Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Guest Blog: Blair Allen
I had never really thought about how many homeless people wandered Franklin Street until last weekend when I was pestered for “spare change” countless times. This got me to thinking about why all these people chose Franklin Street to sleep on, rather than some back street that was unpopulated. I obviously understand that Franklin Street is populated, but even these homeless people honestly believe that college kids have extra money to give can they? I came to the conclusion that these men and women are so common on Franklin because for some reason college students are most likely to feel sympathy for them, making them more likely to earn some pocket change. Parents constantly tell their kids, “don’t talk to strangers,” but on a college campus there are no parents; only kids who apparently feel sympathy for these homeless people. Homeless people on Franklin have become famous in a sense. Everyone knows about the man in the wheelchair and the man with the dog who does tricks. I know two girls who dressed up as the homeless man and the dog for a costume party. It is not as though were afraid of them, we welcome them and I have seen an infinite amount of people give up the remaining change from their dinner to one of them. There are the genuinely kind people who give to the homeless out of the goodness of their heart, there are the sorority girls who will give if they think someone is watching and they are wearing a shirt bearing their sororities’ name, and I even know a guy who swiped a homeless man into Lenoir to eat dinner. This guy actually walked to Franklin before he ate, found a hungry homeless person, swiped him in, and took him upstairs to eat with him. From what I heard people were horrified. Honestly I don’t know why, because I would be willing to bet that homeless man enjoyed the food at Lenoir far more than I ever have. Overall, I certainly do not mind the homeless people, and never will until I have a bad experience with one. I do not necessarily give money every time I pass by one, but I do try to at least give a friendly smile. When you think about it, they are people just like us; only without the luxuries we take for granted every day.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Planning my life... for the next 4 years.
I guess I would like to start off by thanking my roommate for not coming through on the guest blog for the 3rd week straight. Thanks for waiting for the last minute to tell me that you are not going to have “time to do it because you have an upcoming paper” while you are playing CoD, for the 3rd week straight, because with my lab final and my 4 pages of paper that I figured out that I was going to have to do this morning, I have an excess of time on my hands.
So anyway, what I have been doing for that last day or so is planning pretty much everything I have to do in college to get my major. I basically sat down with my brother and he showed me the best combinations of classes (matching easy and hard classes in the same semester and so on). I think I have everything that I need planned out, well at least the science based stuff that is required for my major.
Looking over what I have to take, semester by semester I can pretty much say for sure that the rest of college is only going to get so much harder than it is right now. Thankfully, I believe that I am starting to get better at this thing called studying that I never ever learned how to do in the soulless buildings they call a high school.
Either way at least I am on track to get my major, I cannot imagine the people that come in undecided and don’t pick out a major for a couple of years in college. I can’t imagine having to take all of the science classes in the last 2 years; it would be something around like 3 or more a semester, with labs and other random requirements that are needed for a major. Anyways, I guess that’s about all I have to say about that, so maybe next week I can come up with a guest blogger.
So anyway, what I have been doing for that last day or so is planning pretty much everything I have to do in college to get my major. I basically sat down with my brother and he showed me the best combinations of classes (matching easy and hard classes in the same semester and so on). I think I have everything that I need planned out, well at least the science based stuff that is required for my major.
Looking over what I have to take, semester by semester I can pretty much say for sure that the rest of college is only going to get so much harder than it is right now. Thankfully, I believe that I am starting to get better at this thing called studying that I never ever learned how to do in the soulless buildings they call a high school.
Either way at least I am on track to get my major, I cannot imagine the people that come in undecided and don’t pick out a major for a couple of years in college. I can’t imagine having to take all of the science classes in the last 2 years; it would be something around like 3 or more a semester, with labs and other random requirements that are needed for a major. Anyways, I guess that’s about all I have to say about that, so maybe next week I can come up with a guest blogger.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Dudes be robbin people up in this place!!
I don’t know how many of you have read the Daily Tar Hell today but the head line “Students Robbed at Gunpoint in Dorm” may have caught your attention. It turns out that I know the guys that were robbed, they live in Morrison. They are all really good friends with my suite mate, Kyle, and he goes over there almost every weekend to hang out. A couple of the guys have been over to our suite to hang out and those are the ones that I have met.
The crazy thing was that Kyle was thinking of going over there to watch the NCAA championship game (as freaking horrible as it was) but decided not to because of homework and studying for a test that he had today. That was just crazy that he could have been one of the ones that was robbed at gunpoint.
