Paul Ryburn's Journal

I know this is not the topic I promised tonight but I hope you’ll forgive me. After the Rapscallions coasted to our fourth consecutive first-place victory at trivia at the Flying Saucer, we stopped by Sauces (Our Plate, Your Canvas) which opened today on the Main Street Mall in the New Main block between Union and Gayoso.

Let’s start off with some pictures of the restaurant. The first three are of the upstairs, which features a bar, a community dining table, and several individual window-seat tables.

The downstairs has plenty of traditional seating available. Here are a couple of pics of the downstairs:

And finally, some pics of the food.

This is the grouper with mango bruschetta from the “your canvas” menu. The way it works is, you pick the seafood you want (grouper, mahi mahi, halibut, tuna, or salmon), the sauce you want (lobster cream, mango bruschetta, or orange teriyaki), and optionally an entree addition (crab cake, shrimp, smoked Applewood bacon, or sauteed mushrooms). They also have traditional menu items (lots of them) for those who don’t feel like building their own plate – the lobster ravioli (stuffed with asparagus and tomatoes in a delicate tomato sauce with a hint of fennel and vanilla) and the medallions Chesapake (seasoned and grilled steak medallions topped with lump crabmeat and lobster sauce) seem like good selections to me.

The spinach, tomato and bacon flatbread with fries. Comes with fresh spinach, roma tomatoes, Applewood bacon, Italian cheeses, red onion, crushed red pepper, and Dijon dill.

The Garlic Roasted Pepper Burger, with melted Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle and Dijon mustard.

Their mojito menu was not available because they’re waiting on their liquor permit, but they tell me that issue may be resolved as early as tomorrow. They have hooks underneath the bars and community dining tables to hang your coats and purses. They are also intent on making the upstairs area a hangout for Downtown locals. Very cool. They put a lot of hard work into this place and it paid off.

If you live or work in Cordova, or if you plan to head out there today to do some Christmas shopping at Wolfchase Galleria, be sure to stop by Jim N’ Nick’s Barbecue. Jim N’ Nick’s will be donating half of today’s total sales to the Make-A-Wish Foundation (up to $5,000). The restaurant will be teaming with Cordova High School to help grant the wish of a child with a life-threatening medical condition.

You can even check out their menu online and pick out what you want before you head over there. I’ve never been to Jim N’ Nick’s, but I’ve read that the cheese biscuits, homemade pies and of course the BBQ itself are among the favorites.

Remember, this is happening today (Tuesday, December 12) only, so be sure to get by there today if you want to participate. C’mon, you gotta eat, don’t ya?

If you go out there, eat some BBQ for me, because I won’t be able to make it to Cordova today – it’s the weekly trivia night downtown at the Saucer. By the way, congrats to my team The Rapscallions on their first-place victory last Tuesday! The $50 gift certificate we won brings our total stash to, well, $50, since the team just had a party on December 1 where we spent all our gift certificates. Let’s win five more times in a row and we’ll be in good shape to have another big party by mid-January!

That’s it for now… I actually have an additional post about downtown’s best burgers that is ready to go, but I want to leave the Make-A-Wish info at the top of my blog through the afternoon at least. So, look for the burger post late afternoon or early evening.

The manatee that made its home in the Wolf River Harbor and then disappeared the week before Halloween has been found, and it appears to be dead. Click here for the story and pictures.

If you’re looking for something unique to give your loved one, friend or family member for Christmas, I’d like to recommend the art of my good friend and downtown resident, Shane Paris. Shane can create custom pieces just for you (I’ll talk more about that in a moment) and his work is surprisingly affordable. Here are a few samples of what he can do:

This is a collage of images from one of Shane’s favorite towns, New Orleans. This is also one of Shane’s specialties: If you provide him with a group of related photographs, he can produce and print an attractive collage incorporating those images. For example, for one client he took 4 years of college photos and created a collage of those as a graduation present.

Pet photos are another specialty of Shane’s. He can take a regular photo of your pet and superimpose it on a background image to produce a dramatic effect. Here a client from another state commissioned Shane to create artwork based on his dog, Scout. He mailed Shane a photo of Scout taken with a regular camera, and Shane scanned it and positioned it over a swamp background image and adjusted the lighting to produce the effect shown above. If you love your pet and would like an artistic image of him/her, Shane is the man to talk to.

One thing Shane does really well is take photos of ordinary objects and turn them into works of art via photo editing. Here is one of his all-time favorites, a picture of a microphone.

