Do the Dew...

Thought I could make a lighter blog post after the last few heated ones. The idea for this blog came from work, as this entire morning I have listened to three co-workers have a literal 30-45 minute debate over what the best fast food chain was. They literally went through every menu to evaluate them, at one point pulling out a piece of paper to put rankings down for each menu item to get a total score for each. Intense and nub, I know. But I thought it would be interesting to see what others would rank, so I made a blog. Below I have my top 5, may edit it with more thought, but here it is for now.

1) Wendys:
Strenghts: All of the chicken sandwiches, pretty solid chili for fast food, best value menu, frostys
Weaknesses: Fries (ive always rated wendys fries the worst, but nowadays it really just depends on the day whether you get good fries or not)
Overall: Not much you can hate on Wendys for, the Spicy Chicken I think I would have to rate as the best individual fast food item, and they have a pretty solid selection of other stuff.

2) Arbys:
Strenghts: Roast Beef sandwiches, chicken cordon bleu, I've heard there sandwiches are real good, but have no experience myself, best honey mustard sauce
Weaknesses: Price
Overall: The roast beef sandwich may be #2 behind the Spicy for me. Doesn't quite have the depth wendys has, but still solid.

3) Taco Bell:
Strenghts: Price - Nacho Cheese Chalupas with no tomatoes
Weaknesses: No real weaknesses, just obviously limited to mexican
Overall: Could be debateable to be above arbys. As Im writing this Im starting to think Nacho Cheese Chalupa may be the #1 individual item on any menu

4) Chic Fil A
Strengths: Breakfast, Nuggets
Weaknesses: Poor Honey Mustard Sauce, Limited Selection, Grilled Chicken Sandwich
Overall: Chic Fil A has faded for me recently. The standard chicken sandwich is good, but I still prefer wendys I think, and their grilled chicken sandwich is majorly nub.

5) Just found out we are having a nub staff meeting real quick, Ill have to come back to this as I am still debating my 5th

Kaka turns down largest transfer in futbol history

For those that don't keep up with soccer that much I'll give you a bit of background. Manchester City was recently purchased by the Abu Dhabi group. Which that basically translates into they were bought by Dubai. Which means they have more money then they know what to do with. They broke the British transfer record this year when they signed Robinho for 32 million pounds. Which converts to $46.6 million US. Dude did it just for the money as he was being lured by Chelsea and after it was all said and done he had no idea what team he had signed for. What makes this even funnier is that Manchester City are in 15th spot (out of 20). So during the January transfer month they claimed they would make BIG signings. So they approached AC Milan's Kaka. They offered him a record setting 100 MILLION POUNDS! or $145,691,115 DOLLARS! Dude would make $364k a week....a WEEK! He said he wants to grow old at Milan. I mean from a soccer aspect I would much rather play for Milan, they are much better than Man City. But the question is what would you do? And what do you think about this? For the record the most expensive soccer transfer in history is....Zidane from Juventes to Real Madrid back in 2001 for 48 million pounds or $69 million dollars.

What is your favorite soccer formation?

Quick post before my next official post. After watching Liverpool play a 4-5-1 with FUCKING KUYT AS THE LONE STRIKER and almost vomiting for hours on end, I ended up thinking about how I don't like the massive number of teams who play 4-5-1's recently. Although it seemed much more prevalent last season, I still don't like watching the slow, non-offensive 4-5-1 teams that play now.

On that same note, what is your favorite soccer formation? I think if I coached a team, I would lean to a 4-4-2, but my favorite formation that I ever played in was the 3-5-2 with 2 holding midfielders. I typically think that holding/defending through the midfield is much more important than having the 4th defender.

Opinions/thoughts?

Happy About Lower Gas Prices? INC Increased Gas Taxes.

Panel Urges 50% Gas Tax Increase

Due to the economic recession and the decrease in overall gasoline usage, gas prices are at about a 5 year low currently with the USA national average at ~$1.65/gal. This has brought much needed relief to "middle-class" America who are facing increasing debt and decreasing job security. This also has provided a relief to American companies whose sales have been dropping off (due to the recession) because they no longer have huge shipping costs for both raw materials and shipping their product to customers. Although oil companies are still pretty high on people's "I SWEAR I'D KICK THAT CEO'S ASS IF I SAW HIM AT THIS BAR" list, it has at least lowered some of the hatred.

