Why don't you fill us in?

Well, it's certainly surprising to some people who think that Colorado is only an oil and gas state, which it certainly is, and it's important to Weld County and a couple of other northeastern counties that are on the Denver-Julesburg Basin to keep up with those jobs, and they are high-paying jobs.

But The Colorado Solar and Storage Association wanted to point out to people that in some of these plains counties, renewable energy jobs are now a big deal.

Yes, it may not take a huge number of people to tend to a solar farm or wind turbines, but the construction in those jobs, in those kinds of solar and renewable energy jobs, areas makes a huge number of jobs for construction.

And then those jobs linger on, even if it's just a couple of dozen jobs in a place like Lincoln County.

These are high paying utility scale jobs, engineering jobs, mechanical jobs that can pay $90,000 a year or more plus benefits.

And in a place like Lincoln County with only a few thousand residents, A dozen or a couple of dozen jobs makes an economic difference.

So what does that mean for future development of solar projects out on the plains?

So before we get into more details a- about, uh, all of, uh, the information that people now have at their fingertips in a, a much more streamlined way because of what you've built, what do you think about this moment in time where someone with some tech skills can decide to build something that I would argue is, uh, infinitely better than what, uh, even the govern- government of Canada has built?

Yeah, definitely.

And I think, um, you know, with, with what I and how long I've been using AI, how long I've been in the tech industry, you know, I've had a professional job.

I still have a, a daytime job in the tech world for about four years now.

Um, it, it really is changing quick with these latest tools.

They, especially in the coding, programming, and math world.

So I actually-- I don't know how far AI will extend outside of that.

So what can people find when they visit the site?

What can you tell us?

Yeah, other kinds of public health warnings or at least public safety warnings coming from state officials.

There was a kind of a scary, I guess all bear incidents are scary, but this one was struck home as a hiker.

Angler was leaving the Two Forks area where the North Fork of the South Platte and the South Platte main stem come together southwest of Waterton Canyon.

And was climbing up a trail from having been fishing with some other people, not even carrying any dead fish or caught fish, got knocked over all of a sudden by a young female bear.

Knocked over in the legs and then the bear died.

kept attacking and started biting the angler's legs.

So if I'm out this weekend and I'm hiking in the mountains or enjoying a Duffy roll in South Denver, how can I keep myself safe from bears?

Okay.

He's about 16 pounds.

I, uh, pass her house.

There's two dogs outside.

They actually scare me.

There's no sidewalks over there where, where her h- house is.

You walk in the street that part.

Okay.

Yeah, d- just tell us about Databooth before we move on.

As I said, coming out of COVID, I decided to do something different.

I'd been working for others for a long time, so I thought, um...

And I'd also directly before this been reviewing a lot of, uh, models and things that, uh, are used in finance, so I thought it'd be nice to actually build some things again.

I sort of identified data science as a, a place to hang out.

I did a boot camp in Oakland, actually, in 2017, and, uh, just decided, uh, this was sort of a growth area.

I think that conclusion was, uh, correct as it turns out.

What would you tell that person?

Are there any common misconceptions about living with dementia that you'd like to challenge through your own experience?

First of all, the term dementia is one of the things...

What dementia is, is one of the fundamental things that we need to really look at.

There are so many different types of things that are put underneath this umbrella, but then there are other things that are not.

For example, we often refer to dementia as an umbrella term for a group of symptoms, when actually it's not a group of symptoms, it's a group of conditions.

If we put the word symptoms into it, Well, that would mean then old age is dementia.

Menopause would be dementia.

and you also put there what's dementia friendly

As someone who has been through this journey, what is the first step that you would have to support someone in moving past the initial fear and reclaiming control over their future?

Yeah, that was not a good time.

Within a week, I got my diagnosis.

The doctor told me I have an appointment to go and see the DBLA, which is the people who issue the driving license in this country.

I went to them.

They deemed me unfit to drive.

And I was self-employed and the contracting and the insurance said...

You've been doing some reporting on water usage and whether people are really cutting back in this both very hot but also very dry year that we're having.

In case you haven't noticed, folks, we are now on, I think, day 20 or 21 out of 21 or 22, depending on the day you're listening, of July, where the temperatures on the front range have been 90 degrees or higher.

That's a brutal record in terms of what happens to our lawn watering.

Denver, for example, Denver water serves 1.5 million people, not just the city of Denver, but Also some major suburbs.

They serve Lakewood.

They serve Wheat Ridge.

They serve most of Centennial.

So what are they doing that Denver's not doing?

Mike, the most frequent water questions we had in our survey were on agriculture, and many were a version of the can't Colorado farmers grow crops that use less water? It's just not that simple, though, is it, Mike?

It isn't, but that kind of complexity is what we really wanted to dive into in the water solution series that we're working on.

And it kind of starts with that 90% number you're talking about.

We've tried to drill this into people's heads over and over again with the sun over the last six or seven years as the droughts get worse and worse.

And every spring we start out even worse than the year before.

And we try to let people know some of the kind of the basic facts that we stipulate about what it's like to live in Colorado.

And one of them is that 90 percent, somewhere between 85, 90 percent of the available water in Colorado is used for agriculture.

Mike, tell us about the San Luis Valley rye and the impact it's having on water in Colorado.

So walk me through this.

Absolutely.

And speaking of candidate forums and affordable housing issues, which the candidates should be speaking about, and I know our great political staff tries to get them to talk about it instead of just attacking each other.

But affordable housing, of course, is a huge issue in Colorado as it is across most of the country.

And there are some entrepreneurs out there who, in addition to trying to find public financing and ease some of the regulations that makes it hard to build cheaper housing, they're also just trying to see if there's a different way we could build the houses, the structures themselves, that is cheaper, faster, not ugly, not kind of third, fourth tier, but giving people who deserve them, you know, and are willing to pay for them, good looking modular homes.

And modular homes are very popular when they're done well, and they can be much more affordable.

So, There's a company that started in Los Angeles in reaction to Los Angeles' ongoing housing crises that are even worse than Colorado's.

how big are we talking? Are these just really tiny homes, or are we talking multiple rooms?

But your story took another tack, and it looked at, well, what are the solutions to how we live with less? So why don't you tell us?

Thanks.

We're really trying to focus on the solution side of it.

We will continue to do all the reporting we always do, pointing out problems, pointing out where people are failing or falling short, and what dangers that poses to people.

But we also want to make sure, and we try to do this in a lot of our other reporting, but we have now formally joined a group that does this in a more intentional way.

It's called the Solutions Journalism Network.

And whether the topic is social services or in health insurance or racism or police brutality, uh, the point is not just to say, "Oh, there's this horrendous problem, and we all should be depressed about it." It is to look at what are some actual solutions that people are trying to solve this problem in this field, and can it be expanded to really control, get some control over that problem? Our chosen field for the rest of this year is gonna be water, since it's such a huge issue in Colorado.

It's a third thing to say, is there a market out there for you to sell your black-eyed peas into? And that's really where the solution needs to get some help to, to come into effect.

... it's been a huge blessing to me.

I didn't wanna beg you at that time, but I had had some big conversations with all my guys and Landon Bean of IMC Promotions and some oth- and I know Jim's on the board of Quartet Convention, and one of our challenges in our genre is do we have enough artists that can really haul the mail on these festivals where they're multiple, multiple day...

Uh, how many headliners can...

That's what I mean by haul.

The gu- the group that goes on last after the crowd is tired and worn out and beat up, can they handle that spot? That's asking a lot.

And when I saw that, I'm like, "That, there it is.

There, that's...

Right.