Last year on July 1st the Colorado Designated Beneficiaries Law went into effect. This law enables any two legal adults to enter into a Designated Beneficiary Agreement (herein referred to as a DBA). The agreement consists of 16 separate rights which can be granted individually between the two people. These rights include things like hospital visitation, transfer of property upon death, ability to sue for wrongful death, etc - many of the things that a Will and/or Power of Attorney would cover. The law specifically indicates that other legal documents, such as Wills and Power of Attorneys, supersede the DBA.

Today Benjamin and I filled out the two page agreement that had been sitting in our kitchen To Do pile for literally 7 months, took it by UMB bank to be notarized, and then drove it down to the Denver Clerk and Recorder's office to have it recorded. Total due: $15.50 for the recording that included 3 certified copies -- UMB notarized it for free.

The Reason
I'm sure you're asking why, if we already have Wills and Durable & Medical Power of Attorneys that supercede large parts of the DBA, did we bother with it at all. The answer is simple: we're just further hedging our bets should something go wrong. The DBA is one more layer to validate what our wishes are if the Will goes into probate or if one of us is having challenges accessing the other person in a medical situation. $15.50 + $4 parking and an hour of our time was a small price to pay for further peace of mind.

The Experience
The entire experience was oddly easy and yet slightly insulting. The Denver Clerk and Recorder's office is in the beautiful Wellington E. Webb Municipal Office Building in downtown. After an early lunch Benjamin and I drove downtown, parked two blocks away, and walked to the Webb building. We conveniently walked into the entrance that was immediately adjacent to the Clerk and Recorder's office. That was the easy part.

The Recorder's office was empty -- we were two of only a handful of people in the office. It was also pleasantly well labeled as the row of clerks closest to the door had a sign above them labeled "Marriage Licenses" or something very similar. Instinctively I knew that while were in the right office, the women behind the desk were not going to be able to help me with my DBA. Despite that I walked up to an available clerk and inquired as to where I should go to have my DBA recorded. She cheerfully instructed me to go down the hall to the second desk on the right where they could help me. What was the sign above the clerk who was able to assist with my DBA? "Real Estate Records". That was rather insulting: in order to get almost-domestic-partner-level rights in Colorado I had to walk past the Marriage Licenses desk in the front of the Recorder's office, down a hallway to a woman behind a Real Estate Records desk.

The woman who helped us was, while not rude, not overly friendly although she did faithfully record our document and kept a kind demeanor despite her office equipment not cooperating.

As we walked out of the Webb building I commented to Benjamin that the DBA is the closest thing to Marriage that we currently have and are able to obtain within Colorado. I'm grateful that we have the option of a DBA in Colorado but the experience reinforces my feeling of a second-class citizen.

Tags: glbt, marriage

There's a very logical reason why I want to get legally married to my husband: I want to protect my family. Those of you not familiar with the legal rights granted by that $50 marriage certificate might be thinking I'm being dramatic -- but I'm not.

Despite Benjamin and I having Wills, there's absolutely nothing to prevent one of our families from contesting them should one of us die. Given the behavior of my family over the last year this is not a passive concern. In a worst-case scenario I die and our joint assets are frozen during probate and Benjamin is kicked out of our home if my family "wins". We've taken as many steps as possible to prevent that including the aforementioned Wills and life insurance policies with Benjamin as the primary beneficiary (life insurance policies are contractual documents that bypass Wills unless the insurance beneficiary falls through to the estate). If a spouse of a legally married couple dies the person's assets transfer seamlessly to the surviving spouse.

Enough about death, lets talk about life. It's a good thing I like wading through the tax morass 'cause as a non-legally married couple it is an amazingly hard slog. Lets say I want to further hedge my bets against a worst-case "Casey dies" scenario by transferring some of my assets over to Benjamin while I'm alive. Because he and I aren't legally married I can only transfer ~$13k/year to him tax-free -- anything over that amount he would need to pay a gift tax. Married couples can throw however much money they want at each other and not suffer the tax hit.

