It was pretty cool.

More than anything else, though, I have to say that the folks who worked at the Distillery were phenomenal. We went on a tour of the facilities and our tour guide (his name was John) was not just extremely knowledgeable about the Jack Daniel’s distilling process, but he was a funny, friendly guy, too. If anyone happens to be in the Lynchburg or Nashville area, then I highly recommend heading over to the Jack Daniel’s Distillery. You won’t be disappointed!

Here are some thirty pictures from my visit to the Distillery. Enjoy!

In addition, I’ve been reading through some of the books that are taking up space on my bookshelf and, obviously, you should look for a few book reviews coming in the next few days/weeks. And hey, at least one of these reviews is for a book sent to me from a professional wrestler’s publishing company so I could offer some commentary on the piece. Pretty cool, huh? Here are some other things that I’m working on that may not receive their own entry on JerseySmarts.com:

• Sigma Pi Educational Foundation: I make no secret out of the fact that I donate my time, talent, and whatever treasure I can scrounge up to the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation. With respect to that “talent” portion of my contributions, since August I’ve been heading up the Foundation’s strategic plan study group. This duty has allowed me to work closely with some of my fellow Trustees as well as some volunteers – all of whom are looking for a better, stronger way forward for the Foundation and Fraternity alike. Earlier this week we held the last focus group conference call which capped a two and a half week period of these types of calls – many of which I was on for over an hour. I’ve compiled a preliminary, raw data report and sent it out for the study group’s review. Later this week we’re going to have another conference call and then I’m going to spend some time compiling a final report to the entire Board of Trustees. However, the work isn’t over yet. In a few weeks I’ll be heading to Nashville, Tennessee to present our research findings and then to lead the larger strategic planning process with the entire Board of Trustees. This process will be capped off during the December/January time frame and then, finally, I can take a breather on this stuff! By the way, click here if you want to make a small, 100% tax-deductible donation to support the Foundation’s scholarships.
• Preparing for a Family Night: Over the last few weeks, I worked with my brothers and future sister-in-law to plan for a family night and dinner for my Mother’s recent birthday. We had the family night and dinner last night and it was a lot of fun, I think. In fact, one of the best things to come out of last night was a family discussion about reducing our excess spending on Christmas this year because, frankly, we’re all working towards specific financial goals that require a dedicated planning effort on our parts. It was a great conversation and a great conclusion, I think. Plus, spending the night with the family for dinner to celebrate my Mother’s birthday was a great time!
• Financial Planning Roadblock, Courtesy of NJHESAA: I’m not sure yet, but I might spin this little blip off into its own entry to mimic an entry that I wrote both one month ago and many months ago. The long and short of it is that I sent a $1,000 payment to NJHESAA on Monday, October 18th. The check was finally posted to my account on Thursday, October 28th. But that’s not what has me completely frustrated and aggravated with this anti-customer service organization. What bothers me is that I sent a $4,300 check to NJHESAA on Tuesday, October 19th and here we are on Saturday, October 30th and the check hasn’t been posted to my account yet. What the Hell is NJHESAA waiting for to post my damn check?! This isn’t hard, NJHESAA – I know you have the check now post the damn thing to my account for goodness’ sake. I can’t wait to be done with this miserable, horrible organization. NJHESAA could learn a thing or two from the United States Department of Education about customer service and making the student loan repayment process easier for the borrower. Because, at this point, NJHESAA’s payment processing system is borderline ineffective which tells me that there has to be some incompetent people working there. What else could bring on a nearly two week delay?!
• Financial Projections and Forecasting Stunted: As you might imagine, because of NJHESAA’s inability to process a check with any semblance of efficiency, my financial projections and forecasting has been stunted for the last few weeks. For a guy who checks each of his accounts both in the morning and at night (and sometimes in the middle of the day), waiting for these bozos to post this check is torture. I’ve been adjusting my projection models by $4,300 every time that I go in there and make a move. It’s annoying. I have a lot of financial goals that I expect myself to achieve in the coming weeks, months, and years and with my ability to precisely project when my dollars will be posted to various accounts, it makes planning for the immediate future very difficult.
