Scott Adcox

Grilled Cheese Academy – A real education

Financial Illiteracy Is Killing Us – Seriously, are there any non-profits focused on teaching financial literacy to kids? I will volunteer to help.

Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings – Just ordered up some jelly beans to celebrate this news.

Facebook Places vs. Foursquare – Foursquare has a game/awards (kinda). The question with FB places is “why?”. Then again, you could probably ask that question about 90% of the content there.

Furman’s FIRST Running Program – No. Junk. Miles.

Lifehacker: Our List of the Best Android Apps – Already using most, so I’m linking to this mostly to validate my choices.

“I think the Internet is the most dangerous thing invented since the atomic bomb” –John Mellencamp – Sounds like Johnny Cougar doesn’t like having his cheese moved.

What Should I Do About My Virtual Life After Death? – Adding this to my list. It’s pretty far down, but on there nonetheless.

Real Estate’s Gold Rush Seems Gone for Good – hmph

Moving on – An early shot fired against book publishing. There will be more.

Fake Drink Spills save seats – Genius!

Lottery Ticket Art – Don’t throw away those scratch off tickets…you could still be a big winner!

Disney Princesses, Deconstructed – All you can really do to fight it is to push a fascination with ocean dwelling killing machines instead of Princesses. But it’s an uphill battle.

Muscles Remember Past Glory – I strongly suspect fat bellies have the same memory ability.

Thanks No For Skipping Your Immunizations! Whooping CoughIs Back – I wouldn’t let Jenny McCarthy give me dating advice when I was 19. Why would I listen to her parenting tips?

What Happened to Yahoo – Bottom line–nothing was happening at Yahoo, so things started happening to Yahoo. And why is that when I change my Yahoo! password, my Del.icio.us password doesn’t change. Exhibit A.

Ragnar Central Florida – Always wanted to do one of these…I may have found a team!

Endless Bummer – Don’t worry, it’s safe for work.

Unsuck It – Pretty useful, especially if you are low on bandwidth and need to bucketize terms.

The Third Stage of Personal Finance – Good motivator to start your day.

Facebook bug spills name and pic for all 500 million users – Uh….awsum?

Complete Guide to Maximizing Your Android Phone’s Battery Life – When following these instructions, make sure you’re holding the phone correctly.

14 Famous Man Caves – And not one has a spin bike or a punching bag. Where does all the anger go?

7 Discipline-builders for Remote Workers – I found this article very distracting.

Girl quits job on dry erase board – I like TechCrunch too, but if you spend an hour a day there, you must be reading at a remedial level. It’s not Faulkner.

Michael P. Fleischer: Why I’m Not Hiring – Interesting…and I thought it was just because he was a racist.

The Great Reset of Urban Development in Economic Downturns – Metropolitan corridors. I don’t like the sound of that.

Internet gambling freedom boosted by House committee vote – It’s comin’….

Rdio – Even more music.

Zone 12 Project gang: Little Blue Egg – I will put this right next to the outdoor shower. Or maybe inside the outdoor shower.

Build Your Own Outdoor Shower – Coming soon to a side of the house near me. I hope.

If this passes, hopefully someone with some sense will just install a “switch” in the Oval Office and put a label under it that says “Internet”. It won’t do anything, but that’s ok. The people involved clearly have little understanding of what they’re talking about anyway. We could give Al Gore a lifetime position that requires him to flip the switch when he turns in for the night to cut back on the global warming or whatever other crisis the interwebs contribute to.

Even if the president ordered all U.S. Internet companies to block, say, all packets coming from China, or restrict non-military communications, or just shut down access in the greater New York area, it wouldn’t work. You can’t figure out what packets do just by looking at them; if you could, defending against worms and viruses would be much easier.

“Shutting down” the internet isn’t anything like closing the freeway. It’s like shutting down radio, television, and newspapers all at once. We don’t even have a radio, cable, or a TV antenna at our house, so how would we know the webs had been shut down (for our protection)? You know what that means…get ready for the phone systems to get wrecked as part of the collateral damage with people calling up their internet providers because they can’t do the Googles or log on to the Facebooks.

