Figured it out, kinda sorta

I stayed up way too late last night because the Google Reader thing STILL wasn't working, and it was driving me crazy. I think I finally got it to work correctly, the only problem is that in Google Reader it lists my blog as being called "Family Gems", but it is feeding my posts correctly. I suppose you can rename it in your Reader, as I still haven't figured out how to correct it.

On another note, I discovered that Blogger essentially has NO customer service, just some help topics and a help forum. No way to contact them directly. Nice.

Don't Give Your Husband the Password

So . . .

My wonderful dear sweet husband (who by the way RARELY reads this blog unless I tell him to) asked me for the blog password a few weeks ago. I thought, "Maybe he's posting something. Cool!" Turns out he added a feed from LDS Gems onto our blog. (LDS Gems is a service that sends you inspirational quotes from church talks each day). It was a great idea. I mean, who doesn't need inspiration every day, right?

Well, turns out that my blog stopped sending its normal feed into Google Reader (what's Google Reader? If you don't have one set up, you should. It's awesome.) Anyway, even though I deleted the LDS Gems feed because it was going wild, now Google Reader is still taking people directly to lds.org when they try to go to this blog. (I promise that I am not trying to send subliminal messages to all my non-LDS friends). So, on Google Reader you will probably have to click "Add subscription" again and put this blog address in http://www.joemeg.blogspot.com/ and then hopefully it will correct the problem and you will start reading my blog again.

Have a great Saturday. I will be working all day, but I hope you're not :)

Election Day

Well I'm a slacker and never got back on here to share my election recommendations. Since it's pretty much too late now, I'll just say that only ONE proposition got a "yes" vote from me. In general, I don't like propositions. I like the direct democracy in theory, but I think most propositions are put forth by special interests and too many of them just don't make sense.

Propositions are usually:

-way too vague, which is guaranteed to end up in court for a judge to interpret, or

-they advertise that they are about one thing to play on emotions but carry a lot of consequences that people don't realize, or

-they institute programs without taking into account the fiscal impact.

Studying the propositions really makes me appreciate the job that our legislators have to do. Maybe I'll try writing a proposition one of these days, I bet I could do better than some of these clowns. I'm also setting a goal to stay more informed about what is going on in politics.

In other election matters, you should know that the Fechter household has been just as divided as a lot of the country when it comes to the presidential candidates. Specifically, the twelve and under crowd vs. the parents. All of this has taken place on the refrigerator. For instance, this would appear on the fridge in the morning:

And then it wouldn't be long before someone would change it to read

OR

(Sorry John, apparently we never quite had the right letters to spell McCain).

So at dinner last night we gave Hannah a chance to defend her candidate and all she could come up with was: He's nice. Hmmm, that's a pretty good quality to have in a president I suppose, but it wasn't quite enough to convince the registered voters of the household. But I just want to say that I love Kids Voting because it really does let the kids become involved in the process. I don't mind if my kids' opinions are different than mine, I'm just glad that they're interested in the process.

It is a very good thing that the Obama campaign didn't find out that Kendall was a supporter though, because her endorsement alone may brought in enough votes to seal the deal for him (although she frequently changes her mind and says that she wants to vote for "John McCain and the girl." She really likes "the girl"):

Why are you still reading this??? Go vote!