• Bizarre Indian Summer: I’m not going to spin this out into its own entry because it’s short, but if you live in New Jersey then you know that we had this weird Indian summer hit us in the last week or so. Before the mini-heat wave hit, I went out and purchased a radiator for my bedroom and it’s awesome! It actually warms up the entire second floor of the townhouse – can’t complain about that at all!
• Beginning to Complete Coursework: Some of you may remember that I’m actually enrolled in an independent study course at the local college where I teach. Successfully completing this independent study will give me a Public Relations Specialist certificate. Not too bad, huh? I’ve read through the material for the course and, once the final strategic plan report is completed for the Foundation (see above), I’m going to aggressively complete the required coursework for the independent study. I’ve decided that this is going to be the last course that I take for a while since it will complete the certificate program. Also, I don’t want to go back for more education until my life calms down just a little bit (which I think is coming within the next two years, thankfully).
• Grading, Grading, and More Grading: It’s midterm season at the college where I’m an Adjunct Professor so you know what that means – grading time! But it’s not only grading time for the class that I teach in the face-to-face setting. It’s also grading time for the classes that I teach for the online college. I’m thinking of asking the online college to reduce the number of classes that they assign to me – they’re giving me two or three each month and it is so incredibly time consuming that it’s painful sometimes…
• Some Consistency at the Local Gym: Hey – I’ve been going to the local college gym at least once each weekend for the last three weeks. Not bad, right? And now you know why I’ve been able to read so much in the last few weeks – I’ve been on the treadmill. I’ll be heading to the gym tomorrow morning before the trick-or-treaters start knocking on my door. While my results at the gym haven’t been overly impressive (I’m not necessarily losing a bunch of weight – a pound here and there maybe), I am pretty pleased that I’ve been able to make it there one day each weekend during a very busy, crazy time for me.
• Unending Projects at the Office: Hovering above all of the stuff written above is the fact that I have a pretty busy, increasingly stressful day job. Part of that stress comes from the person that manages my department and her mood swings, part of that stress comes from a changing workplace that expects the existing employees to transition to a new organizational structure without officially telling us what that structure will look like (or interviewing us for new positions), and part of that stress comes from the daily grind stuff that needs to be completed day in and day out that is made harder by the fact that my particular department is well-understaffed and thus we all have to do four/five different jobs each. And when you add in the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of the communication work for the organization – you can see how the stress builds up. Very annoying and, frankly, until this day-to-day stress goes away (which better happen soon), I think some of the other goals I have for my health and finances are going to be hard to achieve.
• Changing the Face of Usable Web Solutions, LLC: Thankfully, after months of trying, I’ve successfully spun off one of my last remaining problem clients. Sure, the client screwed me on the way out the door, but I’m so excited that this client is gone that I don’t even care any more about the screw job. Whatever. Removing this client effectively removes more stress from my life and, ultimately, makes Usable Web Solutions, LLC a stronger, better organization. And with that, I’m beginning to change the nature of this small business. In the future, I’m going to focus on websites that are owned by the company and bring in advertising revenue because, honestly, that’s where the money is in this online business stuff. Going out there to find independent clients is not the way to find success in the website world.
• Barnes & Noble’s New NookColor: Here’s a quick item for both the “Watch What You Say to Customers” and “Buyer Beware” files. For some awful reason I’ve been researching e-readers lately. I don’t know why – I love reading an actual book and I really don’t like the setup or arrangement of the e-readers that are on the market. But still, I began researching them and decided that I wanted to buy a Barnes & Noble Nook. However, something told me to wait. I wasn’t sure what it was that told me to wait, but I think it had something to do with the good voice in my head constantly shouting that I had dozens and dozens of physical books in my home that I haven’t even read yet! So, this buyer was wary of the products on the market and didn’t buy. Then, lo and behold, the NookColor is introduced and now I want to buy that thing as soon as possible (probably early next year once the inevitable glitches have been worked out). But the “Watch What You Say to Customers” file comes into play here because, just days before the NookColor was released I asked the guy at the local Barnes & Noble whether or not a new model was coming out and he swore up and down to me that, “We’re not Apple – we don’t have a new version of the product each year.” Oh yeah? Really? Hmmm…

