The Black Friday Post

 

Black Friday Hottie Jaclyn Smith
Black Friday Hottie Jaclyn Smith

I saw a K-Mart ad for their Black Friday specials last night featuring Jaclyn Smith.  I have no intention of going to K-Mart any time in the next 365 days.  That is, unless Jaclyn Smith is going to be there.  This woman was hot when I was in kindergarten.   Now I’m old, and she’s still hot.  Not fair.

Anyway, there are actually some great deals out there from the emails I got this morning from Buy.com and Amazon.  Here are a couple of the best ones:

From Amazon

From Buy.com
This badass espresso machine for $90
2Gb Memory Card for $60

7″ Digital Photo Frame for $40

I’ll post some more stuff as I find it!

Best Thanksgiving List Ever

I’m not going to even begin to bore anyone with the old cliche’d things I’m thankful for. Family, health, friends, etc.–anyone can think of those. Besides, I wrote a nice Thanksgiving post last year. Nope, I’m going to get real. I’m thankful for a lot of things most people probably aren’t, so why not list those and make my Thanksgiving post a little different? Ok then, I will.

  • Nice ladies with coffee–I like nice ladies, and I like coffee, but when you put the two together you get magic!  Nice ladies with coffee just give it away sometimes (I’m still talking about coffee). Other times, they will break the rule that says “you can’t get $.59 refills in styrofoam cups” and let you do it anyway. This is especially helpful if you are driving to the ATL and are stopping for your 2nd or 3rd cup of the day.
  • Muscle memory–It’s frustrating to get older and not be able to the things you used to do as well or as fast as you could when you were younger. On the other hand, it’s nice to still be able to do them period.
  • La Gallina Turuleca and ZoboomafooLa Gallina Turuleca has been viewed 11.5 million times. I think I’m responsible for about 9 million of those.  It stops the screaming.  Zoboomafoo, while popular with the kid is actually a pretty decent show.  I was just saying last night while flipping through channels that Zoboomafoo is better than most of the other stuff on TV.  Which brings me to…
  • Rock of Love Charm School–I’m thankful for this show because it makes me thankful for so many other things. First, it makes me thankful for Rock of Love, without which this show would not be possible. Secondly, it makes me thankful for every ex-girlfriend ever. Yeah, even “that one” wasn’t anything like these chicks. And all those ex-girlfiends make me thankful for my current girlfriend. Sure, technically we’re married, but since we still like each other so much it’s more like dating, which I’m very thankful for.
  • WordPress–Not just WordPress (which is free), but all the free WordPress plugins and WordPress themes as well. What a great, easily extendible platform! I’m thankful more people are catching on to how flexible and easy it is for people to get things done on the web with WordPress. The more people are empowered, the easier it is for them to get information out, and we all win.
  • Free speech–I’m really greatful that we’re able to sit behind our keyboards and cry “Socialism!” when we see it closing in on us. I’m really not sure why we’re still allowed to do so. It’s probably because big government isn’t efficient enough to stop us yet–they’ll have to spend a few years doing a study, creating a department, hiring a huge staff, and creating some regulation first. Oh, and taxing the shit out of us to pay for it all. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they really don’t know that all this stuff they’re doing is socialism. I never considered that possibility until this week.
  • Space…Fight!–This is quite possibly the greatest Facebook app ever produced. It’s a game that has no apparent purpose and cannot be won. What’s the point? I believe the point is to see how long you can stand to play this game. Can you stand to play it longer than your friends? Out of spite, I believe I can. However, I’m getting some stiff competition from one Space…Fight!er who just won’t give up.
  • “Change”–This word has given me so many opportunities to laugh this year, and the hits just keep on coming.  Only in America can more of the same be marketed as change and be bought by so many. It reminds me of Mick Foley rasslin as Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind. He wore different costumes as each character, but once the bell rung you just had a crazy sumbitch dishing out pain, no matter the gettup. That’s change I can believe in.
Have a great, safe, and happy Thanksgiving!

Mellish Meter Revealed!!!

I’m going to go ahead and preface this post with a disclaimer–it’s going to get stupid and, as LL Cool J would say, ridicalous (misspelled on purpose for all you sticklers).

Ok, so I have a really bad habit of posting the Mellish Meter rankings on Twitter when I hear them.  What is the Mellish Meter, and why do I do this?  According to the WSB site:

The Mellish Meter is meteorologist Kirk Mellish’s assessment of that day’s weather. A “10” is a perfect day, not too hot, not too cold, no rain, a “Chamber of Commerce” weather day. A “1” is an ugly day with rain, sleet, snow, ice, or severe cold. A “5” is an average day. “4” and “6” are slightly below or above average. “7, 8, and 9” are good to great days while “2 and 3” are fair to poor weather days.

But here’s the thing…this is Atlanta’s weather.  I hear it while listening to WSB in the mornings, and I’ve been tricked more than a couple of times into thinking I’m listening to the local weather.  Several seconds of confusion ensue when Mr. Mellish tells me it’s raining while I’m looking out of my window at pure sunshine, but I usually figure it out.

