Try out piotter.us/weddingphotos for all of the official ones, plus a set my 2nd cousin so graciously did for us.

Also a few family/friends have posted a few to Facebook, which I now have a nifty link to facebook.com/mpiotter

All the wedding can also be seen at the wedding website: michaelpiotter.com/wedding as well!

Enjoy!

Way to piss on the customer. And it reinforces why I have since moved all my domain names away from this company. Hosting may well be next…

Dear Customer,

1and1 Internet appreciates your business, and we hope that you are
happy with our services.

In order to stay competitive and continue to offer you excellent services,
we have made changes to our pricing structure in accordance with the
changes in the industry. This change affects new domain registrations
and domain renewals.

Since November 3, 2008, the following domain rates apply:
.com, .net, .us, .org, .info, .name, and .biz domains have been increased
to
$8.99 per year

1and1 is committed to offering very competitive prices and professional
services in the domain environment and we hope to continue to meet and
surpass your service expectations.

None the less, McCain didn’t win. I think he was screwed over since his initial presidential run in 2000 when his campaign stalled as a frat-boy from Texas noodled his way into the White House. McCain never really recovered from that. His form in the campaign was off, and the administration sure didn’t do him a single favor for torpedoing his run in 2000. Ah, time for a change.

As for the US Senate race in Mn, it was ridiculous. Why didn’t the two main idiots just say they were gonna bash the other in so many ways that it would look more like a sissy fight than a run for elected office. These two took pride,it looked like, in hating the other guy and finding new ‘campaign’ ways to do so. Yuck.

Al Franken got what he deserved. After losing outstate Mn in the primaries to his DFL competitor, he was blase enough to admit that his real opponent was Norm Coleman the whole time. I sure that statement and attitude were enough to convince some couple hundred voters to switch to GOP or even Independence Party, which fared better than may have been expected. It is of note that the Independence Party did play a spoiler of sorts in this election as well. Just goes to show that 3rd party politics may liven up the electoral scene.

As for the citizens of Minnesota, the majority of them took it upon themselves to raise their taxes via a sales tax increase. They bit this propaganda hook, line, and sinker (or art piece, I forget). Little did anyone mention that the arts and parks would greatly benefit from a good chunk of this amendments ‘great outdoors’ improvement plea. Little did the state government have to worry about, because with it’s passage, they passed the buck (no pun intended) and get to bask in squandering my generations taxes on whatever they have to money to.

Where did all that ’state lottery’ money go we Minnesotans were promised a decade or so ago? All I have heard was embezzlement charges against the big shots running that gig. Yuck.

These taxes tend to stay on the books too. Mankato for one, is a city around the area that has had implemented an extra sales tax to pay for a ‘regional’ project in the Civic Center, but now after the initial taxing period has expired, they conveniently found numerous other ‘priorities’ that needed funding. Yuck.

Almost can’t wait for another even numbered year. Yuck.

Since eBay ditched it’s latest CEO for a new, fresh CEO, the company has taken some fairly drastic steps to change it’s business model while cutting away the almost utter devotion most avid users had for the service/community it created.

It has been slowly evolving. First they raise prices for things, which justified or not almost always happens with any floundering and/or greedy business.

Next they decided to take away the voice of reason that many a trustful and honest eBayer relied on, the positive/negative feedback tool. Now a seller cannot complain about a deadbeat buyer, but the buyer can continue to blast you as a seller without real visible recourse.

The latest indiscretion is what really makes you wonder what will come next. Now eBay is insisting that you ship products out for a set price, no mind whether the time/energy to ship at that price is even relevant.

I’ve read that eBay is trying to cater to the larger sellers on eBay with it’s fees and Buy-it-now auctions, but with all the changes and the utter disregard for the small time buyer/seller, eBay is cutting it’s core audience to the bone.

They are slowly morphing into a online storefront. Gone will be the entertainment and candor of possibly the first internet e-tailer that really had a compelling reason for people to get on the internet and buy/sell almost whatever you could dream up on a site originally dealing with Pez dispensers.

It annoys me and I can see myself shying away from the site due to this continued behavior.

We had a local politician come by the other day and all I can say it is was amusing. Seems there’s a commissioner race heating up for the district basically surrounding Gaylord and Sibley Township. Currently there are 4 filed candidates. With a primary looming, the list shall be whittled down to 2 for the fall election. One of the candidates decided to pay a visit to our place on Labor Day. Fitting enough and given the right circumstances a good move as he was the one and so far only candidate to visit our place.

Given this start things looked promising. But then went south real quick. Candidate drives up as I am working on car and promptly asks “Is your mom home?”. Make no mistake, I am a voting age citizen and for the life of me only know this candidate for his dubious elected position history and family. So after blowing off me as a vote, he proceeds to the house. At the house, my mother meets this candidate as well. After coming to the door, she is effectively thrown a brochure for this candidate, with no mention of his name, why he is at her door or what she should do with said piece of paper. All that come’s out of candidate’s mouth is “…. um the primary is next Tuesday, um….” and with not much more than that proceeds to leave. What a riot! No discussion, no introduction, nothing.

