Knoxville's race to be the ugliest town in Tennessee!

Oh goody, I love nothing more than cold, hard facts to prove a point. Which town has the highest signs around? WE DO!

Alcoa, Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, Franklin, Farragut ALL have ordinances limiting the height of signs and ALL of them are lower than Knoxville. Check out the specifics here, and send your concerns to government.

So either we have really tall people in town or we just don't mind looking like the white trash capitol of TN.

Lemony Spigot's Series of Unfortunate Events

I managed to fill up both cars this week with $3.70-ish a gallon gas. How? By paying attention. You see, Ike wasn't exactly a surprise (hey look maw, weather radars!). And by now folks should realize there are a lot of oil derricks and refineries along the Texas, Louisiana coastline. But when FEMA and others were using words like "certain death" I knew something was gonna happen. Within two hours of my filling up our minivan the price per gallon for regular had gone from under $4 to $4.49.

So what? Well, panic struck Knoxville. Fearing shortages, a number of people went crazy and started filling up their Canyoneros and lawnmowers. Hey folks, guess what: when you make a resource scarce, the price goes up. It is called supply and demand. I didn't realize the full implications of this until some good ol' Twitter friends pointed out a couple of things:
1. We're at the end of the Galveston pipeline, so once everyone else has had a drink, we get the dregs (oversimplifying, but the key is we're USED to getting oil from that area)
2. As a result, we had to buy more expensive "Yankee" gas from the Northeast region. Damn Yankees! (I kid)
3. The panic-buying simply drove up the cost and caused minor shortages and outages in various places. Call it the stupid tax.

You can read a more detailed telling of what's going on at Shots Across the Bow, a terrific local blog.

I had half-jokingly expressed my shock at TN not investigating price-gouging and Scott and Lissa pointed out there's no gouging. True, the rise in prices overall wasn't gouging, but I would bet there were isolated pockets. In fact, I know that one station was trying to sell for quite a bit over $5, but they were reported and quickly fixed it. Good, that's where the "system" works as it should.

The lesson: plan ahead and don't panic. This is a lesson we've increasingly forgotten in this country and we should bring it back. My 3 Laws for Living:
1. Pay attention
2. Slow down
3. Think about it

Next time something bad happens, try that. I'll try to keep the kneejerk Tweets to a minimum as well!

Start tipping Sonic carhops-- in cash

I just learned Sonic, apparently in an effort to avoid the minimum wage increase, will start paying newly-hired carhops (the folks who bring your food to the car) a meager $3.15 an hour, or whatever your typical server gets. You know, at places like P.F. Chang's or Nama, where they rely on tips to make a living wage. Although that is also arguable.

What isn't arguable is that Sonic is about to skirt the system and grossly underpay American citizens trying to work. When's the last time you tipped a Sonic carhop? Better yet, Sonic doesn't yet support tipping on the computers at their stores. So you'll have to bring some cash if you're going to tip. That is, if they had told you you're supposed to. From what I'm hearing, they aren't going to change the machines, either.

All this while we fret and worry about Belgium buying Budweiser.

Community Supported Agriculture

How would you like to get fresh veggies monthly while supporting local farmers? No, Harry & David this isn't-- those fruits are flown in from around the world and shipped in extravagant containers. I went looking for some CSA's near Knoxville and found only one. CSA stands for community-supported agriculture, and I really hope the idea catches on. Essentially you can "buy in" to a farmer's haul for a season, and pick up your portion at regular intervals.

LocalHarvest located one CSA farm near Knoxville: Green Man Farm. I think I actually bought some butter lettuce from them this past week on my trip to the Market Square Farmer's Market. Looks like you could have bought in to this year's crop and picked up 25 weeks of produce for as little as $400 for the year. Think about how much you spend on groceries per month!

I know some restaurants, like La Costa, source their food somewhat locally, but doing this in an easy way for the average consumer could really be a cool thing. As food (and transport!) costs go up, it'll be one way of coping. Couple it with a modern-day Victory gardens and we could be looking at an agricultural renaissance.

