New Sub-Culture of Creativity

It's not been a slow process. In fact, it has been a rather rapid development in a sub-culture. That culture is of the new industry Rent-and Leave Anywhere bike program. The program started last fall and quickly grew into 5-figures of bikes around the city doing just what the title directed. Rent, then leave anywhere. And the riders did! Thus, the new sub-culture of creativity.

I've talked to several of the guys that are employed to wrangle the bicycles from all over and put them back into service were they are needed. One of the workers told me that he had one on top of a telephone pole. One, was up in a tree---a fairly big tree at that. And, of course, the downside of creativity is destruction. Bike locks have been broken allowing anyon, especially the homeless, to ride the bikes for free anywhere. Seats have been damaged, tire wheel rims have been run over by cars. Pretty much, anything you can think of including the element of surprise called, "biking". That being where a dozen or so of your friends (room to debate that one) rode bikes over to your front lawn and deposited them in said yard.

Today, while looking for something besides crowded parks and BBQ smoke, I came across a rather "cute" creativity mark that I have not seen. And, of course, those are never where they are handy to photograph. This one was on a median island upside down resting on its seat and handle bars. No harm done to the bike (Lime Bike is thankful for that) but making a statement none-the-less.

Making a statement one way or another? Or is it just creativity with no harm done?

The cost of this stunt to Lime Bike is very minimal and I know that they are thankful for that.

At the end of this week, the arches are still standing to the Hypermart USA, the precursor to the Walmart Super Centers.The store closed in May of 2008 and Walmart opened a new super center 2-miles away as the crow flies. The 26-acre site has sat empty since the closing. City of Garland has purchased the property for a Gateway Projecdt for the city.

The Fickleness of Fettle

The title almost seems like an Arthur Gordon chapter title. Although it is not, I'll take credit for this one.
A morning that has already tickled the brain and tinkered with the memory.


Somewhere in time, I do remember who they were, but I can not tell you when or where in time I learned this fact.Probably as a child most likely. This morning, while reading articles and scanning the web for the state of the world affairs, I heard the names Caspar, Balthazar, Melchior. I'll come back to that later on.

On the Local Stage

Years ago, I spent a lot of time running around the office putting out fires. Someone would generate one here and there then set on it until it began to spread before coming to me and  telling me about the problem. I didn't enjoy those situations but along with the nice office came the firetruck, hose and nosels so to speak. The hat just morphed into what ever the situation was for the day. I was always glad when I could put that folder in the pile of closed problems.
However, that was then and this is now. Now, when Texas gets below 30 degrees F, I feel it even with a layer or two of clothing. And here is the fickled side of  human nature in that situation. I don't go out for the frosty sunrises and foggy mornings anymore. I blame it on the battery pack getting cold. Which it does, but is still a poor excuse to not go get those shots.

The Nations Struggles

We haven't found MH 370, have not totally cleared the flight that was shot down over the Ukraine.  Now there is another missing plane in the Java Sea to add to the list. But even more fickled in scope is how the world's number one retailer--Walmart-- could receive and sell PS4s filled with rocks rather than electronics when Walmart is known for its high-tech RIFD inventory scanners and in store wall of eyes everywhere but in the receiving area. Shrinkage starts at the distribution center level, continues down to the store receiving level, then to the in-store theft that goes out the front door. It can also go out the front door as a sold item, then the box is filled with weight and returned during the busy return season. All-in-all, it's another fine example of the Fickleness of Fettle. Inventory to and fro of boxed rocks. How fickle is that? I'll tell you. It's Fettled in Fickleness.

Have you come up with the answer to the three names yet? How about the names of the three Magi or Wise men of the East. Okay, a simple kiss my grits will do for the wise men of the East.

