(gazetteer |gaziti()r|
noun---a geographical index or dictionary.
ORIGIN early 17th cent. (in the sense journalist): via French from Italian gazzettiere, from gazzetta (see gazette). The current sense comes from a late 17th-cent. gazetteer called The Gazetteer's: or, Newsman's Interpreter: Being a Geographical Index)
I used to send out a yearly rundown of the craziness of my travels and someone suggested that I should more widely distribute this as it was supposedly good reading. I stole t
The #1 tool for great turf is almost always the mind of the golf course superintendent. Here at The Rock, we don't have a superintendent with a great mind, all we have is . . . me.
Therefore, we must rely on our Top Turf Tool, the Chainsaw.
Watch the following Rockbottum CC training film* to learn important secrets for success with your turf.
*Note: This video has been buried in the archival vault (an old whiskey barrel near the wash rack) and we recently resurrected, re-edited and
This winter I will be diving into building great career materials, but before I do I wanted to include a nice summary of things you can do to improve your career opportunities. My business partner, Greg Wojick (former career superintendent and long-time TurfNet member), recently put together the following list, and I thought it would be a nice start to the new year for us. We will dig deep into some of these in later columns. For more on Greg and his background, click here.
Looking to
Rockbottum Country Club TV is back for 2014 with The Buddy 'n Randy Show, for what was supposed to be a comprehensive look at the coming year in golf.
Somehow, Buddy knocked us off the rails with his inability to focus, so we will try again next week on the comprehensive thing.
The following VIDEO is worth negative CEUs, so I wouldn't mention it to anyone.
Repeat after me, I (your name here) resolve to get rid of that tree (or trees) responsible for the epic all day frost, the weak turf, the surface roots, the buckled path, the increased need for spray apps and the various tree stuff caught in the reels and dragged across the green.
That's a pretty attainable New Year's Resolution. Even if you just get one tree, you win.
I know, I've counseled 'Pick Your Battles' for years, but this is one of those line-in-the-sand fights that often deter
I admit it. I am a sucker for this time of year. Once the snow starts falling, the tree is up and the eggnog starts to flow, it can be the very best time of the year. For most of us, the general business of the golf season is wound down, so it can be a great time to sit back and relax.
Yet the holidays can get away from us if we let it. If all we focus on are Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays, and all the shopping days until Christmas eve, it can be easy to lose focus. The marketing machine is i
I absolutely can not believe that it is Christmas 2013. Can't. Because it seems like just 28 days ago it was March of 2013 and Christmas 2012.
Clearly something happened this year in what seemed to be fleeting days filled with fun, hassle, joy and abject stupidity.
It seems like this time of year polarizes lots of people. (see what I did there...Polar...). Be it family stuff or religious stuff or weather stuff or just plain stuff, the Holidays put people to the act of decision of some so
This Christmas, as you enjoy the warmth of bright lights, colors, grand feasts and fleeting moments of memories of childhood, take a moment to remember our active-duty military out there far from home.
Even for hardened troops, Christmas can be a rough time; loneliness tends to creep in, no matter how many others are nearby.
For military families with young children and a loved one on deployment, a feeling of emptiness stands ready to overwhelm the festive aura.
Let's remember our ac
This past week I have been working on getting end of year notes to clients and friends in the industry ready to send out, and I wanted to do something similar for all of you Turfnetters reading this blog.
It has been great to write these past couple of months and I hope that it has assisted you in your career. I am really honored to be associated with TurfNet and special thanks to Peter for all his efforts in the industry.
It would be easy just to type out some thanks to you guys, but af
A few days ago, my aging dumb-phone was overwhelmed with a barrage of text messages, all worded the same: Billy Jack is Dead.
There are quite a few folks aware that the character of Billy Jack was my hero and role model and they wanted to sympathize with me. Joe, my best buddy from high school, (Known as Jo-dell in Rockbottum Land) assured me he was handling the news in an honorable way, by wearing a black tee shirt, blue jean jacket and walking smartly around the house singing "One Tin So
In addition to being a "science blogger guy" for TurfNet, I am also a TurfNet Member. I'm a TurfNet member because I learn a ton of stuff from the webinars, the forums, and of course my fellow bloggers as well as Randy's Vlog!
I am personally psyched about the upcoming "Quality of Cut" week. I can't wait to hear the scheduled industry leaders try and explain the mystery of reel mowing. I researched and read about the history, development, and latest innovations of the reel mower in the mid-2
"One forgives to the degree that one loves." Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I had planned on a different post this week, but the recent death of Nelson Mandela changed my mind. I am not sure if there has been another person in my lifetime who has effected as much positive change as he did. He was many things to many people; a revolutionary, a saint, a shrewd politician... but for me personally his greatest lesson came in his ability to forgive.