Another ordinary object Shane photographed (this time, a door knocker) turned into something special thanks to his artistic skills. Once again, you can commission Shane to do custom work if you have a particular object in mind.

Here’s a Memphis photo Shane took and retouched: The sunset over the Mississippi River and I-40 bridge. Because Shane lives in Downtown Memphis and owns a camera, you can commission him to take custom photos of whatever place or scene you would like. He can also retouch them to produce any desired effect, and have them printed on any size canvas.

Shane does abstract pieces as well. This one is called “Begonia.” He sells prints of it and others like it that he has done.

Shane also designs logos and graphics for websites, and in fact, he is the person I have asked to help design a logo for the Downtown Memphis site I plan on rolling out next spring. Shane lives downtown and loves it (and he loves the South in general, as is reflected in his work) and I can think of no person more qualified to design art for a site that says “Downtown Memphis.”

If you’re on MySpace, you can view more of Shane’s work through his MySpace page. You can also join his MySpace art group.

If you’re interested in purchasing Shane’s art or commissioning him to do a custom job, you can either contact him through his MySpace page, or you can e-mail me (paul@paulryburn.com) and I will send you his contact info.

I haven’t carried a personal business card for several years now. I always carry note cards and a pen with me, so when someone asks me for my contact info, I just write it down. But this week I’ve been thinking that it’s time to start handing out my own business cards again.

I always design my own cards and print them out on my printer using Avery inkjet card stock. This works well for me because it means I’m not stuck with the same design for print runs of 500 or 1000 cards at a time; I can change the design every 10 cards if I want.

Being able to do that allows me the luxury of printing multiple business cards to be handed out to different people. What I’m thinking about doing is having a “serious, corporate” business card and a “fun, playful” business card.

Both cards will contain my name, my cell phone number, and a summary of what I do (web development using ASP.NET and SQL Server).

The “fun, playful” card will contain a funny, unforgettable image (no idea what image yet; it definitely will NOT be a photo of me though), my paul@paulryburn.com e-mail address, and the URL of either the front page of my website, or my blog (I haven’t decided that one yet).

The “serious, corporate” card will feature an eye-catching but professional image. The last time I had such a card, in 2002, I used a clip art image of a desktop computer. On the serious card I’ll use my paul.ryburn@gmail.com e-mail address (I use Gmail to check my paulryburn.com e-mail as well, so they both end up at the same spot). I also plan to find some way to move my resume off paulryburn.com (I have other domains where I can place it), so that there’s no evidence on the business card that paulryburn.com is my website. That way, if they have a stick up their ass like many corporate types do, they won’t find my blog and think badly of me because they see the drunken pics taken of me at the Saucer last weekend, or my rants about Cubicle World, or my posts declaring June to be Tube Top Month. Or at least, I won’t lay my blog right out there in the open for them to find.

The “fun, playful” card will be the default, the one that I hand out 80-90% of the time. It will be the one I give out when I meet people in bars and restaurants, at functions like Mpact and neighborhood association meetings, even some business meetings when I can tell the person I am dealing with has a sense of humor. No idea what I’d use on the card as the “unforgettable” image, but to give you an idea – years ago when I lived in Little Rock, the Arkansas Times ran a story on poor families living on the Delta. There was this B/W photo of a farm family looking down at a hog, and the hog looking back up at the family. Every time I saw that I cracked up for some reason. I’m sorry I didn’t hang on to that photo, because I’d love to scan it and put it on my business card. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything, and that’s the point. People would ask “Why?” and I’d reply “Why not?”

The “serious, corporate” card would be the one I’d use the other 10-20% of the time, when dealing with people who might not have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate the other card, people who believe that you have to project a professional image at all times in the world of business. As a rule I hate dealing with those people, but sometimes it’s necessary, and it’s always important to meet others where they currently are in their beliefs. If one day I once again find myself going on job interviews and talking to corporate recruiters, that will be the card I use in those circumstances.

Since I don’t have the fun card planned out, and since I haven’t figured out where I’m going to put my resume, I’m going to create a temporary card in the meantime with the “serious, corporate” look and the Gmail address. I’ll keep printing those out in batches of 10 and handing them out until I get the other card designed.

That brings me to my next question… what software is good to use to design business cards? When I came back from Thanksgiving break, my mother gave me her Print Shop CD, but it’s nine years old and I want something more current. I realize a lot of people do their cards in Word (which has templates for Avery cards) but I want more control than Word provides. What’s the best business card program out there? Are there any freeware programs that are worth a look? I want a program that can import GIF, JPG and PNG images and knows how to design for standard Avery business card formats.

