Jess’s Blog

Well, since this is probably my last blog for my Survey Research Methods class, I think it is only fitting that I blog about the wonderful Red vines that I have eaten every class for the past couple of weeks!
Red vines are “THE Premium Quality Licorice,” according to redvines.com. They resemble Twizzlers, and taste very similar too!
Robert has had two huge, 4 lb tubs of Red vines sitting out in class for the past couple of weeks. Our class is conveniently at 1pm, but I don’t ever have time to eat lunch before it. And last week, he had them in the lab every time I went in there. SOOOO…I have probably eaten all 8 lbs of the Red vines!! haha!
I must say that they are YUMMY and I have definitely enjoyed them!
To make a long story short, from now on when I think of Survey Research Methods and our Style and Design class, Red vines will probably come to my mind…they were goooooood!

Time magazine has published their list of the top 100 most influential people. They actually chose 104 people because several people share certain spots. The list includes categories of Artists and Entertainers, Scientists and Thinkers, Leaders and Revolutionaries, Heroes and Pioneers, and Buliders and Titans.
It is very interesting to see who the magazine picked as our most influential people. I think one of the most interesting spots went to TWO people: George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Time had this to say about the two:

“Can anyone recall a more unlikely partnership than that of George Herbert Walker Bush and William Jefferson Clinton? One grew up in Greenwich, Conn., where his father was a U.S. Senator. The other hails from Hope, Ark., where his father was a rambler. One was known for his discretion, the other for his lack thereof. One has a son in the Oval Office; the other has a wife with an eye on the job. In a family in which nicknames mean something, it fell to Barbara Bush to give them theirs: the Odd Couple.

“But by joining forces, Bush, 81, and Clinton, 59, have done remarkable and lasting work in the past year. After teaming together to lead the U.S. response to the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, they suited up again last fall to raise money to help victims of Hurricane Katrina. They put their dormant fund-raising networks on high alert and in eight months have collected more than $120 million for Gulf Coast colleges and universities, churches, and for use by the Governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Next week the two men plan to deliver a joint commencement address to the graduating class at Tulane and announce their final $30 million in grants.”

That is an excerpt from the newest Time magazine. I think it is extroadinary that two former presidents, each from different parties, have come together to do such amazing work for not only our country, but the world.

With all of the big hype going on about today being “May Day,” I decided to do a little research. I looked up May Day on the internet and I think I found a good definition on wikipedia.com:

“International Workers’ Day (a name used interchangeably with May Day) is the commemoration of the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, Illinois, and a celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement. The 1 May date is used because in 1884 the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, inspired by labor’s 1872 success in Canada, demanded an eight-hour workday in the United States to come in effect as of May 1, 1886. This resulted in a general strike and the riot in Chicago of 1886, but eventually also in the official sanction of the eight-hour workday. The May Day Riots of 1894 and May Day Riots of 1919 occurred subsequently.
Due to these left-wing overtones, May Day has long been a focal point for demonstrations by various socialist, communist, and anarchist groups.”

Today, May 1, 2006, also known as May Day, immigrants across the U.S. are supposedly boycotting work, shopping, and school to show the nation how much it depends on immigrants. With all of the other demonstrations that have gone on due to the immigration controversy in Washington, it will be interesting to see if this boycott has an affect on politicians’ decisions.
I am not going to publish my opinion on the situation…

Well, it is obvious that almost every American is in an uproar about the rising gas prices.  If citizens aren’t in an “uproar,” they are at least shocked by the steep climb in only two weeks.  According to a Lundberg Survey, as reported on Fox News, gas prices have risen almost twenty-four cents in two weeks.  That is outrageous!

In Maryland this weekend, gas prices were around $2.99/gallon.  At a marina on the bay, I noticed a gas station that said it was selling at $3.54/gallon.

When I returned home to Birmingham, I noticed that gas was only about $2.89.  It was sad that I thought that was cheap!  I remember the days when gas was only 91 cents!

When will gas prices fall?  Or will they?

Will the 2005 Heisman Trophy winner, Reggie Bush, be charged with violating the NCAA’s rules for college athletes? According to ESPN.com, Bush’s mom, stepdad and brother have been living in a home owned by a man looking to handle Bush’s professional marketing. The home cost around$757,500.
ESPN.com says:

“Since Bush has left school, any punishment would likely involve Bush vacating school records, Schad reported. A source told Schad that because it was not an “institutional violation” and USC received no competitive advantage, it is not likely that the school would have to vacate victories. This could technically occur, however, if it is ruled Bush should not have been eligible.”

I, personally, have been impressed with the dignity and respect Bush has shown throughout his reign as the Heisman Trophy winner. Hopefully this will turn out to be a misunderstanding!

This weekend my family and I flew up to the United States Naval Academy where my younger brother attends school and plays football. This weekend was the Navy’s “Blue and Gold” spring scrimmage. Down in Auburn, we had our big spring scrimmage a couple of weeks ago, but since it is colder for longer up in Maryland, the academy’s spring practices started weeks after Auburn’s.

As we sat in the pouring rain, and temperatures in the fifties, I reminisced on the fall when there was a football game to go to every Saturday! Oh, how fun that is! In the south, particularly, football is not only a game…it is a way of life. I could watch football ALL DAY LONG just about every day and be happy!!

