An interesting point...

In driving home from lunch the other day, with my boss, he reminded me of one thing that I had forgotten about.

With a justice in the 80s, and 4 in their 70s, whomever is the next president may have a huge impact on the future of this country by the possible appointments. This is an important thing that I hope that the Clinton Democrats who are still upset about the choice for the candidate realize they are making.

Anyways i heard parts of the speeches of both Clintons and Biden, and all of the Obama speech. But being that they are available on podcasts, I downloaded all of them and will be listening to them in their entirety. To give the RNC fair time I signed up for theirs when they are available.

Microsoft and Google coming to Iowa

In looking at the Des Moines Register's website yesterday, I read an opinion of someone who was complaining about the tax breaks given to both Microsoft and Google announced plans to build huge data centers in the state of Iowa. The complaint is that for the mere support of 50-75 high paying jobs per facility, and a burden on our electrical system we are trading off for huge tax breaks.

For me, this goes much deeper.

First, Google and Microsoft, even if they hire outside labor, that labor will be spending money when they are building the facilities. Being that these are huge, it will probably end up being a boon to local contractors that probably have been hurt by the downturn in the housing market (while in Iowa it hasn't been as bad as other places, it certainly has had an affect).

Second, because they are coming, there will be an uptick in investment in the infratstructure of both the electrical and internet infrastructure of Iowa. I know that Iowa has a few initiatives to build large scale wind farms, and I'm a big fan (ha ha) of that. We are used to cheap electrical prices, and I don't want that to change, but the demand from both of these, while it will be big, will only prod companies to further invest in the power generating capabilities of the state. As far as the internet goes, Iowa does not have some huge hubs of where internet traffic goes. If you take a look at the map, places like Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis have quite a number of giant pipes that go through their city. Because you would have both companies wanting multiple connections through multiple routes to the internet (to avoid things such as fiber cuts, or etc), this will prod development to bring multiple large lines to Iowa.

Having more cheap power and more redundant places to get to the internet will look very tempting to other companies that may be considering a place to put people for an IT company. Iowa has a fairly well educated workforce, but we still loose a lot of young people because a lot of the type of jobs that people want aren't here...but there is no reason why they couldn't be.

I'm thrilled that they're both coming and I have high hopes with what may follow and be spurred on by both Google and Microsoft building data centers here.

At what point...

Tonight, Gracie (the cat) proceeded to ruin a few mementoes from college. Though all of them are fairly minor, they have made the cut of clutter over the years. The highlight of which was a pen that my youngest sister brought back from Russia for me.

I'm a bit more then pissed (especially in the attempted recovery I was basically pissed on, since urine flowed from the plastic drawers onto myself), and I don't know how much more I can take.

This is not the first time that Gracie has peed. She's peed on my sandals (ruined), at the front door (we now have items there to make it less then comfortable to pee in the corners). She then proceeded to pee at the base of the basement stairs...not once, but twice. After the second time, Shannon put a litter box there...and while she went in there for a while...apparently that was no longer good enough.

Snippets

For as much crap as I've taken over the years from being from the backwaters of Iowa (even if the smallest place I've lived was Ames at around 50,000 people), all I can say is that at least I'm not from West Virgina...The interviews they had from people there are just shockingly misinformed. From what I've read, it didn't take much for the reporters to find those people.

Yesterday, my dad, youngest sister, Lovina, and her two girls drove through and I fed them dinner. It was nice, but the children were obviously a bit restless, considering they have driven from California (Lovina's staying with my parents while her hubby finishes up the last parts of his military training).

Saturday, I missed out on Django's preview (My boss used the tickets in my name, said the food was great), but I had the opportunity to go see Shannon's niece and nephew in the Cherie's Dance Studio Recital. It was...well...long. Obviously parts of it was cute (the parts with them in it) and parts were interesting (the elite dancers are pretty good), but over all, by the end of the night I was anxious to go home (2.5+ hours is a long time to sit). As a note to my siblings who wonder why I don't go to their children's activities. If we can drive to it, and you give us enough notice and we're not already doing something, then we'll consider it. But if you call me the week before and ask me to attend, don't be surprised if we can't make it.

Our upcoming camping trip with friends, got it's location changed from the Decorah area, to much closer to home, and with the price of gas, I'm quite happy about that.

My foot/ankle is betterish, though there is still some residual pain...I thinking about seeing the doctor again this week...

Samsung SCH-U340

Ok so last week...or the week before I got a new phone for work (two year replacement plan)...We switched from a meh nokia phone, to the Samsung SCH-U340.

I gotta say that I hate this phone. First off, the user interface (I don't know if this is US Cellular or Samsung) is often counter intuitive. Text messages are annoying to create and the ringer settings for messages should be, I don't know, with the other ringer settings?, but no it's in a separate settings only for messages. I can see why you do that, but if you are gonna have settings under messages, shouldn't you still also have them in the settings?

It's a folding phone and at the back near the top, it came with a sticker that said, basically, this is where the antenna is, please don't put things over it (like my fat fingers). So when I hold the phone, lets just say that my finger naturally crosses that zone. Then there are two sets of buttons placed on the side of the phone. One set controls the volume (ringer when not talking, loudness when talking), while the other controls the camera and speaker phone. Now I haven't had this problem, since in my left pocket where I keep my phone, I generally don't keep other items, however, Brandon, has taken many many pictures of the inside of his pocket. He finally figured out how to lock the phone, but he says it's a gigantic pain in the ass (and it doesn't lock everything, just most things).

So because of the button placement, I've often changed the volume of the speaker while talking on the phone, with out intentionally doing so....it's annoying. Both sets of button are where my fingers naturally go sometimes when I'm covering up the antenna and almost always, if I make the effort to not cover the antenna....

Basically the phone sucks...but I guess that's what I get for the no money I pay for it and the no monthly bill I have (work pays). Hopefully the Blackberry trial will be over soon and I'll get one of those instead (or something else better).

mmm...easter

So we headed over to Cedar Rapids for easter. The drive over wasn't too bad, though there seemed to be a plethora of drivers who were in such a hurry that they had to drive like extreme jackholes...

We stopped first and Shannon's parents and chatted while they ate dinner. Sean was feeling under the weather (ear infection) but Sheighliegh (sp?) seemed to be as chipper as normal.

It was pretty fun...good to catch up

We headed over to my parents around 3 to have a late lunch/early dinner. At my house the attendance was fairly light, comparatively, with only my parents, us, Jed and Stephanie, Joseph and Isaac for a total of 8. Josephy made a smoked a leg of lamb and we had quite the setting of sides. For dessert we had pie, pumpkin (mom still has lots and lots of pumpkin) and basically a chocolate nut fudge pie...both in my grandma's crust recipe (made with lard!). Dinner was great, the lamb was smokey, lamby, and juicey. Big fan. I also got to try Joesph's attempt at BBQ sauces. One he wanted to have a root beer undertone, but wasn't able to achieve it, although it was still a pretty good sweet sauce. The second was a mustard based sauce w/ bacon...it was very good. In fact at a recent church potluck, he was asked many times for the recipe....

After dinner, we chatted a while, and then we headed home. Traffic was much worse coming on, including an incident with a douche on the south side of CR, in a crappy looking red Hyundai Elantra, got on I380 on the Highway 30 on ramp, proceeded to cut me off, accelerate, and then exit at the VERY NEXT EXIT...

There were numerous people that were in such a hurry, that they had to drive like total jack holes, to gain a mere car length. When I think about the tickets that I have received over the years, which I've received many, I get a little miffed, that my speeding is ticketed, but these guys driving relatively recklessly is not. I don't generally drive in such a future fashion, and yet I'll get dinged for 12 over...oh well.

One more mediacom statement...I think

So I got my last statement from mediacom, telling me that my balance is $0.00...why does this warrant an entry?

In the "For Your Information" section of the the following was printed:

Your account is seriously past due. Immediate action is required. Please call our office today to avoid further collection activity.

Seriously? Are you gonna try to collect the lack of money I owe you?

You'd think they'd have something in there that would basically state if amount owed = 0 then this message cannot display...

*sigh*

Oh well...

random ranting and other things

Well I guess I don't have much bad to say about mediacom, 2/3rds of my last payment came back. So I guess that's a good thing. I got the check about a week ago.

I'm sick of winter. The snow, then the warm up, then the icy snow, then a warm up...I heard we're over 50 inches for this winter...which, while isn't record breaking, is quite a bit above normal.

So with the kitchen cart, the saga continues. I finally opened up the big box that contained a door and two hinges...quite the over packing. To find out the door was the wrong one...but I only found it after I had to break the door that was on there (with the mis-drilled holes), to try to get it on. So I called and another door is on the way...hopefully for the last time.

I got my new glasses today. I got them from Russ' Uptown Optical, where I had what I think is the best eye exam I've had, and then proceeded to drop a chunk of change (mmm...pre tax dollars) on the new ones. They're pretty nice...light and the new coating on them makes the outside look quite a bit better.

I took the day off...I'm starting to like this every other Friday off thing...and considering I can do that and still gain time in my PTO bank (mine is 87% full).

Mediacom Resolution on it's way

Recieved this email about a day ago:

Thank you for your recent email to our Customer Service Department and providing your account information so that we may access your account. Please disregard that billing statement that states that you owe a balance with Mediacom Communications. You actually have a credit refund on your account this should be on its way to you very soon.

If you need further assistance or have any additional questions please feel free to contact us via e-mail and we will be happy to assist you, but please be sure to include your original email for reference. Or you may contact us through our Customer Service Department at 800-332-0245, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for your convenience.

Thank you.

Ben S.
Mediacom Customer Service
E-Mail North Central Division

Certainly not a direct answer to my question, but does lead to the right resolution.

Whee!

Got the paper bill from Mediacom today...my patience is running out.