Articles written by Matt Quillen

Life in Auburn is good, according to local residents.

The 2008 Citizen Survey, conducted by the City of Auburn, reported high levels of satisfaction in several areas as well as improvement in a number of categories over last year.

The city scored a 95 percent satisfaction rate on whether Auburn was a good place to live; 94 percent surveyed thought it was a great place to raise children. 90 percent were satisfied with the city schools and 90 percent thought Auburn was a safe place to live.

Auburn University Computer Gaming Club to host semi-annual Tiger LAN 14 event for local gamers in Foy Union next week

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start.

Video games have come a long way since the original Nintendo. Auburn’s ace gamers are ready, are you?

The Auburn University Computer Gaming Club will be taking on all challengers as it hosts Tiger LAN 14 at the exhibit lounge in Foy Union April 12-13.

The merger between satellite radio giants Sirius and XM was approved by the U.S. Justice Department Monday, March 24.

The next hurdle for the two companies comes as the Federal Communications Commission will choose whether to agree with the Justice Department or deny the merger.

As the only two satellite radio providers, XM and Sirius do raise concerns for some that a monopoly would be created.

The National Association of Broadcasters urged policy makers to reject the plan when it was first introduced, according to CNN.com.

“Watch his awesome approach! Listen to his ponderous footsteps as he lumbers closer and closer, for today you are destined to encounter— The Invincible Iron Man!”

With these words (along with some scrap metal and a lot of WD-40 one assumes), Iron Man was released on the world.

This summer, he will be making another debut, following the paths of Spider-Man, Superman and the like as “Iron Man” hits the silver screen.

And he is not alone.

In the next year, no fewer than five movies based on comic books will be released.

A shopper: takes advantage of Goodwill’s closing sale to purchase items of clothing. The store closed Saturday after 36 years in business. JD Schein / ASSISTANT PHOTO EDITOR

For the first time in 36 years, the Auburn-Opelika area will not have a Goodwill store of its own.

The Opelika Goodwill retail store, located on Avenue C, closed its doors for good  Saturday. The store was in that location for more than 20 years.

The closing was because of a lack of donations from the area.

Store manager Jeff Weynand said donations had continued to drop for the last year, and it was too expensive to ship in clothing and goods from other areas to keep the store open.

Kari Finley, media and events manager for Goodwill, said from a business standpoint, they tried to get a yearly donation average of $5 per square foot at each store.

“What we have been typically running in Opelika over the last several years is $2,” Finley said.

Goodwill plans to open a new store in the Auburn-Opelika area in the near future.

Finley said the new store will feature a career center, a free service to help people with job training and placement. New stores in other areas have also focused on this mission of Goodwill, as opposed to only being a place to buy inexpensive clothes.

Alabama’s Constitution, one of the oldest in the country, may soon be rewritten.

An Alabama House of Representatives committee approved a referendum last Wednesday to vote for a new state constitutional convention.
The committee voted 9-4 in favor of the bill.

If the bill passes through the House and Senate, delegates would be voted on in 2010 at the same time as primary elections.

Sen. Ted Little (D-Auburn) was chief sponsor of the same bill in the state Senate.

Hooters on South College Street closed its doors for good Jan. 3.

Yet, as a new restaurant opened in the same location Monday, many issues remained unsolved for the building’s former employees.

On Feb. 19, former Auburn Hooters General Manager Jerry Adams appeared before the Auburn City Council. He asked that the liquor license for the new restaurant, Bogies Bar and Grill, be tabled until he and his employees received approximately $8,000 owed from their last three weeks of work, as well as their W-2 tax forms.