Tag: ohgeorgia

Oh, Atlanta #285

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

WSB-TV: Georgia Department of Transportation wants to hear from the pleebs about something that they’re probably 20% already initiated into the project, adding express (read: pay) lanes to the top half of I-285

Shade aside, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about the way the world works, is that when a big entity, be it a company, agency or local or even national government tries to look democratic and get feedback from the people in regards to a proposed project, it’s all just a formality and done for optics, photo-ops and public appearance.  I’d say probably 80% of the time, the projects are already underway, and the public is being tapped to hopefully identify and shortcomings or oversights, but with the guise of pretending like they care about the opinions of the rest of the poors.

That being said, nobody’s going to convince me that GDOT hasn’t already gotten the ball rolling in regards to adding Peach Pass lanes to the top half of 285, and that they’re tapping into the public at this juncture just to get a feel for public sentiment, with the idea of pivoting or adjusting the direction of the new lanes based on public opinion.

I’m just curious to know where the fuck these magical extra lanes are going to be built, or if they’ll just cannibalize the far-left lanes of existing I-285 and make them Peach Pass only.  It doesn’t take a genius to identify that there’s basically zero space in between the two directions of I-285, so adding extra lanes on the left doesn’t really seem realistic, unless they add them onto the right, and shift everything down, but that would basically necessitate colossal road work to probably 34 miles worth of highway, feeding the narrative that GDOT is completely incapable of leaving well enough alone, and is always working on something at any given time to all but guarantee that Atlanta’s traffic is among the worst in the nation.

Either way, regardless of if the project is or isn’t actually already started, it’s definitely going to happen if it’s already gotten this far, to ask for public opinion, and I think it’s a dumb one all the same.  It’s like city planners or GDOT schmucks have never played an iteration of Sim City at any point in their careers, and never learned that adding moar lanes of roads is never the solution, and only investing in rail or alternative means of infrastructure do cities really grow, flourish and liberate themselves from the rat race of cars and roads.

Besides, even if and when moar Peach Pass lanes are added, it’s not like the city will actually do anything about the inevitable legions of violators that use them without tags.  Last time I heard about the problem with violators is that there were well over six figures worth of violations that were left unpaid, and that was many moons ago, so I would wager that there are probably well over a million dollars by now in Peach Pass violations that will go uncollected.  So that’s kind of like a double fail that will result if and when Peach Pass lanes are added to I-285, but hey, maybe one more lane is what the City of Atlanta really needs in order to unlock the gridlock that many of us suffer on a regular basis.

Who needs Vegas when you can just go to Kroger?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I wish I had the imagination to make this shit up: South Fulton Kroger under scrutiny for basically opening a slot machine area inside of the store

I don’t even know where to begin with this.  It’s like a hungry lion jumping into a herd of gazelle but there are so many intriguing options that it’s hard to focus on just one, and they all get away and they go hungry, but in this case I don’t know what angle to start blabbing on about and this post is going to (already) turn into shit.

It’s funny though; I like Kroger as a company.  They used to be 24 hr. mostly until the pandemic so it was convenient to go whenever, and the bottom line was always that my dollars always stretched a little further at Kroger than say, Publix.  But ask anyone I know around here, and the general consensus is that Publix is a preferable grocer, because it feels cleaner and safer and more upscale in general, none of which I necessarily disagree with, but when I’m trying to stretch dollars, Kroger is still superior in that regard.

Granted, I still do the majority of my shopping at Publix, because there are literally two of them equidistant from my home and closer than the nearest Kroger and for daily needs and quick gets, time is money and distance wins out, but sometimes when I know I need to make a big trip, I’ll go out of my way and hit up Kroger, because at least where I am, they’re not as scuzzy as say, the ones in South Fulton are, which I am all too familiar with, seeing as how I lived there for 13 years.

But over the last few years, Kroger hasn’t done themselves any favors in the public eye, especially that of the one that resides over the Metro Atlanta area.  I mean, prior to getting hit with the Gentrification Bomb, we had Murder Kroger in the middle of the city, where at least three murders had occurred.  Then we had the Kroger in College Park that was accused of being racist for implementing a series of security vestibules that basically enclosed shoppers inside aisles to help deter theft.

And now we have a Kroger in South Fulton County that for some reason, has decided to put a miniature slot casino inside their store.  Prizes are not monetary, but they’re still slot machines all the same.  Like, my knee-jerk reaction is just to laugh at the sheer absurdity of such a wild idea, and just how flagrantly targeted it is at feeding into racial stereotypes and not even trying to hide it.

Like really, what the fuck business do slot machines have inside of a grocery store?  Even Las Vegas has steered away from the days of having rando slot machines in every gas station, CVS and restaurant, and you can go into a Smith’s or an Albertsons to get just your groceries and not be tempted to dump the remainder of your paycheck in some crappy Wild Cherry or Double Diamond machine.