 Point with No Counterpoint

The point is..life will mix things up for those locked in their comfort zones. Never say never because it will come back on you. For those that prepare for that shift that will not come during this lifetime, it really didn't matter in the first place because when it comes around again, very few of us will ever be remembered in a hundred years. The preachers sermon or the commercial that brings a laugh about being careful what you ask for because you just might get it--from the good Lord or from a genie in a bottle-- is really a possibility of and/or in life. A million buck wish becomes a neighborhood of a million  reindeer bucks! The story about the guy who didn't like to fly and prayed he would never die in a plane crash retires and drives to Florida only to be hit and killed within the first hours of being there crossing a street.

 I see a younger generation growing up with their nose in a phone screen and I wonder what they will write about in their years when they look up from their screens and discover that life is just about to the final act because I really do not believe that they ever see that day in their future.

 There isn't an app for that. There isn't social media to bring back that lost time with family. There won't be a YouTube video that will draw six figure hits of the funeral director watching your casket settle into the vault and the lid being placed on before the grave diggers dump a load of dirt in on the vault lid. That's fettle my friends, nothing fickled about that.

Time to go eat some homemade vegetable and ham soup with a glass of red wine. I made it yesterday and it was good. Today it will have increased it flavor  10-fold. With the  first of three cold fronts already here, it's either chilli or soup time and I'm thinking soup to finish out 2014 and chilli in the new year. One thing about Texas is that we eat simple--but we eat good.

The was on the first day of Spring a couple of years back.

There's Big Money in Toilet Paper

Ask anyone at Walmart , Sam's Club or Costco's and they will tell you that their big money maker is paper goods (i.e., toilet paper and paper towels). Stacks and stacks of the stuff in the "big box" stores does not look like it takes up a lot of floor space. And, if you know anything about retail or wholesale, the ruling king inside four walls is square footage of space. Land is valuable but shelf space is even more valuable. In order to use that much space in a 75 to 125,000 sq. ft. building it must produce big sales dollars right down to every square inch.

Walmart has always promoted their price comparison scam. Bring in your receipt. They don't have to price check that way. You are doing it for them. And, you can bet that the info gets noted somewhere in the marketing department and/or General Manager's office for that daily conference call.

 What caught my eye the other day was the big comparison going on with Kroger's in the commercials aired. In that battle, Walmart has declared war on Kroger's. Why, because Walmart is loosing market shares in the grocery business. Walmart does not like to admit anything and will sometimes go to great lengths to try to turn the potentially damaging  situation in public relations into something less threatening or even try to make it a "golden goose" if it can.

Four years ago, I walked out of Walmart as a customer and began to really "shop" for bargains and savings. It took thirty days to break the Walmart habit. In the past two months, I have gone to Walmart twice. From my observations, I still made the best choice of not shopping at Walmart.

My brother and his wife had given me a gift card to Walmart as an e-gift. That is the reason why I ventured back into the store. I had purchased a pair of house shoes. The story behind that was that I had found the most wonderful and comfortable house shoes  at Kroger's three years ago. Every Christmas, I bought a new pair and tossed the old ones to the garbage. This past Christmas, I had missed out on getting a pair for a couple of reasons. One, the pair did not show the wear in one year as the other two pairs had done. Second, the supply didn't last as long as others had discovered that when they go one sale, you had better buy them right then. I failed to do that for reason one and I lost out. So, along came the gift card and to use it up, I went to  Walmart.  I bought a pair of slippers/house shoes at Walmart. Less than 90-days later, I took them back. They looked like they had come out of a dumpster. They had big clumps of fleece coming out and the plastic supports under the heal were cutting into my heal. When I took them back, the customer service person was so insulting and basically said that I could not have bought this pair in the last 90-days even with my receipt.

The customer service person then gave me a gift card for the amount of the receipt . I went to the paper isle and purchased toilet paper and paper towels. Now that opened up a whole new can of worms. When I was still shopping at Walmart. I regularly bought their 4-pack of tissue and a 3-pack of paper towels that were the cheapest price in the market. I don't put good money into paper goods. You flush one and you toss the other after use. Keeping the price down is a point of logic, not a point of personal comfort.