Later, candidate is seen leaving neighbor’s drive moments after arriving. Which makes this even funnier is that driveway is some 1/2 mile long and candidate is seen backing out. Either he didn’t make it up the driveway or backed up the whole 1/2 after his flier was presumably thrown in neighbor’s general direction. Given the previous firsthand account, both would not be a stretch of the imagination.

What a moron. Why are you running for office if you are afraid of people? Was he put up to this as some kind of prank? How can this be campaigning? You may need to talk to people if they are to actually give a care about what it is you intend to do. This guy doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of doing anything with campaigning like this.

And he somehow got elected to the school board? How?

But wait, there’s more to this saga.

Seeing as leaving a frost-heaved road to it’s own devices is not sound township governing policy, the local intelligencia has come up with a few marvelous solutions.

Alfsborg Township to the immediate west of us has tried a few different tacts. First wise idea was to put rather large (think knuckle sized) rocks down, to ‘fill in’ the frost heaves and then put new gravel over that. While this has seemed to work, it scares the hell out of you when you’re driving and it sounds as though one of those rocks is coming up through the floorboards at you after you kick up one of these rocks. A tad disheartening. Not sure what to make out of it if one of those rocks were to fly/hit anything with so much as a pulse.

Alfsborg has also been ripping up the middle of some real troublesome spots that were pretty much pure dirt/mud and replacing that with pure gravel. Interesting take, haven’t had a problem with these yet, although a good dousing of rain could hamper things (maybe not this year though).

But the blockbuster, cake winner, hands down idiot award goes to the local township buffoons in good ol’ Sibley Township. Seems that in a effort not to be outdone by the upstarts to the west, Sibley Township came up with it’s own harebrained scheme to rid the township of previously mentioned frost-heaved roads. It started out peculiarly one morning with a fellow, presumed to be in the employ of the township, seen discing up the roadside slope of 481st Avenue. While this seemed like a ill advised attempt to dissuade neighbors from haying their ditch easements, it got wilder. A two mile stretch of this roadway was eventually worked up and left fallow.

In discussions with local governing officials, it seems the plan was to work up the ditches unto the road because they contained so much gravel and redo the road from these slopes.

WHAT THE HELL?

How the hell is putting black dirt on a gravel based, gravel covered road supposed to help? This is the rationale though, because someone somewhere heard that this may have happened somewhere else and worked? Whatever.

So today, these bozos went through with their little plan to screwup the road even worse. As I was coming home my normal route, I notice a completely black dirt covered road with two graders grading gravel on top of this. This effectively shut down this road, with no warning or heads up from the township other than to relay their plan when asked about it.

But they didn’t do all of the road, no. They still have roughly 1.5 mile stretch to go, once again on the main route I take to almost everything in Gaylord on a daily basis. I cannot imagine how this fiasco will end up. No doubt it will rain and create a soup hole the likes no one alive could imagine a township government would pay for. I can only imagine they hoarded all this money away from the last few comparatively mild to blow on the craziest frost-heave suppression scheme ever proffered.

Good riddance!

With a giant eye on the future of technology, the government has decided it no longer needs analog TV signals transmitting a loved and long cherished obsession. So out with the old and in with the new – digital TV.

Oh, but wait, the populous will need to either a) buy new TVs with a digital tuner or b) get a setup converter to dumb down digital broadcasts. This in itself has led to a great reason for most people to ditch the old clunker TV that in many cases would still work fine for years to come. This is regardless if they actually would need a digital TV for general viewing, do to the fact that cable and satellite TV are already digital pictures.

That leaves the rest of us, namely the poor and/or rural left with the other option – convert the digital to analog. The government in it’s wisdom decides that since these boxes will sell for 40+ that it will offer a discount on these boxes, which for almost obvious reasons will never cost just $40. Rather than provide the masses these setup converters free via a local federal institution (i.e. Post Office), they sell them at any electronics shop.

Wal-mart, the king of cheap, promptly has a run on these as they are about the only company willing to sell them near cost. This pushes the rest of the suckers out to the high priced outfits that sell these units for greatly inflated prices.

While a fairly easy device to set up, the devil is in the details. Now instead of one remote for a TV, you must either juggle two or figure out a quasi universal remote to function as your goto TV manipulator. Yuck. I don’t really wanna power on/off two things just to watch my old TV. No doubt this in itself is another great ploy for you to go out and upgrade TVs as well.

While is awesome to have a weather station affiliated with KARE TV and a FOX affiliate out of Mankato, it’s just another bunch of fairly useless TV options to flip through.

I can’t imagine what the uproar will be when all those poor, unenlightened and/or old people find next that things don’t work like they had. After all, that’s who will be the most effected by this turnover. The government will be to blame for selling out this demographic in return for the millions they can make by auctioning off the old TV spectrum we loved. They will also be giving the electronics industry a second boost by people scrapping out their old TVs for something that just plain works without all the trouble and pain this transition.

What a joke!