THE MAJOR’S LIFE BLOG

Here’s what’s definitely going in to Phase 1 of the nearly 400,000 square foot shopping and entertainment complex that is currently being built north of Campbell Drive at Florida’s Turnpike in Homestead:

Circuit City
Kohl’s
Mattress Giant
Michaels
Ross
Sports Authority
Staples

Negotiations are currently ongoing for the following businesses:

LongHorn Steakhouse
Olive Garden
Petco

Most of these businesses plan to have their grand openings during the month of October 2008 (weather-permitting). A few of these businesses (such as Ross) will delay their eventual opening until the early portion of 2009.

You waited 168 hours for this ?  Let’s see if it was all worth it.

1.  Last week was the biggest week in history for this blog. Nowadays we are averaging more than double the amount of unique hits to this blog in a typical Monday to Sunday week than we were less than 3 months ago. Today (Tuesday) became the biggest Tuesday ever in the history of this blog before I even turned on my computer this afternoon !  THANK YOU FRIENDS !

2.  Speaking of friends Pastor Travis called me ‘clueless’ in his blog today, and it’s the nicest complement I’ve received all day. I’ll accept the complement because I did a much better job late last night before I went to sleep talking all about Trav to God. Trav is one of the most sensible persons that I have ever met in my entire life / Life.

3.  Paul - There’s no need to be jealous. The person that was going to take me out to Lunch for my birthday today fell ill and had to postpone it, so I ended up eating ‘grocery store grub’ from Publix. Actually it was rather decent tasty - chicken tenders, macaroni and cheese, and juicy corn. YUM !

4.  Yesterday (Monday) I went to Panda Express (spur-of-the-moment decision) for Lunch and I received poor service. As usual they had little to no selection of foods available to choose from for the various entrees. I completed and submitted a survey online stating my dissatisfaction with their Lunch service and product. We’ll see if it gets any better in future visits. If the customer service and the food selection doesn’t improve then I’ll just stop going there.

5.  Speaking of the Atlanta Bread Company in Homestead I have received no follow-up communication from Corporate Headquarters in Smyrna Georgia as of yet - more than 80 hours after the fact. Apparently they have no Assimilation / Follow-Up Director.

6.  I was extremely shy as a kid. I didn’t talk a lot. The reason why is because when I did talk nobody was listening and nobody cared to listen. I pretty much lived through a sad and miserable childhood. My little brother was one of the first persons in my entire life that actually listened to what I had to say and was genuinely interested. If it weren’t for my little brother then I may not be here today.

7.  One of the highlights of my day is looking out my personal hurricane-proof window at work that faces due east and watching the sun rise above the horizon. I adore the daylight. I adore chasing it. It’s morning again !

8.  I spent close to 45 minutes at Office Max yesterday and I only spent $8.75 (including tax). The fact of the matter is that I could have spent 3 hours browsing around in that store and $500 or more on quality office merchandise. But I showed real restraint in there. I’m a member of the Christian Conservative Coalition. Yeah - I’m one of those wackos - and PROUD of it !

9.  When Staples opens its doors for business later this year over at the MASSIVE new Homestead Pavilion shopping, dining, and entertainment complex I may hang out there like I own the place !  I’m crazy about office supplies like that.

10.  Exactly 5 months ago this morning - on January 03RD 2008 - Homestead was shivering just a few degrees above the freezing mark. It was in the 30s outside for 8 hours, and in the 40s for an additional 8 hours. It was our coldest morning in nearly 12 years !  I just wanted to remind you of that now that we’re clearly in the bug-infested hot and humid summertime rainy season.

B U G S - The bugs are back in town here in Homestead due to all of the recent heavy rains. You may be thinking to yourself, ‘Hey - Wait a minute. I live in Homestead. It hasn’t rained since March !’  You may also be thinking to yourself, ‘No doubt. I thought the sky was caving in on us yesterday afternoon. My yard turned into a giant lake !  My new patio furniture was thrown by the funnel cloud into the canal !’ There is rain all around us. Some of us have received a lot of it this past week, and some of us are still living in a dust bowl. Pretty soon all of us will get a lot of rain, and the bugs will flock to Homestead on their Summer break. Get ready to be eaten alive by little itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny mouths with glow-in-the-dark green eyes.

