Made in the US of A

SNEAKERS: Just a quick note, I found a pair of sneakers actually made in the USA yesterday. New Balances. Not all of their sneakers are, but this pair was, and it was the only pair that was immediately comfortable. Next time you're shoe shopping, keep an eye on where it's made--that's usually a good indicator of how well it will fit and how long it will last.

AUSTRALIA: T-minus 3 days. I've been so busy I haven't even had time to get excited/nervous/anxious yet. It's there somewhere, but probably won't realize it 'till we land in New Zealand.

Today feels like a beanie day...

Santa

HO HO HO: A thought occurred to me, I'd really like to get a hold of Santa's Naughty girls list... Why do you think he says "Ho ho ho!" so much?

Granted, most of those would be in the 6-8 year old range. I guess I know what list I'm going on...

SC WEATHER: According to weather.com, we're due for a "Wintry Mix" tonight. You know what that means. Some nasty combination of sleet/snow/rain/crap that's gonna make everyone wreck their cars in the morning. They're really using the wrong term. It should be referred to as "crapping". As in, "Tonight, there is a 90% chance of Columbia getting crapped on."

Southern drivers are absolutely terrified of snow. Especially when it sticks to the road. Once, Atlanta practically shut down due to the chance of snow. Most people tend to speed up, thinking the faster they can get out of it the less they have to deal with it. Needless to say, the automotive carnage rate rises dramatically when the white stuff falls.

Let it snow!

Christmas Grinch

BA-HUMBUG: It took me 22 years to realize just where Scrooge and the Grinch were coming from. Don't get me wrong, I love Hannukah, Christmas, and all other wintery-fuzzy-feel-good-go-hug-a-buddy holidays. But it is possible to overdo something. And we, as the people of the United States, delve into Christmastime excess like nobody's business.

Many people take on the holiday like a full-time job. Everyone has to give someone else a present. Why? Because a dead carpenter said so. Records show that Jesus was a great guy and all, but having the worlds largest economy based around his birthday, that falls under the "ludicrous" category. I really don't know how it happened, but Christmas is the heartbeat of the U.S. retail industry. I know firsthand. Ever hear of black friday? It's the day after thanksgiving, when holiday shopping makes a lot of businesses go from the red (in debt) to the black (bling).

If you've ever been to South Carolina, home of the equator of the Bible Belt, you'd know that we do Christmas right. Whereas Christmas is usually a one-day thing and often spelled "XMas" in other parts of the country, down here it's a month long holiday, much like Ramadan. It goes from the day after Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve. It's not uncommon to see trailers down here with lights left up year-round.

Now I'm glad that we have something reliable to set our shopping clocks to. But from my experience, it simply isn't worth the stress, time, and money to go through the whole charade. I have an interesting perspective on the whole ordeal, being a man of mixed Judeo-christian heritage. I pick and choose my holidays to suit. Lately, I've been shunning off the whole Christmas thing, it simply isn't worth it. The Christmas-day dinner is good, and using the day for an excuse to bum some cash off the parents is worth it, but the rest is just pure stress.

Which brings me to my biggest pet peeve, gift cards. Why, oh why would you ever buy a gift card? These are awful for a few reasons: One, you're letting Best Buy or Sears or whoever hold on to some money for you for no reason at all. Two, you're limiting your supposed "friend" to what he/she can buy with said money.

Solution: Deliver a $50 bill (or however generous you're feeling), with a note attached saying "Spend this at a Best Buy if you want". There, instant gift card. And you save yourself the awful trip to holiday-mobbed stores.

The real driving force of Christmas is simple: Guilt. It was forces you to go out, spend your money on stupid things that often end up in the landfill, and be miserable for a month. If you pay your dues, spend enough money, and put a sufficent number of miles on your car and your shoes waiting in long store lines, you might be afforded a few hours of peace on Christmas Day, if you're lucky. If not, Guilt will be busy consuming you.

My recommendation: Bake a huge batch of cookies, give them to all your friends, and do away with the superfluous present giving. If you have the urge to give someone a present, give them one! Don't wait for Mr. Wal Mart to tell you it's time to give someone a present. There's no rule against present-giving on days other than Dec. 25.

Of course, as I think back, I realize there is a purpose to the whole charade: We do it for the kids. I remember some great Christmas and Hannukah holidays, happily obvlivious to the hell that our parents went through to put on the whole thing for us. And most people will have similar memories. I think a lot of people are trying to recapture what they felt as a kid, but unfortunately, we're just not that simple as we get older.

JOTD: Who's the most popular guy in the Nudist Colony? The one who can carry two cups of coffee and a half-dozen donuts.

Gluttony glory

FATASS: Monday night is $0.33 wing nite down at D's wings. You probably know where this is going. Long story short, I went out with a co-worker and two of his buddies. Ordered 100 wings between the four of us. Not too bad, 25 wings a pop. I can manage that for desert after most meals. But, once we get going, two of the guys putter out at 10-15 wings each, leaving me and my co-worker about 75-80 wings to polish off between the two of us. Needless to say, I wasn't moving too quick after that. I put down at least 35, perahps maybe 40.

The moral of the story is, make sure you have someone trustworth to eat cheap wings with.

I'm swearing off chicken for the rest of the week.

OUCH: Dentist told me today I have a cavity. Dammit. I've almost completely quit drinking regular soda too... Go figure.

GT SPORTS: My school's sports programs are always amusing. Our basketball team, which is supposed to be awesome, lost a game this week. Meanwhile, our football team, which at least for most of the season hasn't been much to write home about, absolutely destroyed Syracuse in the Champs bowl tonight. I feel sorry for sports fans who try to find logic and reason behind these sorts of things.

WORD OF THE DAY: Sammich (n). A sandwich, with connotations of extra goodness. "For example, if you pour gravy on a roast beef sandwich, you now have a roast beef sammich." (stolen from urbandictionary.com). My personal definition: Subway sells sandwiches, but Publix makes a mean sammich! For correct usage, use extra emphasis on the "sam" part.

Beanie day

COLD AS HELL: Talking about the weather is boring. But it's cold. Real cold. Time for the beanie. Most people have one. The thing about beanies is, once you put them on, you can't take them off. You wear them all day, no matter how warm the room you happen to be in. You can't take them off because your hair looks like a dead animal crawled and nested neatly on your head. A crew cut would remedy this, but would almost guarantee hypothermia in the winter.

See, South Carolina simply isn't designed for this cold. We're used to the hot, so-humid-you-can-swim-in-it type weather. Down here, when it gets cold out, no one expects it. I know the scene is the same at everyone's house. You wake up in the morning, step outside to get the paper, and the expression of pure shock, "how the hell did it get like this?!" as the arctic blast slams you right in your inner thighs, 'cause you're standing there in your underwear none the wiser.

And this will repeat for about the first two weeks of cold weather until we finally realize, oh, it just might be cold outside. Southerners live in this denial. You'll see the occasional schmuck wandering around in shorts and a t-shirt, shivering like a chihuahua not because he's a badass, but because he, like everyone else that morning, forgot it was cold out, but was running late that day and didn't have time to find his one set of warm clothes which is buried in the back in his closet.

Come to think of it, I saw the same thing at Georgia Tech pretty frequently, except replace "southerner" with "computer science major" and note that the warm clothes were located next to a box of unused condoms in the back of said closet.

MOVIES: Saw Sideways tonight. A sign of a good movie is when it starts, you see the "Fox Searchlight Movies" logo or some other indication that it's an independent film bought by the major studios after it was done. It usually means it's a fresh script, different actors and directors, and generally something that will be more enjoyable. This was true for this movie. We went and saw it blind (I had forgotten what it was about), and luckily I wasn't dissapointed. Not an action movie or anything extreme, but it has its funny moments and its a good story. Recommended, makes a good chick flick.

JOTD: (Okay, more of Expression of the Day): "He's so far back in the closet, he's in Narnia!"

Twist on an old axiom...

Just remembered this goody I saw somewhere:

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Feel me thrice, I'll break your fu@$ing leg!

Classic.

To austin or not to?