Of course things this good cannot last long. The linked article above describes the current lobbying of The National Commission on Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing to increase gas taxes for funding purposes. Said commission states that "the current 18.4 cents a gallon gas tax and 24.4 cents a gallon diesel tax fail to raise enough to keep pace with the cost of road, bridge and transit programs." The recommendation is to increase the national gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon and to raise the diesel tax by 12 to 15 cents a gallon. This means they want to increase the gasoline tax by 54%, which would raise the current tax to be 16.2% of the total gas cost ($1.65 average + additional 10 cent a gallon basis). Additionally, "the commission will recommend tying the fuel tax rates to inflation." This means that when inflation goes up therefore hiking up crude oil and gasoline prices up, the tax could increase even more.

Now backing up from the "I hate all taxes" stance, an increase of 10 cent a gallon really isn't too much of a deal breaker. I would actually be for this tax if the money would be used efficiently to increase the quality of roads and rail transportation (the future of the American economy IMO). The two things that WOULD majorly piss me off about this kind of a tax are 1) the government spends a ridiculous amount of money on the stupidest shit. I don't need to go into too much detail on the things I believe to be retarded; everyone has their list. Most people do agree that money is being spent in retarded places. How about we take some of that stupid money and re-allocate it to transportation (and other important things LIKE SCHOOLS). The second thing that would piss me off is, the people who improve the transportation systems in America are seriously idiots. How long did it take the Virginia DOT to finish the construction on I-64 west from Norfolk to Williamsburg? There is still construction going on here in Houston from the FIRST DAY I ARRIVED HERE IN 2005. AND TRUST ME IT ISN'T HARD STUFF. My feeling is that the state governments give the construction contracts to companies who do NOT deserve them. Most of them milk the government for more and more money while the people who approve these contracts get nice dinners and "gifts" from the head of said companies.

This means that you and I pay for "improving transportation" that could be paid for by smart government investing and improving the efficiency of construction. I don't necessarily blame the commission for wanting some money to compensate for the slowing economy. They definitely are not going to get it from the upcoming administration who is promising to cut taxes and is forced to bailout the increasing number of American companies. They have to turn to increasing the tax on the one thing we are all thankful that the price is finally going down for. This should concern all of us because this could be an increasing trend of increasing prices due to the recession (hello supply and demand). The worst example of this is the increasing cost of college tuition (which I hope to write about in the future). Do you think an additional 10 cent/gallon is a big deal or not much of anything?




Aside: this blog was more of a rant than anything revolutionary and was not really well written. I just wanted to get something down to increase the traffic of the blog (like Boski mentioned) and also get some of the small beef off my chest.

Also, cool website I found of historical gas prices when I was looking for how low the current gas prices are: http://www.massachusettsgasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx
Interesting to see how gas prices have tracked with crude prices.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Well its 2009!!!! The blog has been slow this past month so I'm hoping it picks up some pace this year. What I want to know is what is everyones resolution this year? Do you have any? If not what are you looking forward to? I always thought New Years Resolutions were bullshit. Why pick this day to quit smoking? Why pick this day to start to work out? Shouldn't you have stopped stuffing your face with Mc Donalds 3 years ago? Shouldn't have put down that cig back in middle school? The only thing interesting I can say about 2009 is that it will be (if we have one) my 10 year high school reunion. Whats Boski say on that??? Fuck 'em. I didn't like most of them while I was in high school, I don't see or talk to 99.9% of them now, so I don't really care where they are or what they are doing now in their lives. As you know my wife is a bit older than me and last year we went to her reunion, it was really like their 12th or 13th year out of high school but they never had a 10 for some reason. When I think of a high school reunion the only reference I had was Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, boy this thing was nothing like that. It was soo boring and small and drab. The first 2 drinks were free, that was good. Then I started stealing other peoples tickets to get more free ones. The only highlight was one of my wife's friends had this boyfriend F.O.B. Italy. Dude was sooo funny. He bitched for like 45 minutes about flip flops and how Americans can wear them and how uncomfortable they were. I just talked soccer to the guy although he said his main sport was mountain climbing....go figure?

Term Returns

Just received my new computer. I have been pretty much disengaged from the world for about 2 weeks, so I need a little bit of time to catch up. Look for a new post from me here real soon, as a lot has been on my mind. Feels good to be back.

Calling Pex and Term?

I mean I know Term's had some problems but where is Pex? Cramming hard for the finals eh???