A Trip to SAMS

 

About once a quarter, my wife and I drive down to Knoxville to make bulk purchases at SAMS because it is cheaper.  Knoxville is about about 30 minutes away from where we live...

What we usually purchase is Toilet Paper, Kcups for McCafe, Pomegranate Juice, Box of frozen COD and Salmon, Turkey Burgers, Atkins Shakes, Raisin Bran, Pimento Cheese, Nuts, and any odds and ends that come to our minds, that are cheaper that WalMart.

It is interesting to know that SAMS is a storage warehouse for WalMart, but some items are cheaper at WalMart than at SAMS...  so, you cannot assume anything and check all prices.

Today after shopping we were going to go to Panera Bread for lunch...  possible a cup of potato soup and 1/2 Tuna sandwich...  but, as we walked by the instore cafe, we decided to get a hotdog and a drink and eat while we were there.

A hotdog and a 24oz drink cost us $1.40 each.  The hotdog was delicious...  just like a hotdog that you would buy at a baseball park.

One of the things that we like about SAMS is that when you go there on the weekends, there are vendors (not SAMS employees) giving away FREE FOOD.

So, for desert, we had 2 pieces of strawberry cheesecake and 1 serving of apple pie (which was about 2 bites)...

Filled up the drink before we left to have something to drink on the way home...

I am just wondering how many people get a SAMS card and go to SAMS everyday for lunch?

First of It's Kind

SEVIERVILLE, Tenn.--Tennessee's Soaky Mountain Waterpark in Sevierville will debut a water coaster promising to be the first-of-its-kind.

Soaky Mountain Waterpark announced the opening of the water coaster which will be known as "The Edge" will open to the public on Wednesday after first being announced last November. The slide will feature two lanes on a 70 foot tower.

The two slides will have riders sit on double tubes before they are dropped three stories into a valley. Riders will then be propelled up a hill into an enclosed tube and dropped again where they will blast up a wall and dropped once again feeling extreme G forces.

At the end of the line, riders will see which of the two is the winner of the duel. In a statement release when the attraction was first announced, Soaky Mountain GM Dave Andrews says "Our new water coaster, fittingly named, ‘The Edge’ is going to be a showstopper! 

It will be perched on the edge of our waterpark, and span two football fields in length. It’s fusing together WhiteWater’s Master Blaster water coaster with their iconic Boomerango. But, we are not adding just one slide, we are doubling it for a dueling thrill!”  READ MORE...

Considering A 4 Day Workweek

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Could your workweek be getting a little bit shorter? One business expert with the University of Tennessee thinks it might be a good idea.

An associate professor of management at UT’s Haslam College of Business started by explaining the five-day workweek comes from Henry Ford and the manufacturing industry more than 100 years ago. Timothy Munyon said it then spilled into office life; however, he said it’s obvious times have changed.

“The history of work, if you look at how we’ve structured work really over the last 120-plus years, it’s an artifact of some realities that were relevant in history but maybe not relevant today,” said Munyon. “When you look at the nature of the way that we actually do work it’s not always the best way for employees.”

That’s why Munyon said he’s passionate about improving the work-life balance for Americans across the nation. It’s also why he feels it may be wise for employers to consider changes like a four-day workweek, saying it can improve productivity, reduce burnout and increase respite.

“It’s about sustainability, actually helping people be well at work and thrive while also helping manage for the long run,” he said.

Munyon also adds this has become vital over the last couple of years as the world dealt with political unrest, the pandemic, and financial insecurity.

“One thing that employers can do is kind of build in a little bit more rest for their employees to recharge, it’s not business as normal,” he began. “If you look at things like base rates of things like burnout and depression in the population, we see spikes, and often they are non-work-related spikes, but employers can help employees better manage those stressors by giving them flexibility and a little more latitude at work.”

Munyon also said there must be a shift in the way employers think soon if they hope to slow down what’s been dubbed “The Great Resignation.” Throughout the pandemic, Munyon said more Americans than ever reevaluated what mattered to them, forcing some of them out of the workforce altogether.  READ MORE...