I dont know if this is the Mellish Meter, but this looks cool
I don't know if it's the Mellish Meter, but this looks cool

Anyway, I did a search and found 14 mentions of the Mellish Meter on Twitter in the last 6 months, eight of which were mine.  That kind of kills an idea I was kicking around.  Because I don’t have enough other things to do </sarcasm> and am a nerd, I was thinking of analyzing the factors that could possibly contribute to the Mellish Meter’s readings.  My plan was to track temperature, humidity, luminance, air pressure, and other weather factors in Atlanta and peg them to the day’s Mellish Meter reading.  I have my suspicions that other non-weather related factors affect the Mellish Meter, and I would like to prove it.  For instance, I’d bet that a bad hangover day can never result in a reading greater than 5, no matter the weather.

The lack of Twitter activity around the Mellish Meter leads me to believe there is not much of a market for this analysis.  Solving the riddle would only satisfy my personal curiousity.  And let’s face it…I’ll move onto something else soon enough.

Green, Get the Money, Dolla Dolla Bill Yo

 

It looks a lot like the Target Logo
It looks a lot like the Target Logo

Are you still waiting on your next check from the gov’ment?  Has it been almost a year already?  A lot of good that did, huh?

Instead of waiting on the people who cause most problems to solve them, you’d be better off heading over to KTownLowDown for some great tips on coupon clipping and maximizing at places like Target and Walgreens. It must be hard to keep a guy like SVD in groceries, but his wife seems to have a good system going. This trip to Walgreens alone makes the whole post worth reading:

She grabbed a toothbrush, two cans of chicken broth, and the pudding for a dessert she was going to make…and went to the checkout. The gal rang the items up, The Wife gave the gal at the register her coupons. the Wife paid $0.57 and the gal at the register gave her a Walgreens coupon worth $5 dollars. Somehow we got stuff we needed and Walgreens paid us to get it.

I need to find someone to pay me to shop, preferably for big ticket items like triathlon bikes, digital cameras, and homes.

I Don’t Get Out Much

 

Uggsly
Uggsly

At least not anymore.  But I was out for most of the day today, at least if you consider the mall and grocery store as “out”.  When I say I don’t get out much, I’m talking about the house and my pajamas.  I mean that I literally don’t get out of my pajamas much.  Here are some random thoughts I had throughout the day…

The mall was insanely crowded.  I’m sure the cold had something to do with it.  That’s the only reason we didn’t go to the park for a walk instead (kid with a cold).  Maybe everybody was just window shopping–dunno–but somebody needs to tell these folks that we’re in severe economic straits.  Isn’t that why we have a media.  Oh wait–the media is saying that.  Maybe it’s just that people don’t trust what they say so much.  Could all of the Fox News Alerts and CNN Breaking News flashes turned them into The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

The Apple Store.  Honestly, I don’t get it.  I think Apple has great computers, mosly because of the OS.  But the price…seriously?  As far as iPods go, I own a first generation Nano that I received as a gift and like. But I couldn’t justify spending that much on a player when all I want to do with it is run, especially when you can get one of these, which are bad ass, so much cheaper.  I think form follows function.  Actually, I think form follows price, which follows function in this case.  I just want something small and light that plays music while I run.  I’m too slow to impress to impress anyone, no matter what kind of player I’m using.

On top of that, Apple store can do all it wants to make me feel like I’m in Times Square while I browse their 900 square foot commercial, but I know where I really am.  Even if i didn’t, I’m quickly reminded of it when I walk out of the store and see this.

Next up, girls with tight, short shorts on and Uggs.  It was 40-something degrees today.  I wear shorts all the time when it’s too cold for most people, but usually out of necessity, not as a fashion statement.  It was too cold for me to wear shorts today.  I hope you don’t wake up in 15 years embarrassed about this.  Don’t worry, there’s a decent chance you won’t.  I have a pair of Skidz shorts I bought in 1990 that weren’t even cool then.  Even worse, I still wear them. But I may not be the fashion example you want to follow.

And to end on a positive note, several people were really nice to me at the Kroger on Middlebrook.  Although I was an ace at it a couple of years ago, grocery shopping is not easy for me any more.  I’m grocery stupid now–back and forth across the store several times to get everything most of the things a few of the things on my list.  I was waiting in line to check out and a guy came and told me that they could check me out in a different line.  He could see that I was struggling to hang on to a tasmanian devil, so he took my cart for me and even unloaded it before bagging my groceries.  Then, just as I was finishing up loading up the car, a nice lady grabbed my cart so that I wouldn’t have to take it to the return.  She didn’t even work there.

I plan on going out again for the next round of early voting or to stock up on yeast and copper line.

Tennessee Martin vs Tennessee (Tennessee)

I DVR’d the game so I could badoop badoop it and not have to spend a ton of time watching it. I feel a little bad for Lester Hudson. He’s obviously a great player–you can tell just by the way he moves. But the Vols pretty much shut him down until late in the second half when, oddly enough, the Vols started playing pretty sloppy themselves. It’s too bad, because this was probably one of the few nights a lot of people in the state would get to see him play.

