Dan Mayer's Blog

I decided that Washington, DC is Snow Capital USA. We have had some amazing blizzards here that shut the city down for nearly a week!

Erin who is better about blogging has some photos up. Washington DC Snow Capital USA

So I had a few goals this year. A big one was writing more on my blog... I failed at that... Sorry hopefully you were following on twitter to see what I was up to. I will try to write more soon, I still hope to get back to blogging as I think it shares more important thoughts and ideas than small facebook and twitter updates.. but sometimes the big updates just go elsewhere in life...

peace

Since Dom and Nicole have done such a good job blogging about their experience moving to LA, in their My Move to LA, I figured I should at least do a My move to DC post. I will quickly cover my neighborhood and apartment.

I have been in DC awhile now, but haven't gotten around to posting any pictures. Basically when we moved it in took awhile to buy and build all the furniture we needed and we had boxes all over the apartment. So I was waiting, things have been pretty settled for awhile now, and while we haven't completely got the place set up how we want, it is good enough that we don't spend to much time worrying about finishing it up.

View Larger Map

Our place is at 8th and Maryland Ave, which is 2.4 miles from the White House. We are about 1 mile from the start of the national mall. We are 3.4 miles from the Lincoln memorial. So we can basically walk to any of the museums and monuments and are living in the heart of it all. We are really close to two going out areas full of restaurants and bars. First we are by eastern market, which has an awesome food market, and great Thai food. Then we are close to H street Atlas District, which has been up and coming for awhile. The area was destroyed by the 1968 riots and only now is getting back on its feet. Last night we went out on H street and enjoyed a German Pub, followed by put-put inside a bar, and finished it off with some dancing at a club.

You might think I am kidding, but I always gave Erin a hard time about the smell of Urine in NYC. Apparently, I once said, "What, What? I can't hear you over the scent of urine..."

Well turns out I was right... We were mostly in Washington Heights noted in the below article for smelling like urine.

NYC Smell Maps

So now I like to claim DC is a lot like NYC, but with far less Urine smell, haha

I have been using USAA for years, and I am beginning to use even more of there services than in the past. I think I started using USAA for my car insurance when I was 16, and never really knew anything about it or paid much attention to it as I never had a reason to call and at that time I wasn't paying for my own insurance. When I went to college, I moved all my banking to USAA, getting checking, savings, and a credit card through them. There bank by mail was easy to use and has only gotten better. I called them up at various times when I needed something awkward and they could always accommodate quickly and usually with out any extra fees. I remember two examples in college, which their banking helped me out. A friend needed $800 in cash in a very short amount of time to purchase a new motor cycle. My daily ATM withdraw limit was $200, I called up USAA at an ATM and they quickly approved a raised daily limit for a period of 24 hrs. I got the cash and it was never a problem. Another example was when I was moving a bunch of money around and at the time needed to write a check for more than I had in my checking account as I wouldn't have my rent checks from room mates for a couple days. I called an they just added the amount I needed to my checking from my credit card and since it was a 3 or 4 day thing, they didn't charge any cash advance or fees on my account.

During college I started to deal with my own car insurance, and had a few little mishaps with my car. Most notably I believe I locked myself out of my car 5 times in college. 4 of those times with the car running, because I am a pretty amazing person... Anyways, USAA with out fail would send out a locksmith quickly and cover the costs. Not only that they were polite and helpful the entire time, and never once called me an idiot for seeing that I had in one year locked my keys in my car 3 times. Something I truly did deserve, was mockery from USAA, but no they just took care of the problem.

During college I also transitioned away from depositing checks by mail, and begin depositing by scanning my checks. It was a simple process and got the money in my account faster than ever. I have deposited over 300 checks this way, and never had an issue.

After college, I had lent my friend my car to drive, and she was rear ended in my outback. It was a small accident that really just dented by back bumper. She was very concerned that it would be a big deal, but it really wasn't. USAA and the other insurance companies took care of everything quickly and with no cost to me. I think the bumper repair was $800 and taken care of in a couple days (once I finally took the time to take my beloved outback a repair shop)

The inevitable happened and I was finally in a car wreck myself. It wasn't a particularly bad one, but it did cause a lot of damage to my car. I won't really get into the details of the story here, but suffice to say nearly everyone though my car would be totaled, and I was supposed to be driving my car across country in about 2 weeks and didn't have much time to deal with the issue... USAA sent out someone to assess the damage on my car about 3 days after the accident. They thought it was close but decided to not total my car and pay for it to be repaired. I had a money in my checking account (minus my deductible) about 24 hours after that assessment. The assessment also included a recommendation of the repair shop I should take my car in to be fixed. I brought it in to Boulder Bump Shop, and they said they could get it back to me in 5 days. The car came back not just looking like the accident never occured, and was cleaner than it had been for a long time... At this point USAA is still working with the other insurance company to get back my deductible for me, since I was the victim car in the accident.

One point I have to make about my car accident was that I was about to get ticketed as well... Because, I didn't have any valid insurance on me during the accident. The insurance cards in my glove compartment had gone out of date and the cop was going to have to give me a ticket. I realized I could get to my insurance on my iPhone through USAA's excellent mobile website. I did while the cop was still dealing with the other driver to fill out paperwork. He accepted the pdf view of my insurance and didn't write me a ticket. Just another example of the nice touches USAA provides.

Normally I wouldn't look towards banks to be leading interesting technology, but USAA is on top of it. I have used many banks websites and they range from non functional, to barely usable in general. USAA 's website is amazing, it just makes managing everything extremely simple. Not only that I normally hear they have features way before other banks begin to support such things through their websites. I already covered the check scanning support, as well as the excellent mobile website, but USAA didn't stop there. USAA built an iPhone app, and it is really useful, but had one feature that blew me away. On my iPhone 3G, I was able to take a picture of the front and the back of a check and have it instantly deposited into my account. The iPhone 3G's camera isn't near the resolution as my scanner, I hadn't heard of anyone being able to do this feature, but USAA manages to happily suprise me yet again.

Anyways, what can I say, I love USAA. Every time I need them they are there for me. Every time I use a similar service from another company I am disappointed by the service. USAA just does an excellent job and has kept me extremely satisfied over the years. I really can't recommend USAA enough.

So I arrived in Washington, D.C last night at about 3 AM. I now have the long and exciting task of getting to know a new city. I don't know much about the area, so of course I am using the internet to learn about it. From searching on the local Yelp and Urban Spoon listings, to checking out my local public transit via Goolge Maps.

Anyways, one of the things I decided to do was post on Reddit to ask about, What I should know about DC. If you have some ideas let me know in the comments here or on Reddit.

I meant to write up a big post sometime about my 9 years in CO, and the things I have done (college, skiing, friends, hiking, a 14er, etc) and the I didn't get a chance to do (Ski St. Mary Alice Glacier, butterfly pavilion). Anyways with time running out and my house becoming full of boxes. I don't see me getting the post done anytime real soon. So I guess for now I will say, I am on my way. My shipping containers arrived and I will be loading them up soon.

Thanks to everyone I have met and been friends with in CO, hoping we can all keep in touch.

Hooray Erin finally got around to getting the pictures off her camera... Here is the proof I got over 14,000 feet...

Erin has proof too

Erin is considering jumping to get down quicker, or contemplating life or something...

Mission Accomplished! I win!

Slide show of awesomeness:

* Erin got a couple of offers in DC, not all what she wanted... But where she wanted to be, turned down some stuff she wasn't as interested in that was in CO.

* I climbed my first 14er last weekend Mt Bierstadt. It was a good time, it took about 6 hrs... Partly because it is packed. I don't think I will do many other 14ers as they are to popular and it kind of kills the whole be out in nature when you are walking in a line of people nearly the entire way up and down. Erin and I have been trying to do some hiking every weekend.

* I cooked up half a raw chicken from scratch. Dealing with raw unprocessed meat is gross. The fried Franks chicken and fajitas were awesome though. Hooray only one more step until I can say I really know where my food comes from when I eat free range meat. Time to kill a cow or chicken myself and prepare a meal from that... I will be looking for a good opportunity to do this...

* Erin got a job she really wanted in D.C., at NACCHO. She will be helping local health depts prepare for emergencies, and starts on the 27th and will be traveling to FL for a conference on Aug 3rd... That is one way to get to know your coworkers.

* I was hit by a Semi as the back trailer came into my lane... The Suburu was flattened a bit on the side, but no one was hurt. Since we were the victim vehicle, hopefully everything will be covered by the other insurance. I am just hoping they repair my car and don't try to call it totaled.

