Congrats!

Congrats to Mario West who won the NCAA Slam Dunk Competition last night! From a walk on to a scholarship athlete and leader, Mario was the heart and soul of this year's Tech bball team. Check out the winning dunk and the look on Coach Hewitt's face after it.

Slam Dunk Contest Highlights

Randomness

Last night I attended Decision Night 2007 for the local high school seniors trying to decide if they will enroll at Tech in the fall. This was my second year attending and it's a great night and opportunity to share your Tech experience with future enginerds. Last night there was one potential Public Policy major in attendance and I think I convinced her she was making the right choice over UNC, as she was leaving she said they were going to send in the deposit! If you have the opportunity to attend a Decision Night event in your area I highly recommend it.

Here are some pics from the Tech at Duke beesball game last Saturday: Tech vs. Duke Baseball 3/24/07

In other news and things that make you go WTF Mate!?! Here's an article from today's Raleigh News Observer: "60 sheep weren't flock, but roomies"

Weekend Update

The weekend started off pretty well. Had dinner with Emily A. at Stonewood Grill in North Raleigh. It was good to go out and do something and I had a great blackened mahi mahi. Saturday morning was the first FPC softball practice of the season and it was a great. We have two more practices and then games on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Lions Park inside the beltline beginning April 12. Saturday afternoon was when the weekend went downhill and became incredibly frustrating as a sports fan.

Tech beesball played a three game series at Duke this weekend. On Friday they eeked out a victory in the 9th inning. On Saturday I attended with the Chalmers and watched as we left runner after runner on base and lost 4-0. A bonus was that Coach Hall stopped to speak with the Tech fans for a few minutes after the game even though we lost. A downside was that my high school's stadium is better than Duke's.

Sunday afternoon was even worse than Saturday...Carolina lost to Carolina. UNC beat themselves only making 2 of their last 23 shots in the second half and overtime. They ddn't even score in OT until there were only sight seconds left. I can't imagine how frustrated the team must feel. I'm frustrated because Kansas and UNC lost and now my formerly first place brackets are busted. Argh!

I've got some pictures from Saturday and will post them later after I have a chance to resize them.

Quote of the Day

Heard during Al Gore's testimony to House Subcommittees yesterday about global warming.

"The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told me it's not a problem.' If the crib's on fire, you don't speculate that the baby is flame retardant. You take action." - Al Gore

Randomness

Last Friday I took the afternoon off to watch the Tech vs. UNLV first round tournament game and unfortunately Tech didn't even show up for the game and played pathetically. Hopefully we can turn it around next year if Javaris and Thaddeus don't to the NBA. In my absence Friday afternoon, a coworker moved all of the chairs from our department's conference room into another coworker's office that was out as well. Yesterday when I arrived at work I found my office stuffed with chairs thanks to the previous victim who came in over the weekend and thought I had put the chairs in his office. Well what do we do? We put them all in the original culprit's office. Booyah!

My Office


Reading the online AJC yesterday I found an interesting poll they are doing online to pick the Braves All-Era team, i.e. the best players from 1991-2005. I posted on the Hive and several people posted YouTube highlights of the magical '91-'92 worst to first season; who knew YouTube was around back then ;).

AJC Poll - Braves All-Era Team

My team is below:

Catcher: Javy Lopez, though Greg Olsen is a favorite
1st Base: Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff
2nd Base: Mark Lemke
3rd Base: Chipper Jones
Shortstop: Jeff Blauser (had a hard time with this one but went with the feel good choice)
Top Pitcher (Top 5 make roster): Tom Glavine
Top Closer: Mark Wohlers
Top Outfielder (Top 3 make roster): Andruw Jones

Braves Glory Days



I don't know what's more strange, the background music is Yanni or that I know that it's Yanni. That hit by Francisco Cabrerra and slide by Sid Bream still gives me chills.

More March Madness

Well I picked VCU over Duke in a couple of brackets but the all important work brackets aren't in good shape after day one. In honor of March Madness here's a pretty funny blog somebody posted on The Hive about the worst college mascots. Unfortunately Buzz was #25, but the blurb about him/her wasn't very funny so I think it was a stretch. I nominate UGA number whatever as the replacement.

25 Worst College Mascots

Tournament Time

In the spirit of March Madness here's a cool game that was posted on The Hive. The goal is to locate on a map all of the schools in the tournament. It's pretty difficult for some of the mid majors. Good luck!

