News – Story: WSexual assault allegations, accusations and admissions are rampant and are pretty much affecting just about anyone in politics and the entertainment industry; at what point do we know who’s done what and when can we expect the biggest and most powerful sexual assaulter – President Donald J Trump – to finally get properly taken down?

– How long has email been around? Many years; How long has free email accounts been around? many years as well; so you would think that with a free email account widely available – Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com (formerly Hotmail) and so many others, that creating a free account for all of your personal emails wouldn’t be an issue, right?; guess again; I know at least 20 people in my life that only use their work email for everything, including their banking, sending emails to family, jokes, memes, social media authentication; all of that contained inside the email account that is related to the jobs they perform; memo from the boss on your meeting notes sits next to an email from your mom asking about what time dinner is on Sunday; why does this bother me? well, if you ask yourself that what happens when you switch jobs; all of those personal emails remain on the email account when you quit, including the ones that are related to job hunting sites to help you find the next job; most likely deleted in the following weeks after you’ve quit; if you have a Gmail account, you get to keep that account after you quit and move on to another job; plus, many companies have policies in place for accessing non-work related content; having your personal emails is non-work related; I’ve heard the argument about “I don’t need another email account” or “I don’t know how to setup and access a Gmail account”; please, just stop with this; if you are that limited in your computer skills, you might want to consider a job that doesn’t require any computer skills; so just do yourself a favor and create that free account and update your email address on all of your personal things with it; you will thank me when you want those emails from your mom a year after you quit your current job.

– this year, I visited Europe for the first time (still working on blog posts for that 18 days trip), went to Cabo San Lucas again in October and went to Austin TX to celebrate a friend’s 50th birthday; yes, travel is not cheap and it adds to my debt, but both my wife and I try to find the most reasonable ways to traveling; Europe was a Viking River Cruise starting in Amsterdam and ending in Budapest; Cabo San Lucas was a use it or lose it week we took, staying at our time share at Playa Grande; and Austin was a quick 4 days – an extended weekend if you will, where we stayed at my friend’s house; Over the years, we have built some amazing memories of places that I’ve been before and many others where it was my first time visiting; I hope to keep doing this for many years and seeing more and more places and building more memories.

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News – Story 1: When there are bills drafted to dismantle the EPA and the Dept of Education and more than 600 positions left to be filled in the Trump cabinet and administration, it makes you wonder why is this happening. We take a look at the real future of the federal government under Trump and his administration and why they are trying to make it smaller.

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News – Story 1: Trump claims Obama wiretapped Trump Tower

– we have a couple of venues here in Salt Lake City that are owned by a group called United Concerts; one is a 1200 person indoor club with general admission standing room called The Depot and it’s located downtown; the other is Usana Amphitheater which is an outdoor place that hold about 20,000 people between reserved seats and general admission lawn; on every Friday from 2pm to 6pm, the box office at The Depot was open to purchase tickets with only a $2 per ticket service charge (they recently raised it to $3 per ticket) for shows at The Depot and lawn seating at Usana; this is much cheaper for tickets instead of going through the monopoly ticket agency here in Utah called SmithsTix where service charges can be almost $20 a ticket for some shows; but they recently changed to where the box office is now closed on Friday and the only time you can get tickets from The Depot is on nights they have shows, where the box office opens at 6pm; more limited times to get tickets is another money grab, in my opinion; forcing us concert goers trying to save a few bucks to have to watch for those nights with shows and compete with those getting tickets via will call; there was no notice of this; I had to call United Concerts to confirm this; the ticket service changes subject alone would warrant a rant; so plan ahead if you were thinking of going to The Depot on a Friday afternoon to save on concert tickets.

– If 16 years ago, 14 years ago… hell even 12 years ago, I would have said you “I will gain a new found respect for President George W. Bush”, I would asked you to check my sanity; but here we are, under an even worse President (who gained that honor just 30 days into his term), I am watching President George W. Bush on talk shows, showing off his painting skills and donating the money to Veterans, which during his 8 years, didn’t get hardly any respect from the things he did and didn’t do for them; While the things he did in office are unforgivable for me, I do have to give a level of positive to someone who is at least good at staying mostly out of the spotlight since he left office and has honed his skills as a painter; I have no plans to purchase his book, even though the proceeds do benefit veterans, but I will watch him on talk shows that help promote his non-polital career after his 8 horrible years as President of this country.

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News – Story: The recent increase in ICE arrests, detaining and deporting and how the manner they are being done and how they are affecting the lives of illegals living in the US and their legal US citizen family members.

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News – Story 1: Detained at airports is using any connection to the banned 7 countries to deny entry to the US

– yeah, let’s just skip right past spring and go into the warm summer months; I know that’s not possible, but it’s what I look forward to each and every year after dealing with winter months of cold, snow and ice; this winter was colder than others and we got a lot of snow over the 3 official months; and spring here in Utah isn’t really spring for the most part as we do get some pretty wet and heavy snow days all the way into the first part of June; yes, I’ve experienced snow on Memorial Day several times in the 28 years that I’ve lived here; I keep telling myself that I will move to a warmer climate, but it never happens; mostly due to family here and I’ve not put a lot of effort into leaving the state; as I get closer to the age of 55, I might end up putting more efforts into this warmer climate business; until then, there are more winters in my future.

