So there have been a number of things that I have had to write about, but the internet here has been sketchy… so here we go.

1.  I shouldn’t have to worry about sketchy internet anymore.  We ordered the internet, and it should be installed on Tuesday I think.  We got a great deal on it so we’re excited about that.

2. Do any of my IT/Web Design friends need a job?  The State Senate has an opening.  Check it out here.  It sounds like it’d be a decent gig.

3.  Work is great.  Long hours as always.  That seems to be the tale.

4. One of my aunts passed away yesterday.  The funeral is on Tuesday.

I think that pretty much sums up the week for me.  Peace out!

I was looking forward to seeing some thunderstorms today, but nothing happened.  I was a little bit bummed I must say.  But it did provide my wife and I the chance to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather.  We went on a nice two mile walk along the paths around the apartment.

Tomorrow starts another week.  It should be an interesting time I would say.

I think I’ve seen this before, and I’m sure some of you have probably seen it too, but it was posted on a blog I read.  It’s one of those things that I think everyone should see, so take a few minutes and watch it.

The interview with God

So earlier this week Google came out with themes for their personalized home page.  I must say that it’s pretty cool.  It follows your time of day and the weather.  So right now I see rain on the top of my google homepage.  It’s fun.

Also I’d like to give props to the Google Talk on the Google homepage.  That’s pretty sweet too.  It comes in handy, although it’s easy to navigate away from that page.

In other news the weather was really sweet today!  I went for a mile run and then walked a mile this evening.  I went along the shores of the Mississippi on the trails.  That’s one sweet thing about living here, we have a lot of nice trails to go running/walking/blading on.  I like that.

Thank goodness!  Even though the House will be debating the Transportation bill tomorrow I get the day off.  It’ll be interesting to watch, and I’m sure I’ll watch some of it on TV.  I don’t know what’s going to happen (well the bill will pass), but it could get interesting.

I was planning on heading over to Mooney’s for movie night tonight, but I didn’t get out of work on time.  In fact I didn’t get out of there til about 8 pm tonight.  Yeah…  it was fun times, what can I say.

We had ice cream at work today!  That was tasty.  Plus it was a chance to sit down and have a one on one talk with the minority leader, which was fun.  He’s got a nice size office.  In fact some of the LA’s there said his office is larger than their apartment.  They must have small apartments!

The weather is supposed to be great tomorrow.  I think I’ll enjoy it with a nice walk or something.  Check out the trails around this place, see how nice they are.  Maybe go look at a few houses which are having open houses on Sunday too.  We’ll see.  It could be something fun to do.

I’ve read some more about the Apple TV that came out.  I think that I will wait on purchasing one for a few months.  Because rumor is that they’ll come out with an HD Apple TV.  Plus there is thought it might work similar as a TiVO.  We’ll see.

So as I sit and watch some more March Madness games I figured I’d post what my bracket looked like after the first weekend. We’ll see if it gets any better.

Sometimes makes me mad.  You never get the full story when you watch it.  So when I read this article about press bias it confirmed what most people know. Watching the morning news this morning reminded me to post this.

of the March….  It’s been pretty fun to watch some of the games this weekend.  There have been a lot of great games.  Close scores, buzzer beaters to send the game to OT.  The one thing lacking would be upsets.  There could have been some good ones yesterday, but it didn’t happen.  That made me a little sad.

But my bracket is doing alright.  I’m doing fairly decent in my pools.  I’m #1 in one, #2 in another, and gaining points in the others.  So it’s fun.  I really like March Madness, even though I don’t watch college basketball at other times of the year.  It’s good times.

So yesterday Beth and I went out with Pat and Tina to celebrate Pat’s heritage (aka St. Patrick’s Day).  It was good times, but there was no green beer around.  They had one keg at the Old Chicago in Roseville.  One would think that one keg of green beer wouldn’t last long, and so they should order more.  But nope.  So I had some Irish beer that wasn’t green.  It works alright.

Today I’ll be watching some basketball and doing some laundry.  I’ll probably be taking care of my sick wife as well.  Okay, she’s not super sick.  Just a cold.  Anyway, I should get started on some laundry.

But that’s alright.  I have a lot of company at work.  The reps are all there late, because it’s getting closer to committee deadline, and way to many bills haven’t been heard in committee.  And the fact that there are nearly 50% more committee’s this year vs. last year that doesn’t speed up the process at all.

There are more political news stories going on that I think are crazy.  One quick note:  The President can appoint anyone to serve in any position.  He can remove them from that position at any time.  Every person who works for him works “at the pleasure of the President”.  So this whole thing about the Attorney’s who got fire: that’s just another day at the office for these people.  There is nothing to investigate there, because nothing was done illegally.

Okay, I’ll try not to get into to many political rants.  I’ll keep this about life in general, which has been good.  My wife got offered a job today!  She’ll be working for TEK Systems (the placement group) at Target HQ in Brooklyn Park (I think that’s where it is) at the IT Help Desk.  She’s pretty excited about it, as am I.  She’ll finally have a steady job with regular hours.  And the fact that she’ll be making more than me doesn’t bother me a bit.

The weather the past few days has been amazing.  I got out for a run for the past 3 out of the last 4 days. Sadly I did not make it home on time tonight to run.  I live in a fairly decent neighbor hood I would say, but I’m still not sure I want to go running after dark.  And it was cold.

Anyway, the wife is home!  Later.

So my internet stopped working today.  That’s a bummer.  I’m not sure what happened, but it was free stuff.  So I guess I shouldn’t be to surprised.  So I’m looking into some internet for at home while I sip a cup of Dunn Bros Coffee and enjoy the free wireless internet.  I’m up in the air on Cable vs. DSL.  For me the price would be the big thing.  I’ve looked at www.comcastoffers.com, but I’m not to sure how legit they are.  A quick scan on the net for it seems like the jury still might be out on that one.  So if anyone knows of good offers please let me know.

