I had a fun Friday night - Anit and Carter came into town, so Chrissy and I joined them at Kent's appartment and had a good time. We ordered pizza and played Trivial Pursuit. Chrissy and I ended up winning, but Chrissy probably answered 2 out of 3 questions for us. She and I were both on the quiz team, but she was on the pyscho good quiz team that had multiple practices a week, and had quiz team HW. And it helps that she's a smartie.

Saturday, Chrissy had to study all day, so I met up with Carter and Kent before Carter left. I avenged my last Settlers loss against Carter with a seemingly rare grain/ore win with largest army. Kent and I played some video games - a good mental relaxation. Chrissy and I got a little time for dinner and talking before more studying on Saturday night. She has a huge test in her hardest class on Monday, and she has to work all day today. That's why I am up particularly early on a Sunday morning - I got up as she was leaving.

So hopefully I can get some yard work today, and then meet up with Kent. I also think my training flight to Orlando tonight will be cancelled due to the Hurricane.

I was feeling a little low about work yesterday - I keep getting dragged into work on the side that I can cleary identify: 1. I am not interested in. 2. It will not help my career. 3. It will not help me with any credit in my short term performance review. So it had me a little frustrated as I couldn't see an end in sight.

I like my current project, except for it somewhat leaves me open to this extra work on the side since I work out of the office. I have a couple of leads for some interesting projects, so we shall see where that leads... I was feeling a little low, and got an email about how God gives you hope when you need it. It was also saying there are no coincidences, and it made me think for a second. Then within the hour I heard about a lead which someone said, "as soon as I heard about this I thought about you." So maybe that's a little bit hokey for most of you out there, but it gave me a positive feeling about my job.

I cannot believe we lost to UNC. Ugly, ugly ugly. Five Tech turnovers, four by Reggie Ball alone. Ugh.

Sarah's 21st birthday was a lot of fun last night. She had a ton of people out at a little Cuban place on the Northeast side. Some people from our hometown church, some college friends. People drove from Alabama to come to the event - Sarah really knows how to make lifelong friends. She had several drinks, but like me I think she loses interest in alcohol after a few drinks. I think my family might have a very decent natural tolerance to alcohol considering how well we do after not drinking that much in general.

Chrissy has to work both days this weekend, and study the nights. Very sad that our few hours together have to be taken up by all this...

Power is back on. You don't know how much you miss it until you don't have it. Not having the Internet, PS2 or anything when Chrissy needs to study is killer.

I went to see Carter's new condo last night. We had planned to do it on Thursday night since that was the only day it was free. Then the weather was awful. I didn't really want to go out in all the nastiness, but I could tell Carter wanted to meet up. So against my better judgement I headed out into nasty traffic with lots of rain. We met at CiCi's which was, as always, good and cheap. His place is really nice. There are pencil drawings on the walls of the guest bedroom. We played Settlers and watched the apprentice. I went to leave after that, and sure enough the only exit out of his place was a bridge that was flooded. So I spent the night on Carter's couch. Shortly after I got back to his place the power went out there. What a pain.

So this morning the bridge was still flooded. I was trapped, and couldn't safely pass until about 10:30. By then I called in work and they said I could work from home. Little did we both know that the power would be out all day. How unproductive.

Today is my sister Sarah's 21st birthday, so we are going to go out tonight. It should be fun!!!

Wow. What a trip. I am exhausted. Chrissy and I went up to Clemson yesterday afternoon and it was great. We brought up our new tailgating tent and it was cool. We met up with JR, Waits, Cassie, and a couple of others. Baucom was supposed to come, but he forgot he had the GRE on Monday. How do you forget that?

The game was awesome. Look at www.gtsports.blogspot.com for more on that. In short it was perhaps the 2nd greatest Tech come from behind win that I have ever seen. The greatest being our 1990 victory against UVA in Virginia when they were ranked #1 in the nation. We came back with 24 unanswered points that game. But this was great too. 3 TDs in the last 4:30 minutes. Our offense looked dead, and then came back to life.

It was great.

September 11th - it is hard to believe three years have passed. I was in Nashville, TN three years ago. I, like most everyone, thought the first plane must have been an accident and then realized it was deliberate attack with the second plane. I had just been with my company for a few months, and due to the planes being cancelled we ended up just renting a car and driving back to Atlanta. I hope our country never forgets that day, and remembers that there will be people who will do terrible things to us and we have to be vigilant to prevent them from killing us.