Lets talk about retirement. When Benjamin was working at the bank, prior to becoming a full-time student, we were actively contributing to his Roth IRA. When he became a full-time student he wasn't eligible to contribute to his IRA because he wasn't earning any income. If we were legally married I could have contributed to his IRA (via the "spousal IRA") for the past three years. This is unfortunate as we missed some pretty good growth opportunities due to how low the market was during that time. A friend had mentioned that I could have hired him for some position and paid him enough money to max out his yearly IRA contributions. The two downsides to that are 1) he would have had to pay taxes on the amount and 2) it could have decreased or removed his ability to obtain grants, scholarships, and/or loans.

Those are the three big financial reasons that jumped immediately to mind this morning - I'm sure there are other financial reasons that I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Tags: glbt, marriage

Today finished out the testimony phase of "Perry v. Schwarzenegger", also known as the Prop 8 Trial. I've been following the trial via live-blogging site prop8trialtracker.com courtesy of the Courage Campaign Institute. The testimony has been very revealing -- particularly the part where the Proposition 8 proponents blatently lied to the public during the campaign about what gay marriage would mean (see Liveblogging Day 10 Daily Summary near 9:42):

"Polygamists are waiting in the wings! If we have same sex marriage, we’ll have polygamy next."

Despite no one anywhere advocating anything about polygamy. And:

"Let’s just say that sexual attraction is definition. Pedophiles would have to be allowed to marry. Mothers and sons. Man who wanted to marry horse. Any combination would have to be allowed."

Aside: I certainly don't condone pedophilia but it's pretty obvious that pedophiles are already allowed to marry another adult of the opposite sex.

Those are just two small examples - there are many more in other parts of the testimony. It was obvious at the time, and even moreso now, that the entire campaign was run on lies and fear. It's clear throughout the testimony presented by expert witness on both sides that there is no "better for society" reason, no "children will be better off" reason, no "it'll destroy traditional marriage" reason to prevent gays and lesbians from getting married. What's the real reason our right to marry was taken away in CA? Because it goes against some people's religious views. Last time I checked it was the power of the state government, not any church, that allowed couples to marry.

And just who were these "Prop 8 proponents" casting out these lies? The quotes above were from a video that ProtectMarriage.com, the defendants, financed during the campaign. And who financed ProtectMarriage.com? Also from a video that ProtectMarriage.com created (see Liveblogging Day 10 Daily Summary near 10:06):

"We know that today we must win. That’s why we are so grateful that 2,500 pastors have come out on consistent basis every month. If someone is going to vote no, we flip them to show that kids will be taught this in schools. We have spent thousands of dollars on polling. Continue to do so. In 1999, LDS got involved in Hawaii. With capital S, they were significantly involved. No different this time. Campaign will cost minimum of $25 million and LDS across this state deeply involved. Catholic Bishop in SD, three evangelical ministers from SD all got involved. Asked Focus on the Family for money. They sent us $50,000 that allowed us to get petitions printed. Thanks to you, we are here, we will win." (emphasis mine).

And just in case you thought "three evangelical ministers isn't so bad - must be a Mormon and Catholic thing", here's an email admitted into evidence that was sent to ProtectMarriage.com listing who was involved (see Liveblogging Day 10 Daily Summary near 10:23):

Evangelicals—400,000 signatures; 3,00 pastors
LDS
Catholics
Orthodox Jews
(emphasis mine)

Maybe God and I will work out our conflicts, but Christianity can go screw itself. Take your "hate the sin love the sinner" and "think of the children" mantras and shove it where the sun doesn't shine. Using John's logical conclusion to a metaphor in a related blog entry: forget the bathwater, the baby's dead - throw it out.

