Daynotes On A Budget, V6.0

Living where I live, and being who I am, I shall never be described as a DEI hire.  But for those that think DEI hires are a problem, well, let me tell you as a fat old man, those who think so are wrong, in my not-very-humble opinion. Yeah, I know.  Shocking statement, but think about it.   I live in Minnesota.  I grew up in a town in the middle of the state, in what has been described in national media of the time as the "most Catholic" and whitest area of the country.  Then the early 1970s came upon it. In the area around St. Cloud, where I grew up, the early to mid 1970s saw a large influx of what were then termed "southeast Asian Refugees."  Due to the end of the Vietnam war, many people were seeking to settle here.  And by "here" I mean areas where farms were not yet ridiculously expensive, communities were thought to be welcoming, and people were just people. The current presidential race does tend to bear some of that out, with the Democrat...

It has been many years since I dealt with this, but it occurred to me some folks just aren't as smart as they think they are. It's State Fair time in Minnesota , so that's going on.  And there is always a lot of competition for booth sites for many things.  There are some booths, however, that are usually available right up to nearly opening day.  As was undoubtedly the case this year. Some of you may have heard that there's an election coming, and we here in Minnesota are a little more invested than we had been as our governor is now campaigning to become the third man from Minnesota to serve as Vice President, following Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, both within my lifetime.   Our State fair is pretty widely recognized as one of the biggest and best in the country.  There is no single focus area.  With all of the agriculture in this state, the Ag barns are a huge focus.  Unfortunately, due to the smaller number of farmers out there, Machine...

    My friend David Farquhar has posted some of the history of the Sega Genesis Game Console .  Back in late February, 1990, my store manager got a call from our district manager.  I was the Assistant Manager of the Software Etc. store in Ridgehaven, a strip mall across a few roads from Ridgehaven, a major shopping center in Minnetonka, Minnesota.  The district manager needed someone to close the Eden Prairie store, down the road from us, that night, because the previous store manager was, as of that date, no longer with the company. Eden Prairie Center has changed quite a bit over the years, but back then, it had a couple of things that made it stand out, if you worked for Software Etc.  That company began life in the corner of a B. Dalton bookstore in downtown Minneapolis, and one of the first stand-alone stores was set up in the basement of Southdale.  If you have spent any time at all in any mall in the country, you should tip your hat to Southdal...

It sure seems a very long time ago, but in the grander scale of time, not so long.  Longer than some lifetimes, shorter than others.   But back in the 1970s, my folk had a piano teacher come in for all of us to take lessons.  I think we each got maybe 15 minutes with her, and somehow we were all expected to practice our lessons during the rest of the week.  Mind you, I didn't know many other families with a baby grand piano.  In fact, we were the only one I knew of.  We had an upright piano we'd gotten before we moved into the house on the river, but the second summer I'd gone to summer camp, probably 1976, late July, my folks made a deal.  I came home from camp and the upright piano was out of the corner of the living room, replaced with this monster baby grand.   It played well enough, for all I knew.  I started out with a lot of finger exercises and scales, and then the dime dropped.  I figured out how to connect my piano le...

Yes, our governor has just been plucked from the obscurity of a governor to the target for all of the dipshit wingnuts who will unwind all of their personal foibles on Mr. Tim Walz, because he's been selected to run to lead the country with Kamala Harris.   To borrow my wife's quote, at least our choices are no longer doddering grampa against crazy grampa.  And as far as the soon to be launched "too liberal" attacks the Reprobates will undoubtedly wind up, Walz has said "I'm such a monster.  Feeding kids, making sure they got a good education, good health care, lived in a happy place."  Yep, that's Minnesota.  Walz did not do it all by himself, it certainly helped that many of the other elected representatives in state government weren't out of touch reprobates.   Sure, Mr. Walz had some learning moments.  If you, in your life, have not, well then stay quiet in your grave.  You might disturb the other mourners.  I do not require per...

I know, I know, I really need to work on my Olympic Spirit.   In my defense, the first Olympic Games I recall were the 1972 Munich games.  And any student of history or a person who was alive back then knows what happened.  So I guess it's probably fair to say that going back that far, pretty easy to understand why I'm not a huge fan of the Olympics.  I do have some positive memories of them, but there's also the 2008 Olympics, I spent most of that stuck in the hospital learning I was diabetic and dealing with an infected leg.   So other than that, the news is, well, the news.  Things change, things stay the same, and my neighborhood...  Well, same thing.   Earlier this summer a house across the main drag from where I live changed hands.  The previous occupants were quiet and fans of a football team - I'm not sure if the banners in their front yard were for the 49ers or Kansas City, but they were quiet.  The home is now oc...