The great new Badger Blog Alliance had a story cutting down 3 and 4 year old kindergarten programs in Wisconsin. Though I tend to agree with the bloggers in the BBA, this particular article was not very well thought out. Dare I say, it sounded quite “ignorant.”

Looks like WEAC has found another way to ask for more money, and they get to thank Governor Doyle once again. There probably isn't a worse time to add an expensive program to the state public education menu, but Doyle proposed just that during his State of the State speech last week. The governor proposed extra money for 4-year-old kindergarten despite a looming $1.6 billion state budget deficit. Now originally I thought isn't this much too early to take the children and start indoctrinating them in public education. I thought a child was supposed to go to kindergarten when they were 5 years old. So, do these babysitters, and thats what they are at that age, get the benefits of a teacher? Are they teachers? So I thought I'd do a little research.

I am normally anti-WEAC but it is unfair to judge the benefits of 4 year old kindergarten without seeing the results firsthand. My wife is a part of the 'WEAC Jobs Program' as Badger Blog Alliance calls it. She is an early-childhood/special education teacher. There are children who have never spoken a word, interacted with another child, or even some who freak out if they are subjected to even the smallest change in their daily routine - until they attend an early childhood program. These programs, including 4 year old kindergarten, help children who would not normally 'fit in' get a chance to do just that. It's not just 'babysitting,' they really do teach these kids.

I see the Wisconsin DPI is pushing for 4 Year old kindergarten. I did find find that they did say “Teachers with BA or higher degrees in early childhood education have the experience and training to provide quality learning opportunities.” So when you hear the rhetoric of the left saying “Do it for the kids”, they mean it. All of them between 3 and 20. I think its just a WEAC jobs program. 3 years old….

I oppose 3 year old kindergarten for perfectly healthy and mentally sound children on the basis that the families of those children should be parenting them, not shuffling them off to daycare. Of course, this is not the 50's, and not all families can afford childcare or afford not to work. If given the choice between offering 3-year-old kindergarten, or giving these families a state funded check that is supposed to pay for child care, I'd take the former. In this manner, 3 year old kindergarten not only redistributes that money as a job, but it keeps the parents from spending the check on things other than childcare - and we know that happens.

In other words, you can have deficit with more jobs, or deficit in the form of checks to low-income families who would work if they had someone to 'watch' their kids.

Consider this my apology. I apologize to all of those who attended class with me when I was younger; in high school and in college. Little did I know how annoying I really was.

In the few short days I have attended my new university, I have come to realize that 'those guys' who think they are really cool and funny are actually the biggest asses in the classes. I remember being 'that guy' who would crack a joke or say “this is the most boring thing I have ever done in my life” all for the sake of a laugh or two. It's not funny. There are people in class who have paid dearly to learn. They don't need to hear humorless banter from a kid whose parents are most likely funding his nonsense. There is really no reason for you to waste our time and our money. If you don't want to be a part of the class, leave.

Today 'this guy' sat and complained about how life was so rough because he had to work 30 hours this week, and yesterday he was called into work early. Plus he had to sit through this entire (one hour and fifteen minute) class. Whoopty-frickin'-do. I held my tognue, but I wanted to lean over and say, “dude, you think this is tough - just wait. Now shut your hole and listen to what the old lady has to say.” Of course, I was 'that guy' when I was his age; I've seen the effects caused by being a lazy comedian-wannabe complainer. Good luck kid, you just might end up being a lifer at that job you're complaining about now.

So, once again, to all of those who attended class with me sometime in my younger days - I'm sorry. I didn't see what an ass I really was.

In case you missed the preview, I am going back to school.

Back to school always sounds cool when someone talks about finishing their masters or phd. Back to school sounds less cool when you're talking about a 26 year old sophmore. I am the latter.

Tonight I attended my first class in over five years. It was a lot easier than I remember. This was probably due to the facts that 1) I wasn't hung over, 2) my teacher is only a year older than me (and probably graduated high school the same year as me), and 3) there is a good chance that I took this class (but failed it) sometime back in my less responsible days.

I promised myself two things before I got on that bus… er, got in my family car and drove to school. The first was that I would deny, deny, deny if anybody asked if I was “the naked guy from the billboard.” I didn't break that promise, and luckily I was not asked that question. My second promise to myself was that I would not refer to myself as “Fuzz,” and not even mention the radio station if at all possible. I didn't do well with this promise. The question, “what do you do?” came up, and I said… “um, I'm a radio personality.” Then I was asked when I'm on and what my name is and I ended up spilling the beans. It won't happen in the next class… I promise.

