While flipping through the channels in my hotel room last night I was greeted with Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and the deputies from the alligator attack on Fox News. I thought it was a new show, "Grady and Friends".

The alligator attack story is receiving national media attention as well as some interest from bloggers. Some of the headlines are quite funny. Perhaps this will replace the Jelly Belly story as the 'vision of Polk County' for those around the U.S. Then again, either of those aren't very positive images of Polk County.

Sample blog headlines:

- Another Reason Not to Smoke Crack
- Darwinism Thwarted in Florida (my favorite)
- Alligator Suffers for Man's Stupidity
- Naked + Crack Cocaine + Alligator =
- More Proof That Crack Can Kill You
- Only in Florida
- Another Strike by the Animal Kingdom Jihadists

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It was a little over a year ago that I conducted my Public Transportation Experiment. As a brief refresher, I spent the entire day using public transportation to make all my business meetings. Here is the intro:

If you would have asked me how things were going at the mid-point of my day (around 2:30 p.m.) I would have said, “Great, everything has been perfect so far.” Ask me the same question at the end of the day (7:00 p.m.) and I would have said, “A complete disaster.” Take the sum of those two responses and you have a balanced look at public transportation.

Go read the entire report. I plan on repeating my trip in 2007 and will post another recap.

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This is somewhat Polk County related since the first Red Lobster was in Lakeland, FL.

USAToday features a profile of Darden Restaurant's CEO, Clarence Otis Jr. Darden is the parent company to Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Smokey Bones, Bahama Breeze and Seasons 52. The article is the standard business-profile-piece but it does talk about the growth options for Darden and the difficulty they've had in launching Smokey Bones and Bahama Breeze

Its Smokey Bones Barbeque & Grill chain, where Otis was president from late 2002 into 2004, has disappointed of late, posting same-store sales declines of 3.7% last year. Also not a home run has been Darden's Bahama Breeze Caribbean food chain.

It's too early to judge Darden's newest chain, Seasons 52, which features pricey, better-for-you, fresh food. The six-unit chain, with no entrée over 475 calories, has done well in Florida. But with meals averaging $35 per person, growth will likely be limited.

I was trying to count how many locations that Darden operates in Polk County. I have five: 2 in Winter Haven (OG, RL) and 3 in Lakeland (OG, RL, SB).

The photo above is from the Red Lobster site and shows the original Lakeland location.

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The Transportation Planning Organization of Polk County has a rather interesting page that details the Transportation History of Polk County. The timeline goes from 1843 till 2000. Here are a few interesting tid-bits:

1915: The Polk County Good Roads Association gathers enough support to sponsor a $1.5 million bond issue which passes by a 2-to-1 margin in a countywide referendum. Polk County contracts with four companies to pave over 217 miles of sheet asphalt highways - the largest construction transaction of its kind in the South. The project is divided into five sections, linking every major Polk city.

1923: Polk County's 340 miles of paved roads is more than any other county in Florida. Polk's "velvet highways" become a tourist attraction, especially "The Scenic Highlands Highway" located along the Lake Wales Ridge. These highways help spur the development of South Florida during the Florida Land Boom, and earn Polk County its "imperial" moniker.

Go check it out.

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Johnny Urban snapped this shot of a 'Rustic' Publix in the Atlanta area. It's at a shopping area with a 'rustic' feel and the Publix was designed to fit in with the surroundings.

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I just posted by early-morning shopping experience. Feel free to share yours by leaving a comment.

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For as long as I can remember I have never participated in any Black Friday shopping-spree. I would typically try to avoid anything commerce related on this day, even going out to lunch is a chore. For some reason though, this year I decided to try it out. Perhaps it was a morbid sense of curiosity. Now that my morning of shopping at Best Buy in Lakeland is over, I can say that it will be some time again before I venture out for another post-Thanksgiving sale.

Why? I am always looking for extra storage for my Nikon D80, so I decided to look for a good deal on an memory card. Reading over the sales circulars on Thursday, a number of stores had 2GB SD cards on sale. Many of the sales were of the rebate variety, i.e. $30 off in-store and then another $X off via mail-in rebates. I despise the entire mail-in rebate system. In an ad you'll see a laptop for $200, but then looking at the fine print you actually pay $600 at the time sale and need to fill out $400 worth of rebate forms, no thanks.

In the end, Best Buy seemed to have the best deal, a 2GB SD card for $29.99 and no mail-in rebates.

Late Thursday, my wife wondered if I was actually going to be getting up at 4 a.m. to go to Best Buy...yep. Part of it was the deal, but I think it was mostly for the experience, an experience that I won't be repeating.

I woke bright and early at 4 a.m. and drove to the Lakeland Best Buy. On the drive over I thought, well traffic isn't that bad, then I began to approach the mall area and things picked up quite a bit. Arriving around 4:40 a.m. the parking lot was full and the line was around the back of the building and continued along the service-way for a few hundred yards. I am bad at estimating crowds so I can't really say how many people were in line, perhaps a few hundred.