THE FUTURE (crap): So I got the phone call the other day. National Instruments offered me a job in Austin TX. I'm not sure how much it pays yet (I'll know soon enough, but it'll definitely be something worth of an engineer), but now I'm in a dilemma. Do I stay or do I go?

It's really a tough decision, possibly harder than picking a college. After you graduate high school, it's pretty simple - pick a college and go to it. But graduating college is a little different. There's no "accepted" path. You could become a pan handler, get a job, travel, start a business, pretty much do anything you damn well please. I suppose the "secure" thing to do is get a job and get some cash under my belt before I do anything else. One of my fears is that this the last stop on the "life train" -- the last chapter in my life books reads "...and then he got a job, the end."

In reality, of course that won't be the case, but you never know. I'm seriously considering this job, and to be honest if it was in Atlanta I probably wouldn't hesitate. The big hurdle is the moving thing. Relocating cities is nerve-wracking in itself--I've built up quite a network here in Atlanta, but the prospect of starting over in a new city is pretty exciting.

Of course, the idea of having to make all new friends, learn new roads, and adapt to a different culture (I'll have to trade in my Hip Hop CDs for the "Texican" variety of music...) is scary but exciting at the same time. I kind of wish I had hated Austin when I visited it, that all the people there were assholes, the roads were bad, and the weather awful. That would have made the decision easier, but it's not the case. Austin is a beautiful city. Damn.

I have a hunch that once my other buddies graduate and move on (people take their damn time at Tech, that's for sure), it will be an easier decision.

My big hesitiation is that I know a good plumber in Atlanta, and that's a rare thing to find.

Good news is that I have until March to decide. I'll ask the kangaroos what they think.

JOTD: What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs floating in your pool? "Bob".

MOVIES: So I went to my friend's house last night and watched Lord Of The Rings: Return of the King, Extended Edition. First impression: that was a long-ass movie. Second impression: that was a good-ass movie. Once you get over the nerdy mythical-land stuff ("what the hell was that ugly thing called again?") it's pretty engrossing and entertaining. If you have 4 hours to kill, this is one of the better ways to kill it.

T-minus 11 days until Australia. I'm pumped.

She's gone from suck... to blow!

ROBOSUCK: Okay, so I return home one day on a break from school to find an oversized white plastic frisbee scooting around our living room floor making a whirring noise, mindin its own business. Behind it trailed our family dog, who was tensely stalking it and occasionally growling in disapproval. After watching this (admittedly unexpected) spectacle for a few minutes, I learn that my parents had purchased a Roomba.

This thing is simply cool. You push a button on it, and an hour later, your carpet is clean. It beeps like a happy Japanese Pokemon Toy, even though it's designed here in the Ass-Kicking US. It moves deliberately. You can tell it's thinking. It gets out of the way of furniture, remembers where its been, and it even hits the brakes if it thinks it's going off the stairs. Oh, dod I mention that it's loads of fun to watch? Needless to say, we initially spent more time watching this thing vaccuum than it would have taken to do it by hand, and the carpet is cleaner than it's ever been. ("Oh, hello Neighbor X, did you see our vaccuum yet?" Rinse, repeat.)

The icing on the cake is the remote that comes with it. You can drive it around like a little vaccuum-enabled remote control car. If only it went faster...

I am definitely buying one when I get an apartment. And some money.

JOTD (Joke of the Day): Did you hear about the dyslexic pimp who bought a warehouse?

(I'm going to be screwed if I end up meeting someone who's read this blog already... I'm not going to have any jokes to tell)
Coming soon: I'm working on my broken back story, which will probably be long enough to warrant its own page.

Engineering Poetry: Haikus by Paul..

Found these on my laptop today. I wrote them in lieu of studying for some test at some point.

"Textbook"
Rich knowledge within
Pages brimming with problems
Makes a good wheel-chock

"Study Session" (written while studying for a test I failed)
Procrastination
Could have done it yesterday
Caffiene fueled cramming

"Life at Georgia Tech"
Male anatomy
We use CoC and SAC often
but receive the Shaft

"Graduation"
A degree from Tech
Soon to be an engineer
"Yes, now I are one"

The messy room ain't so messy anymore

MOVED OUT: Well, it had to happen at some point. I'm officially moved out of the fraternity house and off of Georgia Tech's campus. I think I've made good use of my time here, but as everyone knows you can't overstay your welcome... by too long anyway. I already had a bonus semester and will be starting my second bonus semester in Australia in a few weeks.

