Here are some pics from the Fathers & Family show. (click for more detail)

One of Brendan answering some questions. (Click the picture & you can see one of the signs a kid was working on)

This is the lady that was next to us, Tya Issitt, she was displaying Scentsy, it smelled pretty good.

ThinkBigTopeka (TBT) is still going strong, we’ve totally revamped the website. We’re in the process of implementing a policy to filter out some of the groups/organizations and suggestions coming through to us. We’re not interested in making money through TBT, we’re also not interested in any type of political gain. We only want to improve Topeka and make the best place possible for our children with or without Google.

What did you do this weekend, hope it was a good one.

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I’ve been helping with a cause here in Topeka Kansas. We’re trying to get Google to lay their fiber network all throughout our city. Google has announced that they are going to lay 1Gbps fiber line in some test cities. This will be 1 Gigabit of download directly to your home; you can use Google as your IPS of stick with who you have now in your area. If you have a second, I would greatly appreciate it if you would nominate Topeka Kansas. We have a website up and a Facebook group of 6500 members as of this posting. We only started this a week ago, the support has been outstanding. You can submit videos; I’ll include a few for you to check out.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVBxdrC1KIE

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZR6DRqSzY4

This is the nomination form for google, pass the words to your friends and help us help Topeka.

We’ve also had some outstanding media coverage, and we have a flash mob planned for this week. It’s going to be an exciting month if we get it or not. Google is taking nominations until March 26th.

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We are working on a button to put with our Linkden and Facebook bannere as well as a few “Link to us” buttons if you want to share our resources with your friends and family.

We encourage your participation in the forums, and we’ll hopefully meet up with a few of you next month at Gage Park.

We have nice rooms at the Tan Tar A resort, Lis had to go to a board meeting all day saturday, but we had a dinner cruise that night which was cool. We had gone down last year as well, I hope we can take a trip one of these days and actually enjoy the place.

We drove up friday night, and drove back sunday morning, not much time to relax.

So a little catch up, we sold our house and bought one on Tutbury ct.  Here is a link with google street view. We close on our house on the 30th, and on the new house like on the 7th. I can’t wait to move in and shoot some hoops!

We got a new style on the TransformTopeka blog. The team really likes the way it’s turned out and I’ve been working on building links from other topeka sites.

I recently purchased a small graphics forum called n2dsgn, and I’ve merged it with our forum for a larger graphics tutorial section.

Let’s see, what else has been going on… I need to fix a few pieces of wood on the house before the house inspector stops by, so I really should get off of here.

The first Dr appointment is coming up, I’ll go with Lis to that and will prolly make a blog post that afternoon

cya

-Brandon

I moved to Emporia Kansas when I was in the 6th grade. I finished high school and continued to live in Emporia a few years after graduation but the job market just wasn’t cutting it for me.. I had pretty much worked at every job in the town that I had any interest in, it was time to move on.

That’s where Topeka comes into my life… I was able to find a decent cooking job ($7/hr) within weeks of coming to Topeka. I did the cooking thing for a year and had made it up to 10 dollars an hour, which I thought was outstanding. I started looking around for better jobs, I was able to search the classified section online at cjonline and for free! At the time, the Emporia paper was a paid deal for the full online content.

So i won’t go further into my job resume, but I did find a better job and was at it for 4 years before I gave it up for bigger and better things. The point is this… One thing that has definitely kept me in Topeka is the job market.

Going back to a comparison of Emporia and Topkea, strangely enough it takes longer to get around Emporia then it does Topeka.. I really like how the roads are laid out in Topeka. You have 2 lane roads that you can drive 35-40 mph in just the right areas.. at least the ones I drive.

Lets see.. another thing I like about Topeka are the parks, it’s nice having Shunga park so close with long bike trails and a 2 nice disc gold courses, with Shawnee lake as well.

I’ll try to wrap this up, I need to go to bed.

A few more things I like about Topeka are.

The houses, like the Potwin area.. you’ll see some very cool old houses driving around there.

The Art.. I like the first Friday and the number of galleries that are open to the public.

Washburn.. I’ve gone to a few plays at WU, and it’s just a nice campus to walk around.. I’ve never gone to school at WU, but Lis has and I’ve walked around inside a few of the buildings.

The Expo center.. even tho it doesn’t seem like it gets used but it could be a real money maker if the right gig’s were scheduled.

TPAC- same as the Expo center.. it’s cool but doesn’t seem like it gets used much.

I’m sure I could spout off a few more, but I still need to post a few things that really need improvement for Topeka to be a 5 star city.