There are a few different items that I’ve been working on that I didn’t think would find full entries on JerseySmarts.com. However, this stuff may be of some importance to a few of you so I hope that you enjoyed reading!

But have you heard about the devastating floods that hit Nashville over the last week? Did you hear about the billions (that’s billions with a “b” folks) of dollars in damage that took place? No? You didn’t see that on the evening news each night and all over the morning shows each day? No?

Doesn’t it seem pretty interesting that this natural disaster – the largest, costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history – is receiving almost no media coverage? One of my friends on Facebook posted a link to an article written by a Nashville native that explains exactly why this story isn’t receiving any coverage. The article was written by Patten Fuqua and posted on the Section 303 blog (a hockey blog). You can read it below in its entirety with some of my closing comments beneath it.

Allow me a moment to step away from the usual voice of this website.

What I am about to write has absolutely nothing to do with hockey.

If you live outside of Nashville, you may not be aware, but our city was hit by a 500-year flood over the last few days. The national news coverage gave us 15 minutes, but went back to focusing on a failed car bomb and an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While both are clearly important stories, was that any reason to ignore our story? It may not be as terror-sexy as a failed car bomb or as eco-sexy as an oil spill, but that’s no reason to be ignored.

The Cumberland River crested at its highest level in over 80 years. Nashville had its highest rainfall totals since records began. People drowned. Billions of dollars in damage occurred. It is the single largest disaster to hit Middle Tennessee since the Civil War. And yet…no one knows about it.

Does it really matter? Eventually, it will…as I mentioned, there are billions of dollars in damage. It seems bizarre that no one seems to be aware that we just experienced what is quite probably the costliest non-hurricane disaster in American history. The funds to rebuild will have to come from somewhere, which is why people need to know. It’s hard to believe that we will receive much relief if there isn’t a perception that we need it.

But let’s look at the other side of the coin for a moment. A large part of the reason that we are being ignored is because of who we are. Think about that for just a second. Did you hear about looting? Did you hear about crime sprees? No…you didn’t. You heard about people pulling their neighbors off of rooftops. You saw a group of people trying to move two horses to higher ground. No…we didn’t loot. Our biggest warning was, “Don’t play in the floodwater.” When you think about it…that speaks a lot for our city. A large portion of why we were being ignored was that we weren’t doing anything to draw attention to ourselves. We were handling it on our own.

Some will be quick to find fault in the way rescue operations were handled, but the fact of the matter is that the catastrophe could not have been prevented and it is simply ignorant beyond all reason to suggest otherwise. It is a flood. It was caused by rain. You can try to find a face to stick this tragedy to, but you’ll be wrong.

Parts of Nashville that could never even conceivably be underwater were underwater. Some of them still are. Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel are, for all intents and purposes, destroyed. People died sitting in standstill traffic on the Interstate. We saw boats going down West End. And, of course, we all saw the surreal image of the portable building from Lighthouse Christian floating into traffic and being destroyed when cars were knocked into it. I’m still having trouble comprehending all of it.

And yet…life will go on. We’ll go back to work, to school, to our lives…and we’ll carry on. In a little over a month, I’ll be on this website talking about the draft. In October, we’ll be discussing the new Predators’ season with nary a thought of these past few days. But in a way, they changed everyone in this town. We now know that that it can happen to us…but also know that we can handle it.

Because we are Nashville.