Tags: glbt, marriage, society

Anyone who has known me for any length of time has known that my hair is a distinctive feature about me. Not because it's always the same, but because it is always changing! It's been medium and spiky, long and spiky, long, way long, and even helmet-y (Renee, if you so much as think about uploading that picture of my helmet hair from A&M I'll disown you!!). Recently it's been in the form of a faux-hawk but I can't seem to find any pictures of that style. Sadly, that only covers the hair on the top of my head, not on my face which has at times been a goatee, a chin strap, and an almost-beard.

Some people liked the long hair, some hated it. Some like the facial hair, and some hate it. But in all things it's a topic of discussion, so discuss: what do you think of my hair, past or present? Bonus points if you can link to a picture to share with your approval or displeasure :)

Over the Christmas break I took the plunge and upgraded my Fedora 11 desktop to Fedora 12 (this was after testing the upgrade on my laptop first). Things went seamlessly until I went to run VMware Player 3.0 which was installed pre-upgrade. VMware Player successfully recompiled the kernel modules but kept crashing after the GUI would come up. Thanks to some googleing, forum posts, and a bit of redirection I came across this post. I went for easy route and just added the line:

pref.vmplayer.downloadPermission = "deny"

to ~/.vmware/preferences and the GUI comes up as expected.

Tags: linux

Denver Water, the county and city of Denver's water utility, has an extensive water conservation campaign. This is because, like many areas around the nation, Denver's population is growing but it's water sources aren't.

Benjamin and I have been doing our part for a while now. Last year we bought a high efficiency washer and dryer when we moved into the new house. Living in a townhouse we don't have much of a yard (no grass at all) but we do have some raised beds for flowers and vegetables. The previous owners installed a time-controlled watering system for those beds which we use during the summer. Our house was built in 2005 so it has low-flow toilets. We run the dishwasher only when full.

The last bastion of water wastage in our house is the shower. We use between 2000 and 3000 gallons of water a month and I believe around 1000 of that is from our shower usage. Benjamin likes to take longer showers and while he's flexed on just about every other aspect of my environmentalist agenda, taking shorter showers is just isn't in the cards. After some cajoling/sweet talking/bribing I was able to talk him into letting me replace our 2.5 gal/min shower head with a 1.5 gal/min shower head. He wasn't happy about it but I promised him that I would never again bring up his longer-than-I-think-are-necessary showers if he'd let me install it.

As a bonus the new shower head has a pause feature allowing for Navy showers. No, when the button is pushed your shower stall does not fill with hot navy sailors -- instead the flow of water either stops or the flow is significantly reduced. According to the package the pause button was suppose to stop all water flow but in reality it just reduces it down to a mere dribble.

My back-of-the-envelope calculations says that without the use of the pause button the new shower head is conserving around 390 gallons of water a month (estimated 13 minutes of shower for both people per day and changing from 2.5 to 1.5 gal/min flow) -- and that's a pretty conservative estimate. With my use of the pause button we probably shave another 45 gallons/month beyond that for a total savings of 435 -- or about 45% savings total.

There was an interesting article last month in the WSJ that talks about shower water conservation and the resistance to it.

Tags: environment

IBM has an internal employee appreciation program called Thanks! Awards. This program allows employees to show appreciation to a fellow coworker for going above-and-beyond the call of duty. The award is actually a placeholder. After being given the recipient goes to a specific website to redeem the placeholder for an IBM-branded item of their choice.

Each employee is allowed to give up to 12 Thanks! awards a year and can receive up to 3 of them (the limit on receiving only 3 is presumably linked to the IRS regulations that says employees can gift up to $75 to an employee tax-free and the items to choose from are all easily under $25 each). I've maxed out the number of Thanks! awards that I can receive every year that I can remember, and each year I race with myself to see how close to January 1st I can max out. Not that I solicit them or do anything different than I usually do in my day-to-day job 'cause that would be cheating. In 2008 I received my 3rd award on Feb 25. This year it was on Feb 16. We'll see what happens in 2010. I'm not the only one who keeps track of this as a quick google says some people even mention the number they get on their resume.

