Fogerty

Sometimes it only takes one word for you to know exactly what you are gonna get.

It reminds me of a story…

I went to see a Credence Clearwater Revival tribute band with my buddy Half once. In between sets one of the band members was standing near us at the bar, and Half struck up a conversation with him that went something like this:

Half: When ya’ll gonna play “Lodi”?

The Guy: We don’t play “Lodi”.

Half: *with full contempt*  If you don’t play “Lodi” you ain’t no damn CCR tribute band!

Sometime I Wonder About You

800px-typicalwafflehouse

The current poll asks for your Waffle House hash browns order. So far, seven people have voted, but only three have included “scattered” in their options.

Uh…can you get hash browns at Waffle House that aren’t scattered? I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

Carry on.

Good Peanut Butter and Good Toilet Paper

…the rest of life is butter if you have those two things.  Really good butter.

Check out this awesome video of our ol’ buddy at ktownlowdown and his (much) better half, CouponKatie. You may have to watch the video twice, because the first time through you’ll most likely be distracted with thoughts of, “how did that guy land her?!?!?”

I don’t think such things, because I’m in a similar situation myself.

UPDATE–Had to link to the video…the autoplay was driving me nuts.

Katie is a serious money saving ninja and has built an incredible resource for families looking to save money in our area.

If I had any money I would actually pay her to come help me save it!!!

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?

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.

Coal Ash Spill Map

My buddy and yours @mr_schwartz has been doing some work with the Tennessee Clean Water Network integrating field data into Google Maps.  He’s done some really cool stuff with the spill in Kingston, plotting not only news, but also the results of water samples at exact lat/longs on this map.

He’s also put up a second map that shows info on the Ocoee Dam release on January 4.

Good example of mashing up information from several different sources and dispersing it to the public!

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).

2009 Internet Goals

I read this post the other day on Daily Blog Tips on 2009 Internet goals.  It’s a group writing project they’re sponsoring.  I haven’t participated in one of these in quite a while, but this one is pretty poignant.  Goal setting is usually something that I do in my head, but of course it’s a good idea to write these things down so that we can go back later and check them, right?  Right.

I think I came pretty far in 2008, and I hit most of the goals that I’d loosly set for myself, but there’s a pretty good chance I’ve just forgotten about the ones I didn’t hit, so I think writing them down is the way to go.

1)  Get at least two friends to start blogging.  This means you!!!  Even if you keep your blog private (that’s easy to do) or accessible only to your friends and family, it’s just too easy to have a nice site these days.  I have a whole different post coming about managing your online reputation.  Having your own site is the first step.  Grab a domain name for a few bucks a year, and talk to me about hosting.  I’m running a friend special right now.  😉

2)  Get over 100 subscribers to this blog (finally).  I’ve been hovering at around 85 for quite a while now.  I’m not really sure how to make it over the hump, but I have a year to figure out, right?  I think one of the problems may be that I bounce around a lot of different topics and get pretty streaky on things.  But that’s the way my mind works, and this is supposed to reflect what I’m thinking, right?  Oh wait, there is one thing I can do…BEG!!!  Please subscribe if you haven’t yet.  If you aren’t sure what I mean by “subscribe”, here’s a quick tutorial.

3)  Launch three new sites.  I actually know what two of these sites will be centered around–more on that next year.  That leaves me with the task of coming up with one other idea.  This shouldn’t be too tough to do–I’ve got a million ideas I haven’t even thought yet.  But then, there’s the implementation–there’s the rub.

4)  Money.  Financial goals are always fun.  With all of my efforts combine, I’d like to make it to $600/month by the end of 2009.  Right now I’m at about $225 per month, and it’s increasing at a pretty steady rate.  I think this goal can be attained by June or July, but I think it’s prudent to give myself some wiggle room just in case I don’t get a bailout.

5)  Empower a bunch of people.  This one is tough to measure, but I know a bunch when I see a bunch, and I hope some of the projects I’m working on will help a bunch express themselves and share information.

6)  Complete two WordPress plugins.  I’m almost finished with one sizeable plugin, and there’s another I’d like to write as well.  They both tie in with goal #5.  I think they will go a long way in making things easier for people to accomplish some tasks with their WordPress blogs.

7)  Get two links from A-list bloggers.  I’m not as concerned with which of my site(s) get these links as I am that I get them.  And I’m not picky about who these A-listers are.  Why would I be?  I think this is definitely doable–I got one last year.  Then again, that was in January and I didn’t get another one all year.

And Now I’d Like to Pass the Mic

As you can probably tell, I haven’t had much time for posts lately, which sucks because there is a lot going on right now in Chicago. I’m doing my best to keep up, but my Chicago corruption kung fu is weak. If you read this post from a few days ago you got a little information, but the best stuff there has been contributed by TLittle in the comments.

TLittle is actually in Chicago, so he’s getting lots of stuff locally.  He is also way more Chicago savvy than me, although I must confess that the last time I was there he set us on the wrong direction on the Red Line.  But we were able to correct that without incident, so we’ll let it slide.

Anyway, I’ve asked him to guest blog (if he feels like it) with the good little gems he comes up with to help us stay updated on what’s going on up there.  So before you leave a comment complimenting me on a written post you just read on Chicago corruption, check who posted it.  I’m sure you’ll find that it was in fact TLittle who was responsible for giving you the useful information.

Meanwhile, I’ll be writing another post on rasslin’.

The Return of Half

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a Toonlet.  It’s not that I don’t have any material.  There are volumes of one liners perfectly suited for cartoons.  And boy do I know some characters.  It just slipped my mind for some reason.

This particular situation occurred on a night that began in an airport bar in Atlanta, continued on a trans-Atlantic flight, moved to a hotel bar in Limerick, then to a rugby match (sneaky with the flasks), some local pubs, a dance club, a miserably hot and humid train ride to Dublin sitting across from a guy who sniffed snuff every 45 seconds or so, a car ride to a pub out in the country with a driver who had never driven on the left side of the road, and another rugby match.

It goes without saying that most of us were ready to take a break from the sauce and sleep for a couple of hours.   Most of us.  Also, notice the new character–Mr. Soft Touch
After 48 Hours Of Drinking