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Costco coming to Knoxville

Costco will be tearing down the old BeltsBelz Outlet Mall across from Cotton Eyed Joe off of Lovell Road and building in its location. That’s a little off the beaten path. I didn’t think Costco’s and Sam’s existed in the same markets. It’ll be interesting to see if Knoxville can support Sam’s, Walmart and two BestBuy’s in close proximity. Yes, if you haven’t heard, Turkey Creek is getting a BestBuy. Personally I cannot see the BestBuy on Town and Country Circle surviving.

Little nostalgia. I remember the BeltsBelz Outlet Mall on its last dying legs. Walking through it was almost spooky. It was like the ghost mall. Then years after it was closed, I returned to it with several scouts to help package gifts for Angel Tree children. The moldy, rotting building accentuated the somberness as an Angel Tree volunteer called out the shortages in gifts and donations. Many empty bags were left "organized" on the floor with hopes that gifts would be scrounged for those children. None-the-less, the scouts running about and feeling good that they had helped someone that day reflected echoes of the energetic activity the mall had once known in its halls and particularly in its food court (as the old food court is where the bulk of the Angel Tree activity happened).

Old haunts go to make room for new haunts. I look forward to seeing what Costco brings to Knoxville.

Update 8/13/2008: Belts corrected to Belz thanks to JMT and hiknapster on city-data.com.
Update 1/14/10: I don’t know the status of this project but it may have gone to North Georgia- "Costco identified in secret Catoosa project"
Update 1/21/2011: WATE reports that Costco is still trying to enter the Knoxville market and is considering property at Kingston Pike and Lovell Rd.

…6 News has learned Costco is looking at a potential site at the intersection of Lovell Road and Kingston Pike in West Knox County. … A Costco senior vice president says the discount chain has been interested in the Knoxville market for years, but could never find the right site. He can’t confirm anything until a deal has been signed, but he says they’re getting very close. [Source, WATE, Is Costco coming to Knoxville?]

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Signup for the No-Fly List

Today is the deadline to sign the Kucinich petition to impeach GW Bush based on these articles.

Other than impeachment, censure is an option. Of course, with so little time left in the GW Presidency, what’s the point? Perhaps it prevents him from declaring martial law and stopping the elections in November? See President GW Bush 2004-indefinitely.

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Milestone achieved

Despite the power blinking out and the Internet being down for the bulk of the day, I worked hard today, hit a programmer’s high, held the buzz, and came to a good place on my current project. Some of the stress has actually rolled off my shoulders and I feel good about the project. Now I can reabsorb the stress regarding the absurdities in my life right now. Tomorrow will be back to bureaucracy! I will have to spend a bunch of time on the phone and am thinking I may need to dust off the business cards of some old lawyer friends of mine. The next couple of weeks promise to age me by several years.

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State of Me

On the brink of lunacy. The stress right now is beyond description. My golden plan for this year has fallen to pieces. We were supposed to take a right at the last fork in the river which would have led to calm waters. One of my boats has sunk and now we are in cascading rapids and fighting the current to keep from barreling over the waterfall’s edge. We devoured most of our remaining rations at the last camp and our dry bag with our wallets washed out of the boat on the last class 5 rapid which doesn’t matter because who knows when we will see another trading post! Is everyone wearing their life jackets?

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Programming self into corner

With programming, over thinking a problem is a common pitfall. Sleeping on a problem often results in a quick solution for the mere fact that you quit thinking about the issue long enough to see the simpler solution. As we contrive our Rube Goldberg devices to solving programming challenges, we become like plumbers simply adding more pipes to divert the water to the end result. Quickly we paint ourselves into a corner and waste valuable time. I am there right now on what should be some simple css.

If I have a <tr> that has a class <tr class="foo"> and the <td> within the tr has an <a href> how do I style the anchor?

Before anyone jumps on the "Don’t use tables" bandwagon, this is semantically correct because the output is tabular data.

The solution should be tr.foo td a { }. But nothing changes. CSS is not magic; not spooky. CSS is relatively simple, and fun! But hiccups like this drive me to the brink!

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The ever shrinking room

We’ve hit that time of the Monday where the walls begin to close in. This is the moment that I feel I need to continue programming to hit a milestone, simultaneously I need to be on the phone doing unpleasant bureaucratic things, and I also have a load of paperwork which demands I not ignore it a single more day. All the while I feel like I’m walking in glue. Since the world has gone micro, I think I’ll go have a micro-breakdown. Back in 15 minutes.