HT Les Jones at NoSilenceHere

Lost Finale Heads Into The Light – Newscoma writes some of the best Lost summaries/observations around. I’m going to read this…as soon as I get to watch the finale.

How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job – Hilarious.

After Housing Bust, Builders Dust Off the Boom Machine – Demand is demand, even when it is manufactured out of thin air.

Build Your Own Backyard Fire Pit – Ain’t nothin’ better than your own backyard

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook – Really only need one. I’m not convinced they are competent enough to protect people’s data even if they wanted to.

18 Week Olympic Distance Training Program – Intermediate -

Can Science Explain the Concept of Heaven? – I was really just looking for a yes or no.

I’m really not trying to bully up on Facebook. Really, I’m not. Besides, I’m just one guy, and they have millions of users. But, again, the scariest thing about FB to me is that they just don’t seem competent enough to handle the responsibility of possessing your personal data:

“We were recently made aware of one case where if a user takes a specific route on the site, advertisers may see that they clicked on their own profile and then clicked on an ad,” the Facebook spokesman said. “We fixed this case as soon as we heard about it.”

I’m sure Google knows more about me than Facebook ever will, but there’s a (very slight) level of trust in their competence I don’t have with FB. I’m willing to let them slide on that initial Buzz snafu. Plus, the tools they provide are way more useful and powerful than Farmville and Mafia Wars.

Feel free to “Like” this post by the way.

Facebook has gone from a very private way to communicate with only the people you want to communicate with, to a firehose of information about you and everyone you kinda-sorta know.

@jfloyd pointed out this article earlier today, and it pretty much sums up why I have been changing my relationship with Facebook for a while.

Facebook originally earned its core base of users by offering them simple and powerful controls over their personal information. As Facebook grew larger and became more important, it could have chosen to maintain or improve those controls. Instead, it’s slowly but surely helped itself — and its advertising and business partners — to more and more of its users’ information, while limiting the users’ options to control their own information.

Sorry Facebook. It’s not me, it’s you.

You can expect to continue getting the occasional booty call from me–I’ll let you know when I need something (every time I post), but don’t expect much more. I look forward to your minions Liking my content. In fact, I encourage them to do so. And you can do with that information what you like.

But I really need our relationship to be one sided. As a great man…errrrr golfer…errr playa once said, “You gotta do this for me. Huge. Quickly. Bye.”

**UPDATE**

One of the developers of the World Wide Web,  Robert Cailliau, explains in a TechCrunch interview why he isn’t on Facebook: “I can get in, but I can’t get out.”

NASA Releases First-Ever iPhone Game, Complete With Wiseass Remarks – And to think, it was just the other day I was telling a NASA employee that the private market could do a lot of the same stuff they do and it would be more cost efficient. She threw “we invented velcro” at me. If only she’d known they were releasing this iPhone app, she could have shut my point down completely. At least they are giving it away, so your tax dollars are being returned to you…if you happen to have an iPhone.

Marijuana use by seniors goes up as boomers age – Disclaimer: I don’t set things in fire and put them in my mouth. Period. But there are a lot of “get-off-my-lawn” type older people who really do need to chill out a little. And that wasn’t even brought up in this article. So how, exactly, would it hurt me if they got a little help with achieving that?

CPAC Exhaustion – Oops! So what if she said she met him but was mistaken. It’s not that big a deal. I’ll give some linkages just to say that.

10 fake Simpsons words that belong in the dictionary – Doh!

George Washington: Simplicity seeker – The Father of our desire for simplicity.

The finest Facebook groups ever conceived by man – Heh…Facebook may be good for something after all.

Amazon Wants To Give A Free Kindle To All Amazon Prime Subscribers – Please be true. Thank you.

9 Studies That the Anti-Vaccination Movement Says Show Links or Bury the Truth – And a few notes on them. I don’t understand the Latin parts, but I think the idea here is that these things keep a lot of people from getting really bad diseases, err, alive.