4 Day Workweek

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — Not everyone is an expert in human resources or business management and there are terms used among professionals in these industries that could be useful to others whom are employed; emerging data on the four-day workweek calls attention to some terms used among management experts and the history of the American workweek.

Academics and business industry professionals are talking more about the four-day workweek and discussions have been happening for years. Tim Munyon, associate professor of management at UT Haslam College of Business, offered both a history lesson on the topic as well as what some of the terms used actually mean. Munyon also touched on some recent studies and academic literature aimed at not only employee productivity but also the historical effects.

Recently, the shortened American workweek became a trending topic among international media and on social media when a study out of Iceland called the four-day workweek a success and a California congressman introduced legislation to modify the workweek last summer that was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus in December.

Terms defined
Business researchers are finding that more companies are considering or switching to a results-only work environment, or ROWE that focuses on complete autonomy and accountability for outcomes only.

A broader approach to ROWE some companies are taking includes flexible work practices or FWP, which have seen positive effects according to research prior to the coronavirus pandemic – and after – but meta-analyses (“studies of studies, as Munyon put it) on these practices are still being developed that aim to reduce or and bias.

A peer-reviewed business research study published in late 2017 explored the different avenues of FWP and how companies attract potential employees – and keep them – utilizing FWPs. Overall, FWPs produce positive results, according to the meta-analyses, and Munyon summarizes this when asked about FWPs and ROWEs.  READ MORE...

Taking a Giant Leap

ORNL’s Joseph Lukens runs experiments in an optics lab. Credit: Jason Richards/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Scientists' increasing mastery of quantum mechanics is heralding a new age of innovation. Technologies that harness the power of nature's most minute scale show enormous potential across the scientific spectrum, from computers exponentially more powerful than today's leading systems, sensors capable of detecting elusive dark matter, and a virtually unhackable quantum internet.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Freedom Photonics and Purdue University have made strides toward a fully quantum internet by designing and demonstrating the first ever Bell state analyzer for frequency bin coding.

Their findings were published in Optica.

Before information can be sent over a quantum network, it must first be encoded into a quantum state. This information is contained in qubits, or the quantum version of classical computing "bits" used to store information, that become entangled, meaning they reside in a state in which they cannot be described independently of one another.

Entanglement between two qubits is considered maximized when the qubits are said to be in "Bell states."

Measuring these Bell states is critical to performing many of the protocols necessary to perform quantum communication and distribute entanglement across a quantum network. And while these measurements have been done for many years, the team's method represents the first Bell state analyzer developed specifically for frequency bin coding, a quantum communications method that harnesses single photons residing in two different frequencies simultaneously.  READ MORE...

Just in Tennessee???

Black Lives Matter organizer Pamela Moses was convicted in Nov. 2021 and sentenced to six years in prison in Feb. 2022 for illegally registering to vote in Tennessee, according to prosecutors. 

Moses, reported as the founder of the BLM Memphis chapter, had 16 prior felony convictions, making her ineligible to register and vote.

At her Jan. 26 sentencing hearing Moses, while claiming: ““I did not falsify anything. All I did was try to get my rights to vote back the way the people at the election commission told me and the way the clerk did,” was reprimanded by Judge Mark Ward, while issuing her prison sentence, responded: ““You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” Ward said in court last week. “After you were convicted of a felony in 2015, you voted six times as a convicted felon.”

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Jack Daniels

Jack Daniel's is a brand of Tennessee whiskey and the best-selling whiskey in the world. It is produced in Lynchburg, Tennessee, by the Jack Daniel Distillery, which has been owned by the Brown–Forman Corporation since 1956. Jack Daniel's home county of Moore is a dry county, so the product is not available for purchase at stores or restaurants within the county.

The product meets the regulatory criteria for classification as a straight bourbon, though the company chooses not to use this classification. It markets the liquor simply as "Tennessee whiskey" instead of "Tennessee bourbon".  

As defined in the North American Free Trade Agreement, Tennessee whiskey is classified as a straight bourbon authorized to be produced in the state of Tennessee.  

Tennessee law (57-2-106) further requires most producers of Tennessee whiskey to filter the spirit through charcoal made from maple prior to aging, in addition to meeting the above requirements (the "Lincoln County Process").

