Anyhow, the first story was on NPR Morning Edition on September 5, 2008 about Robert Morrow, the country coroner, dentist, and volunteer fireman.

The second story which was on the NPR Morning Edition on November 3, 2008 were various viewpoints about how people there were voting, and included interviews of a couple of friends of mine. Cool stuff!

Be sure to check out the photo galleries in both stories– great photos!

Blue Sage Realty in Westminster Sucks!

I also posted a review of Blue Sage Realty, Westminster CO at Yelp.

There are a few other listings for Blue Sage on the interwebs, so this is the one that he had this bad experience at:

Blue Sage Realty, Inc
8471 Turnpike Dr, Suite 220
Westminster, CO 80031
(303) 432-9898 Office

http://www.bluesagerealtyinc.com

I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety.

Well said.

Stocks take a turn for the worse as investors scoff at the Fed’s decision to step in yet again, this time adding $3 bln in temporary reserves. At $35 bln (the sum of the first two repos), the Fed had already stepped in more aggressively than its actions following the 9/11 attacks to calm a nervous market.

Since a third injection is unprecedented, as such infusions typically only occur during a crisis, investors are again left wondering just how bad the subprime situation is and questioning whether or not an emergency rate cut would even be enough to avert a possible true credit crunch.

I’ve seen Jim Cramer go asplodey before, and mostly I just generally find him entertaining rather than taking his advice seriously at all, but he really went AWOL on CNBC about this same issue recently.

My assessors evaluation this year showed that my place has lost value, homes in the area are now selling for about 10-15% less than I paid four years ago, and many houses have gone to into foreclosure in this area. I’m still waiting to see what prices the homes that recently sold in a foreclosure auction went for wondering how much they will bring the value of my place down. I do somewhat regret buying a place when I was so young, but maybe it’s better in the long run to learn this lesson on a relatively inexpensive piece of property with a standard 30 year loan.

Early Sunday afternoon I started looking around on the interwebs about buying a Wii just for the hell of it. I found a couple of sites which tracked where you could by them online via RSS but I didn’t bookmark them. I’d read somewhere that you can sometimes come across them on Sunday’s because for whatever reason that’s when retailers have been putting them out lately, so I started calling around to see if they had any:

Super Target: “We won’t have a shipment of them for at least a couple of weeks. Even then it’s only a few”
Game Crazy: “No idea when we’ll get another shipment. Just try calling every few days, but it might be a few weeks.”
WalMart: “We had 5 in stock this morning, and I don’t think anyone has bought any yet.”

Wait. Woah, wtf, they have them in stock? I’d just got done selling a bunch of stuff on Craigslist and decided it would be my only chance in quite awhile to get one, so Linz and I hurried down there.

Me: “Hey, I called earlier and someone said you have Wii’s in stock?”
Walmart Lady: (lights up) “Yep, we do. Would you like me to go to the back and get you one?”
Me: “Yep!”

It was kind of crazy– since they weren’t out on the floor no one would have even known they were there. As it turns-out, I just got randomly lucky. Apparently they have been getting about 5 per week, which they usually put up for sale at midnight on Saturday. This past Saturday someone new was working and had no idea about this, so a bunch people came to buy them around that time and he told everyone that they didn’t have any.

As I was buying mine someone else was getting one as well, and you could tell a couple of other people were thinking about it too just because they had them in stock. The WalMart employee (an older woman) was actually all excited about it and it was because she had a Wii as well and got a kick out of someone finally discovering they had them in stock. She gave me a couple of good pointers on games to pick and what accessories I needed (this was definitely an unexpected purchase so I didn’t already know that stuff).

You can read all about how cool it is in other places, and yeah, it’s totally a blast. Lindsey and I played Wii Sports and Wii Play the rest of the afternoon until she needed to go home. So far I’ve mostly been playing Wii Sports– I also have Trauma Center but am waiting until Wii Sports starts getting a bit boring before playing it. Not sure what games I’ll buy next, but I have my eye on several.

I guess if I actually used the Twitter account I signed-up for a couple of months ago, this would be a good entry for that.

Something that has been in the back of my mind for quite awhile was to try out wet shaving using an old school safety razor and associated supplies. I finally got around to putting together a very basic wet shaving kit and I’m very glad I did. My kit looks something like this:

• Merkur “Hefty Classic” Safety Razor
• Vulfix #850 Pure Badger Shaving Brush
• Taylor of Old Bond Street Shaving Cream
• Proraso Shaving Soap
• Neutrogena Razor Defense Aftershave Cream
• A Pack of Assorted Razors
• A Bowl from Target

As far as creams and blades go, you’re supposed to try some different things to see what you like best which is why I have various blades and shaving cream. All of this ran me around $100 or so– the upfront cost is a bit steep, but in the long run I only pay around 50 cents per blade for the ones I’m currently using, and have samples of some that are as low as 25 cents a piece which are also supposed to be decent. The Proraso shaving soap is available at Target in the Spa section, so I really only ever need to mail order blades.

I first started wet shaving for a couple of weeks using my normal mach 3 razor just to get used to the process, and finally moved to the safety razor this week. I’m happy to report that I’ve shaved successfully without any nicks with the safety razor, and my skin seems to generally be much happier with the wet shaving. Even the fun “neck bumps” (ingrown hairs I assume?) are starting to go away. It does take a lot more time for me to shave this way, but I limit it to a few times a week in the evening. I’m also getting a much closer and longer lasting shave, and my face doesn’t feel like it’s on fire after shaving. Actually with the Proraso shaving soap it’s quite the opposite– it has glycerin menthol in it which feels nice and cool.

I’m definitely glad I made the switch, and highly recommend checking into it! I have a few links here if you’d like to research it yourself. I think the two most helpful links to pass on is this very detailed overview on how to get started with wet shaving, as well as this video series which shows you how to actually wet shave.

• I haven’t talked to my dad specifically about the whole snow situation recently, but I have heard that the counties in SE Colorado were rejected Federal Aid by FEMA. Luckily the area has finally been getting in the press from time to time, so I felt like I didn’t necessarily need to do any updates myself. I actually e-mailed a number of local papers and TV stations about getting more coverage about the story, and in one instance, I felt like I may have made a small difference. One of the people I e-mailed directly was a reporter at 9News, and I saw him on location in La Junta the following day. It was also the lead-off story on the nationally syndicated NBC Nightly News one evening. New Colorado Governor Bill Ritter also came in and did a good job with the situation taking over where outgoing Governor Bill Owens left off.
• I started a new job, and it’s great. We’ve been getting both local and national press lately, and the last one I know of is an article in the Denver Post that came out last week. It’s so nice to be in a small company again despite the crazyness of a startup, and I’m already engaged in a cool project. The commute to downtown Boulder sucks at times, but surprisingly I find that it’s cheaper to eat lunch there compared to The Barrens of Broomfield.
• As part of the new job, I decided it was time I switched to a Mac. I now have a work issued MacBook Pro which is loaded to the gills. It’s awesome. Time to sell the laptop, and hopefully get something Mac’ish at home this Summer to eradicate myself of anything Windows related…
• Farecast rocks. I signed-up long ago when it was still double secret beta or something and only served Seattle and Boston, but I just scored some round-trip tickets from Denver to Las Vegas for Lindsey and I @ $108 each. My advice– sign-up for the e-mail notifications just to make sure you check the fares a few times a day, it’s crazy how quickly they change. The RSS feeds don’t seem to work quite right yet.
• I wrote a blog entry that turned into an article which bumped out Bruce Eckel to be on the front page of the Java Developer’s Journal for a few days. We’re totally in the same league now. </sarcasm></egosurfing>

Until next time…

According to my server logs, two of the biggest fans of my Snacks On A Plane spoof are the US Department of Justice, and The Pentagon.

I remember having an ice storm in Colorado sometime around 1984 (I was 5 or 6) which was not early this bad, but I haven’t experienced a storm like that since then. We had cattle at the time and my dad and I had to go out and knock all of the ice off of the electric fences to keep them from getting out as well as busted holes in iced over water tanks so that the cattle would have something to drink. Consequently that was the first time I remember driving– I had to steer my dad’s Bronco while he knocked the ice off with a shovel on the electric fence. Man, has life changed since then…