This just got me thinking about my security here at UNC, and it’s kind of bad. The main thing that keeps people out of the dorms is the key flex pass things, but with the way that students walk in and out of the dorms, I have no doubt in my mind that I could get into any dorm on campus with no trouble at all. All you have to do is be walking behind someone, I let people in behind me just because if you don’t hold the door open then you look like a complete asshole. If the flexpass is the only thing that is keeping people out that is kind of scary.
In the article they were talking about now they are going to lock their suite door, we cannot even do that with our suite door, only 3 of the 8 keys open the outside door, I have no clue why this is but my key is one of the ones that does not open the door so there is no way that we can consistently lock our outside suite door.
Another thing that pissed me off was that Alert Carolina didn’t send out a message. Your telling me there is a guy running around campus with a gun and robbing kids and you are not going to send out one of you fancy little text messages. The article said they caught one of the guys and they were unsure the other one had a gun, it doesn’t matter to me if he does, I would like to know.
The crazy thing was that Kyle was thinking of going over there to watch the NCAA championship game (as freaking horrible as it was) but decided not to because of homework and studying for a test that he had today. That was just crazy that he could have been one of the ones that was robbed at gunpoint.
This just got me thinking about my security here at UNC, and it’s kind of bad. The main thing that keeps people out of the dorms is the key flex pass things, but with the way that students walk in and out of the dorms, I have no doubt in my mind that I could get into any dorm on campus with no trouble at all. All you have to do is be walking behind someone, I let people in behind me just because if you don’t hold the door open then you look like a complete asshole. If the flexpass is the only thing that is keeping people out that is kind of scary.
In the article they were talking about now they are going to lock their suite door, we cannot even do that with our suite door, only 3 of the 8 keys open the outside door, I have no clue why this is but my key is one of the ones that does not open the door so there is no way that we can consistently lock our outside suite door.
Another thing that pissed me off was that Alert Carolina didn’t send out a message. Your telling me there is a guy running around campus with a gun and robbing kids and you are not going to send out one of you fancy little text messages. The article said they caught one of the guys and they were unsure the other one had a gun, it doesn’t matter to me if he does, I would like to know.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Stumble upon and on and on
So apparently I have found something that is more time consuming than facebook, and that is stumble upon.com. For those of you that have been living under a rock for the last several months and do not know what it is yet, it is basically a site that just randomly goes to sites based on what you say is you interests.
Most of my interests that come up on my stumble upon are either scientific facts (like the weird interesting ones, not the boring ones), online video games, and photography. I am not even kidding when I say that the first day that I started using it, which was over spring break, I pretty much used it for about 5 hours in one day.
I'm not quite sure what it is about it that is so addicting, but some of the stuff that is on there is so cool you just cannot wait to see what is going to come up next. I find myself going, ok one more stumble, then once I do that site for a little while, whatever it may be, I just cannot help but hitting stumble one more time. This usually happens for like a solid hour sometimes (not lately though because things have been absolutely crazy because apparently almost all of my professors decided to give exams back to back).
Another thing that I usually do is post the links that I liked the most on facebook, so I know that my friends get tired of seeing my statuses or links or whatever they are called about the random things I have found on stumble upon. This is one of favorites: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2aSAPB/dvice.com/archives/2010/12/11-cheap-gifts.php
I can’t help but think some of this stuff is awesome. I know it’s kind of nerdy but I don’t really care.
Another good one is this one: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2FK3Nz/www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Ddv8kNTH-KDY
I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped when I saw the finished product of this.
That’s pretty much all I have this week, this was a good little break from studying but now I have to go back to that. I guess I’ll talk to ya’ll next week.
Most of my interests that come up on my stumble upon are either scientific facts (like the weird interesting ones, not the boring ones), online video games, and photography. I am not even kidding when I say that the first day that I started using it, which was over spring break, I pretty much used it for about 5 hours in one day.
I'm not quite sure what it is about it that is so addicting, but some of the stuff that is on there is so cool you just cannot wait to see what is going to come up next. I find myself going, ok one more stumble, then once I do that site for a little while, whatever it may be, I just cannot help but hitting stumble one more time. This usually happens for like a solid hour sometimes (not lately though because things have been absolutely crazy because apparently almost all of my professors decided to give exams back to back).
Another thing that I usually do is post the links that I liked the most on facebook, so I know that my friends get tired of seeing my statuses or links or whatever they are called about the random things I have found on stumble upon. This is one of favorites: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2aSAPB/dvice.com/archives/2010/12/11-cheap-gifts.php
I can’t help but think some of this stuff is awesome. I know it’s kind of nerdy but I don’t really care.