But not this Kroger, who set up a loosely partitioned-off area with a few slot machines and some sad stools for people to really post up and get comfortable for a wallet-draining slot session.  And it’s at the front of the store, where it’s easy for people to come inside with the sole express of gambling away their money, instead of like Costco where they make you march all the way to the back of the store in order to get a $5 rotisserie chicken. 

Kroger Casino’s spot is where you’d see some other Kroger or Kroger-affiliated stores set up like a Subway, a Starbucks, or like eye glass repair or a tax prep kiosk; random conveniences meant to make you want to spend a little more time in the store to sway you to shop more on actual profit-making products.  But instead, it’s just a literal hole in the wall guarded solely by some portable plexiglass partitions with a sign on it that states one must be 18+ in order to play.

I’ve been to Krogers in the hood; maybe not this specific one, but I’ve been to some rough Krogers in South Fulton.  Usually against my better judgment, but the desire to save a buck or two, or sometimes they’re just conveniently on my route.  I don’t think for a minute that by the time I post this, there probably have already been at least 100 minors who have meandered into this section of the store without repercussion and drained at least $2,000 by now.  The store is definitely not going to spring extra for some fat slob with a fake badge and can of pepper spray to run security for this section, and it’s clear that the intent of Kroger is knowing that they will help create young gambling addicts, and by being in existence, help pad their own bottom lines at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.

As sad as this all is, and the painfully obvious message that it’s sending, all I can do is laugh about it.  It’s fucked up, but I still find it absolutely hilarious.  Kroger is in the making money businesses, and there clearly no moral or ethical boundaries in place if they have an idea that can make them some, and they’re absolutely not at all concerned over the optics of choosing stores in the hood of hoods to pilot such an idea out.

Next thing we know, there will be some form of legalized prostitution brought to you by Kroger, where customers can walk up to a different loosely partitioned section of the store, scan your Kroger Plus Card, and then chat with some store employee in a blue Kroger polo shirt about wanting to get 30 minutes with Kayla, before going into a makeshift brothel like in Taken to get your jollies off.

And of course, this would pilot in Forest Park, or Covington, Georgia, because the seedier the idea, the deeper into the hood they need to be piloted in.  Fresh for everyone!™

#TRYHARDSZN2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Feels like it’s starting earlier than usual: two South Fulton teenagers accepted into 63 and 50 colleges respectively, trying really hard to not humble brag about it

It’s apparently already started, that time of year, in which throughout the country there are overachieving high school seniors who begin announcing, as loudly as they can on social media, just how many colleges they have been accepted to.  Some aim for the stars and only go for the cream of the crop like just the Ivy Leagues, and usually upper echelon schools like MIT, Johns Hopkins and Stanford, and then there are others who just apply for every school under the sun, as if there were no such thing as application fees.

And once the acceptances start rolling in, if the number is impressive enough, then onto the internets they go, boasting-not-boasting and humble bragging about how many schools they’ve been accepted into, with the hopes that some media outlet catches wind of it and puts any sort of spotlight onto them at all.

Of course, it can’t be ignored the dollar amounts of all these scholarships love to be extrapolated and added together, so that there can be somewhat of a tangible number to implement a degree of success and value of their accomplishments as a whole, and regardless of if and when they inevitably choose to go to whichever school is giving a full ride, no matter how lesser-heralded it may be, doesn’t change the fact that they put themselves into a position where they could brag about how many schools, simply said yes, you may attend our prestigious institution of higher education if you are willing to pay our egregious costs for credit hours, books, boarding and other bullshit expenditures.

But let’s get #TRYHARDSZN2024 off with a bang, with these two teens in my old stomping grounds of South Fulton county, which is the area’s PC way of lumping together the hood sections of the Southwestern region of the Metro Atlanta area.  But despite the fact that when watching the video in the article, there appears to be a whole legion of tryhards that have been accepted into 10-15+ colleges, these two particular teens who have hit 63 and 50 acceptances get the spotlight as being the biggest tryhards of the tryhards.

Sure, most of the schools that I was able to catch in the article are mostly smaller school, HBCUs, and schools nobody has really ever heard of, there were some notable Power-5 schools that have shown interest in them like Michigan State, Iowa, Kansas, Oregon and Mississippi State to name a few. 

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Georgia Snow Day 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Photo 100% unedited.  Yep, totally

The best part about not having to go into the office is that the day before, the entire state was going into winter snow storm protect mode.  Thanks to Snowpocalypse a decade ago, the entire state is, preferably, always on the side of caution and quick to pull the trigger when it comes to shutting down the city over thinking they can handle any modicum of snow, because as Snowpocalypse showed the world, Georgia is not.