I started buying my paper products at Kroger's because Walmart ended stocking the sizes with the competitive price such as 4-rolls of tissue for 88-cents and a three pack of towels for $1.67 was the going price in the market before they packed it in a 6-pack.

So, when home, after putting the items into storage I continued to use my Kroger items until it was used up. But before tossing the wrappers, they got placed on a shelf. When the wrapper finally came off the Walmart tissue, it too, was placed on the shelf. Yesterday, I sat down to run the numbers as a comparison. There were several differences. Kroger was 1-ply at 198 sheets while the Walmart was 2-ply but only 150 sheets. The sheets sizes were Kroger's at 4.0 x 4.0 inches while the Walmart was 4.27 x 3.75 inches. The net was Kroger at 8.1 meters squared while the Walmart was  6.1 meters squared.

The bottom line is that Kroger was still the better price with 26.5748031 feet per roll while the Walmart tissue was 20.0131234 feet per roll. Some will argue that the Walmart was 2-ply. Come on!
with the Kroger difference of 6 feet extra per roll, use an extra sheet or two and fold it over.

Every thing that I have compared at Kroger's is still a better saving than Walmart. The paper towel thing is much the same as the toilet tissue issue. Kroger wins there, also.

I will take pictures of the wrappers later. I'm waiting for a sunny day. I want the sun to shine of this paper issue!


Edited for more detail.
Edited 04/28/14 to add pictures & edited to correct the price at per 4-pack.

Kroger wins with 6 feet more tissue per roll.

Walmart came in second
.Both products sell for $0.88 per 4-pack 

Columbus Day Sales. Remember the $5 Washers?

The biggest sales blunder that I can remember of late is the JCPenny  sales that really were not sales. That did a lot of damage to the brand in whole. Growing up, JCPenny was known for their quality, especially in the unmentionables and socks! That got lost in some marketing campaign, I suppose.

Some of the late night talk shows have a skit where they send a "reporter" out on the streets to interview the public about a lot of things, mostly things that you know by 5th or 6th grade. One example would be: Who is the vice-president of the United States? Another would be: Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? Of course, the answers are off the wall, which is why it has been so successful but, it also shows how little we know today compared to past generations. Sure, we know technology. Here's the thing with that. Toss the techno-device and its a "Duh-generation". To me, that's sad.  I bet I could ask 100 people what the "C" stands for in the JCPenny (that's how the company displays its name today) name and I would get only a hand full--if that-- of correct answers. Now don't go Google the question because the founder of JCPenny was a real person named James Cash Penny.

This all comes back to the President's Day sales that were so famous in the 1950s. Except, they were called Lincoln Birthday Sales or Washington Birthday Sales. People stood in line for hours. Orderly, I might add. The newspapers ran full page ads. It's an old marketing standby that the younger generation thinks is new when you go stand in line outside a Walmart (that's how they signage their name now) or a Best Buy to buy electronics today, then trample over people to get in the door  of the store. Actually, I find that sad and  funny within itself.

 Neither of those two stores excite me with their advertising, I can poke holes in them all day long.  But, washing machines, dryers and refrigerators sold in the $5.00 to $20.00 range on the original two President's Day. One of those two were on the 22nd of October. Who knows (don't look it up) which one?  In college, I had a marketing professor who always reminded his class that "the more things change, the more they stay the same."  Ain't that the truth!  It's okay to say ain't today, or so I'm told. And, we won't even talk about the new model year cars that shipped with canvas coverings until the official day to show them to the public. The excitement was like an active volcano. Now that was an effective marketing campaign for the auto industry. Then they got swept away in "the future of advertising" and lost sight of what works. Retro today is a vain attempt to reconnect to that old way of advertising. Gee, some find that it really works! Imagine that.

