For those of you that yet believe that you can make money doing just about anything… and you know who you are, Mike. I submit the following: RipDigital.com will rip your CDs to MP3s for you. Yes for the stupid and the lazy, you are now free of the burden of a few mouse clicks to transform old skewl "digital" CDs into iPod fodder. Prices start at $139 for 100 CDs, but most people's CD collections will approach the $1/CD conversion fee. How it works:

• You place your order.
• Ship them all of your CDs.
• They pay some chimp $5/hour to use the same CD->MP3 software available online for free.
• They ship you back your CDs and a stack of CD-Rs with MP3s on them.
• Wait! now I need a CD-R to Hard Drive service! Seriously. Too lazy to rip your own CDs? Time to valuable? Why not hire your little brother or the neighborhood kid – pay THEM $5/hr – and save yourself half the cost? Not to mention getting your MP3s in a a day or two instead of a week or two.

I give them:

for an original spin to an existing problem. I have to take the rest of the stars away since, not enough iPod owners are short on MP3s… or else why would they have bought an iPod? Oh wait it's white!! and cool!! But wait, so is the Shuffle. Now if they created a strategic alliance with Apple to send their service to all Shuffle owners (who obliviously like to overpay for products) and then get them to "need" an iPod with their big stack of MP3s… both companies would win and that would be worth at least 2 stars for cleverness. RipDigital.com

I wanted to touch on my review style now, so that later on people don’t accuse me of loving everything I review. I will rarely have mediocre reviews on this site, because I will rarely take the time to review mediocre products. If you want mediocre reviews, try Google. There are alreay many sites out there with entire budgets and staff devoted to reviewing anything they can get their hands on (often for free and early from manufacturers that want some press to push out with their latest). ScottSoapbox.com however has not (yet) sold out to the product review machine. I will usually only post reviews of products that I have encountered along life’s journey that are SO excellent (or terrible) as to necessitate my proclaiming them to all the masses… So you might say that I am more of a product evangelist than an a simple reviewer.

The one caveat to this would be: restaurants. I tend to review a wider range of restaurants than other products. Why? Because restaurants are different… trust me, they just are. Restaurant reviews falling more into the mediocre category will tend to take longer to make it to print as seen in the below review of Conners.

I actually tried out Conner's last Sunday (25th), but it took me a while get around to translating my notes to an actual review. Conner's is the latest incantation of the group that brought you The Chop House and Chops Grill. Located in Pigeon Forge TN, Conner's has a nice, but laid back atmosphere. I would rate my service there as above average. So with 2 out of the 3 holes covered on to the food. Instead of bread to start you off, Conner's gives you some scrumptious biskets. This, in hindsight, seems appropriate since your salad that follows will have more bacon than a typical breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Their signature blackberry vinaigrette salad dressing also disappointed. It wasn't sure if it wanted to be a sweet vinaigrette or more of a vinager and oil variety – and so it ended up languishing somewhere in the middle. Their signature soup also failed to impress. The lobster/crab bisque had to strong of a tomatoe element leading it to be overly acidic. Had perhaps a small amount of cheese been substitued here a much more balanced taste could have been created. Their prime rib stood out as second ray of hope (after the biskets) and was, in fact, quite good. The prime rib was not as good, however, as what can be had at the Chop House. So, all in all, if someone was considering Conner's while doing some outlet shopping, I would have to recommend they go across the street to the Chop House, instead. I give them:

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Downhere at a local venue. They are a group of Canadians with a great sound. The lead singer sounds so much like Kevin Max in some of their tracks that it’s uncanny. If I hadn’t see it live, I’d be tempted to put forth some sort of conspiracy theory…

You can actually hear their entire albumn So Much For Substitutes on the Downhere.com website. I personally really enjoyed their “In America” track, as well as others but that one is my favorite. :D

I give them: