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This is the major announcement I’ve been waiting to share…

Effective Sunday, April 16, my regular Deal of the Week feature will move to the Commercial Appeal. They’ve been watching my blog for the past two months, and have contacted me about doing something together. So I’ll be joining the CA blogging staff!

I’m happy to see one of my regular features make it to the big time… personally, I always thought “What The Bums Are Drinking This Week” was the most marketable, but I guess the CA knows online content better than I do.

Off to work…

She made this on the website blinkyou.com. It actually kind of looks like the blonde who was here last year. Here’s a pic for comparison – it’s a horrible pic of me but who in their right mind would be looking at me in this picture?

I’ll be back later with more news and that major announcement I’ve been talking about… but right now, believe it or not, I’m about to head to the Saucer. It’s Earring Girl’s 21st birthday (she’s one of the waitresses) and she’s coming up there on her night off – I’m sure I’ll be one of the many people to buy her a beer. It’s trivia night as well, so hopefully I can lend a hand to the Rapscallions’ victory as I float around the bar.

Welcome to Deal of the Week, where I scour the ad inserts in the Sunday Commercial Appeal and present the best deals to you. This week, CompUSA appears to be the place to go. They have a Hewlett-Packard laptop with 17″ screen for only $799.99. This is $400 off the regular price, after $200 instant savings, a $50 mail-in manufacturers’ rebate, and a $150 eRebate. The laptop has an 80 GB hard drive and 512 MB of RAM. It comes with an AMD Turion 64 processor, which is important because it means you’ll have the option of upgrading the laptop to the new 64-bit version of Windows rumored to be coming out later this year.

CompUSA also has a 19″ LCD monitor on sale for $199.99, after a $50 manufacturers’ rebate and a $50 eRebate. That is the lowest price I have ever seen for a 19″ LCD monitor at one of the major retailers.

If security is your concern, check out Office Depot this week. They have a Microsoft USB Fingerprint Reader for $9.99. It’s regularly $39.99, so you’re getting it for 75% off after $20 instant savings and $10 mail-in rebate.

Office Depot also has a Strip Cut Paper Shredder for 50% off at $14.99. It takes 6 sheets per pass and sounds like a way to keep spying eyes away from your documents at a bargain price.

Target has a 5.1 megapixel Polaroid digital camera on sale for $88. It features a USB connection and a 1.5 inch screen. You’d be hard-pressed to cross the 5 megapixel threshold at a lower price.

Those are the Deals for this week. Back next week with more Deals, and stay tuned for a major announcement about this regular blog feature.

Last night, I entered the poker tournament at Hollywood South, Mpact’s fundraiser. About 16 people participated, and after two hours of play (by then they were starting to close the place up) it was down to one other person and me. I got dealt an Ace-King, which if you know anything about Texas Hold’Em is not a bad hand to start out with. So I went all-in (bet all my chips). When my opponent flipped her cards over and had a 3 and a 9, I started to feel really good.

Then they dealt the flop. 3, 3, 9. She had a full house on the first five cards. Blast it. So I came in second.

Still not bad though. The second place prize is a personal meal from the chef at the Majestic – he will come to my place to cook dinner, although I have to supply the food. Works for me. Later in the evening I went to Earnestine & Hazel’s and ran into him there – I told him I won and he liked the idea of cooking on No. 10 Main’s rooftop grills.

He also told me that the Majestic will be open in a couple of weeks, so it looks like the April 10 date that I heard last month was a bit optimistic.

The Mpact party was a blast. They always throw tremendous parties for their fundraisers. Being in that space made me realize how much I miss Club Ten. For those of you not familiar with it, it was a members-only nightclub inside the Plaza Club at Third and Monroe. It cost $150 a year to join and they gave you passes to invite guests. Trendy, upscale music, drinks, and crowd – think Swig with a dance floor. The club was doing extremely well but in April 2004 its owners moved to England and decided not to try to run it from overseas. There was talk of reviving it in a different location later that year, but nothing ever came of it.

I wish someone would pick up the Club Ten concept and run with it. I think it would go over huge with downtown’s young professional crowd. If anyone decides to give it a go, you have my promise that I will promote the living hell out of it in this blog.

Yesterday when I went to the crawfish festival, I parked on Jefferson, east of Cooper. I easily could have found a spot two blocks closer to the fest, and people were asking, “Paul, why do you always park so far away at these events?” Here’s why: there were four Metro DUI cops waiting to pick people off as they pulled out of the parking lot. Now, I wasn’t drunk when I drove home, but still – if I’ve had even one beer, I go out of my way to avoid encounters with cops. Parking where I did, I just drove to East Parkway and blended in with traffic, never coming anywhere near the festival and the cops as I drove home.

By the way – I’m not condoning driving drunk, but if you do ever get pulled over on suspicion of DUI, every lawyer I’ve ever talked to has said the same thing: absolutely do NOT submit to a breathalyzer test. You’ll get your license suspended for the refusal, but it makes it a lot harder for them to pin a DUI on you. Get a good attorney and you’ve got a good chance of fighting it and getting the charge reduced or dismissed.

Last night I heard a rumor that there’s going to be a new coffee shop opening soon in the South Main area. Anybody got the info on that?

Speaking of coffee shops, as I was walking down Main yesterday, I noticed that the shop formerly known as Empire Coffee is now calling itself Puffy Joe’s. Doesn’t “Puffy Joe” sound like someone who smokes a lot of weed? Not that I’ve ever met the guy, but I’m just saying, with that name… of course, he’d hardly be the only downtown business owner who… never mind, let’s just end this now.