Packaged in square bottles, Jack Daniel's "Black Label" Tennessee whiskey sold 12.5 million nine-liter cases in the fiscal year ending on April 30, 2017.  Other brand variations, such as Tennessee Honey, Gentleman Jack, and Tennessee Fire, added another 2.9 million cases to sales. 

Sales of an additional 800,000 equivalent cases in ready-to-drink (RTD) products brought the fiscal year total to more than 16.1 million equivalent adjusted cases for the entire Jack Daniel's family of brands.  SOURCE:  Wikipedia

Lake Atagahi

The secret lake hidden in the Smoky Mountains

Legend states that Atagahi Lake was shallow, purple, and fed by mountain springs (photo by Petr Jelinek/stock.adobe.com)

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is dotted with well-preserved conclaves of cabins and barns. And the occasional mill or silo.

Places like Cades Cove or Greenbrier or Roaring Fork serve as reminders of life in the mountains in the decades leading up to the formation of the park.

And as we walk through these places, running our hands along the rough-hewn wood, feeling the planks creaking beneath our feet and feeling the crisp breath of a breeze blowing through, we try to imagine ourselves living in such a time and such a place.

In fact, it is impossible for most of us.  READ MORE...

Heart Cath

What happens during a heart catheterization procedure?

In cardiac catheterization (often called cardiac cath), your doctor puts a very small, flexible, hollow tube (called a catheter) into a blood vessel in the groin, arm, or neck. Then he or she threads it through the blood vessel into the aorta and into the heart. Once the catheter is in place, several tests may be done.

AUTHOR's COMMENTS:  

On Tursday of this week, I will be having this procedure at UT Medical Center - Heart and Lung Department...    This is the second time that a procedure like this has been performed on me...  the first time was at the same hospital and was performed in 2008 and the surgeon recommended a triple bypass, but instead I had 5 stents inserted into my heart arteries over a 12 month period of time with 3 surgeries.

It appears that my stents may no longer be working as they should since a recent stress test indicated an abnormal reading that pointed to my LAD...  So, this procedure is to take a closer look at the problem...

My surgery is scheduled at 7:00 am so I have to arrive at 5:30 am which means I have to leave the house at 4:30 am and that means I must get up and shower at 4:00 am...  this should not be a problem for me as I am always waking up during the night at various times to urinate.

Hopefully, I will be released and on my way home by noon or earlier of that same day...

THe Iron Mountain

It’s not often we get a glimpse into the road not taken.  There was a movement in the early 1900s to preserve the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains and create the national park.

But that movement came with consequences. Whether those consequences were good or bad depends on your point of view.

Ultimately, people lost their homes, their land and their way of life for the greater good. Communities were erased. Bizarre fairly lands built for the amusement of the ultra-rich were abandoned back to the mountains.

Loggers who were clearing great swaths of the forest were forced to look elsewhere.  I think by and large, we’re all quite pleased with how things turned out. We love the national park, and the areas surrounding the park drive the local economy.

But what if things had turned out differently? What if the parks had remained private land?

Maybe it would have turned out like Foxfire Mountain Adventure Park, located not far from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Sevierville.  It’s a wonderful place with lots of manmade adventure, where you can hike the natural beauty of the Smokies.

Foxfire Family Adventure Park in Sevierville
The park was founded by the Postlewaite family. Prior to 2009, it was chiefly a cattle farm. By 2009, the family was ready to sell the farm for financial reasons.

However, during an Alaskan vacation, Marc tried ziplining. They called the realtor, took Foxfire off the market and built an adventure park, offering some of the best ziplining in the region.  READ MORE

Dolly Parton

In 1990, the high school dropout rate for Dolly Parton's hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee was at 34%.

Research shows that most kids make up their minds in fifth/sixth grade not to graduate.

That year, all fifth and sixth graders from Sevierville were invited by Parton to attend an assembly at Dollywood.

They were asked to pick a buddy, and if both students completed high school, Dolly Parton would personally hand them each a $500 check on their graduation day.