Best Buy opened at 5 a.m. and the line started moving immediately. It took at while for those of us at the end to get in though. I think I finally walked in the door at 5:30 a.m. As with any line situation, there were a few individuals that jumped in or attempted to sneak in ahead of others, sad. You can always tell who they are, they walk along the line with a unique look. What they're actually looking at is to see who is looking at them, sizing up the opportunity to jump in at the right point. Then there are the 'intelligent' folks that walk up to the front of the store and try to walk right in.

Luckily the item I wanted wasn't one of the coveted laptops or HDTV's that were probably snapped up in the first five minutes. Looking at the stock they had on-hand I probably could have walked in around 8 a.m. and still picked one up. For the next ten minutes I browsed around the store soaking up the commerce in the air. I had to laugh when somebody would walk up to a sales associate at 5:50 a.m. and say, "Do you have any of these left?" the associate would try to keep a straight face and say, "No Maam, those were all sold out by 5:05."

It's also interesting to see what is hot and what is not. One of the biggest items featured on the Best Buy sales insert was a SanDisk MP3 player for $35 (I think). There were hundreds of those still on the shelves at 6 a.m. The same goes for the portable DVD players, a few hundred were still stacked when I was leaving.

The next task was checking out. The check-out line stretched around the inside of the store, finally snaking in and out of the appliances department. It took almost 40 minutes to check-out.

Almost three hours after waking up I was out the door with my purchase. I think I should have stayed in bed....money saved, time lost. The sad thing is, the same item will probably be available for less money and less wait closer to Christmas.

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I am traveling this week so things have been slow around here. In the interim, here is this week's installment of Where in Polk County?

Update: Bob got it. It's a sculpture in Winter Haven's central park.

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Over at Lakeland Local, Chuck speculates that the new name of the Lakeland Tigers baseball team will be the Flying Tigers. Good guess, Chuck. I did some digging around and found that the domain name LakelandFlyingTigers.com was registered by the Detroit Tigers on Nov 8th.

Registrant:
Detroit Tigers
2125 North Lake Ave.
Lakeland, Florida 33805
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: LAKELANDFLYINGTIGERS.COM
Created on: 08-Nov-06
Expires on: 08-Nov-11

As of now there is nothing but a 'parked' page at the new domain name: LakelandFlyingTigers.com. The team is scheduled to hold a press conference this morning to announce the new name.

Let's see if we're right.

Update: The only Google result for "Lakeland Flying Tigers" is on the MowtownSports.com message board on Oct 8th:

Received an insider hint today that the new Lakeland name will be the "Lakeland Flying Tigers". It has been mentioned before and I only have one source, so this is not confirmed. Would love to see some ideas for the logo even though I'm sure the Plan B Marketing already has them on order. Southpaws head is a little big for a flying helmet.

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Driving by the Bartow Airbase this morning I saw a Gulfstream G400/450 take off. I wasn't able to stop and take a picture or see the tail number, but it's not often that a jet costing $30+ million comes to Bartow. The photo below is just a stock one.

I wonder who was in it and what they were doing in the area :-)

Photos by Rover75

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At a press conference this morning Kent Buescher announced some expansion plans for Cypress Gardens. The Orlando Sentinel has some details.

The owner of Cypress Gardens Adventure Park today announced a number of new attractions, including new rides for small children and construction of a long-awaited $5 million wooden roller coaster.

Owner Kent Buescher also said that the park will admit for free the holders of a season pass to any other theme park in the United States. This will be in effect from Friday through Dec. 24.

Buescher said installation of the famed Starliner roller coaster, purchased from a park in Panama City, will begin almost immediately. It will be open in late May.

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I was at Florida Gulf Coast University yesterday and spotted an Albert Paley sculpture on campus. If you remember, Albert Paley also created 'Tribute to Volunteerism' - the large, modern sculpture on Lake Mirror in Lakeland.

As you can see the pieces are very similar in style. Also, like the Lakeland sculpture, the FGCU installation is not without controversy. One student I talked to said, "That thing just doesn't fit in this location."

You can view the entire photoset of pictures I took by clicking here.

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This week's edition of Where in Polk County? might be tough. Here's a hint though. The picture was taken in a town that is partially in Polk County, and partially in another county.

If you know the location, leave a comment.

Update: Oleta got it. It's US 17 in Bowling Green.

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Here are a few quick thoughts after yesterday's election. I'll be posting more in the coming days.

1. A photo I took got picked up by Boing Boing and Wired, so traffic to my regular blog is quite high today.

2. We had no problems at all in our precinct (337) with the equipment or the process. I was lucky to have a great group of folks working with me. As far as I've read, there weren't any big problems anywhere else in Polk County either. Thanks to Lori, Christine, Judy, P.J., Terry, Chuck and the rest of the gang at the Polk Supervisor of Elections office.

3. Our precinct was one of only four from Florida (so far) to submit photos to the Polling Place Photo Project.

4. Ignorance is no excuse. An individual showed up at our polling location around 7:10 and was upset that they couldn't vote. I think the statement, "Well if I work late how am I supposed to get to the polls before 7?" was made. Luckily one of my poll workers gave them a good lecture, educating them on the finer points of absentee ballots and early voting. Folks you've had plenty of time to vote early, showing up at 7:10 and claiming you can't get there on time is no excuse.