My results:
45 of 65 perfects
69.23%
Avg. Error 2 miles
336 secs

March Madness 2007

Being Green

Thursday afternoon I headed over to Chapel Hill for a ULI Young Leader's event for the Greenbridge project in downtown. Greenbridge is Chapel Hill's first venture into a large scale, green building condo, retail, office building. The project is located on the west side of downtown between Franklin and Rosemary Streets and will be a ground breaking addition to the community. The developers have big eyes and are striving for LEED Gold Certification which requires quite a bit of environmentally friendly design. While it should be a great project, the units are pretty pricey but right now green building is more expensive and the Chapel Hill market will bear the prices. The Town of Chapel Hill is also famously difficult to deal with in proposing new developments and this was no different even with the great environmental features. The town required 15 afforable units in the development. While I'm a fan of requiring afforable housing through density bonuses and other methods, I'm not sure if forcing the the inclusion of 15 units selling for ~$100,000 in a building with other units priced ~$400k and up. It should be interesting watching this project come out of the ground.

Here's the website for the project: Greenbridge Developments

After the session, I went to dinner with some friends from planning and the B-school at the Carolina Brewery. It was nice going out and I met some new people.

In other news, Tech made the Tournament!!!

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Last night I attempted a new recipe for dinner that I found on a food blog I frequent. The recipe was for panko-crusted salmon. If you're not familiar with panko it's Japanese bread crumbs. I'd never made anything with panko but this recipe was delicious and very easy. I forgot to salt and pepper the fillet and I think I'd cut out some of thyme next time around but it was great. I highly recommend panko-crusted salmon (you can also use other types of thick filleted fish).

The picture on the blog is better than mine but here's the traditional camera phone shot.

Done!

For the past month or so my boss, a coworker, our intern, and I have been plugging through this year's application for a $50 million allocation of New Markets Tax Credits and we finally finished yesterday at 3:30 beating the 5:00 online submission deadline of 5:00 (It was originally due last Wednesday at 5 but the submission site was down so it was extended a week giving time for many more revisions). It's been a lot of work but a great learning experience. Putting it in the school context it was nice to have good group members.

I was thinking about it last night, and the last two weeks have involved working late usually to 6 or 7 and sometimes to 8 (not really late for a lot of people but later than my normal time of 4:30) which was eriely similar to dead week and finals week at Tech. The focus on one thing for so long is something I haven't experienced in quite awhile and the sense of relief that it is done has started to come over me. Unfortunately we won't find out if we are awarded the allocation until early fall. My boss is taking today off and I considered it but I may just leave early this afternoon. Today is going to feel like going 90 to nothing; I'll have to shift gears and get back in the normal work groove.

If you're curious as to what New Markets Tax Credits a presentation from one of the consultants we've used to help review drafts of our application is linked below. The NMTC programs is different from the Low Income Housing Tax Credits we usually deal with in that it's for commercial development in disadvantaged communities and we apply for the credits instead of the developer.

NMTC Presentation

Weekend

This weekend my dad came up to visit since my uncle was also in town. They're both starting to try to get my grandparents to do some better financial planning and getting things in order as their health is unfortunately starting to grow worse. They've always been pretty tight lipped about their financial state and rental properties but it's time that some knowledge be imparted so when the time comes for the family to start taking care of things we know their wishes and what needs to be done.

In more positive news, dad and I golfed yesterday morning at Brevofield in Wake Forest. It was a beautiful morning but very blustery which made it coooolllddd. We both didn't play badly but I lost yet again 108 to 111. Overall my driving was much improved thanks to some tweeks I made on the range last weekend and I didn't have any double digit scores until I fell apart on 14 and 15. I even had a couple of greens in regulation (two shots to the green on par four, three shots on par five) which was a big improvement!

After golfing we headed back to my apartment to kill some time before hitting up the Breir Creek Carolina Ale House for Tech vs. BC and UNC vs. Duke game watching. Six Tech alums showed up for our game but since we were going up against the big game they only put our game on one small tv out of the thirty or so they had, but we still had a good time and Tech won. I think we're in the tournament now with a .500 record in the ACC and 20 wins.

Beesketball

It's been a busy couple of weeks (I'll post more on Tuesday after the big project is done) but there's been some fun mixed in. First the symphony on Sunday and then I received an e-mail on Wednesday saying that the six seed Tech women's bball team had extra tickets reserved for local alums for the ACC tournament. What's better than getting to see Tech sports? Getting to see Tech sports in awesome seats for free! I jumped on the offer and the Chalmers and I headed west to Greensboro Thursday and Friday nights.

The first round game was against eleven seed Miami and we dominated the game leading to the team's 20th win. Unfortunately, the great play didn't carry over to Friday night and fatigue from the first game started to show. Maryland definitely deserved their ranking of three and dominated the paint. On top of MD's play the refs seemed to be completely against us. Coach Joseph got a T and we made sure to ride the refs most of the second half which was pretty easy from the first row behind the bench.

Thursday was my first Tech women's bball game and Friday was my second, now I wish I'd gone while in school. Unfortunately the crowds were sparse for both games but the parents were out in force and thanked us for coming. On top of the good time I finally got to wear my "bee" shorts I posted about a couple of weeks ago.

Here are some camera phone pics from Thursday's game:





Friday's game: