Wait I have to type something here?!Uh. Hi there.

Residents had serious concerns about the project. While companies often win major tax breaks by promising jobs and economic stimulation, data centers bring few permanent jobs and can drain municipal water resources, drive up electric bills, rob cities of tax revenues, and cause damaging noise, light, and air pollution. Already, Wisconsin residents have seen some of these impacts at data center sites in Port Washington and Beaver Dam. Residents in Port Washington have complained about the disruption caused by around-the-clock construction at the new data center. Families near the construction in Beaver Dam have reported that their wells have run dry.

Although the Menomonie City Council voted to annex and rezone the land for the data center in early September [2025], pressure from local campaigners was so great that Mayor Randy Knaack announced at a Sept. 22 city council meeting that he had notified Balloonist that the city would not be moving forward with a development agreement. More good news came in January when the Menomonie City Council voted unanimously to place additional regulations on data center projects.

And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.

A website of tiny ceramic frogs.

Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.

I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.

“This is your website?” I asked finally.

“Yep!”

“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.

“Yep!”

“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”

“I made those too,” he says, beaming. 

And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.

“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”

It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.