Election 2004

Forgot to mention I sent in my absentee ballot last week: voted for Bush/Cheney. My previous posts on politics may make that choice obvious, but I was giving serious thought to both the past weeks, and Kerry has been disappointing. He promises much more than he can realistically deliver, its too a point where I cant believe a word he says anymore. Yes hes a lot smarter than Bush, but smarts dont necessarily make a good leader.

On a side note, today the Redskins play. According to the internets (ha), every election outcome since 1933 has been correlated to the outcome of the Redskins game before election day. If the Redskins won the game, the incumbent party wins the election. If they lose, the incumbent loses. Therefore, if the Skins win, Bush wins. We are playing Green Bay, so we need a miracle.

GO SKINS

Halloween Weekend

Halloween Weekend highlight reel

Thursday: Well I was right, the Virginia Tech night game was a debacle. GA tech decided: nah lets give up our lead we had the whole game in the 4th quarter and just let them win. Great game for the first 3/4 though. Also it was like anger management day at the stadium or something. Our whole group almost got into fights with two different frats behind and in front of us. It was teetering on the brink of an all out brawl (both groups were very large in #'s) for all of halftime, then luckily the game started again and calmed things down cause we could focus on football. I think nick got some pics of words being thrown. Ill try to post. Also the tailgate was money. I went with the GA Tech hilfiger polo shirt tucked into khaki shorts, as is the southern style. Trying to get in the mindset of southern schools, which I guess is dress nice/drink a lot/start fights.

Friday: Halloween party at Bens place (different ben). I had to scrap my idea of being the miller lite referee after not being able to find white pants anywhere. Luckily, I found a Publix employee shirt at salvation army and so thats what i was. So I went as a ratty-ass Publix employee. I bought the redneck busted teeth to put in, and wrote FUCK KROGER on the back of my shirt (Kroger and Publix are the grocery stores here). Got plenty of pics to post on that. As a side note, when I had the redneck teeth in, I actually sounded like a redneck. Anyway, that party was cool until one of our friends puked all over their floor. We immediately left. Man we are assholes.

Saturday: ASDL Company Picnic at Stone Mountain Park. A really good time. Weather was very good. I played some softball, volleyball, and others played football and soccer. Our boss showed up in a full-on soccer uniform, which was funny, but he did score 2 goals. Might have some pics from that. Its Saturday night now, Im not doin anything tonite... need to be useful to get work done tomorrow. Also, MD just beat FSU! Mind blowing.


Email I got this morning: "Its your uncle Tom in Florida. I am sorry to inform you that Florida State is going to whoop your maryland boys today , but thats the way it is!"

My reply that night:
Uncle Tom, I regret to inform you that your loved one, FSU, has passed away earlier this evening at Byrd Stadium in College Park. Cause of death was ineffective defense against Joel Statham's passing game and failing to kick the ball through the uprights. GO TERPS

Living in the office

Ive been in the office a lot of the time lately, which has caused me to go insane. Almost. But on the bright side of things, tomorrow night (thursday) is the Virginia Tech football game... a NIGHT game. Oh boy, its gonna be awesome. I gotta remember to get pictures of that debacle.

Election is almost here, thank god. I cannot wait for it to be over, whoever wins, i almost dont care anymore as long as its over. This news coverage is getting ridiculous. Every hour of the day the candidates are in a different florida/ohio town giving the same ol speech. And of course we have to hear about how every little detail is going to affect the election. They even had a guy on CNN telling us which car the candidates are most like, and why thats useful (bush=ford, kerry=bmw). Retarded; thats not news. Maybe Jon Stewart is on to something (buy his book, its funny).

Midterms are done!

My midterm went pretty well, I feel good about it. It turned out to take all 3 hours and I took 20 pages to answer all of the questions. It was a lot of writing needless to say.

Friday night after the exam we all went to Rocky Mountain Pizza for beer and... pizza of course. A lot of the phd students were there already, celebrating qualifying exams being over. This was 7pm and they had been there since 11am. Thats commitment.

We got half-drunk there and then went over to Spencers house to seal the deal. It was a good showing of people, including several Swedish people, one of which kept pushing chewing tobacco on everyone for some reason. Weird. We went across the street later on to Loca Luna's, probably my favorite bar/restaurant in Atlanta so far. I tried this drink called Caipirinha (pronounced 'KIE-PUR-REEN-YAH') on the recommendation of this guy at the bar. It turned out to be a Brazilian cocktail made with Cachaça (brazilian rum), sugar, and crushed limes, served over ice. Had a great time there.

Saturday was spent getting my life back together after the barrage of tests, projects, and travel. Restocked my fridge (no more eating out for every meal), cleaned my apartment, and went to the gym. Spent the night relaxing, watching the world series, and more relaxing. Felt damn good. Its Sunday now, and the Skins have a bye week, so its time to get a head start on some work due in the coming weeks.


PS: For the person wondering what camera I use, I left a comment on the byrd stadium picture with more details on that.

Exam Friday

I have my last huge midterm on friday, its in fixed-wing aircraft design class, and its sure to be a 3 hour mutha. So no updates until at least that is over. Should be some interesting stuff goin on this weekend though, including bar friday night and a softball game saturday... so hopefully Ill have some pictures from those on sunday. Next week its going to be slaving away on the 3 team projects and homework thats due in the near future.