I am looking forward to my next two classes. I am taking a total of nine credits this semester which consists of two night classes and one morning class. The online classes looked tempting, but I want to become versed in following a regular schedule before I trust myself with an 'at your lesiure' style class.

More updates as they arise. Till then, it's time to study.

My third college go-round starts on Monday. I am not nervous, just a little worried about my schedule (daddyness, the radio station, school). It will all work out in the end.

Wish me luck… and patience.

I was checking my web stats and I somehow came across an old article that I wrote when FuzzMartin.com was an angelfire site. The links to the pictures have been removed, but sometimes its fun to relive your past.

There are way too many people calling themselves “Fuzz” these days. I know, I know, I am one of them. But when I got this nickname I was 14 years old. Nobody had this nickname. Now everybody wants it.

Here is a quick background on how I got the nickname “Fuzz.” When I was 14 I was working for a landscaping company during the summers. (The firm is called Achtenhagen Services Incorporated in case you wanted to know…) There was a foreman that worked there at the time named Kevin Tetzlaff. It was hot that summer, so I decided to get my head shaved to beat my hair's “greenhouse effect” on my head. When my hair start to grow back, I kind of looked like ruff side of a piece of Velcro. Kevin decided that my new nickname was “Fuzzy.”

As time went on my friends started calling me “Fuzzy,” and eventually I went of to college. When I got there I lived on the short wing of a dormatory. 7 of the 16 guys who lived in my wing were named “Mike,” which is my real name. I decided that I would go only by the name of “Fuzzy” to set myself apart from the other goons on the floor.

After a couple of weeks I got a job working at a couple of radio stations. I was “Fuzzy the Weekend Guy” and “Fuzz Martin on West Main Street.” I realized that it was easy for people to remember my awkward nickname, so it stuck. My fiance still does not know my “real” name. Okay, actually she does, but a lot of my fraternity brothers don't. It's actually kind of fun.

Now it seems like people are saying this:

“Oh, Fuzz, that's such a cool name, I'm gonna call myself 'Fuzz' too!!!”

Um, please don't.

Here is a list I have compiled of people who claim to be “Fuzz.”

1. Fuzz the action Hero.
2. Of course there's Fuzzy Thurston of Green Bay Packers fame.
3. There was a kid named Fuzzy Marek that I played football against in High School.
4. Golf Pro Fuzzy Zoeller
5. Fuzzy Wuzzy wuz a Bear
6. A sick and perverted character named FuzzNuts
7. There's a collectible item called Fuzzy Wuzzy Soap
8. One of Ty's beany baby's is called “Fuzzy”
9. Theo on PBS's Between the Lions has a character called Fuzzy Wuzzy and his Book Club
10. There is a “Memphis Bell” like World War II bomber plane named the Fuzzy Wuzzy
11. An imposter who called himself “fuzz” once tried to get into my fraternity house in Whitewater. ~He was quickly removed
12. Plenty of people call their cats Fuzzy
13. An old school jazz band was named “Fuzzy Wuzzy”
14. This fly fishing lure is called a fuzzy
15. The guy playing softball in this picture is apparently named “Fuzz.” check out the lady to his right… yikes
16. In Madison, WI you can stop by Fuzzy's Liquor… if you're 21 of course.
17. Sacremento, California is home to Fuzzy the RV Doctor he does great work, too.
18. Fuzz is the common nickname for Police officers, being drunk (or Fuzzy), and is used as an adjective to describe someone who doesn't quite know what they're doing. (ex: Fuzz is a little “fuzzy” right now, but he'll remember what he was going to say eventually.)

There will be more to come in the exciting world of Fuzz soon. Until then, come up with your own nickname… like Tiny or Hank. Fuzz.

I can remember where I wrote that, on which computer, and almost the exact number of explitives that rang from Bridget's room as her dial-up modem kept cutting out.

I was supposed to receive the Griffin radioSHARK as a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law. December 21st we ordered the radioSHARK ($69.99) from Griffin Technology's website. The item was on backorder, but they said the it would ship in 2 to 3 weeks. 3 1/2 weeks have gone by without so much as a “hey, we're still working on it.” I decided to look up some reviews during my extended waiting period and found the same exact product, from a third-party vendor, for $51.99. What the Eff is that?

They're failure to act proactively with their customers just saved me $18 bucks. Thanks for the bad service Griffin! And thanks for letting me cancel my order.

eBay, in an attempt to please shareholders, is raising its fees across the board. Posting a basic item with no reserve price used to cost you just 5.25% of the final sale price. That's too much in my book to begin with, but here is the kicker: eBay will now be charging 8%, an increase of 52% over the prior price on items $.01 to $25.00. If you post an item that sells for $25 or more, you can expect to pay 8% of the first $25 and 5.25% of the remaining balance. The 5.25% was formerly 2.75% - that's nearly a 100% increase.

