DesMoinesPilot

Up until about 2-3 months ago, if you didn't know your friend's email address you could log into live.com and in the "Search contacts or the web" box type "John Smith". This would bring up a list of people with photos and you could choose "Add as friend" from there.

Now I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do that. It seems the home.live.com/search page now just redirects somewhere else. Messenger 2012 has a "Search for people" link and it goes to the same defunct location.

So my question is: What happened to the search just recently, and is any other way I can add the contact without knowing their email address?

Say we have more than 21 tropical storms in a given year, and have to start using letters of the greek alphabet for the names that year. What would happen if say tropical storm Beta developed into a hurricane and caused mass death and destruction -- on a scale worthy of retiring the name?

It seems to me you can't just retire a letter of the alphabet. Not only does that sound sloppy, but eventually you might be left with no greek letters left!

Surely those in charge have thoroughly thought this through and what to do is forever inscribed in a rulebook somewhere. Anyone have any sources that might yield the answer?

Thanks in advance. I am loosing sleep over this and the future of our civilization may be at stake.

Do shippers need to declare what is in all packages sent out? If so, do individual route drivers get a printout or something, or is there any way for them to know what the package contains?

P.S. Anyone know where the cheapest place is to order a severed human head?

Jeffrey Feinman has his panties in a bind because AVP rejected Coty's $10B offer. If he wanted the $23.25 per share price, then I don't understand why he's be upset because he could have just sold it on the open market for that exact price at around the same time that story came out. Now the stock is trading _above_ that mark so he can make even more.

So why sue?

P.S. Any chance AVP will drop below $23 before April 20th? I already got my posterior handed to me but I can hope. ;)

Consider:

120 km/hr = 120 kilometers per hour

200 USD/gram = $200 per gram

$8.65/hr = $8.65 per hour

but

1.33 EUR/USD = 1.33 euros per USD? Nope, it's just the opposite.

Why are they backwards like that? That's always kinda irked me. Is it simply a case of "it's always just been that way", or am I just missing something obvious?

If I put on say an iron condor and want to close it out the same day, does that count as 4 round trips for day trading purposes (which would get my account flagged immediately) or just one? Does the answer change if you pull it down one leg at a time?

This may be locale-specific, but around here the cops use the phrase "customer number" occasionally and I'm thinking it must mean something not quite nice.

For example the officer will run one by name&DOB and dispatch will come back and say "No DL, but he does have a customer number". Followed by laughter on the radio half the time.

From context I would think it means inmate number or something like that, but I can't find anything that confirms that.

Hypothetical question:

Say you had the password to an enemy's brokerage account. Just to make it interesting say it's a cash account, not margin, *commission free trades for 30 days*, and you can trade stocks and long options.

Your foe will return from vacation in 4 days and discover your tampering. The next options expiration isn't until 3 weeks from now.

What would you do to drain the money as fast as possible?

Dave Ramsey (the radio show host) always talks about how he's getting 12% on all his mutual funds. This is average, not every year of course. The strange thing is he refuses to say which ones he owns. I don't know if this is due to legal reasons or maybe he's just plain fibbing.

I've used several screeners and haven't been able to locate many plain-Jane funds which fit the bill. Especially ones with a 20-30 year track record like he claims.

Anyone know of any?

I have a single-member LLC which is currently a disregarded entity. The people that pay me need me to fill out a W9 and there is _no_ way in heck that I am giving them my own name. If they knew who I was they probably wouldn't want to pay me at all and I'd have to sue for it, long story.

I know this is technically contrary to the W9 instructions, but what if I put down only the business name and EIN, mark the checkbox next to LLC, then write "P" for Partnership on the line provided? Will this raise any red flags anywhere? Since all of the money is going to be reported on a separate schedule C with the biz name and EIN I don't see why the IRS would care much.

My only other option (and the "correct" one?) would be to quickly elect S corp status before filling out the W9. I'd generally like to avoid all that if possible, due to FUTA and all the hassle. However remaining anonymous in this case trumps all tax considerations.

I made my final 2011 estimated state tax payment in January 2012 by the due date. For federal purposes, I'm wondering if on my 2011 Schedule A I should include this last payment.

Since this was for TY 2011 it makes sense to me that this should be counted for 2011, but a strict reading of the Schedule A instructions seems to disagree, although they don't explicitly say so.

Do I really need to wait until a year from now to deduct that final payment?

If that's the case, major bummer for this year. Worse yet, for next year I see that the 1040 line 10 instructions say I can't even use the "State and Local Income Tax Refund Worksheet" and am instead directed to publication 525 for "Itemized Deduction Recoveries" just because I made my final payment in January.

Do most people not make their final estimated tax payment in January when it is due? If I'm reading this right I would have saved myself a _whole_ bunch of fuss by paying it early. :(

Say you had two brokerage accounts and wanted to transfer the stocks (and more importantly cash) from the big money account to another account, without going through the ACATS process. As for why someone would want to do that, I am not going to go into that here. It does not matter why.

Here's my idea:

Find an obscure OTCBB stock or out of the money option with no reasonable asks. From the empty account put in a sell offer at an insanely high price, or alternatively just a couple cents below the moderately-insane ask. Perhaps in after hours trading. Then you go into your big money account and buy it at the inflated prices if you can positively identify your lot sitting there.

What are the flaws of this idea?

Obviously there's an element of risk in that someone else could place a sell order for a lower price during those few seconds it takes. Ways to deal with that I guess. Other than that the real problem would be able to just find the appropriate stocks or options with zero liquidity.

Thoughts?