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I am really looking forward to my three day trip to Minneapolis coming up in a little more than two weeks. I picked up my Delta Airlines tickets on sale for only about $200 on the 17th. I thank Delta Airlines for acquiring Northwest Airlines in 2008, Southwest for lowering fares by adding the Denver - Minneapolis route in 2009, and Dmitry for tipping me off to the sale fares, when we last spoke.

Last Thursday morning, Murka, our barn cat brought us a litter of four kittens. Murka is tiger striped gray and the kittens are: one - pure black, one - pure white and two striped, like their mother, except that one of the striped one has white feet and the other one does not. The mother and the kittens are doing just fine. Here is a picture of the little ones I snapped on Monday.

Yesterday, I attended an awesome all day class, "Watchdog Journalism," at the Rocky Mountain PBS (Channel 6) in Denver, Colorado. It was sponsored by Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network and conducted by Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE), a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting. The cost was $50 and included a one year IRE membership, but a New America Media (NAM) deal with IRE waved my class fee entirely. The lineup of speakers was quite impressive; interesting attendees, too.

Mutual funds industry grew up around a basic idea that professional money managers can pull small investors money, invest it more efficiently, using better knowledge and thus producing consistently superior results than small investors over the long term. You would think then that investing your hard earned retirement $ in a well rated and globally diversified mutual fund run by a reputable no load mutual fund company with low fees and forgetting about it would be the way to go. Think again!

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it to our farm yesterday. Good fun was had by all. Kids enjoyed flying their kites, playing on our brand new play set (thanks Tom L.!), being packed by chickens, feeding goats and just being kids. The weather mostly cooperated and it was rather pleasant outside well into the evening. The only exception was Joey's rocket launch, which had to be postponed due to the otherwise mild wind.

Yesterday around 9 in the morning, a big yellow dog, apparently belonging to one of my neighbors, trespassed once again this time attacking and killing two of my chickens, a very productive egg laying bantam hen and my big black La Fleche cock. The dog seeing me approach, ran off as fast as it could - to the west and past the forested windbreak. When I arrived on the scene, it was already too late - feathers everywhere and two feathered carcasses was all that remained. Unfortunately, I never got around to breeding the black cock to the several La Fleche hens that the dog spared...

Teradata Corporation (TDC) provides enterprise data warehousing solutions, including software, hardware, and related business consulting and support services. Its solutions integrate multiple sources of data and transform it into actionable ‘enterprise intelligence’.

Every man's (not to mention Hugh Hefner) dream will be fulfilled this Friday, when the June issue of Playboy magazine hits the newsstands. Inside we will find an eye-popping brunet beauty, Hope Dworaczyk, Playboy's Playmate of the year in eye-popping 3-D!

In a stroke of promotional genius, HBO, a unit of Time Warner Inc. (TWX) will help pay for the cost of the included special glasses - required to experience the new nude phenomenon.

A new and better model by researchers from Colorado State University, UC Irvine and Yale shows that soil microbes exhale less carbon dioxide as soil temperatures increase. Thus, there will be no positive feedback due to the evil global warming soil microbes, as the rogue Global Warming pseudo-scientists where happily assuming. I absolutely love this quote from Steven Allison of UCI: “Microbes aren’t the destructive agents of global warming that scientists had previously believed.” Read on...

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Soil microbes produce less atmospheric carbon dioxide than expected with climate warming

A nice little Craftsman toolbox is available from Sears on sale today for $12.99. Save an extra 10% off Tools Sold by Sears between 5/9 5PM - 5/10 5AM Central Time. Save another 5% with your AAA discount. This makes the final store pickup checkout price only $11.11 + tax.

On top of this, you can get all of the following program rebates: Bing Cash Back - 2% off ($0.22), Sears Shop Your Way Rewards - 1% off ($0.11) and if you pay with your Fidelity Investments American Express card, Investments Rewards - 2% (approximately $0.24, depending on the amount of tax you pay).