Just a short post for now. Sunday was a pretty good day despite my being stuck, unexpectedly in a three hour computer session with Indian techies who helped me iron out my backup program.
That session darn near left me brain dead since I mostly just watched the invisible techies move my cursor around as they diagnosed my problems. I had to stay and watch in case they had to send me “chat” instructions. The worst thing about the loss of time was that the unexpectedly long session meant I couldn’t go to the surprise 50th birthday party of Chris who was my “campaign manager” in my last campaign for congress with the rest of my family.
The sun came out in the late afternoon to counterbalance that annoyance. I’ve got all the gardening preliminaries done so I can attend to the campaign with no great distractions other than greeting relatives and going on a couple short vacations.
I’m a little stiff this morning from the time in front of the computer both with the techies and from six hours of augmenting the LDV contributor list. I’m about a third done figuring out the precincts that each of the LDV contributors live in and putting it on a spread sheet. It was something I hoped to get done last year but simply did not have the time to do. It would have been a much more potent data base. By the end of the week it will be available for my campaign.
Visitors to the blog were light on Sunday because its going on summer and because I wrote so few posts. I’ll periodically slow down the posting as other activities pull me away – like data entry. I had a few comments to make about stories in the Trib. Robin Washington commented on some of the Trib’s remaining reporters who have taken on new jobs.
I’d add my observations about a couple of them. Jana Peterson is heading off to run the Cloquet Pine Journal. I’ll miss her. As editor of the Budgeteer she was fair and neutral in the Red Plan debate. She seemed to start out as a fan of the Red Plan. Unlike the folks running the Trib, who seemed motivated by small town political and social alliances, Jana treated Let Duluth Vote and its allies respectfully and coverage of the Red Plan from the District’s perspective made room for some skepticism.
I see that Brandon Stahl has been given more responsibility. I like Brandon’s blog and appreciate the fact that his comments show some humility and introspection. I have yet to become acquainted with any of the Trib reporters Robin wrote about. I’ve talked with Brandon on the phone once or twice and sent him an email or two but that’s about it. I’m so unfamiliar with not education reporters that on Thursday when I picked up some documents at the City Clerk’s office I asked a vaguely familiar young man walking down the stairs if he was Brandon. Turned out he was Dan Hartman a new City Councilor. I apologized and he was generous and amused by my ignorance. Once I’m in the legislature I’ll get better acquainted with all the councilors.
Again my reminder that these Harry’s Diary entries are mostly on the fly and I won’t kill myself proof reading them. I’ve got lots of data entry ahead of me this morning so that’s where I’m headed right now. Ciao.
