$200M Powerball Ticket Sold in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A Powerball ticket sold at an Iowa convenience store is worth $200 million, Iowa Lottery officials said Sunday.The winning ticket was sold at a Kum & Go in Fort Dodge, about 70 miles northwest of Des Moines. About 499 tickets were sold at the store for Saturday night's drawing, Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said.The winner has not yet come forward.The prize, if taken in payments over 30 years, would be $140.5 million after taxes, Neubauer said. A lump sum payment would yield a check of $67.1 million after taxes, she said.An assistant manager at the convenience store was shocked to hear the winning ticket was sold at her store."I've got goose bumps," Robin Graves said in a statement. The Kum & Go chain will get a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.The winning numbers _ 13-21-26-45-50 and Powerball 20 _ were computer picked, Neubauer said.The jackpot was the 13th won at more than $200 million in the Powerball game, which began in 1985 and is played in 29 states, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.The record jackpot was $365 million won by eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant in February.

$200M Powerball Ticket Sold in Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa -- A Powerball ticket sold at an Iowa convenience store is worth $200 million, Iowa Lottery officials said Sunday.The winning ticket was sold at a Kum & Go in Fort Dodge, about 70 miles northwest of Des Moines. About 499 tickets were sold at the store for Saturday night's drawing, Iowa Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer said.The winner has not yet come forward.The prize, if taken in payments over 30 years, would be $140.5 million after taxes, Neubauer said. A lump sum payment would yield a check of $67.1 million after taxes, she said.An assistant manager at the convenience store was shocked to hear the winning ticket was sold at her store."I've got goose bumps," Robin Graves said in a statement. The Kum & Go chain will get a $10,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket.The winning numbers _ 13-21-26-45-50 and Powerball 20 _ were computer picked, Neubauer said.The jackpot was the 13th won at more than $200 million in the Powerball game, which began in 1985 and is played in 29 states, Washington D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.The record jackpot was $365 million won by eight workers at a Nebraska meatpacking plant in February.

Friday night - help the drunk get home

Thank god its friday night, its been a long time coming and the hands on the clock slowed down at work to a crawl. Maybe thats why digital clocks became so popular for a while until they realised that it is actually tie that slows down of a friday afternoon at work. And now for something completely different. Its friday night, people go out drinking and so I present a game, Help the drunk get home. Don’t be discouraged that its in German because it speaks the language of drunk which as we all know is a universal language, understood by all.

The End of the Ants

The exterminating company camed out this morning and the guy verified that we do have wood damage due to ants. In more places than I thought, too. This pisses me off since we paid for the inspection and were told there was no visible damage, but I guess since it’s been 5 months since the inspection, we don’t have much recourse. Anyway, he gave me a couple of options for treatment, with discounted prices. I then called my friend whose family is in the extermination business and told her what this guy said. They both seemed to recommend the same course of action - getting on a year-round treatment plan, removing the stakes around the perimeter of the house and possibly using some granules from Home Depot if we weren’t ready to pay for exterminating fees. My friend got me a discount with her family’s company and their company also guarantees against more pests than the other company, so we are going with them. They will be out tomorrow. Yay!! The other pests they protect against are spiders, bees, wasps, fleas, ticks, mice and other small rodents. Carpenter ants aren’t an extra service like they were with the other company, either - so I feel like we made a good decision and I am looking forward to not waking up to ant corpses all over my house soon!!

