Obama in Edison, NJ Part Two (Marine One Pictures)

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Here are a few pictures from my iPhone of the Marine One going over my house:

 P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.

Obama in Edison, NJ

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How often does it happen to work out that the President of the United States visits your town... to visit a sub shop at that! Next to never?

That's exactly what's happening this afternoon! Obama is traveling to good old Edison, NJ -- to "Tastee Sub Shop" to be exact... which is like only a few minutes away from my house. It just happens to be located at the worst intersection known to mankind so I can't even imagine what the traffic will be like today with road closures and what not (considering how annoying it is to cross that intersection on a normal day).

I've been to a few rallies where Obama has been the key guest, most notably last October where I got to meet and even shake hands with President Obama (and see Bill Clinton a day earlier at my university). And while today might be another good opportunity to "see" him, I'm not sure I want go through the hassle considering it'll be kinda hard to beat last October.

Just a funny thought though - Obama is in town to promote small businesses but him being in town is going to limit and close small businesses in the area for the day for security reasons and whatnot.

But oh well, I can still say: Obama came to my town. to eat a sub!


 P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I'd love to hear from you.

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

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Happy New Years!

Anyone else think 2009 just flew by? It seems like every year goes by faster and faster than the year before.

There are so many things i'm looking forward to this year - graduating from rutgers in may being one of them - and i'm quite excited to see what this new year brings.

I was just telling my parents and my aunt and uncle about a week or so ago how crazy it is that it was TEN years ago when there was so much pandemonium about the new millennium and the Y2K bug. I've been thinking all week about Y2K (and all the havoc it caused). It seems like it was so long ago, yet at the same time - it feels like it was just yesterday.

I was reading some of the 'tweets' on twitter with the hashtag '#10yearsago' earlier, and it was so interesting to read some of the responses. My personal response: i was 11, in the 6th grade, living in Canada (but moved later that year to New Jersey).

It's crazy how much times have changed. For instance, texting didn't exist ten years ago - and i can't even imagine not being able to text or accessing the internet all the time.

I can remember when we were younger and the internet was new (and was connected to our phone lines), our parents would only let each of us go online for half an hour each day (unless we had homework or something, of course). Nowadays, I am always connected to the internet on my laptop and can access it no matter where I am through my phone.

I wonder what was 'big' that year? Except all the hype and the drama the Y2K craze caused, of course.

Anyhow, Happy New Year! I hope it's full of wonderful things for everyone and brings great things your way.

Do you have any resolutions for this year?

UPDATE: I gotta add this. My brother wrote this on facebook, and i thought it was nicely written:

'What a strange decade. We went from the panic of Y2K to a digital decade. In 2000 text messaging didn't even exist. Facebook/Twitter/Youtube and the likes weren't even dreamed of yet by their founders. Most people didn't own a cellphone. High speed internet in most homes was still years away.'

Isn't it crazy to think what will happen in the next ten years?

2009 NJ Governor's Election Prediction

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So as i said in my earlier post from this morning, my project for my 'Elections and Participation' course at Rutgers this semester was to predict the voter turnout rate and who will win in Somerset County (and with what proportion).

I just submitted our prediction, and we predict a tight race between Christie and Corzine in Somerset County, with the following percentages:

Jon Corzine - 47%
Chris Christie - 45%
Chris Daggett - 8%

for the voter turnout aspect, we predict: around a 55% turnout rate of the REGISTERED voters (not voting age population). There are 193,345 registered voters right now in Somerset county, so 55% of that would be: 106,340.

I'll update later in the week with our explanation for the basis of our prediction as i'm still organizing all of our information. Or perhaps when i take a look at the actual results for comparison. I forgot to mention in the earlier post that that is also part of our assignment. When we present next week, we also have to include the actual results, and how much the actual results varied from our predictions and possible reasons and whatnot. So at this point, our assignment is only partly over.

This was (is) definitely a fun, interesting (and hard!) assignment, and I'm quite anxious to see the results tomorrow.

On a general state level prediction, i think Corzine will end up winning (but with a very small margin) the election.

again, a quick reminder : don't forget to go out and vote tomorrow!

UPDATE (7:45 AM on 11/03/09): the grad student that teaches our course sent out the overall predictions from our class, summing up all the counties. Here's the data:


The class expects to see approximately 2,643,282 votes tomorrow (51% of registered
voters) and the final tally to divide statewide:
Corzine: 45.95% of the vote
Christie: 41.65% of the vote
Daggett: 6.21% of the vote


It'll be interesting to see how close we got as a class - as political science students!


Based on an anonymous class vote taken in class yesterday:
80% expect Corzine to win the election
20% expect Christie to win the election


And:
65% would vote for Corzine
20% would vote for Christie
14% would vote for Daggett
1% would vote for Evgeni Malkin (i asked my brother who this was.... because i had no idea... and it's apparently a hockey player).

Election Day is Tomorrow!

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just a friendly reminder that TOMORROW is Election Day!

Don't forget to vote and remind your friends and family to do the same. Just because it is not a presidential election does not mean it is not important for you to cast your votes!

I am definitely interested in what happens in the Governor's election here in New Jersey, and it's implications! To make things even more interesting, my project for my 'Elections and Participation' class is to actually predict the voter turnout and who will win in the governor's election, and with what proportion. We were divided into groups, and our group has to predict for Somerset County, New Jersey.