Debate #1 Report Card

Bush: C
Kerry: B

Kerry finally being clear and concise on his positions. Bush could have done better given that foreign policy and security should be his best topic. But both did pretty well in giving me an idea what they believe.

Academic Overdrive

Today had its ups and downs, but was mostly ups, and probabaly was one of the longest days ive had this year, only because i woke up at 9am for once instead of noon.

Went to the office early just to be more productive. That was cool, lots of people were there so it was more fun. Got some lunch at the student center, which included to my surprise, bleu cheese scalloped potatoes... gross right? Yes at first, but maybe its an acquired taste cause i was scarfing it down by the end of the meal.

After class and some more office time, jeff, nick and i went to our favorite sushi place, Ru Sans. Its mainly our favorite because its dirt cheap... 3 rolls for $1. Nigiri is also $1. I got:

3 california rolls
4 salmon nigiri
1 octopus nigiri

Good amount of food for 6 bucks. Got to try to the Sake Bomb sometime.. its where you drop a shot of sake into a beer and drink it. But its even cooler because you drop the sake shot in by placing it precariously over the glass of beer on chopsticks, and then make it fall in by pounding the table. Its a scene.

The down of the day was getting an $81 electric bill. How can my bill be $20 more than last month when my electricity was off for 2 days straight? And its been a lot cooler and my ACs been off? Sketchy billing operation. Also the little plastic guard over my sink disposal fell into the disposal while i was cooking. So now I gotta get maintenance over here to glue it or whatever back in.

But the biggest downer of the day is the incredible work/exam load coming up in the next two weeks. Its all hitting now... but at least all but one exam will be done by fall break. Gotta kick into overdrive. *screeching car sound*

Take me home, country roads...

Well in this case the country roads are an airtran passenger jet. I bought my plane tickets to fly back to MD for homecoming. The tickets actually dropped in price from the last time I checked. They are now $44 each way, only $108 total. Thats way cheaper than driving.

I'll be getting into DC/Reagan around 10pm Friday night (Oct. 15). From there I will probably take the metro to CP. I had to pass on earlier flights and missing Friday class because we got a huuuuge test in that class the next week and we'll probably have a critical review session that day. But anyways, really looking forward to being back in college park and seeing everyone at homecoming.

Lazy Sunday

After little sleep saturday night, i took a nap sunday morning from 11 to about 3. That felt good. After that I was pretty much useless, watching tv and surfing the net. I made it out to the gym around 8pm, tried to get a good stretch session on my legs, which were still mad sore from fridays squats. I was tryin to ease into leg work again, but I guess my legs arent havin it. Tried varying my grip width on lat pulldowns from overhand wide to overhand narrow, that worked my foremans much more. Im going to try the climbing wall the next time its free so I figured Id start getting some strength in those areas now. Had to abbreviate my workout cause I realized I had to catch the poker invitational at 9 on fox sports net south. That was ok though because I still had residual hangover from the night before.

Smooth talk at Waffle House

Great night last night, just got home and its 9 am.

Bunch of us went to the Virginia Highlands bar area, it kinda reminded me of Federal Hill in Baltimore; very young professional, semi-classy bars all in one short strip. Although thats pretty much the theme of most bar areas in Atlanta.

We pregamed at Ehren and Pauls place at Post Renaissance, where I originally wanted to live... they seem to hate the area so Im not too upset about missing out on that. After a long and effective pregame and a debate on how to get 10 drunk people to the bars 3 miles away without using cabs, we were off to the Highlands.

I did my first car bomb ever (i think its my first) at the bar... it went down silky smooth. Actually, all my drinks did, which also included a jager bomb (which ryan's girlfriend got free from some dude hitting on her), couple soco/lime shots, bud light and high life light (brewed for a man's taste, ha).

OH then we hit Waffle House, also a first for me, which was an experience. There was a huge line of drunk kids waiting to get a table but I saw an open table that hadnt been bussed yet, and we just sat down at it. The security guard came over and said we had to wait in line like everyone else but I spouted some brilliant bullshit excuse and by the end the guard was apologizing and clearing off our table for us! ha! Then I told the waitress it was cold under the AC vent and could she give us all free coffee, which she did! She got a huge tip (~50%). Then I gave these self-proclaimed "hungry asian guys" sitting next to us an extra waffle we had and they were eternally grateful.

Great night... wish I had pictures. Gotta start bring my camera with me.

Friday night happenings

After an engrossing 3-6 lecture friday afternoon, in which dr. mavris told me i cant wear Maryland shirts in his GA tech classes (looks like time to buy more MD shirts)... Joe, Larell, Mike and I got some dinner at the Vortex. I got my new tequila drink (see earlier post) and Mike got a burger called the "coronary bypass", which was a 1/2 pound burger with 3 strips of bacon and a fried egg on top. He got even ballsier and put on two packets of mayonaisse. And he finished it. Probably took a year off of his life.