The experience is bittersweet, I'm extremely excited about the opportunities ahead, but of course I am already starting to miss the good ol' times in the House. To be honest, I thought I would be pretty upset while moving out, but I'm not really, because either it feels right or it's just going to be a delayed reaction. I think it would have been harder if I did it earlier, before most of my friends left.

I had a lot of people doubting I could move what was left in my room in one truck load. I am proud to announce that once again, I have triumphed. Pictures will be coming soon, but my poor Ford Ranger definitely looked like that scene from Beverly Hillbillies. It was ridin' low too. Getting up past 70mph on the interstate was a challeng, with the giant wind sail in the bed that was my closet rack. There will be pictures posted soon (as soon as I get my server back online).

GO DJ: While we're on the topic of Lasts, I DJed my last party of the semester at some house party over in Piedmont. It was a blast as always, although it took a little later for all the hotties to show up and start dancing. This crowd was fickle, they only wanted to hear the hip hop songs they knew--they weren't interested in the really new stuff with good beats.

What made this party special was it was the first time I've been shut down by the cops. Yes, apparently you can have too much boom-tisk. Or at least the neighbors thought so. It happened at 2:30 AM, so I wasn't too upset.

Maybe one day I'll get a job spinning in a club. That would be a blast. DJ Paul, rockin da decks!

PAPER, ROCK, SADDAM: So I stole this link from Bela (who knows who she stole it from). Pretty cute.

JOKE OF THE DAY: Okay, admittedly not a clean one, but I heard Rodney Dangerfield say this on TV the other day and it cracked me up.

"I'm so ugly, I went to the protcologist and he stuck his finger inside my mouth!"

I was getting a combination of weird looks and good laughs from telling that at Bela's party the other night...

To hell with finals

SCHOOL: As always, I like to write when I'm supposed to be doing something else, in the case studying. I will be taking my last engineering final, ever (unless I accidentally end up in grad school) in 6 hours. Senioritis is taking its toll at this point.

FUNNY: Interesting twist on an old saying: "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me thrice, and I'll break your fucking leg."

POLITICS: I won't give long political diatribes on here. I typically align with Libertarian views for those who are interested.

All I can say is I hate freeloaders. Congress recently scrapped legistlation that would help crack down on illegal immigration. Apparently they promise to bring it back next session. Here's hoping. Nothing gets me madder then when I'm paying for someone else's free ride. There's a procedure to come in this country properly and pay taxes, so do it. I do.

I'm also convinced there were only two kinds of voters in this past election: people voting against John Kerry, and people voting against George Bush. I don't think anyone actually supported the candidate they voted for, just hated the one they voted against. I know I'm guilty of this. I'd be interested to find someone who was actually FOR their candidate.

Food Porn!

...You can tell I have a lot of work I'm supposed to be doing because I'm posting so often lately...
More Big Food: Hardee's new Monster Burger weighs in at a massive 1420 calories and 107 grams of fat. Wow. I am in awe. "Food Porn," as they call it in the article, is the only appropriate name for this delicacy. While most health conscious people would double over and nearly puke at the sight of this thing, my college student instincts got the better of me. "Wow, You can get a whole day's worth of calories for $7! Deal!"

Jewish Holidays: I'm not the most religious type, but I enjoy the holidays just like any other half-jew would... Apparently there's not one right way to spell "hannukah". Among the 16 accepted english spellings are:

• Channuka, Channukah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanuko, Hannuka, Hannukah, Hanuka, Hanukah, Hanukkah, Kanukkah, Khannuka, Khannukah, Khanuka, Khanukah, Khanukkah, and Xanuka

Fascinating.

Please?!

If I could make this face, I'm fairly certain I could have everything in life for free or at least discount prices. Shrek 2 was a quality flick, I recommend you go see it if you haven't. For once, it's a sequel that didn't completely suck and actually added something fresh to the plot.