<sidenote>Sitting here reminds me of being in DC.  Walking a block and a half down the street to the coffee shop, what a great place, and enjoying the free internet.  Also I enjoyed the free muffins they gave away right before closing.  Also the weather today reminds me of DC.  I still think I’ll get back there sometime before to long.</sidenote>

March Madness, `eh?  They have the slate set for the big 64.  I’ve already got one bracket picked.  You can see it here (It’s in PDF).   We’ll see.  I’ll probably have a few different versions of it all before I’m done.  I’m in 4 different pools this year.  And to think the first time I picked them was 4 years ago.  It’s doesn’t require much sports knowledge.  So just get out there and play!

Tomorrow starts another work week.  My first full week in the Media Dept, verses last week pulling double duty.  So that’ll be very nice.  I’m guessing it will be some long hours, but that’s not so bad.  My wife works every night this week.  In fact by next Sunday she’ll have worked 11 days straight (and still only had a grand total of 67 hours in 14 days).  Although she does have 2 interviews tomorrow for some fulltime jobs, so hopefully she’ll get one of those!

In other news……  I can’t think of much. So I guess that means it’s time for me to sign off.  Peace dudes!

What a great combo!  The weather today has been super nice.  Getting my sister all loaded up to move wasn’t to bad.  I only helped load the truck.  I wasn’t going to go down to Mankato to help reload it.  So it wasn’t to bad.  Two of her neighbors came over to help as well, so that was sweet.  We had 6 people loading.  It only took about 3.5 hours.  Well, for what they took today.  So I can’t complain to much.  It was so nice out side thought that it made it all ok.

The weather was great.  I wore a long sleeve T-shirt and was comfy.  You gotta love that.  Plus it was so nice outside that I went for a jog.  Once again that was great.  I haven’t gone for a jog since last spring.  It felt good to get out there.  And using Google Pedometer I see that I ran just over 2 miles.

I watched a little bit of the Boys State Hockey Tourney today.  Now I’m watching the Badgers vs. the Illini in the Big Ten Tourney.  March Madness starts soon which means tournament pick`em is back!  I’m pretty pumped.  I like picking teams.  We’ll see how I do.

Now I feel a little sleepy.  And we loose an hour of sleep tonight.  Maybe I’ll take a short nap.

I had to pick between comp time and summer hours today.  So basically that means I took comp time.  Summer Hours basically mean that during the summer I’d work 7.5 hours a day.  Comp time means that for every 1.5 hours of overtime I work each pay period I get 1 hour of comp time.  And judging by what I hear (and am experiencing) comp time is the way to go. I had the chance to talk to the person who had my job before me.  She racked up 20 hours of Comp time in January before she left.  So that should kind of give you a glimpse of what kind of hours my job has!

Tater Tots!  Okay, so not just tater tots, but tater tot hotdish.  It’s good stuff.  That’s what I made for dinner tonight.  Now I have lunches for a few days too.  Although having a few days off (aka a weekend).

I’m a little sleepy.  And I have to, er get to, help my sister move tomorrow.  Thankfully I’m only helping load the truck.  I don’t have to follow it and unload it in Mankato.  But it will still be fun I am sure.

That’s what I feel my life has been the past few days.  It’s been super busy.  I started my media job on Monday.  But…. they didn’t hire my replacement LA until today, and they start tomorrow.  So for the first three days of this week I was pulling double duty.  So I’ve been doing Media and LA stuff.  It’s been busy!

I’m enjoying the Media stuff.  I’m using InDesign for somethings which is fun.  I’m also getting press release out.  So over all it’s fun.  I had about 12 unfinished projects dumped on me, which is fine, I’m just trying to get them all completed.  Hopefully I’ll have that number cut in half by the end of the day tomorrow.

So that’s my life in a nutshell.  Not much else going on besides that.  I feel like my new job is more interactive.  Which I guess it is.  It feels more like DC, because the hours are a little bit longer (at least while I’m doing double duty).

Anyway, it’s time for sleep.

So in my job I get to read a lot of political news articles (not like I didn’t read them anyway, but now their brought to my attention every morning). And today there were two that struck me.

The first one gets it right. I think what the legislature did was not right. Each and every person that ran for their respective office (Senate and House) knew the salary they would get, knew the per diem amount they would get, and knew the housing allowance they would get. If anyone of them did not like the amount then they should have not run. For what is supposed to be a part time, citizen legislature, we’re paying them a lot of money. The article talks about most of the perks that are included with being a legislator. I would love to see how much money each legislator takes in, and add it all up. I bet it’s pretty darn good for 8 months of work (out of every 24 months).

The second one is one I talked about before. I would love to know if someone campaigned on this issue, or where it comes from. There are so many things that people did campaign on that aren’t getting taken care of. But this one is going places.

I am also not happy with the proposed income tax increase. Why is it that with a $2 billion surplus (and $34 billion in spending this year by the state) that we need to raise taxes? It’s not just on income, but they want to raise the following:

• ½ cent metrowide sales tax
• 10 cents a gallon gas tax
• Statewide fuel taxes
• $20 per vehicle wheelage fee
• Increase in vehicle registration taxes and tab fees
• Sales tax on prefabricated homes
• New state tax on gifts
• Increase in the statewide home mortgage DEED tax by 50%
• Increase tax on car leases
• Extend the 6.5% sales tax to cosmetic surgery
• Increase tax on foreign operating corporations
• New state tax on gifts
• 5 cents a gallon paint tax

Isn’t $34 billion dollars in spending enough?