* I decided to move to D.C. with Erin cause it is about time for us to live in the same place for longer than 6 weeks at a time. I will be most likely be moving there Aug 9th (which is when my 9 week lease in Boulder) is up. If not I will be moving soon after, as long as I can wrap stuff up in Boulder OK.

So as most of my readers know I am doing a tech startup. The problem is a bunch of people I know don't really know what we are doing. Since we are now bringing on new users as quickly as we can, we are starting to push a bit more on PR. This includes trying to clarify our messaging and make sure it is simple and clear what exactly we do.

From our new site:
"Devver runs your tests in parallel on our cloud, so your test run will complete in as little as 1/3 of the time. That means you can get the results you need – faster.

Devver can run tests written in Test::Unit, RSpec, and Shoulda. Find out if your project is supported."

We have done a couple of things recently to help with our PR push, we launched a new version of our website which tries to explain what Devver is. We also finally announced our funding from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV), which lead to our Devver TechCunch coverage.

So check out some of our stuff, and let us know if it is all clear and makes sense to you. Hopefully we will stop hearing about people that have heard of Devver, but don't have any idea of what we do...

Things are moving so quickly that I don't think I have been very good at keeping track of everything. One of the things that slips through the cracks is writing in my blog, but I am sure there are many others. At least with my blog there are frequent reminders to update it at some point. Unlike say changing my address or renewing my car registration.

My favorite thing lately has been lazy mornings with Erin, most weekends the rule is we don't set an alarm, and then we enjoy coffee and breakfast in bed. It is great to get to wake up next to each other. Then read our email chat about little things, point out interesting articles to each other. A day that begins lounging around together in bed is hard to beat.

So I think this is the shortest lease I have ever had. With Erin's career location uncertain, and where I would end up still up in the air. I signed a 9 week lease at my current apartment... Moving everything in was horrible as I always remember moving. It was made much easier thanks to Erin's family loaning me there van (thanks). I like our little apartment even with its problems, the kitchen is about the size of a shower, the water seems to have no consistent temperature, our neighbors don't pick up after their dogs so the yard is full of shit. All of that doesn't really matter thought because finally getting to live together again after 2 years of long distance and back and forth travel are completely worth being in a crappy college apartment. The only thing that is hard about it is to realize we will have to deal with moving again in just a few weeks.

In case you didn't see it on Erin's blog, during the move we were missing many things in the kitchen like a can opener. Here is a picture of how I opened a can with a screwdriver and a hammer, hooray!

Since Erin has been around we have been enjoying frequent walks and exploring paths and trails that we can take spot on. It is great to get some time out doors and can be really enjoyable when there is nice weather. Unfortunately since Erin moved back here Colorado forgot that it is supposed to have over 300 days of sunshine and converted into a Seattle like place with gray skies and frequent rain. We have had to cheat on our no alarm weekend rule some to get out early in the day before the storms to enjoy some hikes in the mountains.

Lastly my bro is in town which is nice. It was great to get to catch up with him a bit. Since he is in town for a wedding and we have a different wedding we actually won't get to see him much. Glad he got to stay one night in Boulder with us and enjoy a quick hike with Erin, but I hope we will get to meet up a bit more with him and Doc before he takes off.

Erin is getting back into blogging again, perhaps that will finally motivate me to get back into blogging... I am trying I promise.

Erin Miller is breaking the silence!

I am failing at one of my new years resolutions, which was to write more. I haven't blogged here much. I haven't done as much on the Devver Blog lately. I have been pretty active on my twitter account, but that isn't really the same kind of writing. Anyways, I am going to try to get back in the habit a bit. It was a crazy couple of months but I thinks have calmed down a bit.

Quick life update. Erin has moved in with me to my new apartment in Boulder, which is awesome. Unfortunately we have no idea how long she will be here, as all the job offers are in the east coast.

I don't have to travel anywhere for like a month and I am really excited about that. Seriously super excited to just get to have a normal schedule for awhile....

I moved around the blog a bit, and added a bunch of new links to other people I know on the web so check out some of the new stuff in my blog roll.

Last night we went to the really interesting Ignite Boulder event. This was the 4th event in Boulder and by far the largest. Over 400 people showed up to hear the presentations ranging from serious, interesting, thoughtful, funny, and confusing...

I had a great time and was glad I was able to make the event. It did leave me thinking even more about gender and technology. Namely because of the currently raging debate around gender / professionalism in the Ruby community. The comments on the heckle wall seemed to have a bit of the same feel... Anyways, the heckle wall was shut off halfway through the event and I think the event went much smoother after that...

Anyways here is a list of the topics with my quick 2 cents on the talk...

My Mom Just Joined Facebook. Now What? Ryan Wanger
* Mostly just fun, but also some tiny tips on how to deal with it and
things to be careful about...

How I almost died: Traveling sparsely and the creative process Alex Skazat
* About this travel hippy guy... He bikes around the would and has some amazing travel Stories. He got stranded alone in the mountains for 3 days.

How to be a successful musician knowing that you’re never going to make money selling music Chris Reinhard
* Funny, very hilarious mocking of hipsters... Joking that music isn't about the music.

To Influence or Be Influenced …That is the Question Brett Greene
* Um some marketing guy trying to basically convince others to learn more about marketing from him... Lame

“Ye Olde Prince of Bel-Air”, a medieval translation David Mason
* This was simple amazing translating the words of the fresh prince theme song to Olde English, funny. Possibly my favorite.

On Curiosity Niel Robertson
* Very cool quick discussion on the loops and information on wikipedia. Exploring associations on wikipedia. Interesting, another favorite.

Mystery Deck Battle
* Um funny as an idea but really not that funny in practice...

Why Mommybloggers Suck and What We Can Learn From Them Aimee Giese
* Kind of interesting, about the niches and types of bloggers that are involved in that topic. Good to hear about another tight group that I am not involved in

Fame. Fortune. And Hula Hoops. How To Not Suck. Laura Blakeman
* Amusing bent towards personal branding. With lots of hula hoop dancing...

Confession of a NiteRide Driver Jen Newell
* Very interesting hearing about what it is like, who works there, and
the funny stories that occur. Great talk, rock on.

How To Be A Dance Ninja (or not) Nicole Glaros
* Teaching funny and bad dance moves to the whole audience... I was impressed they got the whole audience to stand up... Once standing I could see nothing...

Peak Oil: Does This Mean There Won’t be iPhones? Lilly Justman
* Interesting topic but to slow paced for the crowd basically got
heckled to the point you couldn't tell what she was talking about... The Heckle board / rude audience ruined this one.

Everything in life can be learned from the movie Road House Sam Breed
* Fairly funny talk about stupid lessons learned from Road House

Anyways you should definitely check out Ignite Boulder if you can make it to the next event. Also look for the videos of the talks to start to come online soon.

Videos from the previous Ignite Boulder 3

I was running OSX system update -> 'I need to restart' -> OK -> failed to restart because of firefox 'should I save tabs before closing' -> close FireFox manual restart -> 'there are updates waiting to install should I install before restart?' NO that is why I tried to restart in the first place!

This short update was brought to you by the fact that Twitter only allows 140 characters.

While taking notes I have a tendency to sketch things. I was doing little doodles and I liked a tiny little one in particular. I decided to send a picture of it to my friend, just for the hell of it. He received the blurry photo below with a single subject line...

"I designed a house build it"

He being an awesome architect decided to create something of this and actually turned it into the cool renderings below. Thanks Dom you are awesome and today you partially made my day!

I have been thinking about about this issue for awhile. When I was younger and much more into gaming I thought all arguments for video games changing behavior were ridiculous. As I grown up I have started to realize that everything you do changes you a little, games included. I still really believed that video games like Grand Theft Auto (GTA), didn't increase violent tendencies or make me want to go kill people. After buying Guitar Hero, the discussion was reopened as the game renewed my interest in wanting to learn an instrument. It made me want to take time to learn the drums again. The question raises is If Guitar Hero changes my behavior and makes me more interested in learning an instrument, does that mean violent games like GTA are slightly increasing my urge to engage in violent behavior?

While there has been a ton of research trying to prove the link between video games and violence, [2] including research from a Standford PhD supported by the APA [2]. There has also been contradictory research saying games do not increase violence [2]. Some of the claimed links have been debunked, by an MIT Professor. I would say there is slightly more research supporting the link than against it, because of this the law has looked at a number of solutions including taxing violent video games or punishing parents that allow children to play violent games. I want to cover my thoughts on how I think video games do slightly affect behavior. I don't propose any crazy restrictions, parents should be responsible for their their kids and be aware of what they are up to. Even if a link was completely accepted, taking into account the deaths caused by video games (2 or 3 a year) there are many things that have caused more deaths than video games.

I think there are a few points to consider, about games affecting behavior. How based in reality a game is. Is the action in the game a substitute for the real behavior? The players intent and belief as they place themselves in the game world. Lastly if they see the assumed role is something the player would actually strive for in reality or actively avoid in the real world.

I think the point about similarity to reality is important. If the game's world is so different from ours, I don't think it even make sense for us to attempt to emulate it or have our thoughts about behaviors altered by the game. For instance, Mario which involves eating mushrooms and running around jumping on turtles and evil mushrooms. This game doesn't make me want to get high on mushrooms and run around the world jumping on things and killing turtles. I would say that it doesn't affect younger more impressionable children that way at all either.

In some games with fighting like in StreetFighter or GTA the violence can sometimes a substitute for actions you can't and never would want to make in the real world. In modern society I think we are constantly trying to repress our aggression and violence. Our fight or flight responses made a lot more sense in the past than they do now, but it doesn't mean we aren't tempted to punch someone once in awhile for doing something incredibly stupid. After an incredibly frustrating day, I in the past on occasion had run around GTA shooting everything. This was a substitute or a way to release my anger in a controlled manner and not releasing it in the real world. Is this a healthy substitute? Is this any different from a therapist telling you to punch a pillow, screaming out loud, or pretend you are yelling at someone from your past to get some closure? If you can't substitute games, what is an acceptable substitute?

Some games have larger goals than GTA, but still in theory are about violence. A good example of this is StarCraft, which you simulate a general commanding vast armies to eradicate all of another race. A War simulator then should have the same effects as GTA? I highly doubt it as StarCraft is far more like playing a game of chess than playing GTA. I doubt games like chess, checkers, or StarCraft really have any effect on behaviors except possibly making a person think more about long term strategies and effects. I think the player doesn't personify or have any emotional connection or view with the characters in StarCraft. In GTA since you are a single person interacting with a city, with individuals that react to you, the player is more likely to put them selves into that characters role. In GTA the intent is to make you feel as if you are that character running around the city, in StarCraft their isn't really individual characters to relate to.

The last point is tricky, but I still think it holds some value. The closer an activity is to my current outlook on the real world the larger the effect is likely to be. For instance I would love to be a competent drummer, I don't ever want to run around a city shooting people. Since the first idea fits in my basis of reality I am more likely to identify with the activity I am experiencing. The concept of having a gun and running around and shooting people is so ludicrous to me that my association and my ability to absorb that behavior seems less likely. Now this means that games themselves effect each individual differently based on their life experiences. Since this is true in nearly all other forms of media I assume it holds true for gaming. The issue is because you relate and react to games differently does it still affect your overall behavior the same or to the same extent?

After reading through my thoughts above, it probably becomes clear that I do think video games can affect your behavior. They can make you more or less accepting to certain ideas. They can likely increase your interest in music, or make you slightly less sensitive to the thought of shooting someone. Does that mean that parents or the government should ban all violent video games? No, certainly not. If games were to go so would, books, music, films, and the freedom of speech. It does mean that I see good reason to allow stricter enforcement of game ratings and who can purchase violent games (games rated 18+, but nearly anyone can actually purchase). It does mean as with many things in life I will slightly alter my actions to reflect my current thoughts on gaming.

I have started to believe a bit more that you become the things around you. This is probably a bit due to my slightly hippy girlfriend always wanting to avoid negative energy, but it is also based on life experience. So if I surround myself with negative games full of violence and dark and depressing imagery I will likely slide a bit more into a negative outlook on the world. Some people try to turn their back on everything negative in life, but that is no way to live either. Unfortunately all the depressing things in the world can't be avoided because there are real tragedies and problems that must be addressed and they must be addressed with eye open an knowledge of the issue. One way to gain experience and knowledge of the realities of the world is books, movies, and yes even video games. Games like GTA that expose people to an entire criminal world.

I think I will try to avoid playing as many of the GTA type of games. I will stick to a little less real world style of FPS like Half-Life where I am fighting evil aliens. I will try to play more of the happy and meaningless games like Rock Band, World of Goo, and StarCraft. I won't quit anything entirely, namely because I believe in everything in moderation, but also sometimes running around shooting everything is just a damn good time. I just enjoyed some Rock Band and I think later tonight I will play some StarCraft see you in the games.

Lately I have been getting more questions about why I use the online name Wastedbrains online. I don't do much with wastedbrains.com anymore, it really just serves as an archive of stuff I had done and put online in the past. For many services I still create the user Wastedbrains. It has served as my online persona longer than nearly anything, short of Captian2.

Captian2 was created with a misspelling, which amazingly one person before me had already created a misspelled Captain user name on AOL. Since I have taken more then enough crap in my life for spelling, I didn't continue using that online name. WastedBrains came about while trying to think of a good website name when I wanted to create a hobby site. It was a site that was supposed to host all of my friends and I's various side projects that were a 'waste' of time. The waste of time aspect was what the name referred to, unfortunately that isn't normally how it is taken.

Around the same time as Wastedbrains.com was born, the term wasted seemed to become more commonly used to refer to someone who was drunk or high. The belief that my account Wastedbrains meant I was a partier or a stoner persisted. I recently was playing a game of half life online, and the moderator on the server told me I had to change my name to something that doesn't support drug use. That seemed like the final draw that I needed somewhere on the internet to explain my reasoning and original intent behind my long lived Wastedbrains persona.

So yes, many of the projects and the things I do online are a waste of time. Wasting time with games which I have played for years like Starcraft and Half Life. Wasting time making silly videos, art, growing beards or posting things on YouTube as user Wastedbrains of course. I haven't posted a video on YouTube for likely 2 years, but just realized the videos living there have racked up over 120,000 views. The Wastedbrains lives on in many services I have used, projects, code, and other things I have released online.

I might have wasted a lot of time online, but not everything you do should really have a purpose. When in life is left to experiment and learn if everything you do has a purpose. I experiment, I explore, and I have learned a lot as my online time wasting persona. So hopefully we will see some things done and released by Wastedbrains again in the future.

Many people have seen my old room. Back in the day it was a hangout for many people. It has been years since anyone has lived in my room. I basically visit it once a year around Xmas and wax nostalgic, for a bit. It was time to finally start cleaning up the house a bit, which meant finally taking all of my stuff down. Then getting someone in there to paint the walls and replace the carpet (it is amazing what teenagers can do to a room).

Anyways, it brought all kinds of thoughts and emotions into my mind as a disassembled everything. It took a few hours every day to even get everything down, which gave me plenty of time to reflect on things. I didn't even finish with all the tacks, stickum, and tape on the walls my mom had to finish it all up after I left. I have tons of memories both good and bad from those times back in my room. Many firsts in my life occurred during that period, and many aspects of who I have become were formed then. Oddly I think about how much I have changed now from who I was during those times and sometimes it makes me wonder how much of the old me is still around. I am surprised by how much my priorities and focus on life has changed. Either way I know many pieces of my past are carried on within me every day. So it was sad to pull my past a part, throw much of it away, and box up the rest.

I have some things I collected from the wall (collage?) that people might want, I will be emailing out some pictures of some items to people to see if they care about any particular memento. If there is something you see in the pics posted below that you particularly care about let me know. Ah to grow up, and realize half the stuff you wasted so much time being upset about just doesn't matter at all in the long run.

The second picture cracks me up because the crappy stitching software inverted one of my walls.

A nice closeup of what the majority of the wall collage looks like up close.

One of the coolest things of my oldroom is that all of my friends left a hand print on one wall.

One of my favorite wall paintings was this Batman by Ben.

Another painting I liked was done on the ceiling around the fan, by Jesse.

Room Photo Album on Google Picasa:

Seriously copyright holders are insane! I am talking to you RIAA, MPAA, etc.

They honestly are spending time and money) having software watch every damn YouTube video and if they think it contains music they have rights to they make YouTube mute the sound on the video. Have they heard the quality of the music on many YouTube videos? half of them sound like static filled radio while a 747 flys by off in the distance.

As a result of this there are tons of videos that have muted audio. Even just kids dancing to music in the background and instructional exercise videos. There are many stupid results of this muting.

Youtube muted one of my videos, with music that I don't even like like Kid Rock. I am just pissed because my video had speech by people like my friends and myself in the video. I never made the original audio so YouTubes suggestion that I replace the audio is ridiculous. Then I just cut out all the voices and talking.

Clearly no one is skipping buying CDs to listen to "All the Single Ladies" on YouTube with a couple babies or a fat guy dancing to it. Even if they were worried about that, how about just pull all the TV recorded music videos or songs obviously ripped straight from the CD overlaying a video. My video has a ton of audio content with no music going on and they mute the whole thing. I can't understand the RIAA wanting me to hate them so much. I now purposefully try to only buy small labels music.

My muted and therefor annoying skydive video...

I suck at sleeping. If sleeping was a class, I would have failed it.

Because of this I do all sorts of things to try to get better sleep. I try to cover and tape over the little lights on nearly all my electronics, wall strips, chargers, and clocks keeping my room dark as possible. I have started trying to work out more often so that my body is actually tired not just my mind. I try to get outside so the sunlight hits my skin for awhile during the day, to appease my old animal instinct internal clock.

I have found that if I work right up to bedtime I am only thinking about problems and solutions and I can't sleep. I try to give my mind a break and escape from work and problems before bed. I have slowly developed this routine and I find that I quite enjoy it now. I even miss it when I can't follow it. When I am done for the day I make a glass of sleepy time tea, with a bit of honey and milk in it. I then watch a TV show so that I forget about work and I am basically thinking about nothing. Finally, while drinking some water I read until my book feels heavy and it is hard for me to keep my eyes open to read. Then I shut out my final reading light and roll over to go to sleep.

It might not be the best sleep routine, but it sure is hell beats out the time when I was all OCD like. In my OCDish sleeping stage of life (junior/senior year of college) I had to follow these 5 steps, if any where interrupted I would have to start over.

1. I needed to go pee.
2. I needed to turn my light on and off 3 times.
3. I needed check my closet for trolls (don't ask).
4. I needed to check my sheets for black widows (we found one in that appatment (not in anyone's sheets))
5. Finally I once again had to turn my light off and on 3 more times.

So what is everyone else's night time routine?

One thing that annoys me about Startups is they never really get to take a holiday. I still force myself every year to take a decent amount of time off around Xmas and New Years. I try not to think about work or worry about problems we face much. I try to spend time with family and remember that normal people in the real world don't spend 12+ hours in front of a computer a day. This year was one of the first years I felt extreme guilt for how long I was not worrying about work. It wasn't because I thought I really needed to be doing work, it was because no one else seemed to be taking a break. On twitter their was constant updates about new release from fellow start ups. The Ruby community always tries to make a big push around Xmas, and this year also included the announcement of Merb and Rails merging.

Instead of being excited about all the cool things going on in the community for the first time I was annoyed. I was thinking seriously people stop hacking, just quit for a couple days, go see your friends, families, or lovers and leave your code behind. Just for 4 or 5 days around Xmas, but most people worked up until the 24th, and were back at it the 26th. Some amazingly crazy people were making posts about work on Dec the 25th. I love to code, and I love to release cool things to the world, but it can't go non stop.

I don't think that the change of always working all the time is a good thing. Was it really like this all the time? I don't remember as much going on the previous year. Is it because of the economy? Everyone thinks they have to work extra hard? People still rave about how much European countries produce while most of them have much shorter work weeks, more vacation days, and take their holidays far more serious. There is something to be said for burning out, or time wasted with unfocused busy work.

So 24 hour startup people, slow down. Sometimes, not all the time, but just enjoy some time with the real world remembering the amazing world outside of the computer. I think our community will be better for it and we will build better things, which have a greater appeal to more people.

OK enough of my little rant, back to work!

My lovely girlfriend just turned 25 today. (Is it time for me to stop sharing your age?) To celebrate I will share a picture of her favorite way to spend her time...

I love you, and I hope you had a great birthday...

Wow is this post is coming way late... Which will make it pretty obvious that I am not doing that great on all of my new years resolutions (write more), but that is how it goes with resolutions.

In fact let's see my progress on last years resolutions. You can check out the list on Seekler, because yes it still exists... My 2008 Resolutions, and I will detail what progress if any I made on them...

1. Be Healthier
I think I sort of accomplished this, but with how unhealthy and sloth like I was it didn't take much. In fact this is on my list again. I did start running / jogging some, tried to stay a little more active.

2. Spend more time with my Girlfriend
I accomplished this is some senses, and I am happy with how things are going with us. Long distance is hard but we have been making time to travel and spend time together.

3. More Efficient use of my time
I improved on this goal, but I think I could still work on being better at this.

4. Start making some Art again
I failed entirely, and I just don't see art happening anytime soon.

5. Study AI for fun
I barely scratched the surface on this one, and don't see me having time for it anytime soon.

6. Read More Books
I definitely accomplished this, I actually just finished reading All Quite on the Western Front and A Dog Year in the last week. I also started reading some Sci-Fi. I am hoping to continue to read more through 2009.

7. Read More News
I read a ton more news in 2008, and it started to make me angry. Luckily I doubt I will continue this for 2009. One of the main reasons I wanted to read more was to be better informed around the elections, with that over I am back to ignoring most of politics because it makes me want to punch people.

8. Make Pretheory survive 2008
Ummm, well sorta... Technically Pretheory exists and is a holding company for our old IP. I guess I should have said make our startup survive 2008. While we are no longer working on Seekler or for Prethoery, we are going strong with our current startup, devver.net. I will call this a win!

Spend Much More Time with My Girlfriend!
I am way over this long distance crap, time to get together and live in the same place. This hopefully will be happening in about 4 months. Damn you long distance, damn you!

Be Healthier
A repeat from last year, but health is so important. Last year I started having some knee issues, my heartburn got even worse, and I just have been feeling old for the first time. So I am trying to do something about it. My current project is being able to do 100 pushups in one set, I can currently do 4 or 5 sets of 25 pushups.

Drink Less
Part of my Be Healthier, but also part of my accomplish my other goals and use my time well. College is long gone and I am way to busy to be a weekend warrior anymore. I started to slow it down last year, but I am hoping this year it can help me achieve better health and get rid of or reduce my heartburn.

Become Better with Emacs
Emacs is the application I use to write code. It is like MS Word but is better suited for programmers not writers. It has a ton of advanced functionality and I am trying to learn how to be more effective with it.

Write More and Write Better
Everyone who knows me knows that I don't really understand the concept of grammar. I don't believe in the apostrophe, commas are placed at random in my text. I want to be able to share ideas, code, and thoughts with the world. I hate public speaking, and I don't really do art anymore, so writing seems like the best way to share my thoughts and ideas.

Read More Books
This one is supposed to help me to write better, and also help me to reduce the amount of media I watch. I also find that it is often an interesting discussion topic with people.

Watch Less Media
I have been a media whore for to long. I love my movies and TV, but instead of a couple shows before bed I am trying to limit myself to one show and then reading until bed. Really most of what I watch is useless and not even all that entertaining. Also, watching less TV means I should be able to write, read, and spend more time on my other tasks like...

Contributing to OSS
I got a bit of stuff out there last year. I had a few choice bits of code shared with the world, and a even smaller amount merged into OSS. I am hoping that as we get our primary product up and running we will be working to adapt some open source tools to run on our project, which should allow us to contribute some code back to the community that has given us so much.

More Efficient Use of My Time
To accomplish all of the above goals and still love life, I need to be better about how I spend my time.

That is it, let me know your resolutions, thoughts, or even suggestions for things I should add to my list.

So we run IntenseDebate on our devver.net blog and a few others. I thought on my personal blog I would give Disqus a shot. I would feel bad using a TechStars competitor, but since they were already acquired I don't really feel bad at all.. haha

So leave some comments and check the new system out. You don't have to create an account to leave comments, but you get some nice additional features if you create an account.

Erin and I got to celebrate valentines day together in NYC. We had a blast and did so many things that I can't even begin to cover everything we did now. In fact I am still in NYC but Erin is on the phone trying to buy some tickets for our next trip together, so here I am...

Anyways, for valentines day Erin remembered me saying that I wanted to try hats again which I had swore off in the past. The issue was mostly I hated ball caps, so she got me a sweet new hat. It is currently the favorite thing in my wardrobe, nice! She also got me that bottle of port I am about to pour, a nice 12 year we have both been enjoying over the trip.

Sweet isn't it? Now I need some other recommendations for awesome gifts for Erin (birthday and anniversary coming up), post them in the comments or email if you don't want her to see your suggestions.

I was happy to get an iPhone awhile ago, but all apple products really try to tie you into using other apple products. The thing is I don't want to use iPhoto, iCal, and iContacts (or whatever it is called).

