Retail Wasteland

Driving back from Nashville yesterday we stopped in Cookville to get gas and let Pea run wild through their mall. What we found was Zombie Mall. It was like something out of a Cormac McCarthy book. All the stores were empty with the gates pulled down, no one else inside but a couple of mall walkers. It smelled like an old country church, but you expected to be attacked at any moment by an undead congregation.

The only safe haven in the mall was a GNC at the far end of the mall. Why it was still open I don’t know…probably just to spite the owners into keeping every door at the mall unlocked. The only “big” store, JC Penny’s, wouldn’t even let you enter from the “mall”. You had to go outside and back in.

It would be cool if someone took these old retail spaces and put them to use with stuff like indoor skate parks, soccer fields, indoor playgrounds, etc. I mean, I’m not doing that with my money, but it would be cool if someone else did.

Time to Move This Island

Twitter has definitely changed a lot of things for lots of bloggers. To compound matters, Twitter changes things with Facebook too. I’ve been thinking about the best way to handle all three of these things for a while. There are few issues that come up which make it almost impossible to not annoy someone. Usually I wouldn’t care about that, but how to deal with these things has been bothering me as well:

  • I like Twitter updates fed into Facebook, but I’m finding that most people on Facebook don’t realize that I’m not actually on Facebook when they show up. So I end up getting replies on my status, an email about those replies (yes, I know I can suppress those), along with the replies I’m actually expecting on Twitter itself. Worlds collide! I don’t want to disable the emails because I still want to be notified when people are replying to my actual status updates.
  • I like Twitter to be updated when I write a new post here. I realize that’s annoying for a lot of people as a general concept, but my tweet/post ratio is probably close to 30/1, so it can’t be that annoying. And the stuff I write here matches up pretty well with the stuff I tweet.
  • I like hitting the “Post to Twitter”  button to tweet what I find interesting in my browser, but that seems like it may be annoying for my regular Twitter followers, and it may not match up with what I tweet.
  • I’d like to be able to make short blog posts out of these tweets from the browser, Instapundit style, but that format doesn’t really fit in here either. Most of what shows up here is what I’m thinking, usually a little longer than 140 characters, and is coming from me instead of just a one line comment on someone else’s post.
  • Online reputation management is becoming a bigger deal. Since I own www.scottadcox.com, I figured I should go ahead and use it.

Here’s what I’ve come up with…

  • Removed my ‘sadcox’ Twitter feed from my Facebook status updates. I figure I can still use Facebook’s built in status update, possibly for more personal type stuff. So…don’t expect too many updates there…heh. That move is more for me than for other people.
  • Set up a new ‘scottadcox’ Twitter account, mainly to handle tweets coming off the browser. So there shouldn’t be any more “Reading:” tweets on my sadcox account unless I make a mistake. I’ll be using the ‘sadcox’ account more for conversation, replies, etc. I still consider that my “real” Twitter account. No need to follow the new one unless you just want to see what I’m reading. In other words, no interaction on that account.
  • Set up a new blog, www.scottadcox.com. This will mostly be made up of the tweets from the browser, which will let me post Insty-style.  I even found a theme that works well for that type of posting. It will be very frequent with limited commentary, like Twitter for people who don’t use Twitter.

I don’t really have any plans for monetizing the new blog–it’s mostly just for linking out. There may be some VERY unobtrusive ads later, but that’s not really on the table at this point. The basic idea is to make something easy to read and pop lots of interesting stuff. I’ve felt pretty limited here in not being able to do that just because of the layout, and I’m not really interested in completely shifting gears here and changing what I’ve been doing.

Maybe I’ll change my mind later…dunno.  For now I’m going to put the feed from the new blog in the sidebar here. Hopefully these two will end up working together somehow, and I’ll figure out exactly how that will happen according to the bumps in the road I’m sure to encounter.

Knoxville Overground Co-Working Space Opening Next Week!

ko_openingOn Wednesday February 18 Knoxville Overground is holding a launch party and wants to invite the Knoxville blogging community to come check out the facilities from 7-10 pm.

There will be live music, photographers, food & drinks, guest speakers, the Press, and silent auctions for “an hour of time with professionals, consultants, and celebrity entrepreneurs.” Tours will be provided of the new Knoxville Overground community center (for entrepreneurs & local investors) and our coworking workspace every 15 minutes from 7pm – 8pm.

If you haven’t been by, the coworking space is a great place for things like blogger meetups, tweet ups, and other social events centered on increasing technical and economic development in Knoxville. It’s also a cool place to work during the day if you’re someone who has trouble working out of the house or would like a place a little more “office like” than coffee shops.

Come by and check it out!!!

Twestival Knoxville

twestivalKnoxville Overground is promoting Twestival Knoxville this Thursday at Smoky Mountain Brewery at Turkey Creek from 6:00-9:00 pm. This is an international fund raising event for charity: water. Come out and join a bunch of cool people from Twitter (and me) for some fun.

You can RSVP on Facebook or Eventbrite. Or…just show up if you want to!

Even if you can’t make it out, you can help the cause by buying music at Testival.fm. Feel free to grab this little badge thingy and blog about it yourself!!!

Be there, or be at home. On Twitter.

Should Tennessee Take Bailout Money?

That’s what Blue Collar Muse is asking.  Here’s my take..

If bailouts are bad, they are bad. If people think they are good, they are ok still bad.

But here’s the thing….if Tennessee (or any other state) were to refuse the bailout money, does that mean those dollars wouldn’t be invested spent in another state? Someone is going to be standing there with their hand out.

Wouldn’t we be better off to take the money and then, ahem, “invest” it for an interest in future revenues of another state? For instance, why not buy 1% of Georgia’s state income tax for the next 10 years, or a piece of California’s lottery action, a some of Florida’s sales tax?

I’m just thinking out loud here.  I’m sure what I’m proposing is either illegal or would be deemed so pretty quickly by an executive order–can’t have the States exercising this kind of power and making these types of decisions, right?

I know I’m wrong here…tell me why.

A Car, A Washer/Dryer, and Air Conditioning

No, this isn’t a Johnny Carson Carnac skit.  And yes, I’m old enough to remember Carnac, even though I didn’t get it.

These are the first three items that are considered to be necessities by Pew Research Center.

You know what that means–it’s just a matter of time before everyone has a “right” to these things.

And once something is a right, of course, we can get it from the gov’ment.

For “free”.

HT Reason Hit & Run

Can I Take Your Toddler to Dinner?

I really need to borrow a toddler on a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday night. Why do I need to borrow your toddler? Because I only have one. If you’re lucky enough to have two kids (talking to you ktown), you’re going to love this one.

We found a coupon in this week’s Metropulse for buy-one-get-one 1/3 pound burgers at Fuddruckers.  Combine that with their Kids Eat Free Mondays-Wednesdays, and you can get a TON of food for well under $10!  Even though nine year olds can eat free as well, this works best with toddlers because the kids meals are WAY more food than a toddler can eat.  So you end up getting to eat most of their meal in addition to your food–think of it as free side items.  Two kids meals and two 1/3 pound burgers is probably more than most families could eat.  We usually don’t drink anything but water, so no need to pay for a drink either.

The Missus craves Fuddrucker’s during 2nd and 3rd trimester of pregnancy, wo we’ll probably be camping out there at least once a week as long as these coupons last. This is just one of the tactics we’ll be implementing in cost-down 2009!!!

UPDATE:  DOH!!!!  Coupon is only good on nights when kids don’t eat free.  Boo!  But my belly is full. Yay!