5. Countering that, we had one young person dash in the door right before 7:00 p.m. He had gone to the wrong location first, but made the effort to get to the proper location right before closing time. He even jumped through the door and said, "I'm in the door before 7!".

6. Congrats to Jean Reed. I figured her race over Bruce Parker would be closer and could have gone the other way, but it's great to get somebody new into the system. Now let's see if a lone Democrat can achieve anything on the BOCC.

7. How did Randy win? The man has done it again. I thought for sure that Randy would be unseated this election, but all that developer money certainly helped him out. If you didn't notice Randy upgraded the design of his campaign signs right after the primary and put a ton of them out. The photo of Randy in the camo hat certainly paints a great picture of Polk County. He just needed to be eating a bag of Jelly Belly candy.

8. In contrast to Randy's win over Rober Connors, money isn't everything. Robert points out this fact about the Jean Reed/Bruce Parker race:

One note about Ms. Reed's campaign: She won with a very lean campaign budget. While Parker raised $103,700, Reed only raised $32,096

9. When does Katherine Harris publish her tell-all book?

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Hopefully you don't need a reminder that tomorrow is election day. But just in case you do....get out there and vote. If you're completely clueless you can visit the Polk Supervisor of Elections web site at PolkElections.com to get the details on your correct polling location.

EP will be dark for the next day and a half since I am working as a precinct clerk and can't really be browsing the net while the polls are open. If you vote in Precinct 337 be sure to look for me.

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Think you're a big fan of Publix? How about their private label products? You might think you're a big fan, but you can't compete with Megan Gales.

Megan created the Publix Packaging blog, or in her words, "a tribute to the best branding campaign ever." The blog features reviews of the new Publix private label packaging. Recent critiques include the Graham Crackers, Light Bulbs and Sour Cream.

The blog was started back in May of 2006 with a review of the Flour packaging. Why? You can read over her About Page for the details.

Why create a site entirely devoted to a store’s packaging, you might ask. We say, why not? Perhaps we’re a bit obsessed with the topic, but this gives us a way to connect with others who share our love of this one-of-a-kind store brand.

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You just have to love campaign finance reports. For those of you that don't know, campaigns are required to file extensive reporting on all their income (donations) and expenditures. The purpose is to keep the books open to expose any nefarious dealings. From a media (and public) standpoint it also provides a great deal of insight into some bizarre things.

Case in point, Wonkette reviewed the recent expenditures of Katherine Harris' Senate campaign and totaled up all the money that she has spent at Starbucks.

Katherine Harris has a very, very specific Starbucks order: “Triple Venti, no fat, no foam, extra hot, with pink sugar.” It is her fuel, it is what keeps her going. If she doesn’t get it, she gets angry. Which might be how her cash-strapped campaign ended up spending almost a thousand dollars at Starbucks this fall alone.

Total Starbucks runs, July-September: 133
Total cost to the campaign: $948.05

Wonkette also provides a handy link to the raw data for those with some time to spare.

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The 'Jelly Belly' story is now an AP (Associated Press) item which means it will be appearing in hundreds of newspapers across the country including CNN, FoxNews and then overseas as well. With a headline like 'Jelly Belly' you can bet that a number of places will be picking this up (or 121 as of 8:30 PM this evening....192 as of 7:30 am Thursday morning).

Rule of thumb, when an AP reporter calls, you typically want to talk to them since what they write will be in hundreds of papers. Winter Haven City Manager David Greene didn't follow this rule. From the article (emphasis mine):

David Greene, manager of the central Florida city of 30,000, said through a spokeswoman that he was too busy for an interview, but told the local newspapers the anonymous complaint letters made it clear the police department had a morale problem because of Goward's abrasive management style during his 21/2 years there.

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I understand that businesses need to advertise/market themselves, but littering my neighborhood with signs (including one in my yard) is not the best way to win over customers. In fact, NY Pizza Baby just lost my business. I would normally rotate my pizza consumption around a few local stores, but NY Pizza Baby just got dropped from that list. Now I'll spend most my money at Pasquales or Dimagio's (both in Winter Haven) or Palace Pizza when I'm in Lakeland.

We've all seen these types of signs along the roadway. Typically they're advertising 'Cash for Houses' or some other fly-by-night operation. I guess that's what NY Pizza Baby wants to compare themselves to.

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There is less than a week to go before the general election on Tuesday, Nov 7th. I am posting a few quick polls for readers to vote on:

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Vivian from MamaNeedJava has posted an article on what to do for the holidays in the Lakeland area over at Associated Content.

Moving to Lakeland for college over four years ago, I had no idea I would be raising my young family in the area after graduating. Had I known about the unique charms the city has to offer, I might have guessed it. Lakeland is located in the very center of the sunshine state, and is a pretty good size city if you ask me. But don’t be fooled by its four Starbucks locations and new upscale strip malls- Lakeland is a delightful historic town at heart....

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Once again, Where in Polk County? Leave a comment.

Update: Well that was quick. Jennifer got it.

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