I know eBay has to run a business, but increasing fees by almost 100% is unreasonable. Unfortunately doing this will 1) cut down on the amount of auction items - thereby lowering their need to buy more and more servers and 2) still rake in bushels of cash for eBay.

In other words eBay has a great business plan - that sucks for you and me.

Bastards.

Since the invention of blogging and Mozilla Firefox my internet cruising habits have changed dramatically. No longer do I have to physically go to a website to read their headlines, only to find that they haven't updated since my last visit. All I have to do is look at my “live bookmarks” on the left side of my browser and click on the stories that I want to read. Yes, sometimes its like judging a book by its cover, but that serves as more fuel for you writer types to come up with a better headline for your posts. I love being able to see if your website has been updated just by looking at your bookmark.

One problem I have been seeing lately is the lack of the “add live bookmark” button on some websites. Yes, most blogs have the rss feed buttons on their website, but some lack the hard link in their document head that makes Firefox say “oh, they have an rss feed, let's make the button.”

- Live Bookmark Button

If your blog is good but you don't have live bookmark capabilities I will still make the trip to your site once a week or so depending on how your content relates to my life. But if you do have live bookmarks, and I like your site, you can be sure that I will be clicking over to your site everytime I see a new article. Being a courteous blogger I know that clicks on your Google ads, Blogads, Fastclick ads, etc. mean revenue for your site, so I am more likely to click on your ads more often when I am spending more time at your site.

If you have a Blogger.com or LiveJournal account and you are using a stock template, you most likely have this feature installed. If you are using pMachine, like me, or some of the other “host-your-own” programs, you'll most likely have to install the live bookmark capabilities yourself.

Here's how to enable live bookmarks to your site:
Add:

Put the above all on one line somewhere in between the tags on your home page of your site. I have put the link on every page of my site (thanks to the Dreamweaver Template feature). Just make sure you change the href=”" part to reflect the path to your xml file on your website. If you don't change it you will be enabling live bookmarks to FuzzMartin.com from your site - which is fine with me, but defeats your purpose.

I hope this has been of some help - now get back in your pj's and start railing on local government.

I landed my first nationally syndicated program. Well, not entirely. As of now you can visit the all new BoReynolds.net - home of nationally syndicated radio personality, Bo Reynolds - designed and developed by me, Fuzz Martin.

Bo, and the Biggest Country Party in America, runs on your favorite country radio station every Saturday night at 7pm.

If you are looking for a website solution for your business, send me an e-mail and we can work something out.

Till then, enjoy the all new BoReynolds.net.

***Note: The site's settings were changed on Wednesday morning, they are viewable from Charter and SBC domains right now, but there is a chance the site will be unavailable to those with some other ISP's until as late as this Friday. If you are getting the old site, please try back at a later time.***

I think Owen at Boots-and-Sabers is trying to show me up… we'll see if he's a “puker” tomorrow.

B&S - Bloggers on the Air

Check this out.

The best part is that it's only $499. Now I just have to break the fact that I bought one to my wife. Just kidding, honey… unless there is a student discount!

For those who didn't hear the story, my last computer purchase was made without my wife's consent (or knowledge). Whoops. To those of you who are getting married soon, I suggest making any big purchases now. The only decision you will be able to make from your wedding date forward is which flavor of Hamburger Helper you would like - so long as your wife gets to pick the first 3 boxes.

UPDATE: There is an education discount - starting price is actually $479 for students. One hitch, however, the Mac mini does not come with the following items:

* Keyboard
* Mouse
* Display (I knew that)
* Speakers

The display is not an issue since you can hook the Mac mini to your television, but if you were to purchase the real necessities (keyboard, monitor, mouse, wireless ethernet, speakers) and upgrade from the 256MB of RAM to the 1GB that you really should have, you can tack $1,000 to your purchase. That's with your student discount. Your best bet is still the eMac - unless you're looking for a toy.

Congrats to WJVL midday'er Austin Ryggs and his wife on the birth of their new son Jax Robert. The Ryggs family now consists of 1 boy & 1 girl.

Stats:
9lbs 3oz - 20in

I don't often endorse products but I will for this one. Until last year I had been bouncing around trying to find a solid Web Hosting company which was relatively inexpensive. I had used GoDaddy's web hosting services, but they have very limited features - and extremely poor support. I do, however, use and recommend GoDaddy for purchasing domain names. I also tried hosting through ValueWeb (part of the Register - dot - com empire), but that was way too expensive for the features they provide.