Bloggity Boom

In the past couple of weeks I've been able to track down quite a few bloggers and work-at-home types, all of whom are creating these amazing content gardens all over Knoxville. One caught my eye: Knoxify, an incredibly well-done blog by Casey Peters and Brandon Clarke. From there I found Instaknox, a local version of Twitter (basically), and Knoxd, which looks an awful lot like one of the Alltop sites.

I really think localized versions of these larger services is where it's at, and while I'm sure there's plenty of this elsewhere, I can't express how fantastic it is to see such effort here in Knoxville. Just a month ago I was worrying aloud about the vivacity of our local creative and techy populace. Turns out I just don't get around much!

Well, we are SO having some big ol' meetup. Don't know where, how, when or what shape it'll take (social event or barcamp? panels or keynotes?)

Look ma, I'm a blogger!

A couple of weeks ago I wound up at SXSW, the Interactive part of the festival (I'm not yet cool enough to stick around for the music portion). Lots of designers, developers and a TON of bloggers. I ran into Darren Rowse, the guy behind Problogger. Darren has a lot of hustle, and truly knows how to monetize a blog. He was kind enough to interview me, which you can read here.

Late last year I was interviewed at length for the book "Blogging Heroes," which is still in print. I highly recommend it if you've got friends or family who ask "what is this blogging thing anyway?"

And a quick update on my plans for a blogger meetup here in Knoxville: there has been some interest, so I'm pushing forward and hoping for a late summer or early fall date. I'm also hoping it won't be boring, which means no boring panels of interesting people. While SXSW had some good panels, it had a few stinkers too. The last thing I want is for our local meetup to be a simple meet-and-greet. Instead, I'd like everyone to come out of it with something we can build on. More to come...

Is any form of Knoxville solidarity possible?

I had an all-too-brief conversation recently with my virtual cubicle co-woker cafemama recently about time and work ethic. Sounds like a lot to get into with one quick convo, but it basically went something like this:
cafe: "most of the people i know run three or four blogs, have a consulting business, have three startups they're working on..."
me: "haha! all the more reason i get irritated when i see people who could be blogging doing stupid myspace surveys >.<"

So what is it that drains us of this get-up-and-go I find in places like Atlanta, Portland, San Francisco and elsewhere? I'm not trying to paint with a broad brush here, because honestly I've been quite impressed with some of the hardworking folks I've met around here. At ITT the former director, Dave Reynolds, used to mention the "Appalachia effect" and I guess he's talking about this stereotype of the ignorant hillbilly. But I think there's also a sort of circle-the-wagons mentality that has certainly been around since the very first settlers crossed the mountains. We tend to do things in tight circles, and our regional tech backwardness doesn't help-- we could be a lot more connected.

I guess what I'm getting at is that ideas like a blogger meetup, or any tech-based meetup seems to be very scattered or limited. There isn't the focus, the drive, the ambition and publicity that you might find elsewhere. And this is sad, considering our proximity to UT, Oak Ridge, and the brain trusts all over the region.

Certainly we're all pressed for time. At some point we all have to say no to things we'd love to say yes to, potential be damned. But it gets downright depressing when I start prodding people for a hint of camaraderie, only to be met with stony silence. You'd think folks can't wait to get the hell out of Knoxville.

If you're not hellbent on getting out of Knoxville, and if you've decided we can make this a better place, let's start small. Let's start talking about a real, live, actually promoted blogger meetup. Anyone who has been blogging for any length of time in a public way would surely agree that it can be an agent for change, or at the least, an agent for discussion and debate. That is what this whole democracy thing was founded upon-- the marketplace of ideas. As bloggers, I see it as our duty to promote this marketplace, and somehow make it more accessible, more relevant, and more informative than ever.

Surely the brains around here can agree on that? Let's get to it!

Shared workspace in Knoxville?

I don't want to get in the habit of using this blog for my own purposes, but it occurs to me that what I'm looking for might help more than just myself. In fact, this could be a great opportunity for downtown Knoxville.

You see, I need to get out of our house a couple times a week (or more, depending) to just work. In some cities they call this "shared" or "co-working" spaces. Essentially it's a place you go where you pay a portion of the rent, but you're not really there all the time, or you don't need the trappings of a full office.

