I’m betting the latest announcement from Congressman Bill Sali’s office won’t make former Micron executive and Democratic challenger Larry Grant happy.

Grant lost to Sali in 2006, but plans to challenge him again. Grant hoped that his high tech background would give him the edge over Sali, but it didn't.

This week, Congress has formed a technology working group and Republican Congressman Sali is the newest member.

If you read Sali’s bio on his Web site, you’ll find out that besides having served in the Idaho State Legislature he’s been a lawyer, professional musician, farmer and a Caterpillar machinery salesman.

On Sunday, I was checking out the advertisements in the newspaper and came across Target’s toy catalog. As I was looking through it I came across a familiar face. There staring back at me with his goofy smile was Pleo the robotic dinosaur.

If you haven’t heard of Pleo, you owe it to yourself to check it out. I met Pleo last year at an Eagle coffee shop along with his creator Caleb Chung.

Chung, who lives in Boise, is the co-founder of a California company called Ugobe, but Chung keeps the research arm of the company in Eagle. That’s where Pleo was born.

If you don’t know Chung, you probably know his work. He was the co-creator of the late 90s toy sensation Furby. Much of what Chung learned developing Furby he incorporated into Pleo.

Is it 400 or 1,100?

After Micron Technology filed its annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Friday, I hoped that I might get a better idea of how many people the Boise chipmaker had actually laid off this summer.

The report didn’t say the exact number of layoffs, but it did list the company’s total employees broken down by country.

I decided to compare that information with last year’s annual report. Micron said it had 23,500 employees at the end of August in 2006, but after checking this year’s report that number was still 23,500 at the end of August 2007.

If you’ve been to Vegas or Reno, I’m sure you’ve been tempted to turn around your losses by just gambling a little bit more.

I did it on a Reno trip a few years back. It was late at night and I wasn’t doing well at the slots. I convinced myself that a $100 advance on the credit card could turn things around. It didn’t.

It was a dumb idea, but that seems to be the logic with the board of directors at so many companies. All to often they pay their executives more when the company is performing poorly.

We’ve seen it at Micron, Albertsons and others. Now it’s happening with Nampa-based MPC Corp.

CEO’s don’t like to talk about a company’s stock price especially when it has been performing like Micron’s stock.

But you can bet that when Micron CEO Steve Appleton faces his shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in a few months, the company’s stock performance will likely come up.

I’ve been watching Micron’s stock this week and if there was every a time to “buy low” it’s now. But you have to wonder if there will ever be an opportunity to “sell high.”

Micron’s stock hit a new low this week trading under $10 a share. This morning it was down to $9.65 a share.

The Governor’s Science and Technology Advisory Council was scheduled to meet this week in Boise.

That meeting isn’t going to happen.

I’m told the meeting has been cancelled because of an ongoing discussion with the Governor’s office about revamping the council.

That’s not a surprise. Gov. Butch Otter has had a somewhat rocky relationship with the council since taking office in January.

The council got off on the wrong foot with Otter by promoting a $50 million package of incentives and programs to help grow Idaho’s high tech industry.

That plan was supported by Gov. Jim Risch, during his brief stint in office, but Otter had his own plans in mind.

The latest word from Micron’s beleaguered employees is that more than 300 of the company’s IT workers will be in the unemployment line by next August.

The company is apparently in the process of outsourcing the majority of the IT department. The plan, according to the employees still on the inside, is that the layoffs will occur in stages between January and August of next year.

Micron officials haven’t confirmed any of this of course, which isn’t surprising. But what is surprising is that some people still seem shocked that Micron is cutting jobs.

Let us take a closer look at Micron. We have essentially put much of the Treasure Valley’s economic success on the backs of a high tech car company.

Over the last few years, we’ve heard the constant chorus that our children need more math and science in school.

Last week, state school’s superintendent Tom Luna unveiled his nearly $1.5 billion 2009 education budget, which included a $4 million math initiative to help improve the math test scores of Idaho students.

Despite my own struggles with math — remember I have a degree in journalism — I believe that the requirements for math and science need to be improved.

Many in Idaho’s tech industry also want to see the requirements increased in hopes of encouraging more students to consider a career in the tech field, but I’m not sure the increased requirements are going to accomplish that.

There’s no arguing that Idaho’s tech industry needs to gain a few more yards in the Idaho Legislature.

But I’m still left wondering who is going to lead the team. Tech needs a quarterback who can convince our state leaders that the era of tech playing second fiddle to agriculture is over and it’s time to give the tech industry the respect and support it deserves.

Now I’m not talking Micron or the big tech players, they already have a pretty solid seat at the table. But I suspect even Micron has lost some of its legislative clout given the company’s recent losses, layoffs and CEO Steve Appleton’s’ lucrative stock bonus.