I think the real story of the game was Brian Williams who was getting it done everywhere on the floor. That dude is looking a lot better than last year. I can see J.P. Prince and him both having big years as everyone tries to contain Tyler Smith. Should be a fun season to watch the Vols.

Some Great Reading on Knoxville History

Doesn’t matter if you’re local or not, there’re two great stories in the KNS over the past two days that are very intriguing.  The story is about two possibly connected murders from 1968 and 1972 respectively.   Everything needed for a good novel is involved–an unsolved murder of a prominent wife whose husband was having an affair with a woman of notoriously ill repute, an unsolved murder of the husband of a prominent local madam who may or may not have been involved in the first murder, a possibly crooked police officer’s involvement in both, deathbed confessions that never happened, etc.

I love it that the KNS is featuring this type of thing.  There’s some great work involved in piecing together bits and pieces of information–police reports, old articles, interviews with old friends.  This is exactly what I meant back in January when I said newspapers can still do some reporting better than bloggers and armchair pundits ever will.  I’d love to see more of this, and I hope there’s a book in the making.  It’s a really interesting piece of local history.

What to do With Your Galt Time

If you’re thinking of going Galt next year, it wouldn’t hurt to start finding something to do with all that down time now. After all, it’s damn near impossible to be completely unproductive, and it’s going to take some planning.

I think I’ve found one outlet.

Last Sunday, I was running with one of my buddies, we’ll call him The Schwartz, and he said (this is a direct quotation), “I’m glad you got me out to run today, man. I’ve wasted way too much time this weekend on Wookieepedia.”

Now, you have to understand that my initial reaction was that this was some sort of weird porn site. But no, it’s actually a wiki all about Star Wars. The Schwartz was absolutely engrossed in how much other people knew about Star Wars and how much he didn’t. He remarked that his brother was actually pissed because people knew so much more about Star Wars than him.

I’m not making this up. And this is why I love my friends–each and every one of them. I have so much to learn from other people. Without The Schwartz, there’s a good chance I’d never have never known that Wookieepedia exists. Maybe you’d never have known either.

Thank You Veterans!

That’s not really enough to show my appreciation for the job that you guys do. The best I can do is share one of my favorite stories my grandfather wrote down for us. I’ve posted a couple of things he wrote before in different contexts. This is a short one about two “feasts” he had while serving in World War II. Something for the rest of us to remember when we’re having an afternoon snack that trumps these meals.

It was a one-day trip from Finch Haven to Saidor and we got a1 day supply of “C” rations. As usual we didn’t leave Finch Haven until the next day and our food supply was gone. When we reached Saidor a little after night, the Japs had bombed a fuel (gas) supple and the place was lit up like midday. They ordered us back out sea so we wouldn’t be a lit up target for the Japs to bomb. We spent the night out at sea and came in the next day to land. We sure were a hungry bunch.

While on the boat, I saw a fellow lying on the aft deck under a workbench to shade him from the sun. He was lying on his back and had a can of corned beef setting on the deck right at the top of his head. I was starved which helped put my military strategy ticking. I got down on my stomach, crawled up there, got that can of beef, crawled backwards to where he wouldn’t see me get up and I sat down and had a feast.

When I got off the ship and grabbed a duffel bag and took off, every way I turned that bag something would be resting on my shoulder. We went about 1-½ miles up through the Mott river bottoms grown up in Cuni grass about 12 to 15 fee high. The sun was bearing down 100+. When we got to a stopping place, I took my knife and cut the duffel bag open. It had a lock on it. There were 6 cans (2-½ size) of peaches in that bag. Where he got them I don’t know. Where they went he never knew but me and five of my buddies had a feast.

Vets have sacrificed many small things on a daily basis for us that we don’t even realize.  Again, thank you all for what you do.

More from Newscoma, TennZenn, Michael Silence, SayUncle,

Joe Six-Pack Going Galt

I’ve heard a lot of talk lately about people “going John Galt” if the changes we’ve been threatened with promised are enacted. What’s interesting to me is that, unlike the situation described in Atlas Shrugged, the captains of industry are not among them. Isn’t it interesting that the people who seem to be most concerned and agitated are small business people? It’s not the mega-rich who are worried, it’s the “Joe Six-Pack” entrepreneurs who employ 5 people instead of five thousand.

Maybe I’m over analyzing, but it seems like the uber-rich are more than happy to pay a little extra.  To them, it’s a way of buying an insurance policy.  The more oppressive the tax system, the less capital up and coming challengers have to compete with them.  Why not hedge your bets?

And, as expected, big corporations are more than happy to be complicit with socialistic economic policies.  They are getting hand outs left and right, literally.  The left wants to reward the unions save people’s jobs, and the right wants to reward their college buddies save people’s jobs.

Right.