There were only two people texting and only 1 yapping through the movie.

Oh the movie was really good, don’t get me wrong. It’s not a typical zombie movie (although I like those) and I really enjoyed it. But it was even MORE enjoyable because the weekday crowd wasn’t completely rude, loud and generally annoying. I can tolerate a texter or two when the weekday price is only $4.75. Kudos to the crowd last week, only a couple of you were once removed from some manners.

Then I met my wife Pam and she showed me the ways of saving money by shopping at Walmart. I understand that there are those out there that hate Walmart. I’m sure I don’t agree with all of their business practices, but then again I don’t agree with all of Publix’s either. As the consumer, in tough economic times and as a person just trying to get the best value I can at all times, I feel free to shop at either place. All of this frugality makes me smile, especially when I compare prices for certain items between the stores like candy or bread. And no, Walmart isn’t always the cheapest for an individual item, but for a total bill it’s ALWAYS the winner.

Now thanks to Coupons.com life has come full circle. My scissors have a blue handle, not red like Mom & Dad’s, but they accomplish the same thing. $1.00 off of Nestle Water, $2.00 two Right Guard deodorants, you get the picture. The list goes on and on. For 10 minutes of my week, Pam and I will probably save $300 this year without any effort. I’m not a “coupon gamer” by any means. I don’t want to invest a lot of time in finding $1 off certain items, or trying to time my purchases to magically make a $200 bill be $30. But, I am thankful that thanks to Pam we’re saving more money every week, and thanks to saving more money I remembered something nifty about those old green couches, the sunshine through the big windows and my parents sifting through a Sunday paper to save us some money.

Thanks to all three of you! You make my life special, wonderful and frugal.

Oh how I love thee! One more payment and you’re all mine!

Oh I miss minor league hockey in the capital city.

I’m also always shocked by how many people still use Internet Explorer.

I love your network. I do. It works pretty much everywhere, unless I’m in a concrete bunker, and even then I usually have 1 bar in certain spots. But your latest plans are a killer for me, and I’m tired of being nickel and dimed. You see, you went basically told me that my plan doesn’t mean much to you. I only have 700 minutes for two lines. So when you revamped yourself, you didn’t save us any money on those plans. You only saved those that love you the “most” with the unlimited plans.

Well sorta, right you sly dog? You went and ditched my beloved Premium Plan, which I was happy to pay for because it was so useful and made me brag about greatness of Verizon Wireless. How can anyone beat the network, unlimited texting and navigation (I don’t even care about VCast)? Nobody could beat it. And so, I was a very happy customer.

Then these new plans come out and now you’re telling me that if I want the exact same items, with the exact same types of phones under a new contract it would be $60 more per month? But why Verizon, what did I do to deserve this? Even your CSRs told me flat out to not leave my current plan because, “There is no migration path for your type of plan at this time.” So now I’m stuck. I’m stuck with an EnV Touch that I like, but don’t love. My wife is stuck with her Alias (although I think she’s fine with that). But if I ever need to switch contracts, I’m paying for data AND VZ Navigator, etc.

I get it. You want the world to switch to Smartphones. I just don’t have a need for them though. Sure, they’re cool and I can use them, but I don’t NEED them. Especially for a giant ETF fee, or a giant jump in charges for data. So, for the first time in a very long time, I’m going to at least check out the competition. :-\

Why?

I have a Google Profile, but I don’t want to make it a “publicly searchable” profile. Maybe that’s silly of me, since I have a Facebook account, a couple of websites, and a Twitter account. It’s not like I can’t be found in a multitude of ways. But for some reason, I’m not comfortable with the fact that Google won’t let me use Buzz without showing my full name on a public Google Profile. At least in Facebook I can easily hide myself from search engine indexing, from who can find me there and have some sense of privacy. Google is flat out telling me that in order to post updates to Buzz I need to be searchable in the Google search engine. Why? Why can’t I just post as NoleCC, you know the handle which everyone knows me? Frankly, most people looking for my updates or writing are going to look for that first before my full name. So what gives Google? I love your products generally, and want to use this one too, but not until you clean it up a bit.

The Four Courses (click for Tallahassee menus):

• Alp and Del Cheese Fondue – This and dessert are my favorite courses. The Cheese Fondue is always good, and I think it was my second favorite of all time, just behind the beer / cheddar version of things we had about a year ago. I really wish I could remember the name of that one since it was fantastic. The only thing I noticed was that they seemed to bring out less veggies and apples than previous trips to The Melting Pot, but I blame the soft economy for that. Plus, we didn’t waste any food.
• Alpine Ridge Salad – This was my favorite salad at The Melting Pot so far. The shallot vinaigrette was fantastic, and I even enjoyed the sun dried tomatoes. Normally I hate them.
• Fondue Fusion / Coq au Vin – This was the first time I wasn’t absolutely thrilled with the meats. The quality of the meats was excellent, as always, but the only one that really stood out was the Nueske’s Applewood Smoked Bratwurst, which was great with the mustard sauce. Everything else just didn’t seem to have a sauce to go with it that I liked.
• Dessert (The Original) – Chocolate and Peanut Butter. You can’t really beat that, plus we aren’t big fans of white chocolate which was the featured dessert with the Alpine theme.

The keys to making great homemade ice cream that I’ve found so far:

• Spend the money on the KitchenAid Ice Cream Attachment for your mixer. It’s well worth it.
• Use 2 cups of heavy cream and 1 cup of 1% milk. That’s my favorite texture so far.
• 2% milk works in a pinch, anything fattier than that makes my mouth feel sticky after eating the ice cream.
• Stick the container you are going to store the ice cream in, in the freezer while you are making the ice cream.
• Make sure all of your add-ins, like cookies or candy are in the freezer while you make the ice cream.
• Let the ice cream ripen for a few hours in the freezer. It’s better, trust me.

Their points:

1. FSU Football gets X amount of dollars from the Boosters
2. FSU Academics doesn’t get that money from the Boosters / Alumni
3. FSU Academics isn’t getting that from the Florida Legislature either
4. Professors making $80,000 aren’t getting raises, so they leave for greener pastures
5. The only way to facilitate change is for everyone to push money towards FSU

The arguments are horribly, horribly flawed.

First and foremost the football team has nothing to do with FSU Academics. I bet that most people don’t worry about donating back to FSU Academic programs because of a few reasons. Either they don’t use their degree so they don’t donate back to a program that hasn’t done much for their career, they choose to put their charity money elsewhere or as in my case their program disappeared (MIS was merged into Management at the College of Business). The football team is completely outside of whether or not FSU Academics are up to par.

Looking at point #4, it’s rather hard for me to be sympathetic to professors that make $80,000 here in Tallahassee. Boo hoo for you. One of my favorite professor in college could be considered a victim of the brain drain at FSU. He chose to leave for the University of Michigan after I graduated. He chose to make more money there, but he also chose to live in Ann Arbor and deal with those winters. Money isn’t the only reason to teach or not teach at FSU. It’s only part of a problem.

On top of that, the Democrat’s editorial missed the biggest point in it’s argument that FSU Academics needs money like FSU Football. Look at the numbers folks, FSU Football does MORE with LESS than most highly competitive Division I football teams in the nation. While $1.8 million to Jimbo Fisher might look like a lot, it’s a whole lot less than Urban Meyer gets paid at the University of Florida. Sure we can all argue about HOW the Booster money is spent at FSU and if it could be used more efficiently, but the point still remains that it’s unrelated to the Academic money.

If change is to happen at FSU, there needs to be a clear vision of the future. That is the ultimate problem. There’s been growth at FSU for the last decade, expansion, divergent ideas, but as an alumnus I have no idea about the final vision for FSU. Perhaps the new FSU president will accomplish that. Maybe FSU is happy being a good undergraduate value, or maybe it wants to be a new Harvard. I have no idea, but it’s up to the “Academics” there to figure that out, promote that to the alumni and push the local and state government to help them achieve that vision. Bringing the FSU Athletic programs into the argument wastes time and energy that would be better used getting Tallahassee to accept controlled growth (much like Austin, TX) and move on from being a solely government based economy. Leadership is always the problem at most institutions and companies, if FSU solves that THEN we can have a “better” FSU.