual Studio 2003 (which we did use at one time) but $527. We have since upgraded to 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 was just released (which we won't buy until next year).
Excerpt 2
Computer 500Mhz Pentium 1 - Purchased 1999 - Assessed at $82
I am not kidding. Seriously, what did that run Windows 98? For the record, I honestly have no idea what happened to this ...
Excerpt 3
Computer Equipment - Purchased 2006 - Total Cost 9,743 - Assessed at $7112
I don't have a gripe about actually purchasing new computers (the fact that this single list item is then itemized into six other line items is a bit of an issue), however their appraisal blows me away. It would be great if there was a shotgun clause in the tax code somewhere that binds the county to immediatley purchase items under this personal property tax for the assessed value. If this were the case there would be a hundred new businesses selling the county computers after using them for a year. I would be lucky to get $2,500 for the lot.
When it comes right down to it, I think it is safe to say you will not find me holding a sign up in front of the post office outraged at this offense. Heather Pavlosky and I will work with the clerks at the county to get this all sorted out.
The fact that drives me crazy is that after it is all said and done, I will have additional accounting fees, have lossed billable hours myself and I will owe upwards of $100 to the county which will have lossed money on this transaction as it can't possibly have paid for their employees to generate this thing and then work with us to fix it.
I noticed that Heather Alvis, Mindfly's Creative Lead Web Designer got herself mentioned in the Bellingham Herald (a local publication).
Bellingham Herald - online version
Heather is a great friend and collegue (in fact she designed this blog) and I was very happy to see her in the paper.
Nicely done Heather!
I arrived at the studio today to find the following message in one of my inbox:
Do you recommend a book that will help me learn website management, how to post a picture, add text documents to a site, etc. Very basic stuff that will lead me into more complicated. I taught myself to knit from a book, and hope to teach myself how to set up a website this way too.
While I am certain the sender was very serious, the email just struck me as hillarious! I somehow can't seem to make the "tie" between web design and knitting.
What an excellent roast!
After more than a year of work and working through quite a few different issues, Aramco ExPats Corporation is going to launch the 4th version of it's website TODAY! Initiation of the DNS transfer for the domain aramcoexpats.com will coincide with Champagne corks popping and glasses of ouzo at Mindfly's downtown Bellingham office this afternoon around 4pm local time.
I would personally like to thank Heather Alvis, Kyle Weems, and Frieder Mack (our Mindfly team) for all of their efforts. I really love the new design and am very excited about all of the new features we have added.