As a result, the dropout rate for those classes fell to 6%, and has generally retained that average to this day.

Shortly after the success of The Buddy Program, Parton learned in dealing with teachers from the school district that problems in education often begin during first grade when kids are at different developmental levels.

That year The Dollywood Foundation paid the salaries for additional teachers assistants in every first grade class for the next 2 years, under the agreement that if the program worked, the school system would effectively adopt and fund the program after the trial period.

During the same period, Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995: The idea being that children from her rural hometown and low-income families often start school at a disadvantage and as a result, will be unfairly compared to their peers for the rest of their lives, effectively encouraging them not to pursue higher education.

The objective of the Imagination library was that every child in Sevier County would receive one book, every month, mailed and addressed to the child, from the day they were born until the day they started kindergarten, 100% free of charge.

What began as a hometown initiative now serves children in all 50 states, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, mailing thousands of free books to children around the world monthly.

On March 1, 2018 Parton donated her 100 millionth book at the Library of Congress: a copy of "Coat of Many Colors" dedicated to her father, who never learned to read or write.

Happy 74th Birthday Dolly Parton!

Unpredictable behavior

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WZTV) — Great Smoky Mountain National Park Service is warning visitors to keep their distance from elk in the park as breeding season is gearing up.

Elk are the largest animals in the national park, attracting visitors from all over. But as fall nears, males, or "bulls," are ready for the rut.

"This season is highly anticipated, as bulls begin to mate and make their notorious bugling calls to challenge other males," GSMNPS wrote.

During the rut, park rangers say elk behavior is unpredictable and bulls have been known to charge at people and cars.

All fields are closed to pedestrian traffic this time of year. People should stay near or inside their vehicles. Dogs should be kept on leashes.

What To Do via the GSMNPS:

• Use binoculars, a telephoto lens, or spotting scope for close-up views
• Keep at least 50 yards between you and them
• Use your thumb: Extend your arm, raise your thumb, and close one eye. If your thumb covers the entire animal, you’re a safe distance away.

Learn more about elk in the Smokie here.

Fireflies Sync Their Flashes

Swarms of synchronous fireflies are rather like melting ice, or at least that’s how Raphael Sarfati, a physicist, sees it. Ice remains solid until it warms to a certain temperature and becomes a liquid. Likewise, a loose swarm fireflies will flash the lanterns in their abdomens randomly. But when the swarm reaches a certain density, the fireflies begin to blink in unison.

“Above that threshold, it is almost perfect synchronization,” with rhythmic, coordinated waves of light, said Sarfati, a postdoctoral associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The spontaneous synchronization of certain species of fireflies, such as Photinus carolinus in the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, has long baffled humans who observed the peculiar mating ritual, in which blinking males strive to attract the attention of ground-level females. 

Early-20th-century scientists dismissed the phenomenon as accidental or blamed it on puffs of wind or the twitching eyelids of the people who made these reports, according to one 1935 review in Science.

In the past 50 years, scientists collected anecdotal observations of these unified flashes but not enough empirical data to truly study firefly synchronization’s mechanisms.

Now, Sarfati and Orit Peleg, a physicist and assistant professor also at the University of Colorado, have filmed the mating hordes of P. carolinus and mapped their flashing patterns in three-dimensional space. 

Their research, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, adds to evidence that the insects sync their flashes, and suggests what may drive that coordination. TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...

Life Goes On

Life in America now is different than life in America was...  at least for the old timers...  who were around in the 1960's with the Vietnam War, Demonstrations on college campuses, Race Riots, and Woodstock...  although, there is more to it than just that...  it also includes an increase in the quality of life that revolves around:

• higher wages
• better healthcare
• quality education
• housing
• clothes
• technology
• transportation
• communications

AND...  just when life starts to get interesting, my mentality is to retire and extricate myself from the rigors or employment which is mainly because of asshole bosses who are more incompetent than government workers.

Retirement is good...   and, it is good not because I can sleep in or not shave or wear what I want to, but because I have enough money to do whatever it is that I want to do even with my limited resources...  in other words, I can go out to dinner and order the $13 Salmon rather than the $25 Filet Mignon...   or, I can go to a resort area on the East Coast and get an efficiency condo for $1,200/week rather than an efficiency condo for $2,500/week.