– my thoughts on the broadcast, the host Jimmy Kimmel, who won, what movies I’ve seen that were nominated and won and the Best Picture mixup

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News – Story: Utah loses Outdoor Retailers conventions due to state government and legislature efforts to rescind the Bears Ears National Monument and severely reduce the 20 year old Grand Staircase Escalante national monument. Why companies are upset at Utah for favoring the use of protected lands and how pushing back to elected officials can keep the destruction to a minimum.

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News – Story 1: Milo Yiannopoulos has his upcoming book cancelled; loses his tech editor job at Breitbart News

– this should tell you something about the general level of intelligence of a good number of Trump supporters by their social media responses to anything they do not agree with; facts don’t matter with these people as it’s painfully obvious that even the most obvious tweets and Facebook posts are met with “rigged” or “fake news” or “sad”, mimicking their Orange leader’s tweets to anything he doesn’t like; there is hardly any logical replies by those dedicated to defending Trump every step of the way; I expect that if a statement such as “skin is mostly water” were made, there would be immediate denial and a “fake news” reply uttered, with I’m sure a virtual pat on the back from the other supporters; it makes me sad to see this complete disregard for any type of fact, especially if it’s mentioned by a liberal person; as a life long liberal, I try to keep an open mind from anyone, regardless of party affiliation, and fact check what I’m reading before responding with a one word babble of nonsense; I fear for out future when we have millions that hate facts and blinding support an ignorant elected official.

– “Stalled 2” was a remake from a shorter video my daughter and I made back in September 2007; almost 10 years later, we decided to enter the X96 Radio From Hell Film Festival and ended up recreating that film, in longer form; the original was 1 min long; this film is 3 1/2 minutes long; it comes from a real life thing that happened to me when I was in a grocery store bathroom and there was no toilet paper in the stall; I called the store and had someone bring me toilet paper; the original film was shown at the Treo Film Festival in Hollywood, CA in October 2007, which I attended; This newer video didn’t win any awards or prizes at the X96 Film Festival, but it was fun to hear the reaction in person by a good 400 people who attended; I’ve done a good amount of video work since then, but haven’t done much in the last 4 years; so it was good to get back to making videos; I’ve upgraded from using Final Cut Express 4 to Final Cut Pro X 10.2.3, which is so much better and more fluid; it also helps that I finally have a Mac that is up to date for video editing (I bought a 27-inch iMac 2015 3.3Ghz quad core i5); so here’s to a kick in the butt to get me making videos again.

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News – Story: The EGOT Status. This is for those rare individuals that earn the following awards: an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.

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News – Story 1: Michael Flynn, National Security Advisor, has resigned after Russian diplomat conversations

– on the February 3rd TV show episode, the discussion of a Congressional law to allow coal companies to dump their waste into streams was brought up to the panel; Tomi defended the coal waste dumping by calling the coal companies “the forgotten American” and saying the coal industry was under attack; Maher countered with “even if we support coal, why allow the company to dump sludge in the river?”; Toni’s reply was a deflection “It’s a more complex issue than that”; talk about not answering the question directly; when should it ever be acceptable to dump coal waste in a river or stream?; obviously Tomi and her right wing base are ok with this; otherwise, her answer could have been “yes, they should find a better way to dispose of the waste”; but that wasn’t the answer she gave; unfortunately, the topic of discussion doesn’t allow to expand on this topic into more depth on the show; I certainly would love to hear Tomi give a direct answer to this question; polluting the environment while removing regulations isn’t hurting the little guy; it’s forcing a company that dumps pollutants in the air and ground to be better at reducing that waste.

– * It’s been about 4 years since Depeche Mode released a new album and it was just so-so; not very good, actually; there were some songs that grew on me eventually, but overall, it was lacking pretty heavily for any kind of greatness; now there’s a new album coming out on March 17th called “Spirit” and the first single is “Where’s The Revolution” and after a good 20 or more listens, I like it; it had to grow on me some, but compared to 2013’s “Heaven”, it’s a lot better and has a good strong sound; it’s very hard to be a fan of this band and have them produce an album or two of material that is hard to listen to; I’m hoping the other tracks on “Spirit” will be just as good or better; if not, then I guess I will join other fans in wishing for a return to the older sound from the last 80’s and early 90’s when Alan Wilder was still in the band.

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News – Story: When you find out that Wells Fargo is funding the North Dakota Access Pipeline; when you hear the CEO of Under Armour supports Donald Trump; Deleting your Uber account due to poor HR policies with the company; why boycotting matters and why it’s ok to be against a company and still be a customer.

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