Another good one is this one: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2FK3Nz/www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Ddv8kNTH-KDY
I'm pretty sure my jaw literally dropped when I saw the finished product of this.
That’s pretty much all I have this week, this was a good little break from studying but now I have to go back to that. I guess I’ll talk to ya’ll next week.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Chicago
So I went to Chicago last week and it was a pretty good trip all in all. One of the bad parts was that the place that we were staying was like 45 minutes out of Chicago and we did not have a car to drive into the city. Basically the first 3 days we spent just trying to find a way to get downtown without spending $100 on a cab ride. We finally made it into the city on the last night, we had to walk like three mile to a train and then take a 40 some minute train ride into the city.
On the train we met a guy named Chuck, apparently we just happen to come across the coolest guy in Chicago. Well Chuck was on his way home from his friend’s house and we ended up splitting a Taxi with him from one train station to another because that is apparently where all the stuff was going on. Well once we got to the other train station Chuck was telling us were to go and were not to go and then he just decided to walk around with us and show us the city instead of going home.
My favorite place that we went on the tour of Chicago was the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. We didn’t eat at the restaurant; we just took the elevator up to the top so we could see the city. The view was probably one of the nicest views I have ever seen. It was this room in the picture.
Now this was the highlight of the trip probably. The one thing that was a whole lot different that I have ever seen before was the amount of trash on the sides of the road in and around Chicago. It was absolutely filthy. This just made me realize how much I like good old North Carolina. Another thing that I noticed about the city and surrounding areas was the smell. It just smelled bad, the whole city did. Chicago is most definitely the biggest city that I have been to and it was pretty cool, I liked the big building and the view, but I cannot see myself living there. I think I will just stay in a fairly small town atmosphere.
On the train we met a guy named Chuck, apparently we just happen to come across the coolest guy in Chicago. Well Chuck was on his way home from his friend’s house and we ended up splitting a Taxi with him from one train station to another because that is apparently where all the stuff was going on. Well once we got to the other train station Chuck was telling us were to go and were not to go and then he just decided to walk around with us and show us the city instead of going home.
My favorite place that we went on the tour of Chicago was the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. We didn’t eat at the restaurant; we just took the elevator up to the top so we could see the city. The view was probably one of the nicest views I have ever seen. It was this room in the picture.
Now this was the highlight of the trip probably. The one thing that was a whole lot different that I have ever seen before was the amount of trash on the sides of the road in and around Chicago. It was absolutely filthy. This just made me realize how much I like good old North Carolina. Another thing that I noticed about the city and surrounding areas was the smell. It just smelled bad, the whole city did. Chicago is most definitely the biggest city that I have been to and it was pretty cool, I liked the big building and the view, but I cannot see myself living there. I think I will just stay in a fairly small town atmosphere.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Spring break redneck fight
So I have an interesting little short story that I figured would make a great blog for this week. So, of course I was at home all weekend and one thing that I needed for the house was a new shower curtain for my bathroom. Well I guess it was Wednesday when I was in town so I decided to swing by Target and get a shower curtain.
Well, I pull in the parking lot, and out of nowhere this guy whips in behind me and jumps out of his car all pissed off and what not. He starts just yelling at me because I apparently just cut him off on the way over there. Well I recognized his car and when I switched lanes in from of him, the one lane switch I have to do the whole way to Target, I was a full 2 or 3 car lengths ahead of him. So I told him to just calm down and let it go, I didn’t want to start anything because I'm a pacifist and my sister was with me, but he won’t let it go.
So I just ignore him and go inside thinking that one: he will not follow me in and two: he will just calm down and let it go. I was wrong on both accounts. So this guy follows me into target, still yelling, so that attracted the attention of the security desk, seeing that you walk right past it on the way in. (at this point I'm getting pissed off too) Well the security guard come up and asks if everything is alright, and I said “No, this guy thinks I cut him off and he is being a bitch about it.” (Word choice, I know, I was in the moment) So I guess seeing that I wasn’t the one yelling and I was like 18 and this guy was like late 50’s he escorted the other guy out not me. So, I thought it was over, went and bought the shower curtain, it wasn’t over apparently.
So I go out to my car, and this guy is still standing by my car, so I gave my sister the keys to the car and the shower curtain and told her to start the car. So this guy is about to fight me, I was livid at this point, and he was smaller than my by probably 50 pounds and 2 inches, and old. So we start talking crap back and forth and he starts swinging, wildly and erratically. He hits he like 2 or 3 times, and I got some punches in too but at this point I just pushed him/pick him up/ tackle him, and he is on the ground, so while he is on the ground, my sister was like trying to get me to leave, she was freaking out, so I just jumped in my car and sped off.
