It started a few years ago when I first became an Amazon Prime member to get free 2-day shipping on almost everything the site sells. At first I did it just because the $80 yearly cost was going to be less than the total shipping cots of my Christmas gift purchases, but I’ve renewed every year since.

No matter what product I need, I look to Amazon first to see if I can get it shipped via UPS 2-day free of charge via my Prime membership.

The next thing that happened was digital music. Amazon has made a nearly flawless experience to order and download digital music and have it instantly show up in my iTunes account – easily synced to my iPod and iPhone. It’s less expensive than buying through iTunes, and the files you download are MP3s instead of iTunes’ restricted files.

Last week, I received my Kindle 2 – Amazon’s digital book reader device. I can now buy a book for under $10 and have it ready to read in my hands just seconds later.

I had heard people say that they read much more now that they own a Kindle, and that they would never go back to reading books. As a paper-lover, I wasn’t sure. But now that I have one, I can see very easily where they’re coming from. The ease of finding, buying, and reading with the Kindle is unlike anything I’ve experienced yet in this digital world.

For Christmas, Mandi and I got ourselves a Roku box and a Netflix account. We can now watch thousands of movies on-demand from Netflix, although many of the titles are older ones. Then, last week, a little surprise awaited us… Amazon is now delivering movies directly to Roku boxes across the world.

So in addition to watching our Netflix movies instantly, we now have access to a complete library of new releases for digital rental through Amazon.

Free shipping on almost any product, all of my music, all of my books and magazines, all of my music, and almost all of my movie rentals… all through Amazon.

If they ever go under, I don’t know how I would survive. Sad, but true.

“…… a birthday is really symbolic of how the years have gone by and how little we’ve grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it’s not meant to be. That for the rest of our sad, wretched, pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end …… inevitably …… irrevocably ……Happy Birthday ??? …… No such thing.”

I’m Married
September 20, 2008, I married the greatest woman on earth, Mandi. We were married at the Olin Park Pavillion overlooking Lake Monona and Madison’s downtown beauty. It was a perfect day with very few clouds and 70-degree temps.  All of our family and friends were there to share the day with us, and after a great reception at the Zor Shrine on Madison’s west side, we headed off to a honeymoon in South Carolina.

It was a great week – more relaxing than anything – and a perfect way to refresh ourselves from such a busy time.

A New Home
In May last year, we found our perfect first home together.  Close to where both of us work, the house was in need of some maintenance and we feel like we got a great deal.  We began work right away and replaced all the flooring, painted every surface, upgraded lights, and redid landscaping.  We still have some more improvements to get to this spring, but we’re very close to having it how we pictured it in our heads.  It’s been quite a transformation!

In October, we found our first “child” – Skitty, a 4 year old tabby cat from Madison’s Humane Society.  She had been a stray and was in dire need of some love.  She fell in love with us right away – and besides being very talkative at all hours of the night – she’s been a blessing to have as part of our new family.

Work and Work
Both Mandi and I have been very busy at our day jobs.  For me, Musicnotes has avoided any signifigant impact from the recession and we’ve consitantly been growing year over year.  There are some exciting things happening that I feel lucky to be involved with there, and I look forward to the next couple of years.  In March, I’ll actually be at a week-long conference in Austin, TX doing some networking and learning in the social/interactive media space.

On the side, I’ve started-up and have been writing at Good Plum – a new blog focused on productivity and personal development for home business owners.  It’s been very exciting because the popularity of the blog has risen quite quickly.  Part of the success is because of some guest writing I’ve done at Mashable.com – a blog focused on social media, social networking, and social applications.  It’s an exteremly popular website that has given me and Good Plum some great exposure.  The plan is to try and submit about one article per week to them for as long as they’ll have me! 

All-in-all
Things have been good.  My daily focus has been very positive, and positivity has come from that.  Mandi and I couldn’t be happier right now (though we’re anxiously waiting another opportunity for vacation).  I hope everyone that reads this is touched with positivity as well.  I’ll try to stay in touch more frequently!

(Hoffman Estates, Ill.) Thousands of Barack Obama supporters were left confused and unfulfilled Thursday when they joined a large gathering outside an Illinois shopping mall to rally in support of the Democratic Presidential nominee.

The original crowd, however, was gathered to enjoy a free concert given by the country music group The Oak Ridge Boys.

Due to the large crowd to watch the country music stalwarts, the thousands in the Chicago area suburb parking lot signaled to many that The One had arrived.

“The only time I’ve seen a crowd this big was at Barack’s last rally outside Denver” explained Obama follower Sheila Parks. “So when I heard the commotion and saw the size of the crowd, I knew He must have come to Chicago. Obviously I’m upset.”

