Eight random things I know

My new friend and fellow pinko at work Spleeness tagged me with the seven things meme, and I'm grateful for the excuse to blog. In honor of 08/08/08, here are seven random pieces of advice, plus one bonus, that could save you a ton of trouble.

1. Donate your car to the fire station for the best tax write-off.
Tax laws used to allow you to take the Kelley Blue Book value of a car donated to any charity off your taxes. Now, if the charity auctions off your donated car, you only get a deduction for the amount of sale. If, however, the charitable group intends to use it themselves — for example, the fire department using your car for training purposes — you are allowed to take off fair market value, as specified by the Kelley Blue Book. For more information, see the IRS's brochure on car donations, and make sure to call the IRS before giving up your car in case the laws have changed.

2. To get through to technical service, call the billing office.
After being on hold for a cumulative three hours over three days with AT&T, we had a problem fixed in ten minutes after calling the billing office to say we weren't paying for the days without service. I imagine this would work with any company.

3. Never agree to police questioning without first talking to a lawyer, even if you are innocent and you think you have nothing to hide.
The other day, a friend of Her Royal Spleeness was telling us about the time he was wrongly accused of a crime and actually had to go to jail. When he was first confronted by the cops, his first impulse was to agree to go with them to take a lie-detector test and stand in a line up. But his father managed to talk him into calling a lawyer, who gave him a lie-detector test during which he failed to pass the truth test on his own name. The physical evidence pointed to someone else and his alibis were iron-clad, but the police were most interested in closing the case. Do not assume that cops have your best interest at heart or that they are relentless seekers of truth.

4. Backup your blog, dog.
If you would be heartbroken if your blog vanished in the ether or you were blocked from accessing it, back it up. It's not that hard. I have instructions on how to do it, and here's my backup blog. I try to remember to import it at least once a month. From there you can export the whole kitten caboodle to a text file.

5. Also backup your posts on Twitter.
If you're using Twitter as your primary blogging platform, you should probably start backing up your tweets, since Twitter only saves the last 10 pages. Parenthacks recommends using Tumblr, but you can also use FriendFeed to aggregate your content across social networks.

6. Experiment freely with social media.
If you hear about something twice, go grab yourself a login and play with it. You might like it, and more importantly, you'll be able to establish a consistent online presence for yourself.

7. You can so paint over wallpaper.
In really old houses (like mine), sometimes it's the only thing holding the wall in one piece. And the paint job can look pretty nice, especially compared to painting over crumbling plaster.

Bonus tip!
8. Buy the least expensive house in the best neighborhood you can afford.
And, conversely, never buy the most expensive house in the neighborhood. It's the neighborhood around you that will drive the property values. But everyone already knows that, right?