rambling

I like posts that have no real direction, and if i had actual readers that posted comments every now and then i might do a “comment bag” or something but we’re a long ways off from that one.

-Learned what it meant to drive a German car the other day. For those of you that didn’t know (which i think the two of you that have actually looked at this do in fact know) i decided to buy a new car as the truck was becoming less and less reliable, actually the truck was quite moody and didn’t handle traffic very well. You might ask what “not handling traffic well” means, and i will tell you when rolling along at low rpm’s the truck would get frustrated and stall out. This stalling out would thus force me to turn off and turn on again. Houston as you might have heard, has been known to have some traffic (no. 3 worst in the nation) problems here and there, and by “here and there” i mean at all times no matter what direction you are going. Fact, my friend Tim Traister hit a traffic jam after midnight. Ahhh cannot wait to call the concrete jungle my home. Anyways so I have been saving a while and made a list of cars that i a) wanted and b) could afford. Obviously the first thing i did on this list was eliminate all american made cars, as i am forever biased against american made cars except for american made chevy tahoes. Also i wanted a more conservative car, which is why the Audi A4 was my car of choice. I couldn’t afford a lexus or a G35, and 3-series are flashy and quite honestly, common. Anyways i discovered that total cost of ownership is far different then the purchase price of cars. This is something i would urge everyone who is going to purchase a new car to look at, for one the fuel (premium, but is countered by my exxon discount) and the repairs/servicing. I took it in for the 35k servicing thinking i was still under warranty (warranty was for 50,000) only to find out IT EXPIRED in dec ‘07. I might not be getting a TV for a while.

-Hurricane Ike is currently having a major impact in my life. First thing, whenever ever these hurricanes threaten to wreck shop on the coastal region, the evacuees always seem to pick houston as they’re destination of choice. In fact, there are still many katrina evacuees living in houston today. I have no problem with this, i do have a problem with the news story that was reported on some of the families. Apparently all the families displaced were given a debit card loaded with 2,000 (courtesy of the tax payers like you and soon to be me) for things like clothes for their kids, food, you know things to help one survive a catastrophic events. So what do these mothers go buy? 800 dollars purses and flat screens. Yep sometimes (i’m looking your way extreme liberals) throwing money (at the macro level) at a problem isn’t going to solve it. I also have a problem with Joel Osteen for not opening up his church to house some (could’ve been many) of the evacuees, way to help out the cause Joel.

The next way that Hurricane Ike is impacting my life is my soon to be work. On monday i’m supposed to start at Exxon Mobil (i know finally) and now there’s a hurricane that’s threatening to flood the city. I get emails and phone calls everyday alerting me that their might be an emergency plan and now i might not start on monday? Everyone i’ve talked to this week feel i’m destined to never work as i STILL HAVENT started and yet they are now 3 weeks into the school year and just had the career fair. I find it actually fun trying to help the year below me sort out their lives while mine is still in a perpetual state of rocking chair (i’m moving back and forth but not really getting anywhere). I never did live out my dream (which with a little more warning could have completed today of drafting a fake resume and showing up to the career fair:

me – hands them resume.

them – “you had a 4.0, triple majored and have already interned at 2 investment banks and the boston consulting group?”

me – shrugs.

yeah that would’ve been great and may have been offered some jobs on the spot. Now THAT would’ve been good times. Also, Hurricane Ike has officially flexed his muscle over the NCAA and forced the hand of UT to move the game to another weekend. The funny thing is, the reason they moved it was concern for the amount of people in the city (and the safety of those people), yet the weekend they moved it to was ACL. Oh man talk about a weekend that i will NOT be in Austin. 100,000 people attend ACl, 90,000 attend UT football games (now i know some of those are the same people, but not as many as you would think. I would venture to say no more then 10,000 (and thats a REALLY generous estimate) go to both the football game and ACL), needless to say thats A LOT of people in a not very big area. The thought of how horrible parking/ traffic / general living during that weekend makes me sick.

-Going to El arroyo’s happy hour tomorrow. 1$ margaritas and probably live music. This was the highlight of my week last semester (while i was busy being unemployed) and one of the more “austiny” things one can partake in. 

-I really hope google chrome comes out for Mac’s soon, i’ve just stepped into the world of google reader (which i will be using on my blackberry, assuming i get a blackberry)  and it has lowered my productivity level during an already unproductive day.