So, the bottom line here is this: James Cash needs to go back to selling quality unmentionables and socks but we have changed so much as a society that unmentionables are now viewed on TV if they have any on at all. That being the case, I would think then, that JCPenny needs to go back to selling washers and dryers and ice boxes (the same old thing as a refrigerator in today's vernacular) on Lincoln's or Washington's birthdays.

Sunday, I drove out to DFW Airport to watch the big 747s come in on a beautiful fall afternoon with deep blue skies. It was the absolute worse day to do that in terms of photography. The airport was flipped because of the north winds, but even worse, departures were on the cross-wind runway on the west side of the airport. From Founders Plaza  there was nothing but "real" birds flying. Overhead, I observed a jet dumping fuel.  The contrails are wider. I didn't want Jet A fuel all over my car so later I took Airfield west around to the south entry/exit to Amman Carter wanting to see the new NBC Universal TV station at Centre Port. As I continued, a EVA Cargo 747 was landing and the shot would have been even better than at Founders had my camera been handy and ready. I was not expecting that. I had already missed the christening of the new NBC5 TV station with Korean Airlines dumping Jet A fuel from above. That flight had a Channel 8 reported on board, too. Nah! No way if you are thinking what I'm thinking. It was an engine that failed after takeoff. Of course, the news reported that.

When I got to 183, I was thinking about getting on the BMW Mercedes Lexus Turnpike back to LBJ 635 but then I decided to just take the old way, 183 to 35E to LBJ 635.The road is a bit more bumpy than the smooth thick asphalt on the turnpike. Of course, I didn't have to stand in the line at the NTTA and make arrangements to pay  $50,000 in unpaid tolls, either. I wonder if a NTTA booth inside a JCPenny store might bring in some customers? Maybe not.

The old standby still stands

The BMW Mercedes Lexus Turnpike

 

Winding Down to Thanksgiving, Is That Possible?

A checker board on the backside of the games librarian. All you need is a valid driver's license to check out a board.

The burnt orange colors are refreshing to see.

The other question that weighed in today is this: Do the dogs like the astro turf in the new Klyde Warren Deck Park? The answers may surprise you. Yes, it is possible to wind down to Thanksgiving and yes, the dogs love the astro turf and  for those of you that are going to be trying to figure out how the rest of this post fits in to the title post, well, it's one of those things that you have to wind down  for to see the connection.

Last year I decided that it was time to break that cycle of running to Walmart for everything because they were the cheapest. Were they, really?  Doing some research and really watching  where I was  spending the most and what I was getting for the money spent, I had an amazing shock. Walmart isn't that cheap overall.
I found that I was being drawn in for items like trash bags and paper products. The rest of the items were way more than I was paying at Kroger's or other places.

Well, it's been a year now and I have not set foot inside a Walmart. I've eaten more healthy, I have lost the weight that I was slowly adding  that required me to buy new cloths because I was getting bigger month by month. Now, I fit back in the cloths that I haven't worn for ages, my blood pressure has dropped  to a very healthy level where it remains. I don't feel as stressed at the check out lines as I did at a Walmart and generally I am a much happier person today that a year ago. Most of all, my lab work has don't a complete flip for the better.

Before I began the experiment, someone had made mention to me that they too, had broken the Walmart Cycle. At the time, I didn't really fully understand what that person had meant. Well, today, I may not fully understand  all the workings of what has happened, but even the commercials on Television don't captivate me now as they once did. I actually laugh about the "bring your receipt and compare" see how much you saved. Actually, when I had done that to check Walmart  in the beginning to see where my spending was going.....Walmart was getting the larger percentage of my money Today, I find the savings to be greater grocery wise at Kroger's and  a few other places that I shop.

So, as we wind down for Thanksgiving, The insanity of Black Friday and Blue Wednesday and Green Tuesday don't get me stressed out any more.. I'm actually happier since I broke the Walmart Cycle. Let's put that under Red Thursday since Black Friday seems to be taken. Have a good holiday and I'll keep the  trips to Walmart at zero for another year!