Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

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Self Directed Effort, Google Music vs. iTunes, and…Bowling!

May 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Is bowling becoming too easy? – Yep. I just read an entire six page article on bowling. I didn’t know about 90% of the information here. Now I know.

Self directed effort is the best kind

Are you addicted to a taskmaster, to someone else’s to do list, to short term external rewards that sell your long-term plans short? If no one is watching, are you helpless, just a web surfing, time wasting couch potato? Who owns the extra work you do now that you’re being directed?

Apple Has Keys To The Cloud Music Kingdom – Agreed. The beauty of Lala was that it worked without uploading. Long term though, the labels are still doomed. They will only matter for older tracks; you know…the good stuff. Oh…wait…

How good is Google’s Instant Mix? – Just the fact that it has a “WTF Score” makes this worth skimming.

Libertarianism and Selfishness – It’s important to note that libertarianism != objectivism.

Reading of Excerpts at Tucson School Board Meeting – Please refrain from reading the profanity in the public school text books in school board meetings. KThanksBye.

Man Attempts To Swim The Atlantic. Fails.

May 13, 2011 / / 0 Comments

If you’re going to dream, dream big. Any idiot can run from the cops or get involved in a car chase with them. It takes a special person to attempt to swim from them.

“He just took off, and he got a good head start,” DeMorat said. “He was in a foot chase for a few blocks. Then he ran straight into the water.”

Usually, the mugshot section is the best feature on the FloridaToday website, but the stories behind the violations are pretty boring. Today the tables have turned.

Greatest Spits From The Last Few Days

May 10, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Google’s cloud music service. Request an invite to the beta. 20k tracks stored for free isn’t a bad place to start!

Shit My Students Write – Best new (to me) website I’ve run across in a while

Apple Trumps Google as Most Valuable Brand – Shocked Coca-Cola doesn’t trump both. The carbonate sugar water industry is much more stable than technology. Do you think it’s even within the realm of possibility that someone could knock KO from its perch? Can you say the same for Google and Apple?

Here’s my most successful tweet recently:

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/#!/sadcox/statuses/67615378800513024″]

Celebration standout wins 100, 400 at 3A state track meet – My buddy Ryan’s little brother.

Online Poker Caused Osama Bin Laden’s Destruction? – A little out there, but you never know.

What’s high school for? – This is the best post on education I’ve ever read. Seriously.

Password Manager Last Pass Possibly Hacked – Let thy password algorithm reside only in thy head.

Long Overdue Link Dump

May 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been crazy busy with work for the past few weeks, and a lot has happened. Obviously, I haven’t been reading very much, but here’s a small sample.

An Outsider’s Guide to a Triathlon – Love Todd’s approach.

Justice is Not an Excuse for Jubilation – Pretty much how I feel about it all.

Gas Pump Activism – This. Is. Awsum.

Surprise! Woman finds 7-foot gator in bathroom – Had to read this just to make sure she didn’t find it in my bathroom. Of course, I’d be just as concerned about this woman wandering into the house as I would the gator.

Apocalypse later: what happens the day after we hit the debt ceiling – The horror. The horror.

Higher Education: The Next Asset Bubble? – If you consider college to be an investment, it’s reasonable to calculate your ROI before investing, right?

Social Media for Small Businesses: 6 Effective Strategies – Great tips here for one man shows!

Online Poker Legal Now (in D.C.) – I bet (haha) it won’t take long until this ripples out.

Running Like Epictetus

April 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Awesome post over on The Logic of Long Distance on stoic running.

Finally, and this point is probably hardest to grasp, you are responsible for you.  Not your shoes, not your watch, not anything else.  Those are tools, to be used with the requisite understanding, but they do not take away your responsibility to yourself.

I’d maybe even take this a step further. I think some of the best long distance running a fella can do takes place when there is no watch, HRM, or iPod involved at all. Just run and figure it out. Pay attention to what’s going on, and let what you’ve learned about yourself dictate what you are doing at that moment. Get rid of the gadgets that are telling you what you should be doing. Get rid of the external influences that may push you to do more than you should or hold you back from doing what you could. Instead, just do what you feel like you should do.

We’re talking about distance here, right? If you’re running any kind of distance it’s because you’ve worked up to it, so you should have learned something along the way. And you can  keep learning as you go.

I miss running long.

Great American Royal Weddings

April 27, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’m so excited about this upcoming royal wedding. Really…seriously. I am. It just got me thinking about the great weddings in history of American Royalty.

Jesse Ventura’s commentary in the first video is classic:

  • “Do the rings go on fingers or in noses?”
  • “Looks like two carp in the Mississippi River going after the same piece of corn”


Uncle Elmer’s Wedding by TSteck160

And of course, who could forget this sequence that changed history and ushered in the McMahon/Helmsley era.