After a bit of searching around I found a site called NuevaSync which dealt with most of my synchronization issues. In fact it was better than Apple's iPhone because all of NuevaSyncs stuff syncs over wireless (without requiring you to buy MobileMe). First I got my calendar syncing to my Google calendar, which was great because iCal on the iPhone being a native app is a lot better than Google's iPhone web calendar. The very fast two way synchronization was perfect and I was in calendar bliss. Originally NuevaSync had a contact syncing bug, so I stopped using that, but they finally fixed the bug a few weeks ago. I now have my entire contacts list everywhere I go. I sync my phone's contacts with my Goolge contacts, and that goes both ways wireless as well. Obviously I add a lot of contacts after getting emails from them and quickly entire their other information like addresses, or on the phone I just take a name and add the phone number, either way it is finally all the same to me. If you have been looking for a great syncing tool for the iPhone to help you manage your contacts and calendar with Google or Exchange, I highly recommend NuevaSync, it has made my iPhone way more useful.

I received this email from Erin a couple days ago and it brightened up my day... It included these awesome pictures...

title: my night -- doesn't it look fun?
body: Oh, why are you not here to distract me from this insanity?

All the travel and the holidays and my GF being around has made me be a bad blogger... Don't worry I will be back soon.

See you soon blog people I promise...

So I am off spending a few days with my girlfriend and her family for the holidays before heading back to actually spend xmas with my fam. I have these thoughts that I will actually accomplish some work while traveling, but I guess we will see how that goes.

Happy holidays everyone, merry xmas...

The mystery of the Maxim magazine has been solved... Thanks Dom and Nicole for my xmas gift!

Well after Erin's last visit we think we discovered something. She is allergic to me... OK, not really allergic to me, but we are pretty sure she is allergic to my aftershave. I have been using Nivea for Men Sensitive after shave extra soothing balm for years, best stuff I have ever had... I hate all the burny highly scented alcohol based aftershaves... This one actually feels good and moisturizes, but we are pretty sure she is allergic to one of the ingredients... Oh well such is life, so good bye best damn after shave, and I begin another long search for a good replacement... (I think I searched for about 2 or more years before finding Nivea, the greatest after shave ever)

recommendations?

I built the world's saddest desk in my room. Yippie for now having a desk to work on when I don't feel like going out to the office (in the very next room). Not great but it works for now.

We are looking for talented Ruby developers if you are one or know any check out the full job posting...

devver.net jobs

Holidays are always an interesting time for me. I get away from my computer and work for awhile. I spend a bunch of time with family and friends. I usually get to spend a bunch of time with Erin, which is a rare pleasure because of long distance. I tend to always think a bit about priorities in life. My goals, my current place, my current path, my future... Sometimes it really makes me wonder if I have had my priorities right, spending so much time doing long distance and not just finding a way to be together now. Spending so much time isolated away working on problems and a startup, trying to slowly create something good and useful in the world. In the end who knows if that is the point of life at all, being able to crunch numbers faster on a computer to do interesting things might just not really matter that much. When spending time with family and friends and building lasting relationships and working on little things you can see in people's lives instantly you have to wonder if that is the kind of work that matters more. Then again nearly every family I have spent thanksgiving with, works at a career that they have put a great deal of their life into... Just some of my holiday thoughts, I am sure it is really a balance between big ideas and goals and more immediate and bonding goals.

I spent this thanksgiving with Erin's family at their house for a couple of days, we had a great time. I got to play Guitar Hero World Tour, with Erin's younger brother and sister (and Erin is really starting to enjoy rocking out on the drums). We enjoyed cards, basketball, movies, and discussion with the rest of the family. Their was always amazing food around, with a delicious free range turkey that even a quasi veggie like me can enjoy. Thanks to Erin and her family for making this a special holiday.

Spending all this time with her family, made me think of my own. I haven't actually got to share a thanksgiving with my family for a long time. I haven't really had time to return home for thanksgiving for a number of years. I have found friends to share the holiday with over the years and it has always been great, and I really appreciate having friends that can so kindly adopt me in for thanksgiving or just share the holiday with me as they are away from their family as well.

I want to give a big thanksgiving thanks you to everyone I have shared thanksgiving with in the last few years:

• Dom, Nicole and Dom's family the first two years I couldn't make it back home
• Jesse and Steve in Vail where we made all the food from scratch for the first time
• Ben, Kate, Kate's little sis, and Jesse in Denver where Jesse prepared an amazing meal and Ben and I experimented with meat pies
• Erin's family who has been nice enough to really take me in as one of their own for a variety of family occasions.

Thinking about families and the importance of those we love around us, makes me ponder on how to best share these holidays with my family in the future. I would love to be able to get together with my family again and enjoy thanksgiving with them. My brother had a family thanksgiving in Portland, and was able to get some our cousins and an aunt together for the holidays. Now not only is my family spread between Portland and Springfield, I really need to start thinking about not just my family. Erin and I haven't really been dividing up holidays yet because we barely have enough time to see each other let alone think about planning trips around others schedules for holidays. It seems most people in relationships this long start alternating holidays with one or the other's family. Thanksgiving here, and Xmas there. For now we always split up on the big one in my family, Xmas. Last year Erin came down quickly after Xmas and we celebrated my birthday along with new years with most of my family in Springfield (Shawn doesn't love us so he didn't come to Springfield... hehe) This year Erin won't be making it to Springfield and I will be quickly heading back after Xmas to spend my birthday and new years with her. I guess I am just starting to think that I want to actually be able to be together and share more of the holidays, not skipping out and away for Xmas, and finding something that works for both of us. I don't think we will be changing anything this year as our lives our pretty busy, but it is something I know we will need to start thinking about for the future.

I also know many of my friends that celebrated their first thanksgiving alone with just their newer family either newlyweds or with a child having their first thanksgiving. At some point I guess you don't divy up and travel between each others families, but you are truly just your own family.

I had an amazing thanksgiving, and a great visit with Erin this last week. It was another simple reminder that she is worth it. Ever stupid day of long distance is worth it, because spending a few days with her is about the best part of my life.

Erin is around in Boulder with me now... nice sort of lazy week holiday week. Still getting some things done. A little less than normal for sure, but it is definitely worth it. We have had some great dinners around Boulder and are just generally having a blast with each other. Tonight it is double date night with dinner and a movie... I feel like I could be on some lame TV about 20 somethings and their relationships.

On an unrelated note I installed the newest iPhone update and my battery life went to crap... can't even last 12 hours with no usage anymore what is the deal Apple?

I am digging the gmail themes for emails. I am the Mountains theme...

I am also digging some of the stuff in the GMail labs. Seriously check out the labs options.

I added my calendar to my side bar. Made my signature stop appearing below the response text. I made the side bar drag and drop, so I could put it above chat and labels... (I try not to use Google chat because it makes it hard to get actual work done.)
My Gmail will notify me if I forget to attach a document that I was referring to in my email text... Ben and I have wanted this for awhile...

I highly recommend you click in gmail settings -> Labs and enable the plugins that will make you happier with your email experience.

My current list:
Signature tweaks
Default 'Reply to all'
Navbar drag and drop
Forgotten Attachment Detector
Google Calendar gadget

Also go vote for my friends Ignighter and Gyminee in this years Mashable awards...

Categories:
Dating: Ignighter
Sports: Gyminee

vote at mashable

my twitter updates are now in my sidebar above my delicious links... a whole new way to follow the things I am thinking and saying.

I just made a post on our company blog about Music Recognition Vs. Music Mashups.

It is more fun than most of our company posts, so I thought I would point it out here...

So while in NYC I woke up and found a weird bump on the side of my knee. It was pretty hard but slightly squishy. It didn't hurt any but it was rather odd to just have this weird bump appear on me. I of course decided that I had cancer and that I should deal with it once I returned from NYC... Long story short it was a small bakers cyst which is normally some sort of sports injury. Yeah me and sports, I think it happened in my sleep, oh well they drained it and I am all good but my hospital visit was pretty freaking amazing so I figured I should share.

I haven't seen a doctor since moving back to Boulder, so I just find a list of doctors in my health insurance network and randomly call. I get set up at Boulder Community Hospital, when I call in they even have someone that can see me in about 2 hours, great. So I head over fill out all the first paperwork and see my new doc, he thinks it is a bakers cyst and should be drained and sends me to ortho. I am told they can see me today but it will be about an hour, 10 minutes later I am in to see my ortho. They decide it is pretty hard and want to schedule a sonogram to make sure it is fluid and not a solid. They send me over to schedule the scan and tell me they will call in a couple days with the results. When I get to the receptionist for scheduling they tell me they can fit me in right now. The tech does the scan and says the doc will send the results over in a few minutes so I should go back to ortho and tell them the scan is done. I return and I am immediately sent into a room, 5 minutes later my ortho doc walks in and says yep it is a fluid and she is prepared to drain it right now. So needle in my knee and the thick vasaline like fluid is drained and my bakers cyst is gone. My knee is wrapped and I am on my way home. All in all I was in 4 different hospital rooms and went from knowing nothing to having my problem solved in less than 3 hours. Simply amazing.