Then I found Lunarpages. Lunarpages has the best support staff, great features like cpanel, Fantastico, and phpMyAdmin - and you can get an above par hosting plan with Lunarpages for $7.95/month. If you're like me, and you have more than one website in your portfolio, you can purchase “add-on domains” for just $2.95/month - this has saved me tons!

Lunarpages best feature is their “LunarForums,” a phpBB style chat board where thousands of people answer your questions for free! If you are having problem with some PHP, LunarForums will help you - and they never 'flame' you no matter how 'green' you are with websites.

I'm not big on endorsements, but this is definitely one worth endorsing. Make the switch to Lunarpages today.

Thank you to everyone at West Bend Broadcasting who wrote down my name for Bliss Communication's 2004 President's Club Award. It is nice to be noticed every once and a while.

Also, thanks to TopHour.net for posting an ID that I produced for 92.5. It's fun to stumble upon your own work on the internet. The specifics on the audio cut are Fuzz Martin, producer; Beth Cameron, voice over; and TM Century's Imagio provided the production pieces.

This is an e-mail from my buddy Bob Cahow who is serving with the National Guard in Iraq.

Hello Friends and Family,

My ability to use the Internet has been somewhat limited over the past few weeks. It has been great though to finally check my email and see so many well wishes from all of you. I have also received countless letters, care packages and Christmas cards in the past few days so that has been very uplifting. Let me just say thanks for all the things you have sent and I assure you that it makes a gloomy day bright to be so blessed as I am with all the support from home.

My platoon has been very busy as always. We have stepped up our patrols because of the upcoming elections which has put all of us on our toes even more. Our area of operation has seen an increase in insurgent activity butI assure you we are doing everything to stay as safe as possible and still do our jobs.

I have enclosed some pics that I have taken over the past few weeks. Two of the pics show an increased problem we have been having here which is traveling down these canal roads. This is the rainy season here, so when it rains everything turns to a muddy clay. Also there are some pics of the Samarra area when I traveled up for the funeral of Todd Olson. They have renamed the FOB where he was stationed out of after him which is nice. Also there is a picture of one Saddam's many palaces that sits outside of Samarra.

In closing I would like to say thanks for all of the items that people have sent me as well as your thoughts and prayers. I would also ask for people to continue to pray for the people of Iraq, that they may come to an understanding of what we are trying to do here and for them to lay down their arms and aggression towards coalition troops and help bring peace and prosperity.

Goodnight form Iraq

Bob
***pictures below***

Christmas Checkpoint

Forward Operating Base - Olson

Got Mud???

One of Saddam's Palaces

Floating Bridget on the Tigris

I didn't write up a story about it yet (I've been very topical, I know) but Todd Olson, a soldier from Loyal, WI who was serving with Bob and Robb in the same platoon was killed last week. Hearing that really brought a sense of realism to the war, rather it personalizes the stories you hear, bringing a sense of “wow, that could have been my friend.”

Thanks and Godspeed to all those serving in Iraq and Afgahnistan.

Please pray for Bob Cahow, Robb Svoboda, Pat Sykes, Jeanette (Jesse's Girl), and my Uncle Dan Schmitz who makes trips with the 440th every couple months.

A few weeks ago I said I would be updating all of my links to pMachine's “Search Engine Friendly URLs.” The current setup puts some code at the end of your url which most search engines, like Google, tend to dislike. Converting all of my pages to this new format would have been a great big pain in the ass, and I really don't have that kind of time anymore, so I tried one last idea.

I implemented pMachine's Archive Summary feature. This prints out a list of all of my articles, giving Google and the other search engines the opportunity to read all of the links to the articles. Since I added the “Complete Article Listing” Google has indexed all of the pages in my site and you can now find your way to any FuzzMartin.com article via Google.

So, if you had linked to a FuzzMartin.com article in the past, rest assured, the link will stay the same. I will not be changing to pMachine's “Search Engine Friendly URLs.” I suggest that if you use pMachine that you include a link to the articlesum.php page somewhere in your site's template. You'll be glad you did.

Another pM note: I am beta testing pM version 2.4; it has a lot of great new features. PMachine is a great product and Rick and Paul continue to make it better.

There was a point in my life where all I ever wanted to do was party and drink. Now I find myself talking baby talk and increasing the octaves of my voice higher than I ever thought I would. I feel like I've gone soft; like there is some sort of baby kryptonite that is tearing away at my masculinity.

Want proof? Check this out:

Fuzz Plays P-a-B with Brianna