Since yesterday I’ve learned of several places Downtown that will show the election results, with sound on: Jillian’s, The Flying Saucer, and Calhoun’s. The owner of Bardog told me he’d have the results on, but I forgot to ask if that included sound. Didn’t hear of any election day drink specials, but Calhoun’s always has $1.50 PBR and the Saucer has the $2.75 Fire Sale. I asked the manager what it would be and he said Shiner Bock. “Is that the best you can do?” I replied. I’ll walk by after the Saucer opens at 11 and confirm that SB is indeed today’s Fire Sale.
Here’s an hour-by-hour breakdown of what to watch for on election night. As you can see, things could get very interesting as early as 6 PM CST (7 PM EST).
Here are links to my three favorite sites for electoral map analysis:
- RealClearPolitics – in my opinion the best site, links to plenty of political articles from the left, center, and right, as well as state-by-state polls.
- FiveThirtyEight – electoral analysis that uses simulations to predict the winner. If you love statistics and math you’ll enjoy this site.
- Electoral-vote.com – only updated once per day. Some people think this is the most accurate of the three.
Wow. Each day FiveThirtyEight updates their probability of each candidate winning the election (electoral vote, not popular vote). Today their probabilities of winning are 98.1% for Obama and 1.9% for McCain. They’re calling all the Kerry states plus Iowa and New Mexico safe for Obama… that’s 264 electoral votes. All he has to do is pick off one more Bush state and he’ll hit 270. He’s leading the polls in Colorado, Virginia, Nevada, Ohio, and Florida. Any one of those would do it (Nevada would get him to 269 which would be a tie, but if the election were thrown to the House of Representatives, the Democrat would likely win).
If you haven’t voted yet, what are you waiting for? GO VOTE!!!!!
A few non-election items:
Here’s the tally from The Window Game yesterday, which I played from 4:25 to 8:25: 20 bums, 27 police cars, 6 FUMOTs (f’d up modes of transportation), 1 RUP (really ugly person), 1 hoopty, 0 appearances by Downtown homeless person Scratchy, 6 left turns out of a lane other than the left lane, 1 wrong way up Second, 18 buses, 21 COGIC courtesy cars, and 0 COGIC hats. It’s early in the week, so the COGIC people aren’t out in force. If I play later in the week, I’ll probably count over 100 courtesy cars and at least 20 hats.
Otto told me about a very cool service called ChaCha yesterday. If you have a question you want answered, you can text it to 242242 (CHACHA) and they’ll reply with an answer within a few minutes. Answers are researched by humans using the best search engines and most trusted sources of information.
Great article on Vaco in the Commercial Appeal yesterday. Vaco is a placement service that matches job hunters to companies in the IT, accounting, finance, and administrative fields. When I was hunting for a job a year ago, they contacted me (one of the recruiters found me through my MySpace account), took me to lunch, and sent me on an interview. Their preparation for the interview was so thorough and professional – they drove me out there, told me all about the company and what they thought the hiring manager was looking for, and gave me a very professional-looking black portfolio to use to take notes. I ended up taking a different job, but I was thoroughly impressed with Vaco and would absolutely recommend them. You can contact them through their website. I’m currently trying to make a go of it freelancing, but if that doesn’t work out, I’ll definitely be talking to my friends at Vaco to help me find my next IT gig.
Still not sure where I’ll watch the election results tonight. Back later with more posts.