And, folks, that’s why I’d move to Nashville. These people didn’t point a finger at a politician and say, “You hate us – look what you did.” These people didn’t rob, loot, or destroy their own city out of their own ignorance. These people didn’t cry that they were being abused by the “system.” No. The good people of Nashville saw a problem coming and reacted as any civilized society would react – they helped each other, they tried to save each other’s lives – they even tried to save their animals! That’s the type of good, down-home civilization that you just don’t find in the uber-urbanized areas of this country.

Nashville has people who can help themselves and don’t rely on (or demand) handouts from the government.

My purpose for going to Nashville was to attend the Board meeting of the Sigma Pi Educational Foundation. As I reported on this blog last year, I was elected to the Board of Trustees of my fraternity’s foundation; I’m also the Chairman of our Alumni Communications Committee. Since then I’ve attended a few different meetings and they’ve each been rewarding both personally and fraternally. Plus, we have a bunch of really great (and incredibly smart) guys on our Board of Trustees and hanging out with them is a lot of fun.

For lodging, I spent Wednesday through Saturday nights in the freshmen dorms at Vanderbilt University. I should note – while the Foundation has its Board meetings, the Fraternity itself holds its biennial leadership school on Vanderbilt’s campus. It’s one of the “features” of the leadership school that you live on the campus of the university for the weekend. And I’m all for the whole fraternizing with the different generations of the fraternity thing, but my back and body disagrees. In other words, if I have to go down there again I’m going to have to stay in a hotel!

Before I go on, I should also state that the campus is beautiful. The folks who manage Vanderbilt University have done a wonderful job in making that campus appear in tip-top shape at all times. Definitely a job well done.

Tracy Lawrence – a member of our fraternity – was in attendance at the leadership school. He gave a great speech on overcoming adversity. The undergraduates had some questions for him and I thought that his entire presentation was very well done. For a huge country music star, he’s a down to earth kind of guy.

I’ve been down to Nashville twice before and the downtown scene is always great. It was no different this time. Of course, we generally wound up at Lonnie’s Karaoke Bar in Printer’s Alley, but that’s because we’re a bunch of northerners who are fascinated by that whole scene. On Thursday night I may have had a few drinks which led me to get on the stage and sing Don McLean’s American Pie…but that’s another story.

I enjoy going down to Nashville. I can get a bit hot down there, but the people are really nice and the scene is wonderful. It’s definitely a place I would consider living outside of New Jersey. Anyway, I’m back now!

Aside from battling some annoying heartburn over the weekend (and for the last two weeks) and being very busy with websites and Foundation work, I’ve been doing great. More to come tomorrow…

In the mean time, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

In any event, this will be the third time that I’ve gone down to Nashville and I really like it down there. It’s a great city with a wonderful night life and the people are all really nice and laid back down there (which is a dramatic change from the northern part of the East Coast).

I’ll be back Sunday afternoon, but don’t worry – I have entries ready to be auto-uploaded to the blog for every day that I won’t be around. So you can get your fix of Joe’s Journal on JerseySmarts.com every day!

This year they had Recruitment Chairmen come along to listen to a completely outstanding presentation by Phired Up’s Josh Orendi. For those of you that do not know, Josh is co-author of the best book on recruitment that I’ve ever read: Good Guys – The Eight Steps to Limitless Possibility for Fraternity Recruitment. His presentation was both timely and on-target for today’s undergraduates.

For any fraternity or sorority folks out there – I cannot recommend Josh highly enough to come and speak to your chapter or your campus. Great presentation.

This was also my first chance to do a little touring of the St. Louis area even though it’s my fourth trip out there. I got to ride up to the top of the famous St. Louis Gateway Arch as well as go on a tour of Budweiser’s World Headquarters. I should have pictures of both up in my Google/Picasa photo album soon.

Anyway, these events are great for volunteers like me because it recharges our “fraternal batteries” and gets us back on track to help better advise our undergraduates. I had a great time out in St. Louis with my undergraduates and my fellow alumni volunteers and I can’t wait for Sigma Pi University to take place in Nashville, Tennessee this July!