Oct
28
No one under the age of 30 should be allowed to vote
Filed Under Florida Government, Jacksonville, Movies | Leave a Comment
From the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, where Recount, a movie about the 2000 election, is being filmed:
OVERHEARD
Don’t know much about recent history
Two 20-somethings chatting in a San Marco bakery earlier this week.
First guy: They’re filming some stuff for that HBO movie Recount today.
Second guy: Yeah, I saw the crew working on signs. Why are they setting up so much stuff to make it look like everything is happening in Palm Beach?
Oct
3
Only in FLA: Key West election decided by pulling name out of hat
Filed Under Florida Government, Humor, Key West, Only in FLA | Leave a Comment
Shades of 2000: Key West election decided by pulling name out of hat
But, the funniest part?
Harry Sawyer, Monroe County’s supervisor of elections, says the same hat was used to break a tie in 1985 on a decision to purchase a county fire truck.
If only that hat could talk…
Sep
12
Dating in Florida
Filed Under Interesting | Leave a Comment
There are lots of dating sites out there, but very few of them are free. Most have some monthly or quarterly charge, as I recall…
So, it’s unusual to find a free site with any kind of selection to choose to contact. I did a fairly narrow geographic search on Florida, further narrowed by age and some preferences, and still came up with several pages of women.
Including one who posted pictures that were JUST barely safe for work. Barely.
Really, this is kind of cool. you can send email through a contact form, so you get to keep your privacy, and they have this tool called a "QuickFlirt" that allows you to just send a canned one-line message as an opener. Good to see who is even in the mood to be bothered with responding. There’s also chatrooms and message boards, so you have lots of ways to interact with the people you meet on the site. Another neat feature is that they allow you to see who has been checking out your profile, which is good to know if you’re serious about dating and want to get a feel for how your headline and picture are attracting people.
The price is right - Click here to go to Smooch.com
Aug
7
Follow-up to Wisconsin dudes
Filed Under Humor | 4 Comments
Amy said…
We need photographic evidence of your friends to tell for sure. I don’t have much experience with Wisconsin dudes. I mean, Brett Favre is hot, but he’s a Mississippi boy.
Well, all I have of the roommate is his old website from the last time he ran for State Assembly in NY 5 years ago: Kirk. Sorry, but I discarded the shirtless photos when he went into politics. 
It appears his site has been taken over by a splogger by the name of Alex, with a company registered in Tortola.
I should probably tell his mother…
———
Hey Kirk - if you find this post during a vanity google search, call me or email me (tim AT floridasundog DOT com) - I need your twisted sense of humor and political insight for a political satire blog I’m going to resurrect for the current election cycle: Polititard
May
22
Waving the Flag, Today
Filed Under Interesting | Leave a Comment
Here in Florida, we have a lot of state pride. Or, at least, those of us that consider ourselves Floridians rather than transplanted New Yorkers, Ohioans, or Michigonians.
United-states-flag.com, the sponsor of this post, is the largest online vendor of flags and flagpoles, with approx 50% of the online market. The store sells a wide range of US flags, outdoor flagpoles, state flags, college and major sport flags, and even some custom novelty flags.
The site itself is laid out well, with an easy-to-understand menu structure so finding the flag you want is pretty easy. There is also a search function, and telephone and e-mail support to aid customers. The shopping cart is powered by Yahoo ecommerce with 128-bit encryption, so buying online is secure.
A pet peeve of mine when it comes to American Flags is flag etiquette. Maybe it’s the Boy Scout in me, or maybe I just appreciate what the flag stands for, but I think flag etiquette is becoming a lost tradition. If you’ve never been involved in a burning ceremoney for retired flags, it can be a moving 
experience, especially when carried out by men and women that have fought for the country and truly understand the symbolism of the flag. I was very happy to see this site provide quite a bit of information about flag etiquette.
Finally, I also liked that you can get the accessories you’ll need to mount your flag, whether on the wall outside of a garage, or a 100-ft flagpole. There are also a ton of of patriotic wear and gift ideas, like pins, decals, and car flags, perfect as we head into election season where each candidate tries to prove that he (or she) is more patriotic than his opponent!
May
14
From the files of too-stupid-to-know-better
Filed Under Florida Education, Florida Government | Leave a Comment
Forgive them - they too young and dumb to realize that once you add a “fee”, it defies the laws of physics that state that something that goes up must come down. Fees never come down, and volunteering to pay them damns the students that follow to pay escalations caused by an ever-increasing portfolio of “green projects”. After all, if I were a University president, every building in the planning stage would be classified as “green” and I’d rape that fund for every penny and hit those environmentally-aware-but-financially-stupid kids for every penny I could squeeze out of them. Or their parents.
Florida university students push for ‘green’ fees
Orlando Business Journal - 9:00 AM EDT Monday, May 14, 2007Students from the University of Central Florida, New College, Florida Atlantic University, University of Florida are working to kick-start a funding source to apply environmentally friendly practices on campuses. and the
The first phase of the plan is to incorporate a proposed 50- to 75-cent “green fee” into tuition to finance projects that would campus energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The proposals are asking for a campus sustainability committee made up of students, faculty and staff to oversee those funds.
UCF’s green fee campaign is expected to be voted on by students during the student government elections in the fall. It follows the national campaign Campus Climate Challenge, under which similar proposals have been made at southeastern colleges, such as the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the University of Tennessee.
“Campuses use a large portion of the nations energy from non-renewable resources like coal which contribute to global warming pollution,” says Stephen Mortellaro, UCF student senator and green fee campaign coordinator, in a prepared statement. “We’ve got to do something and the [green] fee seems like a great first step.”
UF’s Gators for Sustainable Campus group recently passed a student vote with 78 percent approval. The issue is awaiting review by the board of trustees this summer.
Jun
8
Restaurant Review: Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille, St. Augustine
Filed Under Restaurant Reviews, St. Augustine | Leave a Comment
We mystery-shopped Harry’s Seafood Bar & Grille in St. Augustine last night. Harry’s has always been a favorite of ours, so we were looking forward to the visit. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to our previous trips.
We arrived at 5:00 and were offered the choice of sitting inside or outside. It was still a little warm and the sun a little too high, so we opted to sit indoors. Everything started off fine, with out waitress arriving in a timely manner and taking the order. Unfortunately, Harry’s required us to order specific items from the menu, and to have 3 courses: appetizer, entree (with salad), and dessert. Experienced mystery-shoppers will tell you that this type of shop sucks; you stand out like a sore thumb when you are ordering specific items and large volumes of food. In 12 years of mystery-shopping (probably 100+ assignments), I have never been made.
Until last night.
I ordered wings and my wife ordered a the Voo Doo Shrimp appetizer. Our waitress came back after nearly ten minutes to tell us the appetizers would be arriving shortly, and that the wings were the hold-up because they took 10-12 minutes to cook. They arrived 10 minutes later, telling us that the waitress must have been a problem getting the order in right away. The shrimp came swimming in some sort of brown gravy, but the gravy had a skin on top as though the shrimp had sat out while the wings were cooking.
At this point, our radars started going off. Our waitress became overly attentive, with too many stops to see how we were doing, and if our forks left our hands she was ready to drag away the plates. At first, I thought she was rushing us because the entree was right behind. That probably was a factor, too.
I’d finished half the wings when she arrived looking to clear the plate. No, but I can stop eating and move on to the salad if I can have a box for the wings. The salads came and my house salad looked fine, but it was room temperature as though it hadn’t been refrigerated in a while. My wife’s Caesar Salad was room temp as well, and the romaine was wilted. Again, as soon as the forks went down, the waitress was ready to clear.
Our entrees came fast on the heels of the salads. My Chicken Baton Rouge was tasty, and the chicken was piping hot. The Smashed Potatoes were good, but there were crusty pieces as though it had been a leftover from a batch made earlier in the day and reheated. My wife order red beans and rice to accompany her chicken, but it arrived sans beans.
A New Orleans-style restaurant with red beans and rice on the menu, and they make the mistake of forgetting the beans? Think someone was focused on making up time lost during the wait for the appetizers?
The rice was not very appetizing, either. My wife had to pull bits of undercooked rice out of the serving. But, at this point, we became aware that our waitress’ attentions were anything but normal; in fact, she become overbearing. Frequent checks to see how we were doing, and again, as soon as my fork hit the table she was clearing plates. I mentioned to my wife that I thought we’d been made.
Dessert came and went without incident. We were also required to do a bar-shop while we were there, so my wife left to run a few errands while I took a spot at the empty bar and order a beer. Then, I hear our waitress’ voice calling the bartender from behind the swinging doors to the kitchen. I was pretending to be engrossed in ESPN, and saw the bartender stop at the doors, glance in my direction, and then thank the waitress. She returned and stared away for five seconds, then quickly turned to me and asked, “So, how are you doing? How was your meal?” The big grin on her face confirmed my earlier suspicions about being made.
I just mumbled a quick, “Fine,” and returned to ESPN, annoyed at the set-up of the shop and promising myself to never again take a shop that dictates the specific items that can be ordered.
As an aside, it is also annoying to be told which items can be ordered, then find that the compensation provided for doing the shop does not cover the cost of those items. Ordering only what was on the menu, with no alcohol, came to $6 over the compensation which is not a big deal until you added the tip on top of that. Then, I still had to shop the bar, for a few bucks more out of my pocket. Most companies provide the minimum cost of the meal, plus a nominal five or ten bucks for the time it takes to fill out the survey. In this case, the survey was a two-hour job, so we were left feeling aggravated by the whole experience.
As I said in the opening to this post, Harry’s is one of our favorites in St. Augustine, but I can easily say that this visit was the worst ever, even without the mystery-shopping. Service was overbearing and the food was not prepared well or with attention to details.
Should someone from Harry’s find this post, I am sure they will be tempted to pull their records and see if they can figure out who did the shop last night. No to worry, folks, we won’t be accpeting any more shops. We’re not too worried about being made because turnover in these places is so high that nobody will remember us six months from now. No, we won’t be doing any more shops here because of the structure of the shop - the small selection of items to be order, having to order all three course, plus a bar shop, then compensating us so poorly that this shop wound up costing us almost $25, after minimal 15% tips.
Come on, guys, you know how much your food costs, does anyone down there have a calculator?
