2014

Gov. Daugaard, Master of Disaster?

Forget EB-5, Dennis is now claiming he is a leader when helping with flooding. Could have fooled me. When Joe Lowe was coordinating the Dakota Dunes flooding fiasco (he worked for Dennis) they had to find ways to distract the governor while he was visiting the site before he made any stupid decisions. I think Joe referred to the experience as ‘babysitting’ the governor, he also had some other ‘colorful’ descriptions of our governor’s brain trust when it came to disaster management and cleanup. Let’s just thank God for one decision Dennis made, keeping Joe Lowe on as his disaster manager.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEI2_j5B79U[/youtube]

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings

No Huether Press conference or ribbon cutting isn’t complete without a few tears. Hey, Mike, it’s concrete and steel, nothing worth crying about, well maybe the botched siding job.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ErAvBQkHeg[/youtube]

A South DaCola sent me this fitting poem last night about the grand opening

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Events Center Grand Opening

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Me in front of the ‘EGO SIGNAGE’

My first impression is that It’s very plain, and design elements don’t match up going from lounges to seating. It was to be expected. A facility like this should have cost us around $200 million, we built it on the cheap, and we got what we paid for. Now the only people benefitting are the bond salespeople.

Yes, I am a cynic, but I am also a person who has worked in construction, art and design, I notice things. The flow of the building is disjointed, and you can tell it was built FAST.

I also noticed lots of cracks in the Terezzo flooring on the second level, it could mean the under structure was not supported correctly or level. Some of the cracks are over 20 feet long and span over different sections.

The biggest disappointment is the signage font is Helvetica. Mainly this bothers me because it would not have cost anymore to buy a different font (or maybe it did) One of the first things you learn in design school is that Serif fonts read better then San-serif fonts (Like Helvetica) and they look better. I would have gone with Garamond instead of Helvetica.

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Other then that, I wasn’t impressed. Of course I voted against the place and still think it is gigantic waste of tax dollars when only a few will benefit.

But the biggest disappointment was that T Denny wasn’t even there for the ribbon cutting. Call him modest, whatever. His go to BOY Dana Dykhouse said, (paraphrasing) “Denny hasn’t bought Caribbean islands or NFL teams, he has given over a billion dollars to the state.” Right after that, a friend leans into me and says, “He bought a city.” Yes he did.

We will wait for the Joan Jett concert to give my next review.

Curiosity Killed the Cat?

I find this story very intriguing;

A former Sioux Falls firefighter is facing serious felony charges.

47-year-old Patrick Warren, who was a division fire chief, has been indicted on 15 counts of hacking into the department’s computer system.  At this time, authorities aren’t sure what his intent was, but we do know Warren is no longer working for the department.

I have NO CLUE why he would want to look at the files, but I highly doubt it had to do with just curiosity. There is a bigger reason. Why would a Division Chief making $104K a year awaiting a great pension risk his job by doing this if he wasn’t ‘suspicious’ about something. Or could he have been doing someone elses dirty work.

I noticed in an early article he resigned in May or August(?). Funny how this just surfaced a few days ago.

It will be fun to watch this unfold, I especially want to know what the picture of ‘sucking up’ was.