Studyin time.. im out

look how everyone's livin! the old apt crew: Sean won so much at poker, Noah has interview with anheuser busch, Art stopped by from his non-stop architecture work for ramen noodles and a hustler, Matt countin his loot from poker as well.

Tailgating and beyond: Contest Beer, spilled rum&coke on this eagles fan, at the bar later, gaitin' with katie & lisa among others

Homecoming 2004! Byrd Stadium at Univ of Maryland. Nice panoramic shot during the first quarter... before we got our tail wupped by NC State.

Here's all of us GA Tech people from the earlier "post-exam unwinding" post. PS its a tuesday night ... so proud *tear*

Maryland Homecoming 2004

So after my all-nighter thursday night to finish the report I had due, I flew home friday night for a little homecoming.

Tailgating was a ton of fun... saw a lot of friends I didn't think I would run into. Good to see everyone again. Also I saw 4 F-16s fly over in formation while tailgating... i think because there were some air force reserves in attendance. Either way it was unexpected and awesome. The game however, was not awesome at all. Maryland got wupped by NC State, and it started pouring at halftime so we left. Made it to Chipotle afterwards, which was a welcome sight and taste (havent been yet in atlanta).

Went to the ol' Santa Fe that night to hang out. They were overcharging at $5 cover, taking advantage of the alumni. Made me appreciate the Atlanta bar scene oh so much more. Ill post some pictures I took later on.

Monday I went in to DC with the parents to the Spy Museum. They are running a special exhibit on the history of terrorism in the US. It was really interesting, learned a lot about bombings and 60's radical groups in america I never even knew about. Spent about 4 hours in that exhibit and the general exhibits. A really good time.

Debate #3 Report Card

uh they both get A's... and gold stars... i dont know. Listened to this debate on internet NPR while writing a huge report for school.

Bush had some surprisingly solid and very interesting plans for health care and retirement reform. However, his citing of No Child Left Behind as a job act, saying education leads to better jobs, was way too much of a stretch for me.

Kerry also made the huge mistake of bringing up Cheneys daughter to help answer his stance on homosexuality... WAY out of line. I know it was meant well, but seriously Kerry, you should know better than that.

And yes, this is like 6 days late... (sorry erin, who almost commented that i havent updated in a while)... but I felt for completeness I should include it. My reason for lateness will be explained in the next post

Debate #2 Report Card

Bush: A
Kerry: A

Just gave em both A's. Thought they each handled themselves well. Dont have the time/effort to go into it, but definitely the highlight for me was Bush's timber company remark:

Bush: I own a lumber company??? That's news to me...... (pause) need some wood?

Post Exam "Unwinding"

Monday I had a 3 hour exam and tuesday there was a 1.5 hour exam, so after the tuesday exam spencer, jeff, nicho, brian, and i went over to Ru Sans, the sushi place and got bombed. Well, not really, but we all did Sake Bombs. This is where they put a shot of hot sake on chopsticks precariously over a glass of kirin beer. Then the waiters all shout some japanese stuff and you pound the table and the shots fall in and you chug it. It was real good.

Then later that night more of us met back up at Jeffs place in midtown and placed drinking games till 230. Just a little unwinding after some exams. Good times, ill post some pics that nicho took whenever I get them.

VP Debate Report Card

Cheney: A
Edwards: B

This debate was much better in every way than the Presidential Debate. It was much closer to a tie but I think Cheney topped Edwards, especially in questions on foreign policy. Cheney was in control and had a clear and logical response to every question. Edwards on the other hand, while impressive, seemed at times jumpy and over-eager when answering questions, which made him seem immature compared to Cheney. Here's some comparisons I heard after the debate:

"Edwards seemed like a little dog yipping at Dick Cheney's heels"
"It was as if Cheney was the Principal and Edwards was the student class president"

Edwards just doesn't command respect like Cheney does. I also didn't like Edwards's closing statement, the story about growing up watching his dad learn math to get ahead at the mill. Just seemed like a pretty slimy lawyer-type thing to do to make us like him. Talk about the issues, not childhood memories. Cheney also made Edwards look like all show and no work, especially with the poor Senate attendance record jab. I think that was very effective at discrediting Edwards's work ethic, especially since Edwards made no attempt to repudiate that claim.

Pictures from the GA Tech v Miami game. Jeff snuck in a 16 oz flask of rum that was gone in 5 minutes.

Pictures from the GA Tech v Miami game. After Tech's ONE good play of the game (also happened to be the first play)

Pictures from the GA Tech v Miami game.

Academic Downshift

It's been a while since a post due to my schedule. Academic overdrive is over for now... even though I still have 3 or 4 big projects to do now. Oh well but my two huge tests are finished at least. One was 3 hours and I was writing the whole time and barely finished. It took twenty sheets of paper to do. Then I had to go home and study for the next test. Anyways, I did manage to have some fun last weekend in spite of impending tests. Tech played Miami and got wupped but we had a ton of fun. Tailgate party at dave and nicks before the game and went back after the game till like 4 am. Pictures will follow. Then got up sunday and studied at the office for 10 straight hours. That wasnt a fun thing to do on a hangover.