Hints for Colorado non-profits

December 10, 2003

Thinking about soliciting donations? It will pay to be up to date with the Colorado Charitable Solicitations Act. The law applies to "every charitable organization that intends to solicit funds in Colorado." It requires a financial report from the most recent year be included. Attorney General Ken Salazar has an editorial as well that encourages anyone giving to a charity to ask certain q

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Heads Up

December 8, 2003

New York Times:Heads-Up Displays Move From Cockpits to Cyclists' Helmets - Soon recreational motorcyclists and bicyclists will be able to take advantage of data projected into their line of sight.

This is quite similar to a device I was pondering while driving back yesterday. I want to combine GPS and a simple display with a wireless connection for updating road conditions and highway speeds dynamically. If the technology was used to track vehicle speeds like the fleet tracking or reporting from the ever more common roadside speed indicators.

CDOT has a pretty good site but it only does most people good while they are not in their cars but are at their computers.

Customer service returns to the US

December 8, 2003

According to an article in the New York Times Dell is moving some customer service operations back to the U.S. that had at one time been sent to India. Dell is one of many companies that are finding that sending the work to India works for some highly repetitive work but not for widely diverse work. For supporting home users installing a new card it's fine, but for complex corporate networks its not working.

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Disclosure Requirements for Tax Exempt Orginizations

December 7, 2003

I was a part of a discussion tonight about the disclosure requirements for tax-exempt organizations. There are two publications by the IRS on the matter. They are publication Publication 4221 and Publication 557. The key point is this:

A 501(c)(3) organization must make certain documents available for public inspection and copying upon request and without charge (except a reasonable charge for copying). The organization must disclose its exemption application (Form 1023) along with all supporting documents and a copy of the exemption ruling letter issued by the IRS.

Home again

December 7, 2003

After ten days on the road we made it home again tonight. I'll work on posting pictures over the next few days. There are some nice pictures of Zion, Bryce, Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. We stayed an extra day at Sun Flower Hill B&B in Moab as it was a pretty nice place.

It's different this time. I'm not excited, or even that happy to be home. It's great to have the large screen TV and to sit at my own desk, to sleep in my own bed. It's not that. I'm just wanting to move to another phase in life. The southwest is beckoning.

Las Vegas Metro Police Department SAR team

November 30, 2003

The LVMPD SAR team has a great site. Their mission summaries are very well organized. The mission we saw yesterday at Red Rocks was not covered on the site yet. Perhaps it will be in the next few days.

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Cell Phone Post Part II

November 29, 2003

I posted the other day about having gotten the cell phone working. Indeed it works well. I have since found the Verizon modem script. Now the problem is that each time the machine boots it connects the first time just fine. After disconnecting however, it will connect a second time but is rendered useless by a near constant string of "disconnect-connect-authorize". It does all of this quickly enough that it continues to increment the counter and does not miss a beat. At times it will appear to stabilize and stay connected for a time but the next set of packets on the net can set the whole thing off again.

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