Think of it like a micro-time-share. While at Macworld last week I visited the "offices" of Plasq, makers of some great Mac software. Their team is distributed across the planet, and a couple times a year they descend upon one geographic location to work together. In San Francisco they are using a place called "Citizen Space" which is very cool (just look at their bathroom!).

So I'm looking for something like that. Either a corner of someone's established office, or a larger space where a few of us home-based workers can set up shop. I'd happily share the costs, or pay someone a monthly pseudo-rent. Does something like this even exist in Knoxville? And yes, I'm aware of Executive Suites. Personally I think those are overpriced, not to mention quite sterile and rather far from my home location.

Ideally this would be downtown somewhere. I mean, if we're encouraging folks to live and work downtown, and you want the type of creative workers that flourish in a downtown space, shouldn't there be some place where they don't have to spend hundreds a month on rent? Not just a coffee shop, which is nice for occasional use, but not great for long periods of work.

As for why I need this-- it's basically needed to save our family. Working at home is grand, but the kids don't "get it" and it actually makes my wife's work (wrangling kids) much more difficult. While I was gone for a week in San Francisco everyone at home got into the "flow" of me being gone. And I'll admit-- absence makes the heart grow fonder! So while I dig being at home, it is clear I need a physical offsite for at least part of the week...

Anyone else in this position? Anyone know an at-home worker who might want to share bandwidth or office space?

You can reach me directly at: superpixelfeedback AT mac DOT com

Yar, how about Talk Like a Knoxvillian Day?

Today's Talk Like a Pirate Day (check out some pirate crafts or how to use your iPhone to make pirate faces). But I wonder what Talk Like a Knoxvillian would sound like? Do we have a sound? Other than East TN redneck, is there any particular phrase or colloquialism we use that would ID us? Personally, I pepper my sentences with references to the Sunsphere.

Welcome Jim Samples to Knoxville!

Most of this town won't have a clue who Jim is, but I've been an admirer for a while. He's the former chief of Cartoon Network who resigned *cough* after Boston lost its sense of humor and went kookoockachoo over those Adult Swim neon signs were strapped to poles in public view.

Well it looks like HGTV snagged the brilliant man who had the brains to OK shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Everyone who worked at CN (owned by Time-Warner, the same folks who pay my checks via AOL/Weblogs, where I work) said nothing but good things about Jim, and frankly I'm giddy that he'll be setting down roots in our squalid little burg.

Of course, we're not squalid. HGTV and Scripps in general is making some pretty good moves lately. While I doubt their Pickle video service will fly, I do know they've snagged other top talent from the likes of Yahoo, and while I may poke fun at the resilience of their News-Sentinel blogging efforts, the fact is they make a tasty meal of info EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Naturally, I do the same thing, and I do it a a lot cheaper, but we won't get into that now.

Welcome to Knoxville Jim, please don't be offended if I actually ask for your autograph. It's the closest to Frylock I'll ever get.

It's like I'm a psychic or something

I finally get around to reading the Sunday paper this evening, and what do I see? Well the paper has gone and made themselves a blog network. Good on ya! Granted, trying to join resulted in a 404 error, and my blog wasn't included (no shocker there), oh and bloggers won't really be able to monetize their blogs within the page, but hey, it's a start, right?

Anything that gets the blog blog flowing is a good thing. It doesn't necessarily change the fact that, overall, we are still a pretty technologically backwards town. In a moment of true funny I scroll down and see someone blogging about killing the battery on their Wall Street Powerbook. That's the Powerbook from 1998 y'all.

So I dunno, maybe it has been tricked out by MCE Tech and is a screamer with dual DVD-burners. Maybe Blognetwork.Knoxnews.com (catchy, huh?) will be a rocket ride of local success. And maybe, just maybe, Knoxville will learn what it really means to blog and the ethos of the blogosphere. Considering it took Knoxnews a few years to drop the whole "we don't need your stinking Google referrals" and remove the mandatory log-in, we've got an uphill battle on our hands.

UPDATE: As Jack points out in the comments, this blog HAS been added. In my efforts to build an SEO-friendly site, I named my blog "The Knoxville Blog" which is pretty generic when viewed against a number of other "Knoxville" blogs. So I couldn't find it, and complained, and that's my bad. Sorry folks.