Word of the month: "Chrismahanukwanzikah". Seems that Virgin mobile coined the term, in the context of "Merry Chrismahanukwanzikah everyone!". I like it, it's edgy and pokes the fun at the political correctness trend of recent years. I still have yet to meet someone who celebrates Kwanzaa. This really is the red-headed stepchild of the winter holidays. Goes to show though that anyone can make a holiday if you just put some effort into it. It's only been around since 1966, whereas any real holiday has been around for 1000+ years. Maybe people looked at Christmas and Hanukah like this in 300 AD, but they've paid their dues! In protest, I will be starting Paulikahmas, which will be celebrated on my half birthday in November so it's a winter holiday. Don't forget to do your Paulikahmas shopping!

Best. Website. Ever: Wikipedia Seriously, this site is everything that's right about the internet. Anyone can write articles, and it's peer-reviewed. It has so much information, on so much random crap, it is simply astonishing. For killing time in a productive manner, you can't beat it. One of the unique things is the good coverage of pop culture in it. I'm especially fond of the "Random Page" feature.

Wikipedia Article of the Day: Barbeque. Everything you didn't know you wish you knew about barbeque. For instance, the BBQ sauce from my hometown is known as "Columbia Gold". Fascinating!

Hot diggity!

Confession: I love hot sauce. I don't know why. From what I've read, it fools your mouth into thinking it's been burned, and releases endorphins into your brain (the same things that get produced during sex, jumping out of airplanes, and pop quizzes). Really, It goes good on everything, including pizza, lasagna, Chik-Fil-A sandwiches, and more. If you don't like it, just start off in little bits, it'll grow on you.

I even had hot ice cream at Jake's Ice Cream, the best damn ice cream place in Atlanta. They make this ice cream called "Mexican Hot Chocolate" which is their badass chocolate ice cream seasoned with cayenne pepper. Don't knock it until you've tried it. At least get a taste of it next time you're there.

While Tabasco is an a-list hot sauce, but nothing beats Qdoba's hot (and extra-hot) sauces.

Confession #2: I love Qdoba. Anyone who has spent any time with me in the last 3 years knows this. For the uninitiated, Qdoba makes the best 1200-calorie two-handed foil-wrapped meat-packed monster burrito on the planet.

Willy's is a close second, but the other chains are simply inferior. I definitely drag my friends there way too often, upwards of 4-5 times a week. It never gets old. We used to go out and visted "Q-dobz" (as I call it now) in its location that was 30 minutes from Tech, but freshman year they opened a store close to campus.

So one day, my buddy David Z accompanied me down to the new Q-Dobz for a soon-to-be daily visit, to find the owner there working the counter. After some chatting, the fraternity came up, and next thing I knew we had 40 free burritos for the guys for dinner the next week. That was one of the times I ate two of these artery assasins in one sitting. At dinner that night, we engineers figured out a plan to install one of those tubes like they have at the bank directly from the house to QDoba, so we can phone in orders and have burritos arrive, *shoonk!* at the house in mere seconds.

Sports: A shout out to our basketball team who finally gave UGA the ass-whoopin' they needed. This was the biggest smackdown point wise we've ever laid on them since we started playing them. Good job guys. 7-0, keep it up. I gotta figure out how to get GT games in Australia.

Joke of the day: Did you hear they cancelled Christmas in Athens (at UGA)? They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

Finals week, Round 9, FIGHT!

This is my 9th finals week of my college carreer. My last one in Atlanta, ever, hopefully.

I'm proud to say that so far, I am completely unstressed this week. Might have something to do with my easy schedule.

Interesting thing happened in my engines class the other day. I actually witnessed two people getting thrown out of class for talking. Only then did I realize I hadn't seen that since high school. You would think by the time you're taking a 4000-level class, people would have grown up. Its their loss though...

MONEY: Consider this: An out of state student like myself pays $8325 a semester (Up from $5015 my freshman year, another story in itself) for tuition itself, before financial aid. With an average courseload of 14 hours a week, times 15 weeks of classes, it costs you $40 for every class you go to ($8 a class for you in-state lottery children).