Sure, it was chilly and the temperatures were rapidly falling, but with the chance of precipitation vanishing, I knew there was no real chance that we were going to get any snow.  Black guys ice, sure, was a possibility, but I didn’t think there was much chance that we were going to get any white blanketing over any parts of the state.  All the same, the Metro Atlanta area was quick to pull the trigger and shut down all of the schools, and my building was quick to declare a delayed opening, which honestly if there’s one drawback to the advent of remote work, is the fact that seldom can we ever be able to use snow days as an excuse anymore for not wanting to go into the office.

In the early morning, since I’m always the first person up in my house, I let the dog outside, and unsurprisingly, it was dark, dreary, cold and blustery, but not a single snowflake appeared to be floating around anywhere in sight.  As I prepared the kids’ breakfast and the sun began to creep up, it looked like a gray and dreary day, but definitely no snow in sight.

Despite the fact that my office had a report time of 10 am, I punted on the day, since I had started working remotely at like 8:45, and I wasn’t about to pack up my shit, drive to the office to set up shop again, and risk burning an hour of relocation and commute time when I had already started working.  And much like responsible people in the workforce, I probably ended up working longer and more studiously working from home that day, because my workload was quite slammed, and I was pretty much on the clock all the way up til 5 pm, without taking much of a lunch break because I was in such a groove.

But it was during one of these moments where I poked my head out to get some air, did I notice that not only was there no snow, it was absolutely, majestically peaceful, sunny and beautiful outside, albeit a frigid 16F degrees and windy as fuck.  So I had to snap the above picture to send to my friends to show them what snow in Georgia looks like.  It’s not my fault if the birds and wildlife decided to celebrate in front of my camera like the start of a Disney Animated Classic.

It’s been a while, how about building another sports property??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the span of the last decade or so, Georgia and primarily the Metro Atlanta area has seen a lot of sports-related projects be dropped onto us.  Spouting bullshit like economic impact, (minimum-wage) job creation and moar reasons for people to come visit _____ to feebly mask the reality that a bunch of old men are going to be getting rich on their investments while the taxpayers of each locale eat the brunt of the cost, we in Atlanta have witnessed such projects emerge or be proposed:

  • ScumTrust now Truist Park, the brand new home of the Atlanta Braves so that Braves fans could get away from all the scary black people in Downtown Atlanta
  • Mercedes-Benz Arena, the home of Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons because there was nothing wrong with the Georgia Dome other than the fact that it wasn’t designed to look like Megatron’s butthole and didn’t have an endorsement built into it
  • Atlanta United’s Training Grounds, because practicing and training at their brand new stadium is probably difficult because of all the traffic in Downtown
  • Gateway Center Arena, in Jurassic Ghetto College Park so that the Atlanta Hawks could have their developmental G-League squad have their very own stadium too
  • It was once proposed to build a Cricket Stadium out in Smyrna, coincidentally there is an extremely high concentration of Indians in the area, whom could probably actually justify its existence, but thankfully nothing really came from this
  • Out in Dawsonville, some developers want to build a Battery-like multi-purpose park, centered around a massive arena that would hope to lure an NHL team back to Atlanta in the event there are any more expansions in the future

So short of an NHL team that the city had already squandered, Atlanta’s pretty well represented in most major spectator sports, with the Braves, Hawks, Falcons and United, as well as minor league baseball and hockey smattered around the outskirts.  And they’ve all got their expensive little homes to mostly themselves; you’d think at this point, the city was actually full of sport venues/facilities, and couldn’t actually find any more means to build sport-related shit to bilk taxpayers, right?

LOL this post wouldn’t have come to fruition if the answer were actually yes.

So let’s congratulate Fayetteville, Georgia, for becoming the new and future home of the US Soccer National Training Center and the US Soccer Federation, and the latest victim member of Georgia’s club of regions to get more than likely fleeced by the building of something that the state had no need for in the first place.

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This is oddly validating

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

We’re #1!  Or #50:  Georgia ranks first (or last) in happiness of employees, according to rando website, then reported by WSB

Considering the fact that I have very specific brog tags for “ohatlanta” and “ohgeorgia” I’ve been critical of my home state since basically, I moved here.  It did not take too long for me to recognize bullshit when I saw it, combined with the age in which I moved here, really growing up into bullshit recognition and as my generation is often liked to be labeled, as woke, there is an odd sense of ironic satisfaction at seeing Georgia win, or tank at employee happiness. 

It validates a lot of criticisms I’ve had and witnessed throughout my life living here, and there’s a part of me that likes to pawn off my own struggles with depression as having reason on account of working.

