Random observations from Wine Bar

I went to the West End Wine Bar tonight to watch the UNC Tar Heels play Louisville in the Elite Eight basketball tournament in Charlotte. There was a very funny moment during the second half with about 2:48 left on the clock when the local CBS television station, WRAL, moved the picture onto a small subset of the screen to make room to display tonight’s Powerball lottery results. The boos and jeers coming from the fans at the Wine Bar must have been loud enough to wake up the guy asleep at the switch at WRAL because almost as quickly as the split screen came on, it disappeared.

 

As I watched Tyler Hansbrough score his 28 points against Louisville, I became convinced that he must know how to fly.

Friend of Bill

The campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination literally took places right in front of my face this morning when I shook hands with former President Bill Clinton at a campaign event. I saw on the news that he’d be campaigning in North Carolina today and drove out to see him with the goal of scoring an autograph.

I arrived at 7:30 at the Bryan Family YMCA Center in Greensboro. The audience was pretty much what I had expected for a 7:45 am event in Greensboro – about 200 people made up mostly of senior citizens and high school and college students. While waiting for Clinton to show up, I struck up a conversation with a black man standing next to me. He is a car salesman who voted for President Bush twice and is considering between Senators Barrack Obama and John McCain. He cited the economy and Iraq as two issues he’s concerned about. He said during the 2001 recession people were not as “afraid” to buy cars as they are today. Earlier this week he attended the Obama town hall event in Greensboro and said the security at that event was “tremendous” compared to that at this event. He also said the audience that came out to see Obama had a much higher percentage of young working professionals.

Clinton finally showed up at around 8:20, took the stage to the tune of Life Is a Highway, and talked for 40 minutes. He complaint about the direction of the country, talked about the great job he allegedly did as President, and praised his wife’s credentials. Multiple times he emphasized a point by pointing out his left index finger in a gesture that I have seen many times in the news throughout the 90s. There were several facts he cited that I wondered about the veracity of. He said his wife was the most “unconventional candidate” in the race because she never served in public office. Later a friend pointed out that Hillary Clinton has been elected twice to the U.S. Senate. I wonder if had misheard. But one other thing he said I knew the moment I heard it was not true and that was that Hillary is currently ahead of McCain in Arkansas, “a state that has voted Democrat for president only three times in the last 44 years.” While Clinton correctly described Arkansas’s voting history in presidential elections, he is wrong that currently Hillary is ahead. I just read last week that Rasmussen Reports has McCain ahead of Hillary by 7 percentage points.





After he got done speaking, he started making his way along the oval shaped boundary that separated the audience from the protective bubble accessible only by campaign staff and Secret Service agents. One of his aides came ahead of collected all the books, pictures, campaign placards, magazine covers, that the spectators were holding out to be signed. Seconds later the former President came by, touched as many hands as he could. I noticed that he has a remarkably weak handshake for a former leader of the free world. After he made his way completely around the oval, he retreated to a room behind the curtains and ten minutes later, his aide came out and redistributed all the memorabilia that have now been autographed.

Updated March 31, 2008 3:38pm: I found a newspaper article about the campaign appearance, with photos and a link to the audio of the entire speech.

Still verdictless life

I had a second round interview this past Monday for the senior business analyst position at a local insurance company. Last week when I was preparing for the interview, four hours of behavioral interview questions posed by five managers, when I started entertaining thoughts of not doing well on the interview and panicking. I instinctively went to the internet to search for more jobs to apply to.

 

That night as I was praying about the interview, I realized that there really are only two things I can ask for regarding my current situation. I can ask for God’s will to prevail regarding my job search and for Him to use my circumstances to strengthen my faith.

 

This, however, is easier said than done. The next day I thought about a company in Atlanta that I was (am) interested in working for. I interviewed with it during my first year for an internship in its mobile content group and interviewed again in May for a product analyst position in its internet content group. I couldn’t help feeling both sadness and anger that if either interview had gone the way I wanted, I would not be in this predicament today. What I want more than anything else, even more than finding a job, is for this job search to resolve itself in such a way that I can look back and clearly see God’s hands guiding me throughout the process.

 

The interview on Monday went pretty well. The hiring manager is currently in the Kenan-Flagler executive MBA program and is hiring a replacement for an analyst who is transferring to another part of the company. Everything I have heard about this analyst is that he could “shoot fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse.” He is transferring to a group where there is a Kenan-Flagler alum and the alum arranged for me to have a quick phone conversation with this guy so I had a good idea what the hiring manager was looking for even before the initial phone interview.

 

But then again, I seem to walk out of every second round interview thinking I it “went pretty well.”

Merrill Lynch looking to hire a proofreader

Because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, soaring gas prices, a declining stock market, and a possible recession, times are tough for everyone. This includes Wall Street’s most venerable brokerage firms.

Earlier this week I was shocked at just how far the stock market has slid when I looked at my brokerage account and saw that my limit buy order for American Express had been executed. I entered this order so long ago that I have almost completely forgotten about it. Looking at the stock’s ten year chart, I purchased at the same cost basis as others who purchased back in 1998. Kind of puts a new meaning on the phrase “Make Life Rewarding.”

American Express is not the only stock that’s done poorly. Time Warner is significantly lower today than it was fourteen months ago when I sold my shares. I figured this may be a good time to buy for the long term and logged on to my Merrill Lynch account this morning to do some research. I was shocked by something I saw on the first paragraph of a research report.

At first, I thought this may have been a clever play on words because the Weather Channel has a major internet presence. Unfortunately I have a feeling the people at Merrill Lynch are not capable of such clever verbiage.

The most possessive man in Chapel Hill

I was driving up Fordham Boulevard on Sunday when I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the following vehicle behind me. I purposely slowed down to allow the vehicle to pass and allowed BuckyCam to document this fine piece of work that is rolling around the fine state of North Carolina.

With gas prices as high as they are, you would expect the guy to be a bit more motivated to either part with some of these things or at the very least put them in his house somewhere. But then again, for all I know this guy's house is probably just as messy.

March 13, 2008 Update: I guess there's no point in asking the guy the proverbial question, "either you own your stuff or your stuff owns you."