On a much lighter note, I did see a yellow jacket today which is a superstition for me on game days. Last season I saw a yellow jacket, but only on days where we were playing football and ended up winning. Today I saw a dead one, so I'm not sure what that means. Hopefully we can take down Clemson tonight...

We must get on the road to tailgate with Spriggle, Waits, Cassie, etc...

Bridge was fun last night. Monique and I played together, and all the old people were all excited to see some young players. They were also trying to figure out how Monique and I knew each other. When we explained we lived about 2 hours apart people gave us a strange look, but we would explain we knew each other from Tech.

We were being rated against people internationally, and although we had some really bad hands we ended up being in the 37th percentile which I thought was pretty darn good considering our competition were all tournament bridge players. We had a good time, but we fell behind timewise early so I felt rushed for most of the night. Ironically our best hands of the night were against Randy and Lauren. They are good players, but for whatever reason we just did well.

We got a free pass to come back another night, so we'll have to do it again.

Late night and an early morning make for a tired day. I went over to Randy and Lauren's house last night for dinner. They cooked a nice dinner, and wanted to talk bridge. They play a lot of duplicate bridge, for fun and in tournaments. I used to play with my parents, but only duplicate bridge once or twice. Usually my grandmother plays. So they want to have more young friends to play with. So we practiced the incredibly complicated bidding systems. I can remember most of the card play, but often forget the bidding. There are incredibly complicated bidding systems that often take years to learn which is why I believe you see so many older players. Experience is very important, and it can take a lifetime to learn.

They needed a fourth for a club tonight, so I am going with them and Monique. Should be fun.

I have seen two movies since my last blog entry. Chrissy has had a lot of studying to do, which kept us from going down to Macon to hang out with Chris and company. It's sad tradition to break because we had enjoyed many a Labor day in Macon...

First movie was "Bend it Like Beckham" which was great. It was an interesting story, and gave some insights on the Indian culture, and the soccer obsession. I think it also did a good job of showing how a person interacts with their family, culture, and religion while interacting with friends and a different culture.

The second movie was "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" which was dissappointing. It was interesting, but a little campy and over the top. The woman gets shot in the chest with a shotgun, is then buried alive, but is still in top fighting form immediately afterwards. Also, again in Volume 2 they tell you she has killed the next people on her list, and is now going to Kill Bill. So there is no suspense of it not happening. I am sure there are some people out there that will be raving about this movie, but I thought it was interesting but just ok.

Time to cook a pasta dinner for Chrissy when she gets back from flag football practice...

I bet you didn't know it but I'm a fiddle player too...

Chrissy and I went to the Stone Mountain Laser show last night. I believe this was the last weekend it was playing this summer. First let me comment on the crowd that was there. I would say this was by far the most diverse crowd I have ever seen at Stone Mountain - particularly a lot of Indian people. It is interesting, because there are usually a lot more white "country" type people. Just thought it was interesting how the demographics of Georgia are changing.

Also the show is one of the best they have put on yet. The songs that I liked the least were removed or drastically cut down. They played less whole songs, but more pieces of songs. But they did play the the classic songs completely. "The Devil Went down to Georgia" "Midnight Train to Georgia" and of course, "Georgia". They took out Mambo #5, Fins, and drastically cut the "classic" 70s/80s techno song without vocals they used to play every year. There were lots of fireworks too that went well with the show.

Also, rant for the day. Would you believe my water bill was close to $90 for the past month? We pay water and sewer, and watering the grass 60 minutes every other day must have put us over the top. A common water bill for us is $20-25. So we will be cutting back our watering dramatically.

But there is also exciting news! The grass seed I planted in the bare spots is now starting to grow. The grass is just barely poking out, but it is there! Fantastic! I would still rather water those new patches of grass by hand than pay $90 a month! OK - back out to work in the yard some more...

Tech wins 28-7 over Samford. It was a good day. My only regrets were Chrissy not being there, my face getting sunburned, and the fact that we didn't get to tailgate very long. Sarah and I had lunch with Baucom at Laredo Nuevo Cantina for some good Mexican food. We only parked on campus about 50 minutes before game time, so by the time we walked to the tailgates we didn't have much time at all.

Delta Chi has a huge house addition that looks great. Unfortunately, that meant a huge fence blocking off most of the tailgating area. I ran into several guys from my class, but what was particularly random was meeting Chrissy's old roommate Elizabeth. She was polite, but not particularly nice. With each question I asked I got the feeling she wanted that to be the last question I asked.

Tech overall looked good, but Samford's players looked small compared to ours. Particularly our 6'4" Freshman WR Calvin Johnson to their 5'9" defensive back. I think Calvin will be a great player for Tech, and he was very exciting to watch. It seemed like each time we talked about him in the stands he got the ball the very next play. I will be interested to see how we do against Clemson next week. I am sure we will be the underdog, but I think we have a chance to win.

Chrissy and I are off to the Stone Mountain laser show, since I believe this is the last weekend this year it will be showing.

I was given the day off from work today. They told us back in June, so you can't say too much bad about a four day weekend. Chrissy had classes, so after she left for school I met Kent. We played some video games, and had lunch at Chick-fil-a. Kent left to go help Carter move, but I won't be able to help because of the football game tomorrow.

I can't believe Tech football starts tomorrow!! Even though the game shouldn't be terribly exciting competition, it will be great to see everyone and feel the college football environment. We are playing Samford, and my sister Sarah is taking Chrissy's ticket because Chrissy has to work tomorrow. Sarah is skipping the UGA game to come down - she has a couple of friends who go to Samford, and they are really excited about playing a big school like Tech.

No offense to Samford, but I really wish we were playing a division 1-A school. This win does not count as a win towards our bowl record. You have to have six wins against division 1-A schools to be eligible for a bowl. We were supposed to play Auburn at the GA dome, but they backed out of it. We tried to schedule ANY division 1-A school, but we couldn't arrange any of them.

I am looking forward to it though! Goooooo jackets!

I have enjoyed this Republican National Convention more than any political coverage in years. I sat in huge traffic yesterday, but I didn't mind due to the awesome radio coverage. On Hannity's radio show he had himself, Boortz, Ann Coulter, and other minds going over the issues. So many great conservative minds bouncing off each other, it was tremendously interesting. And prominent Democrats would be walking by and would come on the show, like yesterday, Terry head of the Democratic Party stopped by. The president even called into Rush's show this week - awesome, even though I never listen to the show.

To offer equal time, here is Michael Moore's take on the convention. His article is titled, "Don't send more kids to die". For those who can't make it through the propoganda, he doesn't talk about the convention that he is supposed to be covering. His story is something like this - I liked the Bush daughter's speech. (ok, that's convention related) It's good they can celebrate with their parents. It's too bad the 1000 kids that Bush sent to their deaths can't be with their parents. I hope Bush apologizes to their parents tonight in his speech. (Ok, good Michael - you mentioned Bush's speech again.) Imagine if I accidently killed one kid - say ran him over. Imagine how much trouble I'd be in, and Bush has killed 1000.

All I can say is wow. US Today fired Ann Coulter because they didn't like her story. (Read "like" as didn't understand/like her humor making fun of the Democrats.) But at least Ann was talking about events at the convention, while Moore just seems to be spewing Bush hatred. Anyway, Moore fell short of my very low expectations. But at least the RNC has been dramatically better than my average expectations of a good but canned convention.

(also - gtcrows people, I would prefer you please post any political responses on that site instead of this sites comments.)

I found this to be amazing - for the 10-11PM convention slot last night, FoxNews beat our all the major public network broadcasts.
FOXNEWS -- 5.2 MILLION
NBC -- 5.1 MILLION
CBS -- 4.4 MILLION
ABC -- 4.3 MILLION
MSNBC -- 1.6 MILLION
CNN -- 1.5 MILLION

That is amazing - even though so many people don't even have cable, and virtually everyone who has cable also has NBC, CBS and ABC FoxNews still won out. Wow.

Also thought this was interesting coverage of the RNC:

For 40 million viewers in the Arab world, Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite television channel, provides a window into the intricate world of American politics. This week, its 16 reporters and staff will air 13 hours of broadcasts from the convention -- more time than the combined coverage of America's major television networks, ABC, CBS and NBC.

I think that tells the sorry state our major network news are in, and perhaps a commentary on the average TV viewer who has little interest in politics...

you're staring at these claws and your thinking to yourself,
and with these claws you're thinking,
"How am I supposed to kill this bunny, how am I supposed to kill this bunny?"

I have taken control of my parents Netflix membership. For a while they weren't getting movies, even though they had 40 movies in their queue. They had picked all movies that wouldn't be released for at least another month.

So I watched Old School last night, which was stupid, but funny. Will F. is just a funny guy. Also the guy from Swingers was in it. I do love that movie Swingers - it is a movie that I enjoyed more the additional times that I watched it. That inspired my quote today at the top. "You're so money and you don't even know it." I could really identify with the lead character in that movie.

OK I'm done. It's raining here. The commute is going to be rough today...