Then we went to spencer's house down the street where lindsay and some other people (i forgot their names) were hanging out and pregamin. Lindsays swedish friend told me the Absolut company has a crazy good logistics and she wants to work for them someday. Larell also told me a lot about the massage profession (she took 4 years of school for it), including accupuncture and race horse massaging... really interesting stuff, accupuncture is very cool. Race horse massagers make about $170 an hour.

So around 12:30, most headed out to some club in buckhead, but I wasnt feelin the whole cover $cene, so i went home. I dropped joe and larell off at their car, and on the way we swore we heard a gunshot near us in midtown... larell said she saw people running. Ill have to check the news.

Got home and ready to call it a night when Nic calls me from a frat party on campus and tells me "there are hot freshman". So I suit up and go. The party was at ATO, it was a beach party and they went all out. Live band, sand covering the lawn, huge above ground pool, tiki torches, the whole she-bang-a-bang. Good times. Talking to freshman made me feel old, but in a good way...like damn i just finished and youre just starting.

On the way home after the party I bottomed out my car on a huge speed bump i didnt see. whoops. Nic and I had a good laugh about it.

Weekly Poker Action

The older grad students have a poker game every thursday night, and tonight was no different. I played over 3 hours in 2 no limit hold em tournaments and ended up breaking even. Im fine with that. What im not too fine about is the hand I lost to at the end. It went liek this:

Me: K K (raise $2)
Pete: 4 6 (call)

Flop: 3 K 5

Me: raise $4
Peter: All-in
Me: call (at this point im feeling good... 3 kings against a draw)

Turn: 2
Theres his straight, destroying my hand completely. Now I need a K,3,5,2 to show up...
River: Q

Ouch, my pocket kings lost to his 4, 6 off suit. Im not real upset though, just felt like writing about it.

Overall a great night of poker with some good people.

Geico's funny again! and Miller Lite is even funnier

Finally! Geico's commercials are funny again!!

Geico's commercials back in the day used to make me crack up... then they turned the gecko into some pansy british figure who just made you want to change the channel. Then they must have got wise after several years of crappy gecko infested commercials and they switched to the "ive got good news.... i just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by switching to geico". These were much better than the gecko ones, but still were not "laugh out loud" funny.

Today brought a return to geico commercials making me LOL. Its in the form of a spokesman saying geico.com is so easy even a caveman can do it...at this point a caveman who is working the boom mic offstage, says "what?!?.... NOT COOL man" and storms off. Pretty hilarious.

But I must say the funniest commercial(s) out there right now is the new miller lite campaign of "Play Beer". This includes referees coming in to everyday situations and throwing penalty flags at people who are drinking bud light.

Dont have more time to get into it, but watch out for both. Gotta run to class.

Ants, Leaky Roof, and cashiers check

Ive been havin an influx of these little tiny black ants into my apartment. Apparently ants are very capable of climbing 3 stories. I thought there may be enough food for them on the first two floors...nope. They climb all over... not too many of them but some of them climb on my laptop and my arms while i type. There may be some living inside of my laptop right now. Luckily the apartment management is prepared for this threat and can spray the outside of my apt for ants at my request. Looks like ill give them a call tomorrow.

Also, hurricane ivans moderate (at worst) rains seemed to have had an ill effect on my roof. The ceiling in my bedroom has some water stains, and during the storm there was slight drippage through my ceiling fan, onto my bed. ill keep this updated as to the apartments action or lack thereof to fix the problem.

Annie Duke just won the poker tournament of champions... she is a woman. She just beat the 8 best men in the world. Well done. she also won 2 million dollars in one night... not too shabby.

On a high note of my own, just got my cashiers check from closing my MD bank account... $751 in my pocket! time to hit vegas

Election 2004... yes im going there

That's right, i just started a blog and im already hittin politics... maybe now the comments will roll in...

I applied for my maryland absentee ballot today... which highlights my need to decide who im voting for (im gonna ignore the whole electoral process and assume my vote is important).

Over the past several months ive been flip-flopping (kerry pun intended) on how im going to vote. Over the past year, it went something like this(in order):

Not bush
Maybe that Dean guy
(Ok guess not Dean)
Undecided
Kerry
Bush

I was at first against bush mainly because I thought we needed a better public figure/speaker in office that would be respected throughout the world.

But in the past week I've decided to focus my decision solely on Iraq and foreign policy...ignoring for now domestic or economic issues. So the bush-haters may be surprised that foreign policy would lead me to Bush... but I think he's got Kerry easily covered.

Kerry is not giving me any reason to vote for him on the foreign policy/iraq issue. He just keeps saying Bush got us into a mess over and over again. His solution to getting more countries involved in the restructuring of Iraq is basically begging Jacques Chirac to send troops. France, and the other "non-willing", arent ever sending troops, no matter who's president.

Yes, we didnt find any WMDs, but at least Bush and Congress were willing to step up and enforce what the UN should have all along... their own international law. Yes Iraq is a mess right now, but maybe it wouldnt have been if it wasnt US led and the UN sent troops instead... and then again maybe it would still be a mess.