9 Studies That the Anti-Vaccination Movement Says Show Links or Bury the Truth – And a few notes on them. I don't understand the Latin parts, but I think the idea here is that these things keep a lot of people from getting really bad diseases, err, alive.

iPhone Is Buzz Compatible While Most Android Phones Aren’t – "Currently there is only an estimated 28% of Android devices in use that are capable of taking full advantage of these services. This is due to the fact that lower Android versions browser does not support HTML5, although the gears requirement is meet". How's that for ironic and frustrating?

Google Buzz in Enterprise – Will Need to Overcome Google Apps Limitations – More on Google Buzz in the Enterprise. This argument against it (for now) makes sense

A Butcher’s Tips for Avoiding Cuts in the Kitchen – We just bought a knife sharpener, and it scares me to have blades that will actually cut things now. Although, a sharp blade is probably safer.

A newspaper starts exiting the Web – Huh?! I guess if you're trying to kill your newspaper, it's better to kill it as quickly as possible instead of letting it suffer.

A “Miss Me” Billboard I Can Get Behind – For realz.

5 Reasons Why Google Buzz Will Fail – Funny!!!!

Consumer debt will hold back spending, holding back economic growth. – Don't be ridiculous. We just have to "get banks lending again". Right.

Google Buzz

• Better group management than Facebook
• Share photos and videos inline from Picasa and Flickr
• Reduction of noise of posts you don’t care about (interested to see this one in action)
• Comments at your inbox instead of going to a site.
• Suggestions, suggestions, suggestions.
• Oh, and instant indexing of your Buzz’s–VERY important for bloggers.
• Unbelievable location based features

And still, I think the most potential is in the enterprise.

If it would only write to Twitter. Lot’s of people have a lot of equity built up over there and aren’t going to want to throw that away.

15 Steps to Cultivate Lifelong Learning – Very nice article here. Even though I sort of know all of these things intuitively, I need to be more active in implementing some of them.

Cocaine in Space Shuttle Hangar – And no mention of it in the local paper. At least no mention I could find. Interesting

Twitter’s Answer To Facebook Connect – I'm pretty close to breaking it off with Facebook for good. This is only fuel to the fire.

How to Tether Your Android Phone – Nirvana

Iphone VS Girlfriend – Maybe 2010 will be the year this type situation gets a clever name.

And How Are Things in Venezuela? – People spending their money needlessly because there's no point in maintaining savings in a soon to be devalued currency. Only in South America, right?

Top 10 Fighters – MMA Pound for Pound – I'd like to see these guys in a "Ten Men Enter, One Man Leaves" battle royale. I think if Anderson Silva could use his quickness to stay in open space for the first 15 minutes, he may come out as the real ultimate fighter.

Twitter’s traffic in trouble? – Scoble has a ton of advice for Twitter. My advice for Twitter: be Twitter and nothing else. Get rid of the 140 character limit? No way! Add comments? No way! Besides, do we really think Twitter could implement all these things without Fail Whaling left and right. Just be Twitter and be good at it, thanks!

Twitter’s traffic in trouble? – Scoble has a ton of advice for Twitter. My advice for Twitter: be Twitter and nothing else. Get rid of the 140 character limit? No way! Add comments? No way! Besides, do we really think Twitter could implement all these things without Fail Whaling left and right. Just be Twitter and be good at it, thanks!

Lang Wiseman: Vols | Kansas – DISCLAIMER: Lang Wiseman is one of my all-time favorite basketball players. I was at U.T. during the Wade Houston era, and it was pretty easy to tell at that time who was giving effort and who wasn’t. When Wiseman starts giving out ‘atta boys for hard work and determination, he’s doing it from an experienced perspective. HT Silence.

Netflix might still be coming to the Wii – That’d be cool with me.

Annoying Facebook Friends and Profiles – I’m like the Sybil of Facebook, with apparently at least 18 different personalities.

The Geography of Recession – I feel much better knowing we have a connected river system. For a minute there I was like, “whoa!”. Seriously, this is a pretty interesting take on the economic systems of different geographic areas.

What Your Bra Color Facebook Status Update Says About You – I’m glad I’ve yet to participate in the phenomenon.

If Big Stupid Tommy ran the Knoxville News-Sentinel – Big Stupid Tommy is a genius.

You Drive What? – Proud to be among the first to provide them with some link love. This looks very promising.