So…I began to ponder on the thought of “What if college football was played year-round?!” Would we still get excited in the fall when the REAL season began? Would we get burnt out on a year-round sport?! I’m thinking the south could NEVER get tired of football…

I know I have talked about our survey research project before, and I’m going to continue about it today.  We are surveying citizens in the area to see what does/doesn’t bring them to the Colonial University Village Mall in Auburn.  We surveyed people entering the mall, as well as random people on campus.  The mall is targeting college students with this survey because they want to bring stores to the mall that will attract the college aged students to shop.

Now that we are through surveying, our total came to around 600 surveys.  We take that as very successful, considering the mall director only asked us to get 300.

I can honestly say that I thought this was going to be a lot easier than it has turned out to be.  Granted, we did not have a problem getting people to take the survey, but entering the data and tabulating our results has turned into a small challenge.  We split up the surveys to upload to a website that helps us tabulate our data, and we soon learned that different people typed in different things.  For our question that asked “What stores would you like to see at the mall?”  some of our group members typed in “The Gap” and some of them only typed in “Gap.”  That problem arose for several stores, such as “The Limited” and “Lerner New York and Co.”  That wouldn’t be a problem if WE were the only ones tabulating the results, but since we were using a website, it recognized “The Gap” and “Gap” as two different stores.  At first we thought this was going to be a huge problem, but we ended up combining both of those entries to equal one.

I have learned a LOT about surveying and conducting a proposal with the help of this project!!  I love the hands-on interaction and practice we have been given by the mall hiring our class to conduct this proposal!! I feel this experience is priceless and I’m so thankful for it!!

I am watching the news right now and they are having a round table discussion about the Oklahoma girl who was killed by her neighbor.  I cannot believe how sick and disturbed Kevin Underwood, the man who killed her is.  Apparently, he was planning on eating his victim…SICK.

Here is some info I found on Foxnews.com:

“On his blog, an online diary that he had kept since September 2002, Kevin Underwood described himself as ’single, bored, and lonely, but other than that, pretty happy.’
He mentions cannibalism, asking ‘If you were a cannibal, what would you wear to dinner?’ and responding: ‘The skin of last night’s main course.’”

Oh my goodness…I am honestly speechless.  I am amazed that no one read his blog and turned his awful thoughts into the police.  However, from the sound of things, he probably didn’t even have anyone reading his blogs.

Ok…enough about the gross, sick, disgusting killer.  I think an interesting fact about this story is that he BLOGGED.  The police and investigators are using his blog to uncover facts about him.  I just wish someone had found his blog earlier, and maybe the little girl’s life would have been saved.

Wow!  I am WORN OUT!  Second semester of my senior year has swamped me with schoolwork.  It seems like I have a “final project” in just about all five of my classes and they all seem to be consuming my life right now.  It’s Friday afternoon and I’m waiting on someone to call me back so I can interview them for a feature story I’m writing in one of my classes.  All I want to do is SLEEP, but even on this Friday afternoon…GOOD FRIDAY at that…I am working on schoolwork.  The reason I am so tired is probably because I have been working ALL day EVERY day on my school projects, and staying up late to write papers that I have due.  Last night I got a record five hours of sleep, which is the most I’ve gotten all week!

I am not complaining about anything, but simply bringing up a point.  How beneficial is it for me to be working on these projects with such little sleep? We all know that everyone needs to have eight hours of sleep to be able to properly learn and retain knowledge.  That has been drilled into us for YEARS.  However, a lot of times we just have too much going on to sleep that much.  Trust me, if I could sleep eight hours every night I would LOVE TO!  It just seems like there are not enough hours in the day to get all of the school work done sometimes, which means that I have to sacrifice sleep.

I am the type of person who has to finish what I start, and it HAS to be perfect!!  I like to excel in everything that I do, so I have been pulling a lot of late-nighters this semester to end my college career strong!  I know that my hard work will pay off, I just don’t want to look back at my senior year and say, “Man, where did it go?!  I missed out on so much because I was studying!”  I guess pretty soon it will slow down and I will GRADUATE…AH!

On my way home from Spring Break, I decided to buy a new book to read on the flight from Salt Lake City back to Alabama.  I went to the airport bookstore and ended up staying in there for half an hour, trying to find a book.  I was surprised at the number of “best sellers” out there and had trouble choosing between them.

A book that caught my eye, and I ended up buying, was called Strategery by Bill Sammon. What first caught my attention with this book was, of course, the cover.  It has a picture of President Bush in a deep phone conversation.  Since I LOVE politics, this picture grabbed my attention.  Well, I know you can’t judge a book by its cover, so I read the back and inside cover to learn more about this book.  Surprisingly, this book was about the GOOD things and POSITIVE aspects of President George W. Bush’s presidency since his reelection.  A paragraph inside the front cover reads:

“Every week, President Bush’s top strategists gather in the West Wing office of Karl Rove to plot what they wryly call ’strategery.’ The word was coined by comic Will Ferrell in a Saturday Night Live skit that portrayed George W. Bush as an endearing dimwit.  Far from being offended, the president’s men adopted the term as a sort of ironic inside joke.  In fact, they laughed all the way to reelection.  Strategery is a behind-the-scenes story of that hard-fought election and the tumultuous year that followed.”

It is about time that someone write a book about the incredible things our great President has done, and continues to do.  I have enjoyed this book more than any other I have read recently, and I look forward to back tracking and reading Bill Sammon’s three previous books!!!