But back to the data aggregation itself, the rankings were based on criteria such as quit rates, commute times, working hours, injuries, paid time off and state positivity levels.  Considering the fact that Georgia has turned into a battleground state politically, it obviously has a very high rate of contention in general state happiness, as at any given point, nearly half the state is pissed about the color of it.  But if I had to guess what is really anchoring down the state’s general workforce happiness, has got to be the commute times, in which is further anchored down probably by Atlanta itself.

According to GPS, I’m barely six miles from my office, but I still need to give myself an entire half hour in order to traverse home to work, and I don’t actually have to touch a highway either.  I’m usually below the median commute time of 28.7 minutes according to this study, but barely, and any little divot such as a fender bender or some rando school bus being late easily pushes me past it.

And to think there were varying times in my life where I had commutes of 70+ minutes and 55 miles each way, and I was living my life then, I couldn’t imagine going back to such hellacious commuting conditions ever again.

But again, I’m just going to assume most of Georgia’s ranking is weighted heavily by Atlanta since lets face it, outside of pockets of civilization in Augusta, Macon and Savannah, there ain’t shit else in Georgia that could muddy up the picture of the state, and even those pockets are merely blips of population compared to the five million-plus that live in the Metro Atlanta area.  And most are innately aware of the escalating cost of living in the Metro Atlanta area, with obviously the wages not rising commensurate to meet them, which would of course lead to a lot of unhappiness.  I’m sure this is nothing different than lots of other major cities across the nation, but based on this study, it’s very apparent in Georgia, more so than everywhere else. 

Honestly though, when I came across this article, I thought I’d have way more to say about it than I apparently do, but continuing this post any further would just be parroting things already said.  Georgia is apparently full of a bunch of unhappy people in the workforce, and although I don’t necessarily think I’m one of them, I’m definitely not really in the happy camp on a daily basis, but I don’t think a lot of these correlating conditions really help either.  I know my general sense of happiness wouldn’t mind some extra wage to help alleviate a lot of my anxieties and issues.

Rarely are there ever winners in college football

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay, so I’ve been marinating over this topic over the last few days.  The 2023-2024 college football playoff field is set, and unsurprisingly there exists a ton of salt from various fanbases, just as much pointless analysis to simulate a bunch of hypotheticals, and then a whole lot more salt from the results of such hypothetical matchups.  Honestly, this isn’t something that I was really intending on writing about, but it’s getting a little slow at the office as we’ve entered the tail end of the year and the holiday season, and I’ve found a little bit of time here and there to help kill time by writing, win-win.

Honestly, I think the committee did an okay job with the four teams that are slated to play for the National Championship.  The only one I really don’t agree with is Texas, but I’m completely okay with Michigan, Washington and Alabama being in the playoff.  I wholeheartedly agree that Florida State, in spite of their 13-0 record and ACC championship aren’t a top-4 team, because the ACC has been more or less anything but a Power-5 conference since well, Trevor Lawrence left Clemson.

Trying to not sound like such a Georgia homer, but despite the fact that they did lose the SEC to Alabama, I still feel that they should’ve been in the playoff, especially instead of Texas.  CFB is always about recency bias above all else, and Georgia did finally lose, at the worst possible time ever, but nobody’s going to convince me that the two-time defending National Champions who hadn’t lost in two years doesn’t deserve to be in the CFB playoff.

An even harder sell is convincing me, as well as millions of other CFB fans, that a Michigan/Washington/Georgia/Alabama field wouldn’t be absolute money for all parties involved, because it’s no secret that the SEC has flexed on the entire sport for decades at this point, and what better way for other conferences to try to overcome the mountain than by having two SEC powerhouses in the field?

If anything, the one flexible school that is in the field in my opinion is Washington, because they’re always a strong regular season school, but have done jack shit come postseason, with them getting trounced by Alabama just a few years ago the time they did make it in.  Plus they have a far smaller fanbase that isn’t nearly as willing to spend money, travel, spend money or spend money than programs such as FSU, Texas or Ohio State, and as long as the CFB playoff remains a biased invitational, there will always remain arguments of keeping certain programs out for the pursuit of money.

Regardless of my armchair analysis, the one thing that most everyone can agree upon at this juncture is that the CFB playoff field desperately, desperately needs expansion.  Fortunately, this is something that is mutually agreed upon by the CFB committee, but unfortunately this is not the year in which it rolls out, otherwise we’d have a pretty lit playoff field set.

But the word is that starting next season, the playoff will become a 12-team field with the top four seeds all getting bye weeks, and then 5-12 playing games to reduce to eight, then to four, before setting up the game for the Natty.  And although this system is probably more than sufficient to get a lot of CFB fans wet, sure there is a lot for me to like as well, but I just think that it isn’t a particularly good idea as well.

Continue reading “Rarely are there ever winners in college football” →