Too cold to go out tonight… think I’ll stay home and get an early start in the morning.

– Last night I went to a reception at Bluefin, held by Mpact Memphis, to honor two outstanding groups who are working to positively impact the education inner-city children receive.

I spent quite a bit of time talking with a first-year East High teacher, who came to the high school through the Teach for America program. Teach for America addresses the inequalities in our school system by getting some of the brightest college graduates from all over the country, majoring in all fields of study, to commit two years to teaching in inner-city schools in low-income neighborhoods.

The East High teacher I spoke to explained that not all of the Teach for America teachers will remain in education once they complete their two years, nor are they expected to. But, she told me, because they are the best and brightest they will go on to become leaders in the corporate world and in the realm of public policy. “Can you imagine how much better public schools would be today,” she asked me, “if all of our leaders had that classroom experience in their background?” Great point.

She also explained to me the prestige of the program. “Many of the people who enroll in our program are from schools like Yale and Harvard and would like to work for companies like Goldman Sachs. Well, guess what? Goldman Sachs likes to see Teach for America on resumes.” Again, good point. If you can convince a headstrong 8th-grader to do what you want, then persuading corporate middle managers should be a piece of cake.

– I also met representatives of New Leaders for New Schools, a group that is preparing the next generation of principals to take the lead in public school systems. They have to go through a rigorous training program, and they commit to five core principles (principles for principals) based on the belief that every child can attain excellence, given access to adults who believe in them and who know how to unlock the potential of every child.

I am just thrilled to no end to see the Memphis City Schools involved in both of these movements. MCS has really won my support and my enthusiasm over the past 8 months for all they are doing to help children succeed.

I’m also thrilled to see Mpact Memphis promoting this type of event. Mpact has always focused on working with its corporate partners – the FedExes and Autozones and the like – to recruit and retain talented people for those types of companies. But, it’s always been my belief that Mpact needs to reach out just as strongly to those working in education. To everyone who put the event together, great job.

– After the event I stopped by (of course) the Flying Saucer, then went to Big Foot Lodge where I had a four-cheese burger topped with sauteed mushrooms. MAN was that good. I noticed that they now have Sleeman Creme Ale on draft. The bartender told me that a 34 oz. Sleeman Creme Ale was only 5 bucks. Now that’s a deal!

– Speaking of Deals… I have resigned from the Deal of the Week blog I had been writing for the Commercial Appeal since April. When I started writing Deal of the Week, I figured there would be a certain amount of fame/prestige involved in writing for the CA’s site… and to some extent there has been, but honestly, in the eight months since, my personal blog has brought me more fame and more readers than the CA. So I want to focus all my energy here. Also, for what they were paying me it just wasn’t worth having a responsibility on my plate when I woke up on Sunday mornings.

– Speaking of Sunday mornings… back in winter 2003-04 I took a hiatus from Sunday brunch at Sleep Out Louie’s. I’m going to be taking another one this winter. The reason is, I’m working on a major website (not for work, but a side project) that I want to roll out no later than April 1, and Sunday is the best day to work on it. Drinking a bottle of champagne with brunch and being wasted by 2 PM every Sunday robs me of too much time and brain power that I need right now.

This does not mean that I won’t be showing up at all at Sleep Out’s on Sunday. It’s just that there won’t be a 99.9% chance that I’ll be there by 11:30 AM for the next few months. Rather, Sundays at SOL will be like, say, Thursday nights at the Saucer… no one expects me to be there, but there’s still a very good chance I’ll wander in for a beer or two.

I want to make it clear that my hiatus has nothing to do with the bar… Sunday brunch at SOL is back and better than ever. This is just a personal decision that makes sense right now. So no one at SOL should take it personally… and it’s not a permanent hiatus. I’ll be back by spring at the latest.

– Speaking of SOL… Crash Kole, Bobby Durango, and Josh Lemons play tonight at 7:30. I think they’ll have a drummer backing them up this time too.

– Best quote I heard in the past 24 hours: “She’s a witch with a capital B.” Heh. That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that one to use myself. I better not say where I heard it or who said it.

– In the news: Looks like Target is finally coming to Midtown.

– Check Thaddeus Matthews’ blog today for a hilarious Photoshopped image of Rickey Peete allegedly retrieving cash that was left for him in his office’s restroom.