Wedding of Test & Stephanie McMahon by marshal99

If you didn’t get teary-eyed watching those two videos, I got two words for ya…

Ron Paul Running!

April 26, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Just like last time, I still think he has no chance of winning. But just like last time, he will have the ability to shift the debate towards more libertarian ideas.

The big difference this time around is that Gary Johnson is also running. So instead of being the only libertarian voice in the mainstream debate, there will now be two voices–one a little more extreme than the other. Just an idea here, but maybe Trump is to Palin as Paul is to Johnson.

I do think people are going to be paying more attention this time around when Ron Paul somehow finds a way to tie every single debate question back to the Federal Reserve. You have to give him credit for staying on message. But I think people may be more drawn to Gary Johnson. Not because he’s saying anything that much different than Ron Paul, but because of the way he says it.

Save Your Own Football Season!

April 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Remember paper football? It’s that game we played in middle school where we’d fold paper into a triangle and bump it back and forth across the table until part of the “ball” was over the edge of the table but not falling off. That game curbed much violence at lunch time.

Now you can get one of these table top kits and play for real…as real as paper football gets.  They even come with the logos of your favorite NFL teams. I know. What a shocker.

I know what you are thinking…”Can’t I just play with the paper football app on my iPhone?”, “What about the risk of paper cuts?”, “What if I’m not able to reach up to the fast food window to get my dinner because I’m sore from playing paper football?”

These are all legitimate concerns, but there’s no other way to get the thrill of paper football without throwing all caution to the wind and jumping into the game.

Possible uses:

  • Team building money at work purchases one for your office. You can run tournaments at lunch time.
  • Share the joys of paper football with your children. This way, you won’t have to go outside or move your body too much, but can still claim quality sports time.
  • Drinking game at what used to be a Super Bowl party. Loser has to do a shot when he gets scored on and has to stay at the table.
  • Perfect gift for someone who is committed to sitting in a chair every Sunday from August to December no matter what.

Don’t be surprised to find many athletes from the professional leagues turning to paper football to stay sharp during the lockout.

How To Remove Dead Christmas Palms

April 19, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Unusually cold winters here for the past two years have caused many a palm tree to perish. If you need to remove dead trees and replace them with something more cold hearty, I’ve built up some experience in the past couple of months, and there are two basic methods I’ve used.

Method 1 works best for single trees or small doubles/triples. Since the root ball on palms is relatively small and the soil they grow in is relatively soft, you shouldn’t have much trouble digging around the root ball and exposing the top part. It’s not too difficult to chop through the outer roots as you dig, and you’ll have the tree rocking back and forth in the hole in no time. There will be lots of dirt/sand attached to the root ball, so to make it lighter you can take a hose and blast as much soil off as you can. Test it out every now and then to see how heavy it is and if you can drag it out of the hole. I was able to do this by myself with some effort, but if you have someone to assist you it shouldn’t be too much trouble.

Method 2 works best for bigger trees or multiples. You’ll need the same basic tools as in Method 1, but you’ll additionally need a cooler with some beer in it. After following the directions I outlined above, you are going to realize that even if you get the whole root ball exposed and cleaned of soil, there’s no way you’ll ever be able to get it out of that giant hole on your own. Sit down and drink a couple of beers while you wonder what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into. While sitting there, look as pathetic and helpless as you can. It may take a while, but eventually one of your neighbors will drive by in an F-150 (or equivalent) and offer to come over with a heavy duty tow strap and yank it out of the hole for you. Make sure you offer him one of the beers out of the cooler.

Hope that helps. Bottom line–use the tools you have available to you. You’ll have more success if included in those tools are a mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong.

Personal Finance, Government Style

April 14, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Wait…let me get this straight. Using this approach, if a person is facing extreme debt with collectors calling, cars and houses on the verge of being repo’d and foreclosed, and maxed out credit cards, these are the steps they should take to fix the problem:

  1. Ask for higher limits on their cards
  2. Demand a raise from their employer (at gunpoint if necessary)
  3. Create a plan to spend the extra money from the raise and the newly available credit to raise their kids’ allowances, trade-in for a new car that gets better gas mileage (no need for cost analysis, right?), and buy some new clothes to interview for jobs that pay a much higher salary. They’ll get these interviews by leveraging the great references the current employer they just held up at gunpoint gave them.
Sounds like a solid plan.

Sight Word Shuttle Runs

April 13, 2011 / / 1 Comment

I went downstairs for a cup of coffee this morning and saw Ana playing a new game with Pea. This one combines sight words with fitness (i.e. “energy release”). How lucky are we that she’s able to make up stuff like this on the spot?!?!