G A S - I filled-up my car this morning with not quite 11 gallons of gas at Chevron on Useless-One at Campbell Drive at the remarkable price of $4.059 per gallon. That’s about 15 to 20 cents per gallon higher than every other gas station in the general vicinity of that Chevron, but I am kinda sorta semi-loyal to Chevron, and I really wanted to use my fresh new Chevron-Texaco credit card this morning for the first time. $4.059 may seem outrageous to a majority of whining and complaining Americans, but $4.059 for the equivalent of a gallon of gas anywhere in Europe is known as ‘the good old days of the 1990s’.

J A V A - Speaking of items that we Americans love to spend a lot of money on - Starbucks in Homestead - not to be confused with Starbucks in Florida City - is OPEN for BUSINESS !  OK calm down Travis. The drive-thru is open for business. The inside of the joint is apparently not quite ready for customer utilization, so you’ll just have to wait a little while longer to sit inside for hours on your wireless Apple Mac.

One final item of interest - Many of the mega-stores and restaurants at the first phase of the Homestead Pavilion shopping, dining, and entertainment complex at Campbell Drive and the Turnpike are expected to make their grand openings between the middle of October and the middle of November - just in time for the NASCAR Championship Series at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and of course the Christmas 2008 shopping season.

Here’s what we’ve learned (or reiterated) over the past several Thursday nights:

• Gas stations are not intentionally cheating us by rigging their gas pumps to deliver less gas to your vehicle than what is indicated.
• Circuit City, Bed Bath And Beyond, and other stores have not filed for bankruptcy, so you can continue to cash in your apparent stack of gift cards for them.
• Pictures don’t lie (unless the’re manipulated), but the stories written around the pictures can be totally bogus. What appeared to be actual inflight pictures of a horrific Boeing 737 mid-air collision at 35,000 feet over South America were actually still-shots of the pilot episode of the ABC-TV series “Lost”.

Here’s another picture. It’s a picture of a guy holding up his adorable cat - his adorable cat that is 5 feet 9 inches in length and weighs a MASSIVE 87 pounds !  Is this feline for real, or could it possibly be - an INTERNET HOAX !

Read more about it.

Last week on the ‘Thursday Night Internet Hoax Hall-Of-Shame’ we exposed a developing hoax in which an E-Mail states that a list of businesses have filed for bankruptcy, so you best run don’t walk to those places ASAP to use your gift cards for them before they become worthless. The list (naturally) includes stores that have not filed for bankruptcy, and future variations of the E-Mail are expected to include even more stores that have not filed for bankruptcy.

An Internet hoax is like gossip. It evolves as it expands.

This week on the ‘Hall-Of-Shame’ it’s all about an E-Mail that’s currently circulating all over the world accusing gas stations of intentionally cheating at their gas pumps by showing more gallons of gas being pumped than what is actually being received by the vehicle (thus inflating the overall cost of the fill-up).

You’re not gonna believe what your local gas station may (or may not) be doing to you right before your very eyes. Grab your crew and be sure to catch this EXPLOSIVE edition of the ‘Thursday Night Internet Hoax Hall-Of-Shame’. It goes LIVE here on the blog shortly after 5 PM EDT here on the U.S. East Coast. You’re not gonna wanna miss it !

This is a developing Internet hoax:

The following companies just filed for Bankruptcy

Hollywood Video
Levitz
Sharper Image
Performance Team Freight
Linens n Things
Circuit City
Bed, Bath and Beyond

If you have gift cards from the above list use them ASAP, they will not be valid for much longer.

PASS THE WORD.

Actually 3 out of the 7 companies listed above have not filed for bankruptcy, and future variations of this chain E-Mail over the next several months are expected to include even longer (and growing) lists of companies that have not filed for bankruptcy. These chain E-Mails are intended to intentionally frighten the public and slow down E-Mail servers worldwide with bogus information. Don’t base your day-to-day life decisions on chain E-Mails. Don’t fall prey to Internet hoaxes. Use common sense.

Incidentally just because a company has truly filed for bankruptcy does not mean that they have stopped honoring gift cards (although some do just that).

Read more about it.

The following E-Mail was recently circulated all over my workplace. It is a chain-letter with numerous fallacies including exaggerated, incorrect, and bogus information. Variants of this chain-letter have been in existence on the Internet since 1999. The bottom-line is that this is a classic example of a ‘denial-of-service’ chain-letter in which the main intent of it is to bog down E-Mail servers and Inboxes and decrease available Internet bandwidth worldwide. Any E-Mail that encourages you to forward it on to all of your friends is known as a ‘denial-of-service’ E-Mail. Virtually all of these types of E-Mails are Internet hoaxes. They should be deleted upon receipt of them. Do not forward them on, or you will merely add to this ongoing problem on the Internet.

Read more about it.

Subject: Dropping Gas Prices

THIS IS NOT THE ‘DON’T BUY GAS FOR ONE DAY’, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON.

This was sent by a retired Coca Cola executive. It came from one of his engineer buddies who retired from Halliburton. If you are tired of the gas prices going up AND they will continue to rise this summer, take time to read this please.

Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea. This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a certain day” campaign that was going around last April or May! It’s worth your consideration. Join the resistance!!!!

I hear we are going to hit close to $4.00 a gallon by next summer, and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action. The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to “hurt” ourselves by refusing to buy gas.

It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, whoever thought of this idea has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read on and join with us!

By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about $2.00 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $3.19 for regular unleaded in my town.

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.

The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here’s the idea: For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.

If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point…keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) … and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)…and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers. If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all!

(If you don’t understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people…. Well, let’s face it, you just aren’t a mathematician. But I am, so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Keep it going!!!

This is not my web site designing and marketing company, but Chris Day sure does some great work !

Florida City Florida is now officially on the map … now that Starbucks is open for business in town at the former longtime location of Miami Subs where Palm Drive (SW 344TH Street) meets Useless-One (U.S. 1).

My first impression of the outside of the place ? - The parking lot is ridiculous. I would have thought that they would have blown up the previous parking lot and started anew, but instead they just painted over it and re-striped it in a haphazard manner. Oh well. At least I found an open parking space (on a slight angled slope).

I walked inside of the joint, and it was music (loud) to my ears. It is paradise inside. I looked around for this dude, or this dude, or this dude, and none of them were inside camping out. I guess 7 AM on a Saturday morning is just a bit too early for them. Why I do more before 7 AM than they do … oh never mind.

I ordered the GRANDE Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha ($4.05) as well as a Sausage, Egg, & Cheddar Sandwich ($2.95). They didn’t have any peppermint left, so they offered (and I gladly accepted) the regular White Chocolate Mocha (that I am so familiar with). I grabbed my loot, and I took it all home with me. The sandwich was hot and scrumptious. The mocha (still drinking it) is warm and tasty.

I am truly impressed with this particular location of Starbucks, and I shall return to it on a regular basis - poorly-constructed parking lot notwithstanding.

Bring on the other 3 planned Starbucks in and around Homestead - especially the one less than a mile from my workplace. Once that one opens for business we might as well have our ‘Commander’s Calls’ there because half of the base will be there lined up for coffee before each work day begins.

I’ve recently heard rumours of a Best Buy under construction in Florida City, and now I’m pretty confident that those rumours can in fact be confirmed as true.

Ground breaking is well under way between U.S. 1 and Krome Avenue at SW 336TH Street (just north of the new Largo Honda) for a 100,000 square foot shopping center that will include Best Buy (anchor), Bank Of America (outparcel), and Longhorn Steak House (outparcel).

Sometime in 2008 we will no longer have to drive up to Cutler Bay to browse and purchase state-of-the-art electronics, or way up to far West Kendall to eat a delicious steak and potatoes meal. We will be able to do it right here in our own neighbourhood !