In fact, the estimated crowd of approximately 15,000 to watch The Oak Ridge Boys perform their greatest hits grew to over 35,000 when rumor spread that Obama was holding a rally.

According to JaVon Jones, this had all the makings of another huge Obama rally.

“I live not too far from here and I heard this crowd chanting and I swore it sounded like O-BAM-A, O-BAM-A. So I took the bus over here and I saw thousands of people and knew I had to become a part of it.”

After about 15 minutes of standing in the crowd and joining in the Obama chant, he realized they weren’t chanting Obama at all.

“They were all chanting Elvira. I assumed they just meant Obama.”

Stephon Stevens provided a similar account.

“Everybody was yelling Elvira and I was trying to explain everyone that it’s pronounced O-BAM-A. I was just waiting for Obama’s opening act to finish singing and I thought I’d have an easier time of it. But those four white dudes kept on singing.”

Most Obama supporters indicated this was the first time they were attending a rally for the candidate so they didn’t know what to expect.

“I watch MSNBC every night,” explained Regina Wells. “And I always see thousands of people in huge crowds where He goes. So when I showed up, I just screamed and waved my arms because that’s what everyone else was doing.”

Steve Williams, a Sociology professor at Northwestern University, indicated this type of “pack mentality” is not uncommon.

“Most of the time the people in the back can’t hear or see what’s going on. They just know that they are witnessing something historic which they can’t explain and they must be a part of it. So when those who actually see what’s happening get the signal to cheer, those beyond do the same, and it ripples back to those who are there because everyone else is. And this continues to the voting booth. People don’t know why they’re voting for Him, they just do.”

The event was not a complete bust for one new fan of The Oak Ridge Boys.

“Even though it didn’t have His name in it,” said Mercedes Marshall, “I’m pretty sure that Elvira song was about Obama. Eyes that look like heaven, lips like cherry wine? That’s exactly how I feel about Barack!”

(This post is *hopefully* an obvious satire piece, written by my brother, Derek Kosmicki)

It’s a good time, if for nothing else than just to get into the spirit of the game and the team again.

Friday night will be their first practice – open to the public.  You’ll find a slam dunk and 3-point contest going on, as well as some other fun things.  It’s also nice to see the players actually work a little bit for the first time.  A week and half later will be the red/white scrimmage where a full "game" is played between two halves of the team.

Then the real fun starts… we’re young this year, which will keep it interesting.  I can’t wait!

I’ve been through Twirl, Tweetr, Toro, and more (there’s got to be 50 of them out there). But the one I feel I’m going to stick with, despite the weird logo (see left), is Spaz.

I’m not real fond of Spaz’s default theme, however it’s an open source Air application with themes by CSS coding only, which means it’ll be easy for some developers to make new ones. The one I’ve found and am happy with for now (despite it’s limitations) is called Urchin.

So, why Spaz as my Twitter tool instead of all the others? One primary reason: Ping.fm integration. If you’re not familiar with Ping.fm, and you update your status on several different websites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and more… then Ping.fm is the tool you’ve been looking for.

Right now, I’ve been using my Google Talk buddy integrated with Ping.fm, but now using Spaz, it will cut down on the number of things I have to be looking at at one time. One thing that’s also great about it is that you can choose to send Ping.fm your @ replies or not (which I don’t).

So, if you’re in the market for a good Twitter tool/application – take a look at Spaz. You’ll be glad you did.

Read here for a full-length review of Spaz.

I’m aware that some people are still having problems after the iTunes 8 and iPhone 2.1 updates (mainly Win Vista people) – but my MacBook and iPhone are now so harmonious, that I’ve actually decided against looking at the Bold when it comes out soon (sorry RIM, you waited too long in the U.S.).

Sync times are down to several seconds (including the backup), I haven’t had a crash or freeze yet, keyboard and contacts feel zippier… it’s just overall a much better experience.

There are now a few items I use on my phone daily that I can’t see myself living or working without in the near future:

- Ping.fm web app: Update all social network statuses

- Omnifocus: to-dos, projects, essentially my life broke down into parts.  This actually has a permanent place next to my Safari, Mail, and Contact Icons.

- Sugarsync: I have this on my PCs, Macs, and now my iPhone.  Keeps files in sync accross computers.  Priceless.

- Evernote: Again – I have this on my PCs and Macs, and now my iPhone. A note-taking application to leave written, voice, or picture notes.  All notes are text-searchable.

There’s a few others that I’ve just started to use but can see them becoming extremely necessary as well.  I’ll update as I figure them out further (RSS, reminders, and more).

Do you have an iPhone?  What have your experiences been so far with problems and/or solutions?

