I’m working in the Budget &  Management Analysis Division of the Administrative Services Department.  And I have a new office and everything.

I’m very happy to continue on at Jefferson County, and Emily and I are rooting quite a bit deeper in the JeffCo community.

Many aspects of the [city or county] manager’s job remain the same: keeping the council informed, providing continuity and stability, telling the council what it does not necessarily want to hear, and balancing short-run interests against a long-run, “greater good” perspective. The difference between now and ten years ago is in the emphasis on the facilitative role of the manager.

This is my chosen and learned profession, and I’m excited.

I started FollowYourGov to chronicle the use of social media and social networking in governments.  I hope to show governments taking advantage of social networks to connect with their citizens.

You can find Governments Using Open Source CMSs over at FollowYourGov.

It was a little sad to leave this afternoon.  I’ve worked with my boss and coworkers for nearly a year, and made a certain bond with them.  You know people are dedicated when they are sitting at a budget work session after midnight (here’s the tweet to prove it), after arriving at work at 8am that morning.  A close bond forms at times like those.

I’ve also learned the Unified Government (and it’s funds and departments) inside and out.  And I’ve met so many people that serve the citizens of Wyandotte County and Kansas City every day.

And I’ve bugged all of these wonderful public servants.  From learning to do accounts payable and trying to understand the fund structure, to surveying busy people for school projects, I know a lot of people have helped me without complaint.  Thank you all.

I have learned so much from my boss, my coworkers, and everyone else.  It is my hope that I contributed just as much in my time with the Budget Office.  I’m going to keep this post short, but I have many more thoughts about learning at the Unified Government and my experiences, most of which made it into a Moleskine or two.

As a side note, there were lots of events that took place at work.  Of note are seeing the Thunderbirds practice over Kansas City and witnessing a massive wreck on the way to work (and how social media got pictures of the wreck on the evening news).

Thank you, Unified Government.

I will be going to Denver in May for a new job.  Well, not just me – Emily will be joining me!  Emily and I will be moving out to somewhere in west Denver shortly after she graduates from UGA in May.

I’ve accepted a position with the government of Jefferson County, Colorado.  I will be working a full-time internship to complete my the requirements for my degree from the University of Kansas.

Jefferson County is immediately west of Denver.  The county seat is the City of Golden, the home of the Coors Brewing Company (and the mountain stream from the commercials).  JeffCo is known as the Gateway to the Rocky Mountains, and the beauty shows it.  When I was interviewing for the job, I could look out the office windows and see the Rockies.

I’m really excited about working for Jefferson County.  They are very innovative and were featured last July in ICMA’s Public Management magazine for their method of prioritizing county services.

And they have a county blog (here) that’s advertised prominently on their homepage.  How unique is that?!  The very first post on Conversations with JeffCo was from the County Administrator.  He even responded to concerned citizens in the comments.

So the next few months will be hectic.  But I will update everyone after Emily and I get settled in.

PS – I cross-posted this to Facebook.

I’ve been looking around for the past, well, months for a new theme, and I’ve finally decided on Hybrid News.  It is a great looking theme, it’s very professional, and I hope everyone here likes it.  And if you don’t, let me know.

If you notice any problems with the site, please PLEASE please contact me or post a comment.

I’m going to mention what I customized after the jump.

I’ve done a bit of customizing to get the Hybrid News theme functioning in a manner I like.  I’ve been addicted to asides recently, so I added some CSS to allow for more inline asides (I basically hide the title of the post and the post meta information).  Here is the CSS to do that if you are interested:

.home .category-asides .entry-title {

display:none;

}

.home .category-asides .byline {

display:none;

}

.home .category-asides .post-meta-data {

clear: both;

display: block;

font-size: .9em;

font-style: italic;

color: #777;

}

.home .category-asides .entry-content {

overflow: hidden;

height: 100%;

margin: 0 24px 0 0;

padding: 3px 0 0 24px;

border: none;

}

I also adapted the same code from earlier (with a different background color) to highlight my comments. Here is the code for that:

.bypostauthor {

background-color: #009ACD !important;

}

These CSS code snippets can be added to the style.css file.

I also am not too big a fan of the highlighting of categories under the header (look up top). But all I can really change are the categories that show up. So I’m using the following code to highlight certain categories:

function news_category_menu_args($args)

{ $args = array(

/* 'depth' => 4, */

'include' => '9,12,13,153,6', );

return $args;

}

That code replaces the existing php element in the functions.php file.

The Hybrid News theme is a bit hard to customize.  A lot of the functions are hidden away in different files (I had to look through 8 files to figure out what code was showing my email address on an author page that I don’t really need but can’t get rid of).  Part of the difficulty with customization is that the Hybrid News theme (like many these days) has so much functionality built-in (what was once plugin functionality) and there are so many options.  These make for a beginner-friendly theme, but it can be difficult for the more advanced WordPress user to customize.

2004 was a great year, and that was an amazing game. I’m getting pumped for the LSU game this weekend, and I really wish I was going to be at the game. 2004 was my first year at the University of Georgia, and I still remember that morning of the first home game – I woke up at 7:30 am and the people were already crowding campus and I could hear the fight song being played. I love the SEC. The opponent was Georgia Southern, and my car got hit in the parking lot of O-House during the game (not a negative, it was a Georgia Southern bands truck and they filed a police report that I found out about after discovering my car, crooked in a parking space).

I got to cheer for the likes of David Greene, David Pollack (who went to my high school!), Reggie Brown, Fred Gibson (sorry Fred, I love you, but I think AJ Green might be better), Tyson Browning, Greg Blue, Will Thompson, and Odell Thurman (2004 roster). We finished the season in Tampa Bay at the Outback Bowl, where we stomped Wisconsin at the Outback bowl. I went down with my whole family and we had a great time.

I don’t know how Saturday will turn out for us, but here’s the video that gets me pumped up for games, or anything really. Paul Westerdawg made that video, and it’s an alternate version of the scoreboard video that is played right before kickoff.

I’m going to be liveblogging the game, using FriendFeed’s new real-time feature to embed a room here on the site. Anyone who wants should be able to participate (I think). Make sure to check back on Saturday!

Go Dawgs!

I love this picture that my mom was able to snap while I was driving, Budweiser and the Gateway Arch:

And my official welcome to Kansas:

My first class is this evening.  This class is on public budgeting.  I had orientation Monday and Tuesday, and I’ll be visiting the health center tomorrow morning for a cough I managed to get sometime during my hectic last three weeks.

This summer should be fun, and jam-packed.  Everything is a little unnerving, because I’m living alone for my first time ever (granted, I’m in an apartment building).  There have already been several severe Kansas storms, but every building out here has signs for where to go in case of a tornado, so I’m trying not to worry too much.