After your limit is reached coworkers are suggested to send internal eCards instead - which are admittedly corny but in my mind have the same personal recognition impact. Because lets be honest, it isn't the IBM-branded stuff that's the big win from the Thanks! award program, but the recognition of a fellow coworker of a job well done.

And in that vein my work resolution for the new year is to be better about giving out Thanks! awards (and corny eCards if necessary) where appropriate.

Tags: recognition, work

This year Benjamin and I are doing something different with respect to gifts for our families. Like most of your families, gentle readers, our families have everything they need - not to mention a slew of things they want beyond that. Instead of purchasing gifts for them this year we've adopted two families that need a little help this holiday season via the Adopt-A-Family program through the Denver Rescue Mission. Each of our families know what we're doing instead of gifts and we've encouraged them to do something similar. The only exception are our nieces and nephews: they will still be getting gifts otherwise we'd surely lose our Favorite Uncle titles!

Last weekend we completed about half the shopping for our families' gifts and today we finished it. And let me tell you, we are so out of our league shopping for toddlers! One of our families has an 18 month old and the other has an almost-2-year-old who is big for his age. Even when we knew we wanted to get diapers for the 18-month-old we had to ask an associate where they were located in Target. And baby clothes!? Toys?! Thank goodness we get gift guides for our nieces and nephews from their parents!

While Benjamin was busying cooking the pot roast for dinner tonight I was boxing up gifts and wrapping them. With that finished I'm writing this blog entry as Benjamin is putting the finishing touches (ribbons, bows, and name tags) on the presents. They'll then sit under our tree until December 12th when we deliver them, and uncooked food items, to the families.

Don't gift less this holiday season, give differently.

PS: Benjamin is now a bow-making fiend after learning how to do it earlier today! Watch out Martha!

About a year ago I installed the AP Mobile iPhone app and was using it quite extensively to access news. Then they "upgraded" the app with new "features" and it now takes at least 30 seconds, sometimes 1 minute or more, to load the app and the initial news page. That's just insane and a non-starter (pun intended) for me.

I tried out Bloomberg too but their news is even more market-centric than the WSJ and didn't fill my news need adequately.

I then switched over the the WSJ application. These guys have the mobile news viewing experience down to an art. Sure it still has an ad and is still market-news heavy, but the app loads very quickly and the interface is intuitive (the navigation bar disappears when you start scrolling the article freeing up the entire screen, sans ad, for the text). Unfortunately in January the WSJ is going to start charging $2/week to access their mobile news apps. $2/week? Are you kidding me? I'd pay for $2/month or maybe even $4/month but $8/month is not worth it. Apparently I'm not alone in this view.

I realize that journalists need to get paid, but I think the WSJ is pricing themselves out of the mobile market. Granted, perhaps I'm not their target audience and they'll do just fine. January I'll either go back to AP Mobile, Bloomberg, or just go straight to some still-free news websites.

Tags: iphone

Ian McKellan sums up my own thoughts about organized religion quite nicely (via the LA Times):

"I increasingly see organized religion as actually my enemy. They treat me as their enemy," said the British actor, who came out 20 years ago. "Not all Christians, of course. Not all Jews, not all Muslims. But the leaders. . . . Why should I take the judgment of a declared celibate about my sexual needs? He's basing his judgment on laws that would fit life in the Bronze Age. So if I'm lost to God, organized religion is to blame."

Unfortunately, religion, not just organized religion, has begun to leave a very bad taste in my mouth. I removed the Christian station from my radio dial over a year ago. We stopped regularly attending church several months ago. Up until this month I was still interpreting at the church, but I've asked for a break until at least the end of the year if not indefinitely.

You might argue that I'm throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and perhaps I am. But right now religion only raises my blood pressure and reminds me about my second-class citizenship.

Tags: society