Eubie's notes

Myers Park Hardware at the intersection of Providence and Queens was one of my favorite hardware stores in Charlotte. It was convenient, the advice was good and the best part was a contract post office. Those little post offices are convenient and never as crowded as the post offices.

Myers Park Hardware closed in December. I haven’t heard what will be done with the building or site. I don’t think it’s going to remain inactive for long. It’s too active a intersection. Here’s the story from September from the Charlotte Business Journal when the store’s closing was first announced.

While traveling for the holidays, I bought gas at Midnight Oil in Ooltewah, TN for $1.36 a gallon. It wasn’t a fluke, another gas station across the highway was selling at the same price and other stations in the area were selling around $1.40 a gallon.

Using the calculators Measuring Worth.com, here’s the equivalent of the retail price of gas at 32 cents a gallon in 1968:

In 2007, $0.32 from 1968 is worth:

I used 2007 numbers because the site uses only annual numbers and 2008 numbers are not available yet.

Unfortunately, the suppliers are doing what they can to make sure prices don’t stay this cheap for long.

It’s almost become a tradition that we’ll meeting Michael somewhere around Vanderbilt before he flies back to Chicago. Starbucks is always a good choice.

WSJ: Greenbrier Resort Put Up for Sale — Congress may lose its nuclear bomb shelter.

WSJ: The Doomsayers Who Got It Right

Washington Post: Credit Freeze Puts Chill on Dealmaking, With Volume Down 29%

WSJ: Crude Reality: OPEC’s Really Cutting Oil Ouput-So Far

Tech Crunch: Top Social Media Sites of 2008

Footnoted.org: And the worst footnote of 2008 was …

WSJ: Microsoft’s Web Browser Loses Ground

WSJ: Companies Tolerate Ads for Free Software — Good news for Google Docs and Zoho.

CSMonitor: A cook’s favorite, sturdy tool — With proper care, cast-iron cookware can last generations. I know some that believe in these skillets, such as those campers who use dutch ovens but most cooks shy away from it. This writer says the secret is coarse salt, water and oil. That’s similar to the suggestion here on How To Season a Cast Iron Pan.

More photos at the Cracker Barrel in Franklin, Ky.

And me with some of my aunts and uncles:

These are the brothers and sister who live near my Dad. This was taken on a foggy and drizzly morning after Christmas.

NY Times: Airline Flies a 747 on Fuel From a Plant — the plant was a jatropha, which needs little water or fertilizer and can be grown almost anywhere — even in sandy, saline or otherwise infertile soil. Each seed produces 30 to 40 percent of its mass in oil, giving it a high per-acre yield, specialists said.

Washington Post: Obama: America’s ‘First Online Social Networking President’ —Obama Won With Web’s Help. Now, How to Govern Using That Community?

Wired: YouTube, Twitter: Weapons in Israel’s Info War

TechCrunch: Holiday E-Commerce Sales Fall Flat

TechFlash: Zunes commit ‘mass suicide’

Religious Intelligence: Church of England puts its faith in Al Gore’s investment arm — The Church of England’s Church Commissioners have gone green, investing £150 million with former US Vice-President Al Gore’s environmentally minded investment firm, Generation Investment Management.

Guy Kawasaki: Ten Tiny Things Every Small Business Owner Should Do in 2009

WSJ: Viacom Enlists Cartoons in Fee Battle

CNN: Road to stimulus: Speed bumps ahead

NYT: Itineraries: Internet Use Grows at Meetings, as Do Challenges — Hotels, conference centers and event organizers struggle to provide enough Net access for corporate clients.

WSJ: How Historic Was Dolphins’ Turnaround?

Wired: Clive Thompson on How YouTube Changes the Way We Think

USATODAY: Colleges, offices scrap land lines —  An estimated 25% of businesses are phasing out desk phones in effort to save more money.

CoStar: Major Retailer 2008 Store Closings Significantly Outpacing 2007.

WSJ: The Promise of Broadband–Is the Umpteenth Time a Charm?

Fortune: 21 Dumbest Moments in Business 2008

WSJ: The Weekend That Wall Street Died

WSJ: Why It’s Hard to Judge Polls

NY Times: By Saying Yes, WaMu Built Empire on Shaky Loans — Yet even by WaMu’s relaxed standards, one mortgage four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer.

WSJ: Retailers Brace for Major Change — Fallout from the dismal holiday sales season promises to have a lasting impact on how the retail industry operates, with some prepared for a large number of bankruptcies and store closures.

WSJ: Madoff ‘Feeders’ Under Focus — The investigation into Bernard Madoff is starting to turn to the middlemen who attracted billions of investment dollars to his funds.

TechCrunch: Canary In The Coalmine: NYT Sees First Decline In Online Ad Revenues