Thanks Boulder Community Hospital. so happy to have a positive health care story for once, now lets just hope my bill isn't to big.

My Awesome Hospital Pants!

The bump on my ugly knee

Anyways since there is another smaller bubble on the side of my knee, I know I need to go get it drained again. The problem is that I am pretty busy at the moment... I really need to just schedule it for sometime next week. LAME!

I think I have had a relationship with my alarm clock longer than with anyone else... Well nearly anyone else... Anyways it has taken to not going off, loosing track of time, and being nearly impossible to reset. I now rely on my iPhone for my alarm clock. So good by alarm clock every single time I woke to the horrible sounds you would make I would hate you a little more and die a little on the inside...

Yippie for one less piece of junk in my apartment...

I have a close friend in California after prop 8 passed he wrote an open letter to it's supporters. I thought it was a great letter worth sharing with as many people as would listen. So I present it here. If you would like to find out ways to help the good fight check out, No On Prop8.

I present a guest post, with his permission of course, by my friend Bobby Atwood.

An Open Letter to the supporters of Proposition 8

You have given your time, your money and your energy to a cause that has attempted to create a second-class citizenry in the United States of America. You have given your time, your money, and your energy to the cause of corrupting the Constitution of California with the first mention of discrimination against its own people. You have given your time, your money, and your energy to the cause of destroying thousands of loving unions between two people. And, congratulations, you succeeded. So, now the question that you should ask yourself: Are you happy now?

We certainly are not. In fact, we are furious. The problem is, you see us as gays and lesbians, but we see ourselves as Americans. You would do yourself a huge favor to look back through the history of this great country and see that in the war of oppression against Americans, your side has always lost. Not only have you lost, but your failures are seen as epic and painful embarrassments that we, as a country, try our hardest to forget. We don't want to believe that America would allow segregation, Japanese internment camps, prohibiting women from voting, and most ironically, the anti-Mormon movements of the 19th century.

The only difference between this Civil Rights movement and all of those that have come before us is that you can't tell us apart by the color of our skin, our sex, or the country that our parents came from. We are your sons, your daughters, your mothers, your fathers, your brothers, your sisters, your cousins, your doctors, your lawyers, your teachers, your public servants… and not one of us looks like the other. Actually, we look just like you.

Maybe you didn't think Obama would win, but he did, and you will hear the echoes of his landslide in our calls of "YES WE CAN" until we are equal.

We are Americans, and we will not give up. We never have, and we never will. The only end in sight is equality, so for the sake of your children's pride in the actions of your generation, please get out of our way.

I started a goal to achieve 0 inbox back in June. I quickly went from 1500 down to 100... I have constantly been shrinking that 100 ever since then... Today I finally achieved my goal of a 0 inbox email policy... lets hope I keep it organized and it is here to stay.

Participating in the Me Meme

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture. (should be super-easy with Photobooth)
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.

from:
Obie Fernandez
Raganwald
stochasticresonance

You should get on this...

Over the weekend Ben and I volunteered for the Colorado Boulder County Democrats. We went out and gave polling location, candidate materials, and amendment recommendation information door to door. It was just our attempt to be able to say at least we did something to try to help this state go Blue.

Anyways Boulder is a funny town. If you have ever been here you surely know of the Boulder bubble, which is full of some particularly amusing people. While volunteering during the early afternoon on a Saturday, we encountered some of Boulder's college type kids. (Admittedly it was CU's homecoming so I am sure that contributed to the craziness). Here is a short list of things that happened while we were going door to door...

* We had some slightly baked college kids sing and serenade us, while taking our materials. Then asking if we had any McCain materials so they could read them both. As we left one guy sang about how it doesn't matter who you vote for anyway...

* I was told to just come in at a house which was clearly expecting more party goers to arrive. They were already long into drinking games. I still managed to interest a few in some materials, before taking off.

* One house opened the door and took some materials while five guys likely under the Boulder influence were busy playing Mario Kart and drinking beer.

* One guy answered in a towel having just got out of the shower, but was quite happy to talk about Obama

* We were frequently thanked for what we were doing, which I wasn't expecting.

* We left one house which had a group chanting Obama! Obama! as we began to leave.

* One door wasn't opened, as it had distinctive party smells and music was playing... Perhaps paranoid?

* We learned to completely give up on asking if the people living at the houses matched the names we had on our list, since it is a college town (and we were in a college) and everyone moves nearly every year.

* I went in one house talking with someone, and noticed there was another person passed out on the couch either already or from last night

* We both remember how shitty housing and living situations were in college, seriously it is crazy some of the places people live.

Anyways, it was amusing and a good time... I hadn't been around that many college kids for a long time... Amusing how big of a deal Saturday football is to people, and how it seems like they have nothing to do on a weekend.

Today I mailed in my ballot officially casting my vote, and being one step closer to being done with this whole election season. I can't wait for the election to be over... So I am crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I have voted, I am done, Go Obama!

I thought this was a great write up by my favorite Googler Peter Norvig. If you are still undecided it is really worth looking at. Peter is an admitted Obama supporter, but he tries to present all his reasoning in terms of facts, not really opinions.

Norvig is also one of the authors of my favorite book Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach... Smart guy.

election 2008 faq

I have a busy week coming up... I think there is more to do than I can really get done... So it is all about prioritizing what is most important, and sometimes that is hard to know.

So wish me luck, and have a great and exciting week yourself.

I am not really a fan of bumper stickers... I actually have never put any on my car. So me finally deciding I should put one on to support Obama matters... Look at the Subaru rocking the Obama 08 sticker.

And Erin doing some Devver advertising during my recent trip to NYC, at the beer gardens in Central Park.

No Arguing With Conservatives

nice one for the morning coffee

So I was reading and excellent blog post by Steve Yegge about the importance of typing speed and realized that I don't even know how fast I can type. I decided to take a quick little speed test and find out. It turns out that I can type about 70 WPM when I am just writing free thoughts like now. I can get about 50 WPM when I am copying the text for the test.

Now this was all on my tiny laptop keyboard if I was on a real keyboard again for awhile I am sure it would improve a bit.

So take the speed typing test yourself and post your WPM...

So part of doing a long distance relationship is trying to find times to visit and make sure you both are still on the same page. It is obviously hard when so much is going on. So a quickly put together trip when opportunity arises is a common lifeline of a long distance relationship.

So after Erin keeps telling me how nice NYC was for the end of summer, I decided I should try my best to visit and see it. Unfortunately I arrived at the same time as a hurricane arrived on the east coast. At least it was kind enough to not delay any of my flights. The rain didn't seem to really slow us down to much.

Saturday we woke up and enjoyed a slow start, coffee in bed as well as a walk with Spot. Then we headed to the MOMA to see some art, specifically the Salvador Dali exhibit that was visiting at the time. That was fun, but we got soak by all the rain getting to and from the museum.

After cleaning up a bit, we headed out to get some Italian food. Unfortunately the place we wanted to try, wasn't really accessible. All the rain had flooded the street, and the restaurant was still open, but could only be accessed by walking through six inches or more of water. After hearing that we decided to call somewhere else that might be a little easier to visit for dinner. Sadly we ended up at Max SoHo, which while having good reviews turned out to be a terrible place to eat. The food was worse than Olive Garden, cost much more, and the service sucked.

Luckily by Sunday it seems all the weather had cleared up and we had an amazingly nice day on our hands. We headed to Central Park, since amazingly I had never seen it before. It was nice to see, and we found the Beer Garden (Tavern on the Green) which had some live music. Afterwords we tried a random Sushi place, which turned out to be awesome, and went home to watch a movie.

Overall it was an amazing time in NYC, even if I was only there for two quick days... My travel there and back sucked, but I guess I just have to blame the airlines for that, which I will write more about soon.

Very cool I like it better than the handlebars video...

Flobot's Rise Music Video

I have a new hobby, that will last until Pandora runs out of new recommendations.

I am listening to all the Flobots recommendations from Pandora and finding some interesting hip hop music with horns and such... Nice

Well today was frustrating. It was one of those days where you find far more problems than you fix.

It seems that there are a bunch of new issues popping up and it will be a stressful week trying to fix them all.

One task that I thought would be fairly simple actually turned out to be rather complicated, exposing one problem after another. It ate away a large chunk of the day. That is particularly bad, when I think I accomplished less chasing around this bug, than if I would have just started to focus on smaller pieces and fix them one at a time.

I think the next week and a half is going to be a very stressful and hard time, but hopefully everything will end up better for it. Wish me luck and don't expect much new on the blog in the next little while.

I also slept like crap last night, so hopefully tonight I will sleep better.

Well it is 08 08 08, which is awesome, and I have a lot to do this weekend. The problem is I really don't know what the priorities should be. So I am trying to right now just clear up as many loose ends as I can. I figure the more little things I get done the easier it will be for me to figure out the priorities and really be able to focus on the bigger issues. One of my goals is to continue working on my Gyminee challenge. So I set out with a goal to finish in the top 10, and I have quite a bit of running to do that. So I just ran a mile tonight and I will be running both Saturday and Sunday to try to catch up...

"If you signed an employment agreement in California, any non-compete clause in it is null & (void*), says the state Supreme Court of California (ruling PDF). Better still, the San Francisco Chronicle opines that the US Federal courts are likely to fall in line with the decision in the way they interpret California law. (Most other states still have non-compete laws on the books and it's not clear this ruling will affect them.)
-via slashdot non-compete thrown out

Matt Mullenweg of wordpress fame, who is also famous for snapping pictures all over the world posted a picture of me... awesome.

Matt's picture of me

This blog post goes out to my mom. She is visiting with my brother, but still isn't getting enough of the sons. Apparently she has been making them frequently check my blog to see if I have updated. So here we are with a little update. I don't really have much on my mind so allow me to ramble little things below to fill the space. If anyone has thoughts or recommendations on what I should ramble about next send me your ideas...

Batman in IMax: The Dark Knight IMax experience
I really like this movie and it was incredibly well done, so was IMax even better? Yes, yes it was... but not by a ton, IMax is really big and I know the film is way more detailed or something, but honestly I can only absorb so much detail at any given moment and there is so much going on that I don't think I can really appreciate or care that much... that being said some of the flying over cityscape moments and such look pretty cool.

The Gyminee running challenge. For those that know me, I am not a fan of running. In fact I only think it is appropriate to run from something or toward some sort of ball (like soccer). So a running challenge isn't really my thing. Since they are one of the other companies this year, I am forcing myself to participate a bit. I ran two miles Friday evening. I didn't wait long enough after eating dinner, which made me want to throw up. Then my legs turned to jelly. Today 2 days later and I can still barely get up the stairs my legs are so sore. So I walked 2 miles today, don't really know why. So yippie for doing something that is supposedly good for me. I hate running a little more every time I do it... but I do feel like I should easily be able to run 2 miles.

Our apartment is really hot, I need to do laundry, but I won't because our place is way to hot. I sit in front of a fan in my boxers as I type this.

I gave in to being a tech nerd and bought myself an IPhone. I know as if I wasn't geeky enough. I now have my entire music collection in my pocket. I have also taken to listening to a learning spanish podcast most days while walking to work. Hola mi llamo es Dan! The phone also has GPS, which is awesome, I finally will be able to drive somewhere and not get lost (Dom that means I will call you slightly less for Gmaps directions). Factoid: I measured my running distance with my GPS.

Tomorrow we give our 60 day demos to a select few people. We are trying an entirely new angle to attempt to entice the non developer crowd a bit more.

I think I deserve some chocolate cookie dough ice cream, I might buy myself some as a reward after the demo tomorrow. (In reality after the IPhone I can't afford any reward, buying it was a pretty dumb financial decision.)

My girlfriend went swimming in her underwear in the ocean yesterday. I think that is pretty cool. I even saw a picture, good times, which I was there babe.

I talked on the phone with my girlfriend for 6 hours on Friday while enjoying a few glasses of wine, nothing quite a long distance date night... I am lame, but I had a good time.

I clearly haven't played enough video games lately, just thought I should share.

I really want to build tank wars for the IPhone, but I don't think it would help to productivity of our company.

I didn't proofread this post, and this post has exceeded my predictions for it, so I will end it abruptly.

I just thought it was time to through some software endorsements behind some software I have been using. I have gotten a bunch of people on Movable Type (MT) over the years, and run a bunch of my own MT blogs. I have been using WordPress.org for awhile now, and I just think it is simpler and better. It is easier to use, maintain, skin, add plugins, and about everything else. It has just been moving much faster than MT and seems to be built on a better code base than MT. So if you start another blog soon try it out, if you don't want to install it yourself you can always use WordPress.com to get a free stripped down WP blog.

I actually moved over slower than most to FireFox 3 (FF3), that was because while it has some awesome features it has some I don't like. Like it included all the bookmarks you have as possible results while you typed in the URL box. I hadn't finished completely moving my bookmarks to Del.icio.us yet, so I made my self move them all before I would switch to FF3. So now I have no local bookmarks on my machines, and I have all the FF3 goodness. I have heard reports that FF3's spell check kind of sucks and misses a lot of spelling errors. I wouldn't be able to tell you because if it misses a spelling error I would never know it was spelled wrong anyways. I do know that FF2's spell check always kind of sucked, it would catch misspellings but it couldn't recommend correct answers to me very often. I just ended up taking anything underlined by FF and searching that on Google to get the correct spelling recommendation.

So yeah if you haven't gotten FF3 go install it now, it is way faster.

Kansas running for State Representative Internet Style

In honor of the awesome new Batman movie, pick up a new Batman graphic novel, here is a list of the best Batman Graphic Novels

Awesome dog, is Awsome

Are you aware of the secret adventures of a cat

Sweet, that feels much better... share some random things with the world today and put a smile on some people's faces... off to basketball

When you have a few hours driving in the car you think about all sorts of things... Today I was thinking nostalgic for part of the drive, which made me think I should post this.

Cheers to a random thought of the past, and a random memory of a past friend who I know nothing about anymore.

Tanya Brodsky once explained parts of the way she thinks, paints, and sees the world to me in high school. She was painting green into the skin on a face of a person, and I asked why should was adding green, when people never looked green, and she was going to paint over it with skin colors. She looked at me and asked, "you don't see the green in people's faces?" It was something like that, I am not sure exactly how it went since it was years ago, but my brain remembers that basic discussion. I looked for years and never saw all the other colors in peoples faces. One day in college, I saw them and now I hardly ever look in a mirror with out seeing the green, yellow, and other colors in my own face. I see them in everyone else's that I have long enough moments to look deeply into. Looking into a mirror this weekend, I thought about this old conversation yet again, and it might stand out as one of the most interesting and sticking conversations I had in high school. So thanks Tanya Brodsky, where ever you are, whatever you are doing, because I finally see the colors.

It is kind of crazy to think about the fact that a ton of the time we (Erin and I) get to see each other right now is at other people's weddings. Long distance sucks, we are over half way done with the long distance time we have to put in. So we only have about 9 months left, before we should be able to live together (again). We are both getting pretty excited about the possibility of the 'next stage' of our lives.

So who is going to be our 8th wedding?

Erin and I had a great time getting to hang out and see each other at Mark and Liz's wedding, and here is a awesome photo from the ceremony.

Today was bike to work day. We walk to work almost everyday, but to show our support we biked over to a meeting, and then to our office later. Luckily it wasn't bike to work and home day. After working in the office all day we forgot that we biked to work, and we walked home, hence leaving our forgotten about bikes at the office. Awesome!

Oh well good times, I just fixed one of the four major problems that came to my attention today, arggg... I am thinking we better rock it this weekend.

I have been trying to get better at a habbit of archive old conversations that are no longer needed, and starting emails that need to be dealt with in a day or two. I did this awhile ago and cleared my emails down to just the newest and most important, but I started slacking and it quickly grew to a mess of over 1500 emails. I am now down to less than 100, some of which are recent / active email threads, and some are starred emails I have to deal with. Either way I am hoping to slowly go through these last few starred emails and then I will finally be set up right to be on top of my email situation. Rock on, so hopefully that means I will less often ignore and fail to respond to people who write me emails, so if you feel like I missed over you last letter or never got back to you or anything like that, shoot me an email now, cause I should be all over it.