So that is probably the most eventful thing that happened over break; I got in a fight at target, while getting at shower curtain. I don’t even know if I would call it a fight, more just trying to get rid of a pissed off old redneck while getting in my car. I am truly not someone who resorts to violence, but I really didn’t know what to do otherwise.
Well, I pull in the parking lot, and out of nowhere this guy whips in behind me and jumps out of his car all pissed off and what not. He starts just yelling at me because I apparently just cut him off on the way over there. Well I recognized his car and when I switched lanes in from of him, the one lane switch I have to do the whole way to Target, I was a full 2 or 3 car lengths ahead of him. So I told him to just calm down and let it go, I didn’t want to start anything because I'm a pacifist and my sister was with me, but he won’t let it go.
So I just ignore him and go inside thinking that one: he will not follow me in and two: he will just calm down and let it go. I was wrong on both accounts. So this guy follows me into target, still yelling, so that attracted the attention of the security desk, seeing that you walk right past it on the way in. (at this point I'm getting pissed off too) Well the security guard come up and asks if everything is alright, and I said “No, this guy thinks I cut him off and he is being a bitch about it.” (Word choice, I know, I was in the moment) So I guess seeing that I wasn’t the one yelling and I was like 18 and this guy was like late 50’s he escorted the other guy out not me. So, I thought it was over, went and bought the shower curtain, it wasn’t over apparently.
So I go out to my car, and this guy is still standing by my car, so I gave my sister the keys to the car and the shower curtain and told her to start the car. So this guy is about to fight me, I was livid at this point, and he was smaller than my by probably 50 pounds and 2 inches, and old. So we start talking crap back and forth and he starts swinging, wildly and erratically. He hits he like 2 or 3 times, and I got some punches in too but at this point I just pushed him/pick him up/ tackle him, and he is on the ground, so while he is on the ground, my sister was like trying to get me to leave, she was freaking out, so I just jumped in my car and sped off.
So that is probably the most eventful thing that happened over break; I got in a fight at target, while getting at shower curtain. I don’t even know if I would call it a fight, more just trying to get rid of a pissed off old redneck while getting in my car. I am truly not someone who resorts to violence, but I really didn’t know what to do otherwise.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Spring Break at its finest
Considering how much I was looking forward to this break, it sure is boring. For the first like hour I was happy to be home, now I am just bored out of my mind. The good thing is, I went to the UNC v. dook game. Which was awesome, unfortunately I was really, really, really, high up, but just being there and being a part of the game was awesome. I wish I could have gotten on the court but I was way to high up, by the time I got down to the bottom they were already getting people off of the court. Anyways, that was the highlight of my break so far.
Besides the game I really haven’t done anything except watch movies on Netflix. I just got finished with Shutter Island and that was pretty crazy. I have never watched a movie that made me question what was going on as much as that movie. It was still a really good movie. Not as good as Inception, all I have heard about Shutter Island was how much it was similar and as good as Inception, I didn’t think they were that similar, and Inception was so much better than Shutter Island. It may be better if I watch it a second time, that way I know what is going on, even though I have heard so much otherwise I kind of knew what was going to happen.
Another thing that I did was watch the second season of Jersey Shore. (it’s on Netflix) now I have never seen it before this, so I had no idea what happened in the first season, but it was pretty good. Well “good” isn’t the right word, more like entertaining. It’s kind of like watching a plane crash, you know what is going to happen, and you know it is going to end in disaster, but you can’t stop watching it. The best thing I think I got from that show was some of the sayings. And with that being said, I got a GTL session coming up, so I'm going to go.
Besides the game I really haven’t done anything except watch movies on Netflix. I just got finished with Shutter Island and that was pretty crazy. I have never watched a movie that made me question what was going on as much as that movie. It was still a really good movie. Not as good as Inception, all I have heard about Shutter Island was how much it was similar and as good as Inception, I didn’t think they were that similar, and Inception was so much better than Shutter Island. It may be better if I watch it a second time, that way I know what is going on, even though I have heard so much otherwise I kind of knew what was going to happen.
Another thing that I did was watch the second season of Jersey Shore. (it’s on Netflix) now I have never seen it before this, so I had no idea what happened in the first season, but it was pretty good. Well “good” isn’t the right word, more like entertaining. It’s kind of like watching a plane crash, you know what is going to happen, and you know it is going to end in disaster, but you can’t stop watching it. The best thing I think I got from that show was some of the sayings. And with that being said, I got a GTL session coming up, so I'm going to go.
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