I sort of went into a few of these above, but the Expo center and TPAC seems like they could really be profitable, but doesn’t seem like they get used.. Maybe the media doesn’t broadcast it like they should! Or they don’t even know about the events?? Someone needs to get on top of this!! seriously..

I think some of the roads are pretty bad, pot holes and patches all over the place.. it’s nothing I would leave over, but especially up on Wanamaker, they need to just shut down a whole lane and refinish them.. they suck!

I don’t like how, apparently in some areas of town, their tax $goes to the county and not the city.. what’s up with this? I understand how town’s grow and all, but we should annex all of lake Sherwood, and I think up north there is some populated land that should be annexed as well.. They all come to town for their shoping but go home and pay the taxes to the county.. It should be going to the city like the rest of us

Not so much a “I don’t like” as ” I think this needs improvement” the downtown area.. We should take note from Lawrence and try and mimic their downtown Mass street atmosphere. Oh, and maybe have stores stay open past 5pm!!! that is just ridiculous,, the only thing open after that is a bar or two..

I don’t like the image the stupid Phelps try to imply on Topeka. It’s just a group of ignorant people that are on there way out of town and by the sounds, at least a few behind bars. I don’t really care what happens to them, I just get sick of seeing them, and it being a first impression to the town. Topeka is so much more, maybe we just need to advertise more or just do a general “rebranding” of the town..

I can’t think of anything else I don’t like about the town.. If I think of something pro/con for this post, I’ll come in and edit the post.

Hope you all enjoyed this post, what do you like about Topeka?

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2 weeks ago my mom and I went down to see my grandma Siver for a week. It was a real good time, I wish we lived closer so we could see each other more. The day we drove down, Alissa had a wedding to go to. It was one of her school friends I think, I know she was looking forward to the party afterward. She took a pregnancy test after the wedding while her and Amy where getting ready for the party, and it came back positive.. You can only imagine how excited the sisters were, Alissa wanted to keep it a secret from her mom at leas until she told me.. Both our mothers have been giving us “hints” and “nudges” for a grand baby..

Anyway, long story short.. we’ve already made a Sheley baby blog, where you can see how she told our parents.

I had posted that our house was for sale some time ago, well 50 days later and we think we have it sold. We have until the 31st to get out, and into a new place.. We’ve found a few places we like, but will probably rent a place for a few months before we move in. That way we don’t have to feel rushed, we found a real nice house today, and might give an offer on Saturday..

I just got the new skin on the Transform Topeka website. I also just posted one of the longest post I’ve ever done.. I’m pretty impressed actually.

The Crowdgather job is still going great, I’ve been working closely with some real advertising pro’s. I’ve learned more in the last month about advertising using CPC and PPC advertising then I had in the last year.

oh, I’m looking forward to seeing my Sheley family, we have a reunion in September for a few days.. I’m not looking forward to the drive at all, but it’s well worth it once you get there.

We will be going to the ozarks one of these weekends for the Topeka adclub, I got to go last year but wasn’t a member.. This year I’m a member, so it may not be as free going for me.. I’m hoping to work on my tan and have a few beers!

Jim Cates has been a Topeka resident for more than 30 years, moving here from his hometown of Liberty, Mo.
Cates worked as an insurance consultant for the National Credit Union Association for 25 years. It was during that period he became involved in politics. His career in radio began in 1997 and last May, he joined The Topeka Capital-Journal to kick off online radio in Topeka.

And here are his radio shows up to the point of the post.

• July 3, 2008 Guest: Larry Wilson, Shawnee County treasurer
• July 2, 2008 Guest: KS Turnpike Authority Mike Johnston
• July 1, 2008 Guest: Congresswoman Nancy Boyda
• June 30, 2008 Senate District 18 GOP Debate
• June 27, 2008 Weekly News Roundtable
• June 26, 2008 Guest: Jerry Berger and Chad Taylor, candidates for Shawnee County district attorney
• June 25, 2008 Guest: Mike Hayden, secretary of the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks
• June 24, 2008 Guest: Kevin Haskin, Capital-Journal sports columnist
• June 23, 2008 Guest: Jack Woelfel, Topeka city councilman
• June 20, 2008 : Weekly News Roundtable
• June 19, 2008 : Guest: Mayor Bill Bunten
• June 18, 2008 : Guest: Bob Beatty, Washburn political science professor
• June 17, 2008 : Guest: Ron Thornburgh, Kansas secretary of state
• June 16, 2008 : Show debut; Guests: William Beteta and Henry Luke, Heartland Visioning

I’ll try to check back on this post and update the archives, or you can bookmark the cjonline link here .

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