The day the Wii came home.

It had taken almost two months. Every chance we got we would cruse past the Game section and check to see if any Wiis' were on the shelf. We talked to the clerks and acquired all the intel. We could about when they received them and when we should be at the store to possibly find one. On Sunday morning, we received word that one store had gotten a new shipment in. Game Crazy got them on Saturday, thus it just might be possible that other retailers in the area would be stalking them over-night. Early the next morning we set out and meet three major department stores at the door as they opened up. All to no avail it seemed. None of them had gotten any in.

Just when it looked, well, like a waist of time, suddenly a clerk blurted out that Wal-Mart was supposed to have just received a shipment of Wiis'. We headed over to Wal-Mart with all the haste possible for one wishing to avoid any police type entanglements. There they were at last. 6 unopened, fresh from the factory, white and printed boxes, each containing a brand-spanking-new Wii! The girls both beamed and grinned like Cheshire cats!

It is Monday night. The girls have already plugged in about 9 hours of Zelda, and tried out every feature of Wii-Sports. Even my wife, who has never gotten on a game machine before in her life, enjoyed a round of bowling with the family. Tonight, after dinner, Grandma Pat & Grandpa Carl joined us and tried it out. They golfed, bowled and practiced their batting and pitching on the Baseball field. Grandma went away saying she just might have to buy one of these for herself.

The Wii has got to be the biggest advancement in game systems since the development of the Attari. The X-Box and the PS3's are both doomed to go down in flames. I mean come on! A bunch of over-aged "juvenile delinquents" might like net-working a bunch of systems together and gaming all night, but lets face it. Grandma, Grandpa and the kids are not going to be up all night playing Halo! The Wii has already endeared itself to an entirely new and larger market of potential gamers! EVERYONE! Yes everyone from 102 to just big enough to handle the remote.

Programmers beware! If you think you can just port over your old games, your "first-person-shooters" .. games like Halo or Resident Evil, the Mature games et. al. It won't work! They will not sell. The Wii has opened up a market for FAMILY FRIENDLY games. Multiple player games. Games that open up social interaction, require physical movement and advance gaming physics. The Wii is about people coming together and having FUN. It is not a machine for your isolated lone predator, blood and gutts, shoot everything that moves trash. Okay! I hope your getting this!

I can't wait to see some good driving/race games on our Wii. Mario-Carts or something like it might even be fun. Hunting games, Fishing games. Olympic sports like you have never seen them before! I'd love to see Spyro, Rayman, or Odd world. All with entirely new moves and utilizing the features of the new controllers of course.

Managing Growth

It is foolish to build houses over your farm land.

I know I read that somewhere, I thought it was in Proverbs, but try as I might, I can't seem to find it right now.

The truth of that statement should be self evident. More houses means more people. Less farm land means less food. More people, less food. This is not a sustainable trend. But that is what we are doing here in the Treasure Valley, and a lot of other places all over the Western States. We are selling out our small farms to developers. Once these fields produced corn, barley, or maybe hay, something people or live stock could eat.. Now they produce grass clippings which get put in the trash.

Americans everywhere need to re-think the way we use land. Land is a finite resource. There is only so much of it, and it is not all the same. Flat lands which are good for growing things and close to a water supply are rare. Some 70% of Idaho is reserved National lands. BLM or Forest Service land... and either way a lot of that is not sceanic or productive, endangered habitat anything. Most of it is too steep to hike, too dry to farm, and to remote for people to care about.

It would be a good thing if some of these area's were made availible for development rather than surrender any more productive farmable ground to housing tracts. I know there are some who fight against development of the Boise foothills, but the alternitives are worse in the long run. Homes can be built on hills, it gives them a view. Houses can be built on rock, it gives them a firm foundation. Homes can be built on hills and rock, but farms can't. I hope city planners everywhere will exercise some wisdom, and cause the growth to occure where it should. Use wisdom, fore-thought and planning. Preserve what is good and productive, loose only that wich we can afford to loose. We are building tomorrow, lets make it grand. If we don't, then the next generation will have to do it over again, and at a higher cost.