Mandela spent 27 years of his life imprison
I'm pretty sure that the whole "what do you do in the winter?" thing has pretty much been beaten to death in the popular turfgrass press. After all, pretty much everyone knows that you spend your winters spinning tunes in the shop and inventing new ways to mow, blow and go. Right? Wrong!
It's almost like we have to tell each other that we really do actually do things. Sadly, we leave out the whole southern part of the US (and the world, really) when the notion is constantly entertained that
The Powers-That-Be in Golf do not want you to see this video.
We stumbled across this film while preparing to celebrate the anniversary of the date TurfNet first told us to shoot a video. The date was 15 December, 2005, and the video was Golf Car Control.
That first short film ended up getting over 100,000 hits and without thinking clearly, TurfNet asked for more.
The video you are about to see followed Golf Car Control, but was quickly suppressed and buried deep in the vault, due t
Recently a thread in the Forum was started relating to its use, and I offered some advice on mobile devices. I really enjoy viewing TurfNet from my iPhone due to the mobile version of TurfNet, which I had saved as a Webapp. In fact, it makes browsing the Forum just as easy as pulling up the Twitter app and viewing my feed from others in the industry. After thinking about this, I thought I would put together a tutorial in case very few out there knew about it. If you already use it, great... If n
Momma has a standard method for dealing with NTV events. (Nocturnal Teenage Vandalism)
I've never figured out how her method works, but I do know it dates back to her military service.
Momma was in one of those PSYWAR/PSYOP units and refuses to do things in a direct manner.
I was fortunate enough to take a few days off last week and take a fall trip with my extended family. This trip has grown into an annual family ritual that we all enjoy. This years edition took to the beautiful town of Mahone Bay, located on the south shore of the province of Nova Scotia.
While it was great to get away and recharge a wee bit, there was something else that caught a great deal of my attention while in this town. Mahone Bay is an old town with a rich shipbuilding heritage.
A few months ago, our training videos suffered a drastic drop in sales. We quickly determined the cause to be that McCord fellow's golf-specific safety training videos.
He has usurped our share of the market at the top of the training video world, so, in true info-mercial form, we are retaliating with a veritable blizzard of marketing, propaganda and borderline untruths.
"Too Many Hats", the video once ordered destroyed and later banished to gather dust in the Rockbottum CC vault, has returned for a short run.
For our Holiday Feature Film Fest, we salvaged what was left of "Too Many Hats"* and now offer it to you for entertainment while you feast on a turkey deep-fried in a trash can full of boiling oil.
"Too Many Hats" guest stars Peter, Jon Kiger, John Reitman, Dr. Nilknarf, Buddy, Esmarelda, Anthony Williams, Mike Mendias, Momma, Johnny Merrick, a fly
When we Turfheads are turned out into the pastures of the real world, all kinds of interesting things happen.
I hear the stories all the time. Chiefly, how, if X, Y or Z business would be run like we run our operations, there wouldn't be any hassles. Because, really, when you want to execute, we all know that a turfgrass professional is the one to call. Think about it. In some form or another you have had reason to say to the real world that they just need to think like "we" do.
My 10-ye
Over the past two weeks we have been on the road at trade shows throughout the country, last week supporting NYSTA in Rochester, and this week the Carolinas GCSA in Myrtle Beach. These events are great for superintendents to further their education and network, plus see the latest technology for the industry.
As an example, last week in Rochester we ran into a couple of former superintendents, Greg Moore and Paul Boyd, that have partnered to offer the Air2G2 service to a 15-state territory. Th
While it is easy for the international Golf Course Superintendent Community to get the wrong impression of Rockbottum CC, we strive to present an accurate image of our golf course, our personnel and our philosophy of golf course operations.
Our reputation as Ivy League intellectuals dabbling in daily fee golf merely to produce entertainment is a fallacy. We are not just producing entertainment.
We are a literal treasure trove of brilliant minds, a conflagration of golf philosophers, sav
Another nugget from the archives...
A discussion took place in the TurfNet.com Forum this past month about interns and their university-imbibed book knowledge but lack of any semblance of practical work ethic. Many have their sights set on the Superintendents Desk but with little or no understanding of the work. Yes, sometimes manual labor required to get there.
Isn't this the age-old gripe of one generation about the next? Those young kids don't know what work is. They have everythin
