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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!

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I Think We Should See Other People

Lots of other people. In fact, I think I should see everybody but you and you should see everybody  but me. I’m proposing a mass Facebook “We Don’t Have To Be Friends” group. It’s like Whopper Sacrifice, but for keeps this time.

I’m going to fix the social networking world’s woes. I’m starting a group called “We Don’t Have To Be Friends“. Here’s how it works…

If you’re thick skinned enough to join the group, you’re basically saying to everyone that you are cool with them un-friending you. Your feelings aren’t gong to be hurt by their decision, no hard feelings, and you can continue to know each other both virtually and in the real world–you just aren’t FRIENDS.

If you are a member of the group and someone else tries to friend you but you don’t really want to accept, just check the group and see if they are members. If they are, no hard feelings as far as denying them goes.

Of course, I will not be dropping any of my friends on Facebook, all of whom I love dearly, but the rest of you may be able to use it. Sound like a good idea?

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More Pay it Forward–Akoha

I saw Akoha‘s TechCrunch 50 presentation a while back, and I really liked the idea.  I liked it enough to part with $5 to get a set of cards, and if you know me, you know how I love a crisp $5 note backed by the full faith and credit of these United States.

The concept behind Akoha is pretty simple–do something nice for someone, and burden them with the task of doing the same for someone else. What’s cool is the little cards you give them with their “mission” have unique IDs. When they go to Akoha’s website and enter the ID of the card you’ve given them they can see who had the card before them and where in the world it has been. Sort of like Where’s George with a cool user interface.

Oh, and each mission has points associated with it. Some of the missions are really simple like “Take Someone for Coffee” or “Make Someone Smile”, and there are even “Wildcard” missions you can make up for yourself.

I’m interested to see if I’m just idealistic, or if my friends are willing to play along.

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A Quick Hi and Some Thanks!

The last few days have been pretty crazy.  Last Thursday Newscoma and I launched a little project, NewsTechZilla.  We thought it was a good idea and would be a fun way to document some stuff.  Little did we know it would explode.  We’ve seen an unbelievable amount of support (and traffic) so far, and I want to take second to thank some people from this side of the State for their help.  Without you guys, we would not have seen this kind of success.

Seriously, you guys helped us get the word out, give us feedback, encouragement, and even content.  We can’t thank you enough!

Michael Silence was unbelievably generous in writing our first feature article, and he went a step further by featuring us in his Sunday deadwood column.  Jack Lail wrote a very nice intro for us on his blog last Thursday too.  These guys got us noticed by Glenn Reynolds, who gave us an unbelievably successful first day “live” when he linked to us from Instapundit. All this within the first three days!!!

Guys, I know a link from me here is worth about 1/100 of what you did for us, but it’s all I can do for now.

Since then, we’re receiving more support from people like SVD at KTownLowDown, and some local guys from Copa Creative, Abunga.com, and TUAW who were generous with their time in answering some questions about the iPhone for an article we were doing.  I can’t even begin to thank all the people who’ve talked about us on Twitter and sent their followers our way.

I’m uber-busy with work (real job) right now, but I intend to (at some point) thank all the local people I’ve forgotten in this short post and all the other folks around the country who’ve been so supportive.

I’m also going to change that poll before the eight week period (I hope).

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A Content Generating Machine

NewsTechZilla!!!
NewsTechZilla!!!

Obviously, I’m not talking about me.  I’m talking about Newscoma, who normally writes more before 9 am than I get to read all day.  How lucky am I to get to work on a new project with someone like that?

There’s a lot of buzz in the blogosphere right now about the demise of newspapers and changes in the media.  This “citizen journalism” thing seems to be a little more than just a fad.  It’s leaving a lot of journalists with some choices to make, and it’s a tough row to hoe for some to learn new technology.

So we’re developing a resource to help them along the way, answer questions, and discuss the changes that are occurring in media right before our eyes.  We were even able to persuade Michael Silence to write our first featured article.

NewsTechZilla is where tech (me) and journalism (Newscoma) collide, duke it out, shake hands, exchange barbs, and hug it out for the good of all.

Actually, there’s good stuff theree for everybody, not just journalists.

We just decided to do this a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve been working like mad over the holidays to generate content, work on our site layout, get our feeds up, fix the things I break, etc. and “officially” launch today.  Go over, check it out, SUBSCRIBE (it’s free) and jump into the fray.

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I Made the Deadline This Year

But just barely. Last year’s “year-end” post didn’t get written until we were literally hours into 2008. I’m on the ball this year though.

Lots of changes for me this year!  One big event is that I changed jobs.  More accurately, I quit my job and got another one later.  It was basically a case of a one man union going on strike.  Negotiations didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, but I’m in a much better place now.  That seems to happen to me every time I change jobs.  Not a bad time at all to move out of the auto industry anyway.

I took advantage of my new situation to work on some really cool stuff in 2008, and I’ve met some great people who are thinking in the right direction.  Most of them are more Twitter-centric than blog centric, but I’ve also made some great connections in the blogosphere that have helped me become super-productive and inspired.  I’ve finished this year in a frenzy working on a new project that I’m very excited about–more on that tomorrow when it’s officially launched.

But enough about me.  Let’s talk about me.  Here are my top 5 posts from 2008, as determined by you the reader:

5.  Jitterbug Cell Phones for Old People
I saw this commercial and thought it was downright insulting to elderly people.  Then again, I like the idea of having a phone that just lets you talk to people and nothing else.  It’s very novel.

4.  Homeschooling Ruled Illegal in California
That may have been a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.  It comes down to the State of California claiming to have more of a right to decide how a child is educated than a parent does.  Right.

3.  Died in a Blogging Accident
I saw this cartoon on XKCD and thought it was funny.  It turned out to be one of the most searched for terms on Google that day, and me being the SEO master that I am, I popped up second.  Weird that traffic is still tricking in on this.

2.  My Ideal News Thingy
One of the things I’d hoped for in 2008 was to get a link from Instapundit, and I got it pretty early on.  It’s interesting that almost one year later, I’m involved in a project that deals directly with some of the things I talked about in this post.

1.  Another Naked Idiot
Like everyone else with a blog, my most popular post is bound to be about a chick getting naked.  I’ve made a habit of writing about naked idiots because, well, because they make me laugh.  They get traffic if you are early to post.  LOL!  I try to keep it confined to naked idiots in Tennessee, but we seem to have exceeded our quota over the past couple of years.

So if you made it to the end, there’s actually a little bit of a payoff.  The biggest news of this year is that we are having another delivery from the stork in July 2009 and we’re super excited about it!  Aside from lots of work, I’ve been pretty busy lately taking care of The Missus, who gets morning sickness 24/7 for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.  That further explains the sparse posting, but I plan to pick it up as she starts feeling better.

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Dear You

I’m really not trying to ignore you. I’m just super busy right now. I will leave this for you to watch since many of you may be tired from 5 days straight of Rock Band. You still have a long way to go to catch this guy.

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Ultra Light Blogging

So it not just me? I stopped by for some bagels and a cup of coffee (ok, I really stopped to get online), and checked my feed reader just now. Looks like there’s light blogging going on everywhere, which probably means there’s light reading going on everywhere as well.

Not much to write–I’ve been 1) Playing outside 2) Playing cards 3) Went to a movie (Benjamin Buttons)–the first movie I’ve seen at the theater in two years.

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Because I Care

I’m finally getting around to setting up remote posting for this here site.  Since I’m going to be without constant connection for a couple of days it makes sense.  Plus I’ll be able to write posts updating every big poker hand I win.

You may ask yourself, “Why is he worried about being able to post remotely all of a sudden?  He’s been constantly connected since Thanksgiving, up all hours of the night, yet there haven’t been many posts recently.”

Well.  That’s a good question.

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School Kids Make Me Jealous

So I’ve had a fun couple of days down here in Florida playing with my sister-in-law’s kids. We’ve been staying up until like 2 am drinking coffee (don’t tell their mom), eating pizza, playing Wii, and talking trash about our skills.  It doesn’t hurt that the weather is perfect, so during the day we can go outside and hang out.

But all that ends tomorrow.  For me anyway.  Tomorrow it’s going to get really cold (in the 60s), and they are all going to the zoo.  That sucks.  For me anyway.  I have to work.  And it’s worse when you work remotely, because at least when you have an office to go to you can forget about the fun everybody else is having on your drive to work and see a bunch of other people who are at work while all the kids are having fun.

Those kids better be ready for some Rock Band tomorrow night…it’s on!