Pea is a very “high energy” kid. Sometimes when she’s really revved up we go out in the yard and do shuttle runs to help her release some tension and empty the tank. You may have done shuttle runs if you ever played basketball, soccer, rugby, etc. The basic concept is that you run to one point, touch the ground, run back to the starting point, touch the ground, and repeat until you are gassed. We don’t make her do this–she loves it on her own.

The game Ana came up with today was to put several slips of paper with sight words (“and”, “or”, “the”, “she”, etc.) written on them into a hat. That’s the starting point. The game is to take a word out of the hat and read it by sight, not by sounding it out. When she reads the word correctly, she gets to run all the way down the hallway to pick up an item out of a bucket. Use whatever motivates your child–marshmallows, pennies, small toys–for them to retrieve and bring back.

I could not believe how much she loved this game. The best part is that it’s very easy to add more and more words to change the difficulty level. And for a bonus, Bug was following her the whole time. She loved chasing her sister up and down the hall and repeating the words!

Kindle Price Dropping and A Bunch of Other Financial Stuff

April 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Here’s another mind dump of thoughts on a few of the link worthy things I’ve read lately…enjoy!

Now you can buy a Kindle for $114! The gotcha here is that you have to be willing to look at ads and special offers. Still, I’m glad to see the price coming down one way or another. I still think the magic price for this device is $99. At least, that’s the price at which I’d bite.

5 Common Remote Work Misconceptions – Word!

Roth IRA: Time to retire Roth IRAs – Could not be more wrong. This guy needs to run the numbers, although I doubt he’d know where to start to do that. Roth IRAs and Traditional IRAs generate the exact same tax revenue if you make the assumption that the tax rate doesn’t change. But for the gov’ment, they get to have their candy now instead of waiting for you to retire. The upside for the account holder only comes if they end up in a higher tax bracket or tax rates rise across the board. Look where people have placed their bets.

Gov Shutdown’s Impact – Great argument by @newscoma for keeping $ in state instead of sending it to D.C. 🙂

IKEA desktop – <3 IKEA. This is pretty cool.

Portugal, Illinois and Caterpillar – “The Portugese have decided to protest against mathematics….” That’s pretty much all you need to know. Of course, as Dave Ramsey likes to point out, if they’d been doing math they wouldn’t be in this mess.

Khan Academy Updates and Upgrades

April 5, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I watched a few of the Khan videos a while back and thought they were great by themselves. But there’s a lot more going on at Khan Academy now. Hopefully this will get people thinking about some different and better directions for education. Here’s a TED talk…he explains it much better than I do.

Hey…I Know That Dude!

March 29, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Local boy does (not so) good…allegedly. And worse, he’s a Robertson County Commissioner.

There are now as many as 40 people who say they are owed millions, and a criminal investigation is under way. Robertson County Commissioner Shannon Polen already faces three civil suits.

I went to high school with Shannon, and it would be fair to say we were friends on some level. I mean, we didn’t hang out at each other’s houses or anything, but we were teammates on a couple of 2-8 football teams and laughed at a lot of the same stuff in classes we had together. Lot’s of laughing in those classes–not much learning.

I would run into him every now and then in college too. I remember bumping into him and another guy we both knew at a basketball game once. We ended up sitting a couple of rows behind Andy Kelly, whom he was heckling just loud enough to not be heard.

I’m sure the Vols lost that night, but I can’t blame that on Shannon with a clear conscious.  While I remember him having a biting sense of humor and being a master heckler, the ability to affect the outcome of sporting events doesn’t stand out in my mind as one of his strengths (see the 2-8 football teams) .

But seriously, how do you heckle Andy Kelly when Wade Houston is in the same room?

Time and malt beverages have ravaged a fair percentage of my memories, but there are a few interesting facts I can tell you about Mr. Polen. Digest them at your leisure and make of them what you will…

  1. He once went as Brian Bosworth for Halloween.
  2. When our Algebra II teacher* had us research a great mathematician, the subject of his research was…our Algebra II teacher.
  3. When busting someone’s chops, he often liked to incorporate a song. He used Steve Miller’s “The Joker” on one friend, but for other people he made up songs. One involved a rat’s nest on a guy’s head, while another was simply a refrain of the words, “Do Wrong”.
  4. He was my weight lifting partner for a year, and I didn’t get much stronger. I’m not saying he was robbing me of my strength, but I can’t say for sure that he wasn’t either.

In all sincerity, this doesn’t smell like a simple misunderstanding, and I hope the people who have lost their savings and faith in elected officials are at least able to get their money back.

UPDATE: Michael Silence has a point.

Sometimes you just have to wonder if stupidity shouldn’t be a felony.

*NOTE: I like to play fast and loose with the word “teacher”

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