What Google’s Nexus One means to your organization – I’ve had my Android phone for about two and a half months now. I’d say the model I have isn’t quite on par with the iPhone standards by hardware standards, but the Android platform is. The phones are only going to get better, and they’re available on multiple carriers. Even development is more hassle free. Look out Apple.

Memphis Has Lost A Shining Star – Some sad news coming out of Memphis.

Home sales fall 16% in November – The real estate market may not be finished falling, but I don’t see interest rate opportunities getting any better in the near term. That’s what skeers me the most.

How to say stupid things about social media – Without a doubt, this is the best article on social media I’ve read in a while.

C-SPAN Challenges Congress to Open Health Care Talks to TV Coverage – I know they have the numbers to pass anything they want. But those representing states and districts that oppose this legislation have the OBLIGATION to be as contrary and obstructive in these negotiations as their constituents want them to be. It’s still a representative republic, right?

Facebook blocks ‘Web 2.0 Suicide Machine’ – All of your facebooks are belong to Facebook. Got it?

Photocheck.in for Foursquare – Since Orlando is so close, I've had a chance to mess with Foursquare some. Not that there's really anything huge going on in Melbourne, but it's close enough. Here, you get to be the Mayor of places like Publix and Panera (although I'm the current Long Doggers Mayor as well), and I don't think many other people in this little village are playing along. But photo checkin is a really cool idea for places like Sea World and IKEA, where I actually have taken some photos and almost forgot to 4S checkin.

WordPress 2.9.1 – This is supposed to fix some pingback issues. I've been using Delicious to auto-generate a lot of posts based on stuff I bookmark, and I've noticed that my posts don't seem to ping the other blogs I've linked to the same way they would if I wrote a post in the editor. Not sure why this would happen, since the ping is supposed to happen at publish time. Hopefully this was just a WordPress issue and is resolved.

Facebook Rolling Out Redesign To Some Users – I'm trying to quickly set the over/under on how long it will be until I see the first post in my FB feed of someone complaining about the new layout. Tentative line is 35 hours.

Some Google Wave Bots – I suspect lots of people got busy at the end of the year and the Google Wave hoopla died down. It may be coming back big this year, and here's a list of useful bots to add to your account. If you're on Wave, let's make an effort to communicate that way!

George F. Will – Catastrophe and survival – Read it. Again.

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I'm still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to "get credit flowing again." Well, I'm not really shocked that they say it. That's what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I’m still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to “get credit flowing again.” Well, I’m not really shocked that they say it. That’s what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Crunchy French Toast – This is now the official French toast recipe of our household. We’ll only be using the cream after long runs though.

50 Things we know now that we didn’t know this time last year – To be honest, I’ve suspected at least 34 of these things for a few years. I just wasn’t able to prove them.

Global Warming Won’t Prevent Ice Age – If it ain’t one thing with these climate fanboys it’s another.

Four UT basketball players face drug and weapon charges – I have an idea for college basketball players with aspirations of making it to the NBA. Lay off the weed for just four years. Once you get into the NBA you can do pretty much anything you want. I don’t really care what you do as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, but if you’re going to take the money you have to play by the rules made by the people who write the checks.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – What we really need is a Web 2.0 homicide machine. Only those with strong passwords survive!!!! I predict Web 2.0 homicide will be a big trend in 2010.

With U.S. Opportunities Dim, Expats Return Home – That's a relief. Now we don't have to worry about them taking our jobs. Oh…wait a minute…

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 – And how do you plan to adjust your strategies?

You’ve Got Mail, But the Mailman Hid It – In the near future, postmen caught hiding mail will be transferred to the U.S. Department of Medical Services as a punishment.

To comment or not to comment on Facebook – Here's a simple flowchart to help you decide

Option Arms: A poison pill for housing - – Would love to see a heat map showing where these were issued. Anyone? Anyone?

Matt Banahan red carded for stamping – Play as much rugby as possible while you can boys. The game will soon be turned into nothing but a series of free kicks.

Twoddler Lets Toddlers Send Tweets – – Uh….no.

Essential Year-End Money Moves – Solid info.