Point is, Bush has the guts that UN and kerry don't. He also is not going to abandon Iraq. If we pull out now, the citizens have no chance of a stable country. Ill end with a quote from his speech today at the UN:

"the proper response to difficulty is not to retreat, it is to prevail."-Bush

cant wait for the debates...

Leave Comments

I just changed it so anyone can leave comments on my blogs.

You used to have to register with them to do it, but I found the setting and changed it. So leave me comments.

good ones

AK-47... the vodka? That's right folks, according to CNN the creator of the famous AK-47 assault rifle, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Kalashnikov, has followed suit with american rappers and created his own vodka label. Of course his vodka will be incredibly better, seeing as he's a really old russian hardass.

UMD homecoming plans.. tentative

i will be flying back to college park for homecoming (oct 15-19), seeing as this is also GA tech's fall break... which is very convenient. Plan is to crash at the old apartment for the weekend and spend sunday night thru tuesday at home. Contemplating flying in thursday night to get the full college weekend experience in, but that depends if i got a huge midterm that friday or not...hopin i dont. Found super cheap flights ($50 each way) thru airtran though... which ends up making it cheaper to fly.

Today was spent on campus at a group meeting, homework in the office, and class. Found out you can get a really good homecooked meal at the student center for lunch for about 4 bucks... incredible. I of course discovered this after I had bought my so-so chick-fil-a sandwich for the same price. Gotta learn the intricacies of campus...

Had some leftover marinated chicken for dinner (6:30), and made some bomb homemade chili for 2nd dinner (9:30). While I was eating the chili, a tiny fly landing in it and prompty died... thats how you know its good.

Later

got me a new drink

Crazy drunken night/morning. Just when it looked to be a saturday night of watching history channel or amc, jeff calls me around 11 and says hes got "a shitload of beer" at his place. So nick, spencer, german michael and I roll over there to help ease his alcoholic burden.

We enjoyed several great tasting, less filling miller lite bottles before heading out to Loca-Luna around 1:30, which is luckily only one block from his place. Loca-Luna turns out to be this sweet bar that has a dance floor and a whole other huge chill room with a fountain in the center. I think we'll be back there plenty of times, seeing as its walkable from jeffs place, which has free parking.

Bartenders there hook you up too. Our jager-bombs had more jager than red bull. Also I decided to try out this drink called a Low-Rider I found on a tequila website a few weeks ago. The bartender never heard of it, so I just told him how to make it:

1.5 oz tequila
0.5 oz triple sec
splash of cranberry juice

I think I have me a new drink! Its reminiscent of a cranberry vodka, only tequila has much better flavor than vodka. You can find this and more tequila drink recipes at 1800tequila.com. Check it out.

After the bar we went back to jeffs to drink more. Some more people met us there, including this guy brian who had gone to UMD and VA tech for undergrad. Me and him had to represent on the REAL rules of Asshole, where you CANNOT play doubles on singles or triples on doubles...which apparently is what they do at berkeley. idiots...

Oh, and try teaching a drunk german kid how to play asshole... impossible. Anyways, drank till 5:30, chilled and then went home by 7am. Woke up at 4 today... not good, need to start some of my projects I got comin up. Also Skins and Terps need to start winning again.

At a bar in Midtown: Here's the people I've been hanging out with. Most of them are in my classes... luckily Jack isn't (the guy grabbing himself).

The night the lights went out in Georgia...

Ok now that the intro post is out of the way (see below) I can get down to business. So hurricane ivan pummeled the gulf coast the past week, the remnants of which hit atlanta thursday afternoon. This included some moderate rain and moderate winds, nothing bad... but apparently enough to knock out my power for about 36 hours. I mean seriously, what is the condition of the Atlanta power grid? To add insult to injury, the entire city had full power back within an hour of the outage (the downtown area never even lost power), EXCEPT the little area that encompasses my apartment complex and the nearby traffic lights. So it was 17th century for me for a day and a half.

It reminded me of hurricane isabel last fall back in maryland where we lost power for like 5 days... only it wasnt as much fun because i was basically sitting alone in the dark, eating canned chicken... and i still had to go to school on friday.

long story short, electricity good, georgia power bad. big ups ben franklin.

Welcome to my world

Ive been enjoying reading some of my friends web logs lately so I decided why not do one myself? I just moved to Atlanta from Maryland, and being scarcely in touch with my friends back home, I figured if they want to know what Im up to without actually having to talk to me... they can check this once in a while. Plus I think it would be good for motivation to look back and see what i have, or have not been doing lately.

So for those of you I havent talked to in months or years who might find this link in my AIM profile, heres the deal: graduated University of Maryland in may with a BS in aerospace engineering... I am now attending Georgia Tech (ACC rival) for a Masters in aerospace engineering, more specifically, aerospace systems design. Dont worry about what that means, Im not even sure yet...

alright this blog is over
-Ben

if a customer ever gets in your face and asks to speak to the manager... say guess what, you ARE the manager!
"let me speak to the manager"
"yo I AM the manager... youre DONE b.. get out!"