Think about that for a second. Is skipping class worth $40? This is why I get really mad when I get stuck with a lousy professor, because I'm paying that schmuck $40 to put me to sleep. The sad part is this is one of the best educations in the country...

Yeah, feel bad about skipping those classes now don't you? I know I do.

SOCIAL: I was completely worthless this weekend, outside of DJing a lousy event in Athens at the University (sic) of Georgia. I swear, I had the most boring people in athens at my party. The funny thing about this bar is that it was right across the street from the Athens police station. Yet, I saw many underage people sneaking in. I am convinced that if you have a plastic card with a picture on it, even if it's your Nickelodeon Kids Club card, they'll let you into bars in Athens.

Not to mention everyone dresses the same over there, it's disturbing. Four guys came in with dates, and they were all identical. The white button up with blue picnic-cloth pattern, hemp necklace, cargo khaki's, and same short cut hair. The shitty part about the event was that I had to drive back that same night to get the equipment back. That was scary. There's a certain point in sleep deprivation that caffiene stops helping, and I was well past that point.

MOVIES: The rest of the weekend I sat around being useless watching movies. The movie to see, when you get time, is Napolean Dynomite. It's a silly movie, but the characters are phenomenal, and extremely quotable. I expect those lines to start flying around the fraternity house any day now...

Also saw Team America: World Police, the puppet love-fest action flick by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. While it lacked the edginess of South Park, it was pretty good. I wouldn't put it at the top of my list, but the jingle "America... FUCK YEAH!" does stick in your head pretty well. It was effective at making fun of both liberals and conservatives (if those terms even have any meaning anymore).

TV: Arrested Development is by far my favorite show on TV right now. It's hilarious. And not in the "Jackass" or "Generic Ben Stiller Movie" type of hilarious, but a truly witty, intelligent hilarious. They brought back Sitcoms to their true meaning, having funny situations. (Factoid: "Sitcom" stands for Situation Comedy).

It's 4:30AM, do you know where your beer is?

So once again, I have stayed up way past my bedtime. I'm supposed to be working on an engineering project, quite possibly my last one for my college career, but as always my attention span rivals that of a disinterested 2-year-old. Committing yourself to an allnighter is quite easy: take a few naps during the day, polish off a few caffeinated beverages of choice (this week: Diet Coke), and have something that you can procrastinate from doing. So once again, for the third time this week, a sleep schedule is anything but that for me.

I started this blog because I realized I quickly filled up my AIM profile with junk and I never had enough room to keep interesting stuff on there for long. I enjoy the forced brevity of AIM profiles, as it forces your thoughts into clear, short bits that are interesting for the compulsive away message checkers out there.

The other reason this is here is to document my upcoming trip to Australia. I have never kept a log book or a journal in my life before, and I realized that my memory simply isn't very good. I think. So this will help me avoid telling the same stories over and over again ("Just look at my blog!") and will serve the dual purpose of reminding me what has happened.

I'll also post some interesting stories and tidbits, including my infamous skiing accident, job interviews, travels, humorous observations, pictures, and what have it.

I think Mathcad is calling me, so I will leave you with this fascinating link:
http:// www.howtofoldashirt.net. I promise you will be amazed. And it's a great party trick.

Crap from my AIM profile

Really, this stuff is stupid, but here for posterity's sake:

overrated: paris hilton, miller lite*, atkins diet, sleep
underrated: wool socks, orange juice, southpaw, miller lite**
*only when momo's not around
**only when momo's around
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"The rodeo clowns, yeah yeah... pick me up when I'm down, yeah yeah...." - G Love and Special Sauce
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GT Basketball: 6-0!
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a lot of people ask me, "paul, what's the secret to your success? Why are you so great?" and I tell them, it's because I start off every day right, with a bowl of little chocolate donuts.
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Get Firefox (way better than Internet Explorer) http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
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PICTURES! (Just added: Halloween Costume)
http://pizaul.kicks-ass.net/photos/
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http://www.theflashgames.com/road_blocks-swf.html
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http://pizaul.kicks-ass.net/