For instance:  in the process of buying a home, our appraisal didn’t come back as high as we wanted it to.  This, as I understand it now, is typical as it really only “has” to match the selling price – which ours did.  However, our goal in buying this particular house was to be able to pull enough money out of it right away in order to redo all the flooring in the home… so at first glance, this appraisal would not provide that extra value.

Now, our mortgage guy at the bank is a friend of mine – we work in the same building, talk Badger sports, take smoke breaks – he’s a nice guy.  However, when presented with the idea that this appraisal was WAY off (I won’t go into the dozens of reasons why… bad comps, no interior inspection, etc), he immediately got defensive, argumentative, and actually said he’d be fine sending our paperwork to a new lender if that’s what we wanted.

Actually, what we WANT is someone to work for us, someone to make a phone call because the appraiser was hired by you, someone to look out for our interests.  Based on some of the things I told him that our Realtor told us he had the nerve to say “your Realtor is VERY inexperienced.”  Hm.

Experienced or not, our Realtor has built a relationship with us, she has held our hand through this entire process, every time we work with her she makes it feel like we are her only client.  Not only that, when the mortgage side gets screwed up, she steps in and helps articulate what we need.

Sure it’s in her best interest – she’ll make a decent commission off our purchase – but the fact of the matter is that most business professionals are looking for the easy sale.  The sale where no one complains, no one creates a “hassle”… they want quantity, not quality…  NEVER realizing that QUALITY will not only bring them quantity over time because their customers will praise their work to everyone they know, but that quantity will be of higher quality.  They’ll create more quality relationships over their career and sooner than later will never spend one dollar on advertising – ever.

Here’s the bottom line. Mortgage guy: great guy, calls you buddy, but when it gets thick – it’s obvious all he wanted in the first place was a check.  Real Estate Agent: great lady, makes you feel like you’re the only client she has, and when things get thick – she steps in, let’s you know everything will be okay, and then takes the necessary steps to make them that way.

Inexperienced?  I don’t think so.  Not when you create meaningful relationships with people.  I’d prefer to hire a mortgage guy who’s never done it before, but would move mountains to make me happy and learn as he goes.

P.S.  I’ve decided that it’d be a good idea to share my agent’s info.  Buying or selling, there’s no one else I would ever recommend to someone in the Madison, WI area. I won’t be providing my mortgage guy’s info. ;)

Sara Alvarado, The Alvarado Group

It couldn’t have been the Wisconsin team that beat Texas, in Texas, without their point guard. It couldn’t have been the Wisconsin team who were picked to finish 4th or 5th in the Big Ten – and then went on to set a record number of wins while winning both the Big Ten regular season title and the Big Ten tournament title… all with no “star” player.

It obviously wasn’t the same people.

Somehow, some way, the same group of people who showed up to play UNLV in the second round of the tournament last year showed up. I have no idea who these people are, but I don’t want them stealing away Badger seasons anymore.

I don’t remember a time when we’ve ended a season fighting and scrapping till the end… only bitter losses where we’ve been picked apart by lesser teams. Only sitting and watching in horror as the beautiful structure that is Wisconsin basketball seems more like a house of cards trying to withstand a breeze.

I have no idea who these people are.

I’m done getting upset at the national media who always underestimates Wisconsin and always finds it easy to pick against them. I need to remember that THIS is the team they remember. The team that I have to try and forget every April to October. The team that makes me believe in something all year long, and then act like hypocrites on the floor of their final game.

Lose your last game. By all means, lose. 99% of teams lose their last game. But could you once, just once, go out with the same passion and determination that you lived with all season. Just once?

If I come across ridiculous, that’s fine. If I come across like a whiner, that’s fine too. If you think I should just be happy on an outstanding season – you’re right – I should be. And YOU should be pissed off that this is how Wisconsin ends their season every year.

But then again, I’m just bitching for nothing… cuz it wasn’t even them.

As a guy, I really didn’t think I’d be into finding a ring for myself… especially since I’ve never worn one before. But this last week we scoured the internet and almost every jewelry store in town before i found “the one.”

Who would’ve thought I would be so picky? ;) Ok, anyone who knows me… but the fact is, the selection of mens wedding rings is AWFUL! Someone needs to do something about this. Most places we went to had a dozen to choose from, while the sections for women seemed never-ending.

My only other complaint is that guys should be able to get engagement rings too. There’s no reason a girl should be able to walk around with a nice ring on and the guy is all plain until marriage. Either we’re equals or we’re not… make up your mind.

I wish I had a picture to share, but unfortunately it seems this ring must be one of a kind… no picture exists online as far as i can tell. And it won’t be 6-8 weeks before I get it myself!

P.S. We ordered an engagement ring for me… it’s a titanium wide ring for my right hand that has Mandi’s name written in Kanji, as well as our first date and engagement date on the inside. Very cool. Now, more waiting. Ugh.