During the winter months, I pretty much stay inside but when the weather is warm, I am on the back porch or I am working in the yard; however, regardless of the weather and my physical location, I spend an enormous amount of time writing.  My writing consists of articles that I publish on my 3 blogs, most of which I write myself, others borrowed but given credit, publishing poems on my 4th blog, and writing a few pages each day on a novel.

To date, I have written two and a half novels, and am working on my 4th without finishing my 3rd.  Why did I do this?  No sure...  other than I got tired of writing or questioned my ability to write and when I returned, decided to start something new.

Will I contact publishers?

Not sure...

Am I writing just to be writing or am I writing to be published?

Again, not sure...

But, writing keeps me busy and occupied and in retirement I suppose that is a good thing.

However, some people like to continue working and continue building up their wealth.  I have no desire to build wealth as long as I have enough money to meet my needs and the needs of my wife after I die.

Am I being un American?

Perhaps...  but, I have never like the concept of GREED or the concept of climbing to the top of the ladder just so I could say that I got there...

Back in the USSR... not really... East TN... much better

We left Destin at 7:00 am EST which was 6:00 am Central Time which means we were up at 5:00 am this morning in order to get home at a reasonable hour since we had an 8.5 hour drive ahead of us...  and no telling how long we might be delayed due to construction, or traffic, or an accident...  

We stopped once for gas and use the restroom and a second time for something to eat most of which we ate in the parking lot before we returning to the Interstate.  We were delayed a little by construction and even less by traffic but it took us 9.5 hours to return to our home which means we were delayed about 30 minutes by our 2 stops and another 30 minutes by either traffic or construction or both.

In another hour, we had unloaded the car and put everything away from our trip although we are saving mowing of the lawn until tomorrow after we have gotten a good night's sleep....  so, in 10.5 hours we have just about been able to return to normal.

Two of our 3 cats met us at the door but our Siamese who gets really pissed off when we leave for more than a day or two, decided that he not show his face until a couple of hours after our return...  I guess he did not want to appear too eager to let us know that he missed us.

It was nice to have a vacation and eat out every night and it was nice to sit in chairs and watch the water...  even if it was the Gulf and not the Atlantic Ocean...  but, if the truth be known, I did the same damn thing down there that I did here, plus I had to spend all that extra money and drive for 18 hours...  not really sure if it was worth it or not... and unlike the Caribbean commercials my wife and I did not fall in love with each other all over again.

A Siamese Cat Tale

All of my life until the age of 43/44, I have had two types of dogs as pets:  a Dachshund and a Labrador Retriever; but when I relocated to TN in 1990, I began living with a woman who had a cat and after 6 months started to feel just as comfortable with a cat as I had been with a dog except the cat was more skeptical than a dog about most things.

Five years later, we got married and acquired two stray cats who later died of old age and after a few months of mourning, we selected two baby cats for an Animal Rescue Center and decided to purchase a Siamese Cat who came with "papers" but we did not want to spend the extra money for those.  The Siamese owner led us to believe the cat was younger than it really was and that it had been properly socialized.

When we went to pick up the cat, we immediately realized that both of those assumptions were incorrect but decided to take the cat anyway.  I was living in KY at the time and my wife was living in TN and felt like a needed a pet.

Back at my apartment, we let the Siamese out of the carrier and the cat went "ballistic," running around like a cornered wild animal and jumping up on the walls trying to escape.  He later ran under the bed where he remained.


I left a bowl of food and water out in the second bedroom along with a litter box and went to sleep.  That night I felt the Siamese walking all over my body and in the morning, all the food was gone and the water container was half empty and the litter box had been used.

This behavior continued for about 9 months until we brought one of our other cats up to my apartment from TN and it was that cat who was able to entice the Siamese out from under the bed where I could interact with it and eventually begin to rub it.

Ten years later, the Siamese is still somewhat anti-social and very skeptical of everything that takes place in the house, but because of our time together in KY, the Siamese has bonded to me and I am the only one who has been able to fully interact with him.