Deal of the Week will be up later today.

Had a couple of hours to kill between the crawfish fest and the Mpact party, so I took one of those online personality tests. Here are the results:

Yesterday was my last day at ACB. Even though I’m looking forward to starting with the City Schools on Monday, a job offering more money and new challenges, it was weird/sad to have to leave a company I really like. I have nothing but good things to say about ACB – the work environment was casual, free from office politics, and everyone got along.

I’ll take a moment to tell a quick story: Several months ago I was at the Tap Room on a Friday night, and ACB’s general manager came in with a couple of friends, who also happened to be mutual friends of mine. “Oh, you know Paul?” they asked the GM.

“Yeah, Paul works with me,” he said. Not works for me, but works with me. I always appreciated that little sign of respect – kind of a way of saying, hey, outside the office we’re all equals. That kind of thing was indicative of the way I was treated at ACB.

My boss was great too. He gave me projects that expanded my knowledge and skills, he was always there to answer questions and to let me bounce ideas off him, but he didn’t micromanage. Even when he made suggestions on how to improve, he did it the right way, always accentuating the positive. He’s one of the good guys. I’ll miss working for him.

After work, I celebrated at Big Foot Lodge with a deep-dish chocolate chip cookie a la mode. Here’s a pic:

Guys, if you have a girlfriend you need to bring her to Big Foot to share one of these cookies. Unless she’s one of those girls who will whine about how many calories it has – in that case, call and tell her you have to work late, and then go to Big Foot and eat the cookie by yourself.

And if you have kids, it goes without saying that you need to take them to Big Foot – take a look at the skillet desserts and other desserts on their menu.

Every time I go to Big Foot, they make me feel so welcome there. Not even the presence of The Most Annoying Woman On The Planet could ruin my good time last night. I watched the Grizzlies game on their TVs and hung out afterward until almost 12:00.

I have a friend who is looking to sublet her apartment in Midtown for a couple of months, and after that, once the lease is up, you may be able to take over a new lease. It’s on the top floor (6th floor I think) of a very nice apartment building (I’ve been in the building before, although not her apartment). I don’t want to quote an exact number but rent would be less than half what I pay at No. 10 downtown. She’s even willing to leave basic furniture in if needed. This offer is open only to people I know personally – I don’t want to send her some random person who may turn out to be crazy or irresponsible. If interested e-mail me and I’ll pass on the info.

So, today is the Overton Square crawfish festival. I’m trying to decide whether to drive my car or ride my bike up there. Hmmm… last year I walked, although it took an hour to get there. Here’s a money-saving trick: they’ve been price-gouging on the beer (4 bucks for a 16 oz. Budweiser draft) in recent years. But, you can walk across Cooper to the convenience store and buy a 24 oz. can of beer for 99 cents and sneak it in.

I’m trying to decide if I’m going to go to Hollywood South, Mpact’s annual fundraiser tonight at Don’t-Call-It-The-Plaza-Club-Or-Someone-Will-Correct-You. On one hand, it’s kinda expensive ($35 a ticket, or $65 for a VIP ticket which gives you access to the open bar; I’m sure you can figure out which kind of ticket I’d be buying). But on the other hand, Mpact threw one HELL of a party last year when they did Mpact Impacto. It really was the place to be. Hopefully they can pull it off again. Hmmm… I know there are some people talking about going to Raiford’s afterward… and I’m always up for Raiford’s.

I’ve just been kind of bored with Mpact lately… I’m coming to realize that they made a mistake when they got rid of the pillars, and I feel partially responsible because I was on the board at the time and voted for it. And if they tried to bring the pillars back, corporate donors would see it as, “oh, they’re reconfiguring themselves yet AGAIN” and they’d think the organization has no sense of direction. Not sure what the solution is.

Time to get going… I’ll be back tomorrow with Deal of the Week, and there may be a major announcement coming soon concerning that weekly blog feature. Have a good weekend everybody!

New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets vs. Dallas Mavericks, 7:30 pm tonight.

If the Hornets lose, by my calculations the Memphis Grizzlies will be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs for the 3rd consecutive year. The Hornets have a sub-.500 record, and will be playing against the team in the NBA with the 3rd best record (Dallas, 57-19) on Dallas’s home court. I’d say our playoff chances are looking real good.

Those of you who have been around the Internet for a while may have heard of SETI@home. It was a project that analyzed data from space to look for possible communications from extraterrestrial life. It was the ultimate distributed computing project – 5 million volunteers installed SETI software on their computers, which allowed their computers to download and analyze SETI data when idle. It didn’t disturb the volunteers’ work at all, because the SETI program only ran when the computer was not being used, as a screen saver would. Over 2 million years of computing time were eventually donated to the project.

This model is now being expanded to other projects. You can choose to volunteer your unused computing time to research cures for human disease, analyze climate change, participate in chemistry or physics research, or analyze signals from space. Check out their website – it’s a project of the University of California, Berkeley.

Cancelled Flight: 101 Tried and True Pigeon Killin’ Methods

Regular reader Don e-mailed with a question I don’t know the answer to, so I figured I’d pass it on: Is there a Madden Playstation league in Memphis? It’s a league where people play each other over the Internet, and it mimics a real NFL season.

If anyone has info e-mail me at paul@paulryburn.com and I’ll pass it on. Thanks.