Problems with internet connection

Thirteen Things about My downed Internet Connection1…. We installed a wireless connection (new router) about three weeks ago2…. Ever since we installed it I’ve found that our Internet connection would go down here and there.3…. Sometimes I could fix the outage by unplugging our cable modem and our router and then plugging them back in again.4…. Other times I just had to wait and hour or two. Very inconvenient when you are trying to use Wordpress to type your posts online.5…. On Wednesday, as I was using my computer my connection disappeared again. I waited a little while and then I went and unplugged the modem and router and then plugged them back in again.6…. Still no Internet connection. Hmm is the router working ok or not?7…. I started looking at the various Internet and network related connections on my computer(s) and I couldn’t find anything wrong.8…. So I went and pushed the reset button on the router. It still didn’t work, so I pushed it again.9…. Then I got the bright idea to try to reinstall the router connection so I put the CD in my computer and skipped all the steps like connecting the computer to the modem and the router since that was already done and got into testing the connection. It couldn’t find an Internet connection and it wanted me to input my the IP address that my ISP had given me. I couldn’t do that since my ISP gives me a new IP address each time I connect.10…. So, before calling Linksys for support, I thought I’d better call my cable ISP - Rogers to find out the settings information that the Linksys people might ask about as they tried to help me.11…. I ended up speaking with a very nice technician named Kelly. We tried several different steps to try to get my computer to get a new IP address. Nothing worked.12…. She did some testing while my modem was unplugged and discovered a problem on their end of the line. Apparently the TL1000 - some kind of connection in my neighborhood - has a problem. My modem apparently connects to this device in order to connect to the Internet.13…. She put in a support ticket to have it fixed, but she was unable to tell me whether they had to physically fix the TL1000 or if they could fix it or reset it remotely. When I asked how long it might take to fix the answer was - "24 to 48 hours, perhaps sooner."So here I sit, waiting for my connection to come back up. She set it up so that I’ll get an automated phone call from Rogers when the TL1000 is working again. Then I’ll have to figure out if I messed up my router when I hit reset. My home network of computers are still all connected so that part of the router is working. I just need that Internet connection.If this post doesn’t end up getting posted until Friday or even Saturday- that’s why.Happy Thursday!BTW I seem to have a tenuous connection at the moment so I’m setting this up to be posted at Midnight. Wish me luck!

Blogexplosion what's happened to you?

First question: Where are the new owners of what used to be a very good blog traffic exchange? The new owner(s) hasn’t introduced him or herself yet to all of the members.Next- What’s going on with thumbnail pictures of our blogs? I have four blogs running on Blogexplosion and only two of them have thumbnails right now. I stupidly decided that I wanted to change the thumbnail for Breath of life, oh, about THREE weeks ago. I’ve submitted my request twice and it still hasn’t been changed.Might I suggest that when a person requests a new thumbnail, that the current thumbnail is not removed until the new one is ready to replace it. Wouldn’t that be so much better than staring at a blank white thumbnail that gives a viewer no idea of what the blog is about?The other site of mine that doesn’t have a thumbnail is Odd Planet. You see, I recently moved Odd Planet from Blogexplosions blog hosting site Blogcharm to my own domain. I did this for a few reasons. 1. so I could have more control over my posts such as setting up automated posts. 2. So that my visitors could actually comment easily. The blogcharm comment system is terrible.My third reason for moving Odd Planet from blogcharm to my own domain is a big one. When blogcharm started up it offered a small incentive - bloggers could make some money by having their blogs on blogcharm. That sounded interesting so I decided to create a blog there in early February and that’s when Odd Planet was born. It took me until early July to make $10 on blogcharm. $10 is the minumum amount of money that they will pay out to your paypal account. I requested my payout and it said pending. Alright, I can wait a day or two.Nearly two months have gone by since I made my first request for a Blogcharm payout. I’ve sent in two support tickets about my problem and they haven’t been answered. Not a peep. I just sent in a third support ticket about this issue and I also sent one in about the lengthy wait for thumbnails.Has anybody else noticed that their sites aren’t getting as many views as they used to on Blogexplosion? I’m pretty sure that my sites used to get at least 25 hits a day, but lately the highest amount is perhaps 12 hits each and often less than that. What’s up with that?I’m not trying to run down Blogexplosion. It’s a good service and I’ve met a lot of great people and gained several regular visitors through them, but it’s hit a lot of bumps in the road lately and I’d love to know how the new owner is planning on addressing those problems.Has anyone else run into problems with Blogexplosion lately? Have you had any response from the support team at all?Here’s a few other blog traffic engines that I use to get my sites viewed:Blogmad, Blogazoo, Blogsoldiers, and Blogadvance. Each have features that I like and each have brought me new and regular visitors. Check them out.