Voter Responsibility

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I haven’t posted a good rant in a while, so…

The “Brexit” vote has me thinking about voter responsibility. I honestly only knew about Brexit peripherally until about a week before the vote. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to it for a couple of reasons: 1) I had no say, and 2) I didn’t really see that it was going to affect me much. A 20/20 hindsight look at the turmoil in the stock market and how that affects my 401(k) negates #2, but in reality, #1 was still valid. No matter how much concern I had placed on it, I wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. I can’t even name one British citizen I know that I could have gone up to and said, “Look here Old Chap, you need to do the right thing because this decision is going to affect the whole world!” Not that I even thought that. I had pretty much trusted those in the know to have factored either result into the markets and that the outcome would be a blip outside of Great Britain.

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Sand Hill Farm is Part of Culver’s Stellar Application

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Stellar Sand Hill Farm 1 Pilot News 6-23-16The Sand Hill Farm project that has been discussed extensively here is part of the Stellar Communities application that Culver has submitted. I would assume most of you reading this are aware that Culver has made the first cut and is one of the three finalists for the 2016 award. As part of the public education process, an article appeared in the Pilot News (see right – The continuation of the article can be viewed here.) on yesterday. Jonathan Leist, Culver Town Manager, did a nice job describing what has brought us to this point.

The Troyer Group has completed some preliminary sketches based on my preliminary vision of phasing for the project. One of those is included in the article to the right. They have also included some preliminary sketches of the potential housing which I will share here when I get the chance.

As part of this process, I appeared before the Plan Commission in May and received their blessing on annexation of the eastern half of my property. At the following Town Council Meeting, on June 12th and formally requested voluntary annexation. They agreed to this and have begun that process. There will be a public hearing on the annexation in the near future. More on that here soon too.

Culver Stellar Information Session

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Stop by the back room of the Lakehouse Grille tonight from 6:30 to 8:00 for an open house to find out more about Culver Stellar Plans.  Town council member Tammy Shaffer and Town Manager Jonathan Leist will be there to answer questions about our application for the state program, how the program works, and what projects are including in our plan.

We will have a map of the proposed trail route around the lake (draft version), floor plans and site layout options for the beach lodge, and a site plan for the Sandhill Farm Housing development, plus more on display.

Alexa

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My Blog writing has suffered lately and I apologize to any of my lurkers that have checked in on me and have been disappointed. I blame it at least partially of how fast the grass is growing. The only good thing about all the mowing I’ve been doing is that I have actually lost a few pounds!

I purchased an Amazon Echo (Alexa) for my wife for her Birthday last year. Becky has a iPhone and constantly laments about how poorly Siri performs in comparison to Google on my Droid. While the voice activation isn’t perfect on the phone, it’s pretty good. The Amazon Echo takes this to the next step and relies on voice activation completely. Overall, we’ve been pleased with the ease in set up, its ability to search from verbal commands and its ability to provide verbal responses. Probably most of all we’ve been impressed with its ability to pick out our voices from amongst background noise as well as the quality of the sound it achieves from the single point speaker system. 

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