The Brownwood Bulletin doesn’t write much about it, but there’s quite a list of changes coming to the Brownwood/Early area. Keep your head up and you can stay in touch with what’s happening. Those of you who travel to this area may wish to take note, as many new businesses are coming.

1. The construction at the 377/67 intersection is complete. There are now SEVEN lanes on 377 and FIVE on 67/377. There are now two straight and one turn lane on Clements street (between CVS and Blockbuster). From 377 S, there are now two dedicated left, one dedicated straight, and two dedicated right turn signals.

2. You’ll notice a big four-story hotel behind CVS/McDonald’s. That’s supposed to be a La Quinta Inn. Rumor has it that IHOP is going to build next door, although that is strictly unconfirmed.

3. A new traffic signal has been erected where the old John’s Pawn once stood. Dart, the old Wendy’s building, and the old Burger King, have been demolished. Dart is now open in a new building in Early next door to Cousin’s Exxon. The new signal will support a new road being cut in along the Adams Branch that will lead to the back area of Underwood’s. On this new road will be -confirmed- a new Walgreen’s and an Arby’s restaurant.

4. A new Dollar General store is now open at 2000 Hwy 377 S.

5. TXDOT is preparing another major overhaul over at the 67/183 intersection. Rumor has it some businesses will be demolished to make way for road development.

6. The old Johnson-Ross property in the 200 block of Early Blvd sold once again. A reliable source told me that Aaron’s Rentals is building on the corner nearest the Chicken Express, and a Holiday Inn is still scheduled to be constructed on the other portion. Holiday Inn is taking their own sweet time.

7. The state DHHS building is now open on Crockett & S.F. Austin.

8. Commerce Square sold recently, with new stores expected to arrive. The land behind Commerce Square is scheduled to be developed into housing.

9. Mi Familia is being rebuilt (Nearly finished!!). Local construction company U.S. Construction is handling the rebuild. It is expected to reopen Spring 2008.

I’m sure there’s more I’m missing. If you know of something or can confirm any rumors, please let me know.

Okay. I’m fed up with SPAM. No, not the salty processed meat-like stuff. I’m talking about the email variety. This is getting so old. When are spammers going to figure it out?

Today I received over 30 junk email messages that were not even addressed to me. And that was on only one of email addresses. I’m very careful where I put my email address online, and if the form is suspicious, I use either a bogus email or a Yahoo! account I never check. My Gmail account sometimes gets used since it has great spam-filtering.

But, why spammers? Why can’t you keep your V1ag-ra ads to yourself? I don’t need or want Cial1$. And, I don’t want to know where I can buy a Rolex for $100.

Here’s a tip for everyone out there. Stop forwarding cute messages to 20 of your friends. Stop including me in that massive “To:” field. Because they will forward your cute message to 20 of their friends. Those 400 people will forward it on to 20 of their friends. Now 8,000 people have my email address who I did not want to give it to. And it is likely that one of those people is a spammer or has a wide-open computer ripe for spyware picking or data gleaning.

If you want to send me a cute message, send it to me. Not to me and all your friends. Or, better yet, learn how to use the “Bcc:” field. It’s better than “To:” when sending a mass mail.

But, I’d rather have a message personal in nature that benefits me. Or, if you are a spammer, send me a can of Spam™. Not that I could eat it. My doctor would have a heart attack just thinking about all that salt.

Keep my email heart healthy and stop the spam!

A new lineup of feature videos is coming to Brownwood TV (www.brownwoodtv.com). First, I’ve been in contact with John Wilson, another local videographer who has done some good HPU materials. I’m also scheduling a feature story on Clover 7, a search and rescue dog team from the area.

I would like to have a health feature soon, so if you are a physician, or work for one, contact me about setting time to do a feature video.

Here’s a great resource for those of you who enjoy hiking and camping: http://www.abc-of-hiking.com. Published by MaxLifestyle, this site features a wealth of outdoors information and good community forums.

Another handy link for outdoorspeople is animatedknots.com. Learn almost any knot quickly and easily. For scouting, boating, fishing, climbing, S&R, etc.

Also, if you’re a hiker in central Texas, I’d love to hear from you.

I just ran across this web site recently from viewing some video at Viddler: http://www.ijustine.tv/. I’m not sure I understand what she’s trying to accomplish with this site. Obviously, she works for Viddler in some way, but her material in both blog and vlog are confusing and meaningless. If anyone knows what she is doing, please clue me in.

Leo Laporte reported on his Tech Guy program recently that many users were switching back from Vista to XP. With XP service pack 3 coming soon, more people are “downgrading” as a sort of “upgrade” since Vista is such a system hog. An independent study (I will have to find out who) reported that Vista runs anywhere from 50% to 100% slower than XP on the same machine. XP SP3 is expected to run 10% faster than XP SP2. Wow. Another rumor is that of all the machines tested running Vista, the one that ran it the fastest: A Macintosh. Go Mac!

Visitors to BrownwoodTV.com may be a little disappointed of late, but don’t despair. We have in the works some feature stories that will be of local interest.

Also, I’m looking to feature a monthly “Health and Wellness” segment. Any physicians out there who are interesting in promoting their practice via Brownwood TV should contact me.

At a recent meeting of the Mid-Tex Human Resource Management Association, I discussed with members the redesign on mthrma.org, their web site. With the new year and new officers installed, it will be good to put a fresh look on the site.

Also, in conversation with Sherri Ornelas, the director at The Ark domestic violence shelter, I’ve decided to donate the web space and the designing to The Ark. Look for it soon at arkshelter.org.

Well, I thought it about time to start a blog.