That’s all for now. I’m typing this in a hurry, so apologies for any spelling/grammar mistakes I didn’t catch. Think I’ll hit Costa Vida for some take-out before I go back to work.

Required reading for anyone who works in a corporate office, or works an 8-to-5 desk job, or manages people who work 8-to-5 desk jobs:

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/allbiz120606_article1.html

This is an article on how one of America’s largest and most successful corporations, Best Buy, is switching to a results-only work environment (ROWE), where employees are measured on performance rather than being present during traditionally prescribed work hours.

Consider this a follow-up to my “escape from Cubicle World” post from a couple of days ago. I want to work for a company like this. This is where the world of work is headed. I may make a longer post on this but I want you all to read the article first.

Thanks to Pam for forwarding me the link.

If you haven’t seen it, I have a grade calculator on my site. You enter in the grades you’ve made for each test/assignment thus far, and how much each test/assignment counts toward the final grade. You then enter what the minimum grade is needed for an A, B, C, D, etc. (If your school uses plus/minus grading, it can handle that too.) Then you hit the Calculate button and it tells you what you need to average for the remainder of the term in order to get whatever grade you want.

I developed it nine years ago, when I was teaching at the University of Memphis. My students were spending way too much time calculating their grades and not enough time studying, so I decided to create a tool that would help them. I have a tracker on the calculator, and toward the end of the semester, the hits go way way way up. Yesterday it got 944 hits and will probably break a thousand today.

Good luck on final exams, for those of you preparing to take them.

After my last post about cars, a good friend pretty much convinced me not to buy a new car for a while. After all, he argued, there’s nothing mechanically wrong with my car, and I live downtown and walk everywhere so no one knows what I drive anyway. Why not, he said, spend $500 to patch up the car’s interior, and keep driving it for several more years? That was the course I was leaning toward anyway, so it was good to get that advice.

Then I started seeing a car – actually an SUV – on the road that I hadn’t noticed before: The Toyota FJ Cruiser.

Normally I’m not a fan of SUVs but this is a really sharp looking car, especially in its Voodoo Blue color. It has a 4-liter V6 which is plenty big enough for an SUV this size, and it looks like the base model (~$22K) comes with everything I would need. It just looks like it’s waiting to be driven to the beach. And it’s a Toyota so you know the reliability is good.

Anyone own one of these? Or know somebody who owns one of these?

Thomas Dolby, creator of the 1980s hit “She Blinded Me With Science,” will perform Saturday night at EP’s Delta Kitchen and Bar. He’ll be joined by another DJ and world-renowned composer of electronic music, BT. Click here for more info

I haven’t kept up with Thomas Dolby for a while, but I do remember his name for a reason other than “She Blinded Me With Science” – back in 1996, when I was teaching Computer Literacy at the University of Memphis and first added an Internet component to the course, Thomas Dolby was one of the people I talked about. At the time he believed that the Internet would change the way people listen to music – rather than it being a passive experience where the artist creates and the public consumes what they are given, Dolby predicted that enjoying music would become an active experience on the part of the audience, and that the interplay between artist and audience would take the work to an entirely new level. To that end, he posted his latest tracks on his website, and invited his fans to download them, mix them, and send them back to be heard by the world. He also had message forums where his core fans could have a say in the direction he took with his career.

Not sure what happened to that project, because honestly, I haven’t heard much about him from 1996 up until this week. One thing’s for sure though, he’s a man of ideas and it would be interesting to find out where he has taken his music in the years since. I read on his bio that he was involved in the company that invented polyphonic cell phone ringtones.

Doors open at 9:30 and tickets are on sale at groovetickets.com ($20 + $2.96 “surcharge”). If you go, I highly recommend you wait until the late-night menu comes into effect at 11:00, and then try either the Not-Yo Crawfish (crawfish nachos with pepper jack and sweet potato chips) or the Lobster Pronto Pups.

Speaking of EP’s, every time I go there I hear how a local food critic has been doing a lot of “whining” to the staff there, because they allowed me, a humble blogger, to “scoop” her – to post the details of their menu and pics of their food before she got a chance to. Heh. That’s kind of funny. Anyone got connections at Sauces and/or Spindini (two more downtown restaurants scheduled to open soon)? Maybe I can scoop her on those too.

All right. Just returned from a shopping spree at Target, where I bought a new Santa hat after losing my old one a couple of years ago on a drunken Sunday afternoon. Think I’ll wear it to the Saucer in a few minutes, when I go to visit my waitresses and see what the “buy the beer, waste money on the glass” glass of the week is. Good night everybody!