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Memphis-area restaurants capitalize on families choosing to eat out on Thanksgiving
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For the first time either of them can remember, Memphians Terry Honeycutt and Brittany McManus will not eat Thanksgiving dinner in a family home.
Honeycutt and his family will eat at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn’s Medallion Restaurant. And McManus and her family will leave the cooking to the Paula Deen Buffet at Harrah’s Tunica Casino.
“My two grown sons were not thrilled,” Honeycutt said. “They love the smells of the house when we’re cooking and everyone bumping into each other at my small house.”
McManus said her grandparents have passed, their family has gotten a little older and everyone’s life has gotten more hectic. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is a good bonding experience, she said, “but let’s be honest, it’s a lot of hard work.”
“As lazy as that sounds, we simply want to sit back, relax and, most importantly, treat ourselves to a good time,” McManus said.
Local stores hire off-duty police officers to contend with unruly Black Friday crowds
Black Friday prices will be low, but that means lines will be long and tensions will run high.
Whether they brave the crowds late tonight or early tomorrow, eighty-one million people, about 34 percent of consumers ages 16 years and older, will be seeking Black Friday sales, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Thats a 31 percent increase from 2010.
Stores and shopping malls are giving local police departments a heads up about their odd hours and are planning to use a combination of staff, private security companies and off-duty police officers to keep the peace.
The Woodbridge Police Department opened a substation at Woodbridge Mall yesterday, said police director Bob Hubner, and several stores hired off-duty officers for the Black Friday rush.
“They watch out for indicators of possibly too many people waiting at the doors,” he said.
2, including St. Cloud real estate agent, plead guilty in mortgage fraud case
ST. PAUL A St. Cloud real estate agent and a Maple Grove real estate appraiser have pleaded guilty to being involved in a $1.8 million mortgage fraud scheme that involved 28 properties.
Ryan Daryl Krutzig, 31, of Maple Grove pleaded guilty Thursday while Jesse Scott Hoffman, 32, of St. Cloud pleaded guilty Sept. 15.
Krutzig pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Krutzig owned and operated US Appraisal Management in Maple Grove.
In his plea agreement, he admitted that from March through June 2006 he conspired with others to commit mortgage fraud.
He admitted to purchasing a residential property but failed to disclose to the mortgage lender that US Appraisal had handled the appraisal.
As part of the appraisal process, Krutzig prepared and approved required paperwork for the lender, saying that he had no present or prospective interest in the property.
Also on March 28, 2006, Krutzig and others purchased a property in the 3600 block of Bryant Avenue North in Minneapolis.
Full Tilt Poker could be taken over by French investment group
WASHINGTON — A French investment group reached an agreement with the US Justice Department that could pave the way for the group to take control of beleaguered online poker operator Full Tilt Poker, an attorney for the investor group said Thursday.
The agreement provides that US poker players — who had $150 million credited to their player accounts but never paid to them by Full Tilt Poker — would seek compensation through the Justice Department. However, it does not guarantee they will get that money back, according to people familiar with the matter.
Under the deal, Groupe Bernard Tapie will buy the company’s assets for $80 million, according to an agreement letter signed by Jason Cowley, an assistant US attorney in Manhattan, and Groupe Bernard Tapie attorney Behnam Dayanim. The investor will try to restart Full Tilt’s operations outside of the US, Dayanim said.
The deal allows for some money in bank accounts associated with Full Tilt that were seized by the US government to be given to the investment group, according to the agreement letter. Read more…
Could I Build my Credit Score with a Credit Card?
Most of us will need access to credit at some point in our lives and so having a good credit rating is important. Credit cards are often thought to be one financial tool that can be used to help build a credit score – but how does this actually work?
One important thing to note is that a credit card by itself is unlikely to turn around a poor credit rating as this will depend on a number of factors. However, credit cards can be useful if you want to boost your credit rating as long as you meet all of the necessary obligations such as sticking to your credit limit and meeting all of your payments.
This helps to show that you can be responsible with your money and it also gives you a track record that future creditors can look at to see whether you would be a good prospect to lend to. I Read more…
Counting Words A New Way To See Social History
Sometimes you discover a new service and re-discover your faith in Google as an absolutely wonderful thing. As many of you may know, Google had a project to try to digitise the world’s books. Many were concerned that this was Google gobbling up data and compromisingthe copyright of authors. But I don’t want to talk about that in this post.
Rather I’d like to talk about Google’s Ngram Viewer. What they’ve done is created a tool that allows the user to enter words separated by commas and then see how frequently those words have been used in books over history. And it illustrates wonderfully real social trends. Take this graph for example. I simply typed in boy, girl and the frequency within which those words were used in books over the ages. To begin with, consistently, boys are more frequently mentioned and then, bang, after the rise of feminism, about 1975 girls crossover and they stayed there ever since.
Tax-free Shopping Online May Be Prohibited
Shoppers who depend on tax-free shopping when making purchases at online stores such as Amazon may be disappointed this holiday season. Senator Dick Durbin has introduced the
Marketplace Fairness Act that ensures that retailers collect sales taxes in states where they don’t have stores.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Amazon announced support last week for the bill, which would enable states to collect an estimated $23 billion a year. While eBay predicts the small vendors represented on its online-auction site might lose their advantage, states need the additional revenue. Online retailers worry about the costs and compliance issues associated with dealing with each state.
The bill gives this power to all states that collect sales taxes but exempts those online stores with less than $500,000 in annual sales.
Improve Your Website: The 10 Easiest Quick-Fixes
Is your website as effective as it could be?
Even though I’ve probably never seen your website, I’m willing to answer the question for you. And my answer is that your website is not as effective as it could be.
How can I be so sure? Because I’d venture to say that every website on the planet could be improved in one way or another. It’s a matter of identifying which attributes of the website should be modified, and testing whether a change in one or more of those attributes boosts performance.
So, what are the key attributes of a website that you should assess when trying to boost performance. Below are the 10 website aspects I consider most important.
1. Look and Feel
The look and feel of your website is much more important than most entrepreneurs realize. Specifi