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We went on an 8-day odyssey for Christmas break...Lots of driving. From Raleigh to Chattanooga to Kingston to Norris to Greeneville to Knoxville to Greeneville and back to Raleigh. In short it was well worth it, and lots of fun. Seeing all the family and friends was the best part for me, and we had some great food everywhere we went. I took lots of pictures, though not everywhere we went.
Wednesday we went to the Carolina Ale House in Cary for the Biomedical Engineering holiday party. It was fun, and lots of people showed up. Being in a joint BME program, there are lots of people I rarely ever see who spend most of their time on the other campus in Chapel Hill. So it was good to see some of the other folks from over there.
Tonight we went downtown with a bunch of friends to the Flying Saucer. It's a pretty cool bar with a great selection of beers. Tuesday nights they do a trivia game at 7:00pm, and then a little later they set out a free buffet for patrons. Our trivia score wasn't in the top 4, so we didn't win any prizes... maybe next week. 1st place gets $50 off their bar tab. It sounds like a lot, but then you think about the 3-9 people sitting at the table who share it. If you're ever around Raleigh, or one of the 10 other cities home to the Flying Saucer, you should check it out.
Erika put on a baker's hat over the weekend and made a ton of holiday cookies. She put together a plate like this one for each of her co-workers, and she also made some for my research group too!
I saw this sign on the walk to work this morning. It's advertising a group called Wakup Walmart and sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
I've heard a lot of negative comments in the media about Walmart lately. It's interesting. A few years ago my general impression of the company was pretty positive...it had a great distribution system and was able to offer better than average prices. Now I hear things all the time about poor benefits for workers, high competition for manufacturers, smaller companies losing business, etc.
So why is Walmart the focus of so much more criticism now? I wonder if it has a lot to do with how they've firmly established their company as the "big dog" on the street. They're the largest retail company around and they do more business than I'd like to think about. I'm not saying Walmart is perfect, but I think people's reaction to them lately has something to do with psychology.
Given I'm not a psych major, but I think there's a tendency for people to root against the clear leader in a competition. Remember Microsoft a few years ago with the aniti-trust lawsuit. People were so excited to see what would happen to this hug company and how hard they'd fall. And a similar thing happened to Martha Stewart a few years ago. People were so excited to see how much trouble she would get into, and if she'd go to jail. I wonder how much of the public and media backlash at Walmart has to do with this.
What do you think?
Yes. The semester is over. No more classes for almost a month. Grades are starting to roll in, and so far we've done well. Being in grad school basically means we don't get to skip town just yet. We're expected to be around another week and a half to get some work in. But the end of classes means I probably won't have to stay up until crazy hours finishing projects and studying.
Quick exam week update.
Erika is done - Lucky!
I have one final tomorrow, one medium-sized paper due Friday, and a HUGE paper due Friday also. The huge paper is for my advisor, so I've actually been working on it for some time now. Cross your fingers for me.
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