I am getting a bit tired of the harping, fear-mongering and bad stuff on the news these days.  It’s my fault, I have been a news-on-cable morning junkie.  You can get anything at 6 am.

But watching these shows can make you miss some important happenings.  What better weekend to share things than Memorial Day.  Here are a few you may have missed.  What things are going well for you?

1.  Paris Hilton has pretty much dropped out of sight.  Remember how she was everywhere.  Everywhere.  She has either gotten smarter.  Wait. Laughing here.  Or, the news media has gotten smarter.  Stop it.  Really, stop.  Either way, it’s all good.  I heard she is enrolled at Yale but that may be a rumor.  Somehow it makes me feel better knowing that eventually we get it right.

2.  New company formations are way up.  I predicted this at the beginning of the most recent economic downturn.  There are so many ideas coming out now, that the next ten years is going to be awesome.

3.  This Steve Jobs guy.  Seriously, he is like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison combined.  We don’t have to watch the History Channel to see Steve’s achievements.  We are watching it now.  Officially, this week Apple is now worth more than Microsoft.  That bit of news seemed like old news actually.

4.   Smart consumers are now in charge.  Companies who do not have their end users firmly “top of mind” are being punished by new competitors who understand that customers are truly first.  In my own industry, the transition from pay-to-post help wanted advertising like Monster, Career Builder, et. Al. will be replaced by the likes of LinkUp, the new job search engine, with a pay-per-click model that presents actual job openings for job searchers only from company websites.  This is meaningful because today’s consumer is tired of putting up with old style job boards with their duplicates and job scams. What is happening in our industry is being repeated in every niche and segment.

5.    TIVO.  I so like TIVO that I literally find myself wishing I could TIVO everything that I don’t hear the first time.

6.  Everything pretty much works ok.  I used to travel around the world.  In every country I visited there was always something not quite right, but the locals put up with it.  I love seeing the sights but I loved getting home more.  It’s the little things I suppose.

7.  I am reallyreally thankful for the men and women who are in the military today.  I am told that less than one-half of one percent of America is in the military. Amazing.  What’s even better is that we are capable of taking this huge group and organizing it into either a fighting unit or a humanitarian force that saves the disadvantaged around the less-fortunate world.

8.  No one can match our creativity, innovation, goodwill and inherent optimism.  In every state, town and village, people of goodwill and optimism dominate the others.  From time to time, this is tested but it is mostly due to natural circumstances and even when faced with those things out of our control, we know there will be better days ahead.

There were some things that just missed my list:  country music, the Minnesota Twins, Brett Favre, and the Grand Canyon.  What’s on your list?