I don't have a lot of free time to be writing currently. So the things I am writing tend not to be for this blog. If you want to read about what I am up to, check out our new company blog, The Devver Blog. We are also running on WordPress for the first time instead of MovableType, which is kind of cool. It just gives me a good idea of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Yeah it is a little less of my personal life, but I do actually reread what I write there. So you will see far fewer typos, grammatical errors, etc...

So far things are going well with the new company and project.

I thought this was interesting. It is funny how you see the laws align around really weird and unlikely deaths that happen to really upset the public... Fireworks for example...

Number of US men who will die in 2008

Apple is known for pretty good costumer service (source), so when I was having a minor issue with my mactop (Macbook laptop), I thought I would bring it in for repairs. I will share my really crappy experience with Apple customer service that followed.

I had about 45 days left on my warrant. I had purchase one of the small 13 inch refurbished laptops from Apple. Apple refurbished laptops come with a 1 year warranty. My laptop had been pretty awesome, it had one slightly annoying problem that was happening more and more often. The backlight would flicker a bunch and sometime flicker entirely off for a moment or two. I figured it was just a matter of time before it flicker off and never returned. I decided that it was worth having the service before my warranty ran out. I brought it in, and apple said it would take 3 to 5 days and they would ship it back to me, but I was about to leave on vacation so I decided to bring it in when I returned.

I attempted to drop by the apple store so they could mail it in for repairs. I was told I would have to get an appointment to drop my laptop off. They checked online and they were out of appointments for the rest of the day. I brought it back the next day. My laptop was then shipped off right before Memorial Day weekend, after which I started a new job on Tuesday and figured I wouldn’t have my laptop in time. Tuesday morning, amazingly my laptop was at the door. I excitedly rip it open plug it in and power it on. It comes up for about 30 seconds before making this scary image, and it refuses to ever boot again. Apple had just shipped me back a broken laptop, it was a new case, it had my hard drive, but it didn’t work. It wouldn’t even make a boot sound.

I ship the mactop back to apple for a second attempt at it being fixed. Friday afternoon I get a call while at the office, I am told my laptop is in Boulder, but it had an incomplete address. So it returned to the Boulder Fedex service center and they would try again Monday, or I could pick it up. So I leave work early Friday after spending my first week at a new job with out a laptop, to pick it up about 15 minutes away or so. Now that I have the package I check the incomplete address. Apple mailed my computer to:

Dan Mayer
Apt #23
Boulder, CO 80304

There was no street address, and everything previous with apple had my full and correct address. I checked online and apple has my full and correct address in my online account as well. Through out all of this I had probably spent an hour and a half on the phone with apple between the various repairs / disrepairs. So I open the box, plug it in, power it up… and it works thank god it works! It now makes a weird humming sound when the screen is open at random… My laptop mouse key now sticks and doesn’t respond well to double clicking. So after all the ordeal my laptop is back and basically in worse shape then when I originally sent it in. I will say that the screen doesn’t flicker anymore, which is good, but the mouse key is driving me nuts, and I don’t really trust sending it in to Apple again.

We are going to get the last car loads of stuff from our Denver place. We will be turning in the keys and heading out of Denver. I guess it is kind of odd not knowing when I will next be in Denver, I guess I have little reason to head to Denver very often anymore.

Things have started moving pretty fast the first week at TechStars. We have been in a bunch of meetings, and talking with advisors. We have a ton of work that we need to try to get done tomorrow. Hopefully we will have a really strong and productive week.

It is exciting, and I am happy about the direction things are going for our project right now.

I have added the Lijit widget to my blog to try out. I know some people for Lijit, and it is always good to help support the local Boulder Startups. So check it out on the right side, and click suprise me to find some random stuff I have put up on the web at one point or another. To bad I don't have a bunch of feeds of the old wastedbrains content so I don't think any of that is really indexed by Lijit, but most of that stuff is really old and if you are reading htis blog you have likely already seen it.

My good buddy Dom ran the Boulder Boulder today... Awesome congrats for him, he also did it with an extra 1.4 mile walk on the front and the back getting to and from the start line and the finish line. So he rocks! We also got to play some Starcraft which was awesome!

Dom is also getting ready to move to LA, which is pretty cool. I don't think I would be really into LA, but I am really jealous that he will be getting out to CA. I still have a dream of getting a chance to live in CA sometime! Along with getting ready to move to LA and looking for jobs in LA, Dom started a new blog, my move to LA. Hopefully it will help others thinking about moving to LA, or CA. He is researching little towns and places to live, so it might give others some good ideas on the area as well. I just hope after he moves he updates it some more with the results of the move. The Job, the neighborhood, the activities and things to do in the area...

Tomorrow is a big day, for those in the know...

The new Indy was subpar!

I still think it was better than Temple of Doom, but I wasn't really impressed. I don't want to share any spoilers, so I won't really write up a review... I just think George Lucas probably shouldn't be allowed to be involved in any projects of any type anymore... OK that might be a little over the line, but another great series brought to a sad end. Oh well!

I just passed 600 miles on my silly glider and I love it!

For those that know me, they know I have developed some sort of irrational love of my glider. Perhaps it is because it was one of the first things I built on my own that I actually used. Perhaps because I got it with a goal to loose weight and partly because of my glider I now weight less than my goal weight. Perhaps, because it has moved house to house with me since I left college. Perhaps, because everyone seems to mock it for how crappy it is, falling apart, that it counts miles to quickly, and that it is now held together with duck tape. Finally maybe I like it because when I am on it, I think of my grandfather who every day for over 20 decades would ride his stationary bicycle for 10 miles or so to keep in shape. Who knows why, but I had a great dream in my mind of eventually crossing 1000 miles on that thing before it fell apart. It hasn't completely fell apart, but I am now moving somewhere far to small to keep it around and it really doesn't make sense to transport it again as I doubt it could really survive another move. But I knew I had to make one last milestone before we left, so I started setting my sites on 600 miles a few weeks ago, and today I accomplished my goal with my glider partner. Yes to all those out there that hate my glider, I know my 600 miles wasn't real miles, and that I didn't burn near the calories that it would lovingly lie to me about burning, but it still felt pretty good to glide past that last mile.

I am moving to Boulder in 2 days, almost everything I own is in boxes and I am starting to clean everything. Today we donated a bunch of books to the Denver Library and a bunch of random stuff to the Salvation Army. It was great to do some good, while really clearing out the house.

I haven't been blogging as much lately. I have been pretty busy. So I changed up the side bar a bit, it now has my delicious links. I have been adding a bunch of cool links to that fairly often so you can check that out to find out what interesting things I am looking at on the web. Anyways, just wanted to point it out for those that are wondering what I am up to.

I am traveling around to clear my head before our new project this summer. I travel far to much for someone with out a real job according to one friend, which is probably true, but a part of life when doing the long distance relationship thing.

Sadly my other dog (really my brothers dog) was put to sleep after she couldn't stand up or walk anymore. We will miss you Ginger! I guess that means I am petless.

I am in NYC and so far we have...

Hit an art museum (The Met)
Met up with Dave and ate at supposedly the best Korean food in Manhattan (weird but good)
Seen a broadway show (In the Hieghts)
Walked 4+ miles with a cart to get and bring groceries home
Had some random angry woman follow us around while threatening to kill us
BBQed in Erin's awesome NYC backyard
Seen a TV show filmed (The Daily Show)
Had dinner in Hell's Kitchen
Walked the dog around bunch and taken Spot to the Dog park
Ride the Subway all over the place
Enjoyed a nice evening on the Hudson river having some drinks
Went shopping on fashion avenue, although I didn't buy anything.

I think the plan is to hit one more museum before I go... Good times.

So we are moving back to Boulder we signed a lease and have one month left in this old Denver house. We are trying to shrink the amount of stuff we own since we are moving into a place about 1/3 of the size of our current house. That and moving is a great time to do spring cleaning. The amount of stuff I have found to throw out, give away, donate, or sell is pretty crazy. It always makes me think of fight club... You are not your khakis!

So away things go and with that I will post links to some of the craigslist ads in case any of my friends are interested in anything...

set of 4 tires
some old video game stuff
microwave
my old projector
Bumper Pool / Poker Table

We have some other stuff, and we have already sold some things and taken down the posts... Best of all I sold my washer and dryer, which is great cause they SUCK to move!

Since we are in a bit of a transition we have had a bit of extra time which is nice. So when Kate's work had set up a volunteer day at Habitat for Humanity, Ben and I decided to tag along and help out. I have always liked Habitat, but never actually volunteered for them. I found the whole experience rewarding, and generally a good time. Even with my limited (OK barely existent) building knowledge I felt like we actually helped contribute a good deal.

So basically how it worked was we showed up at the build site at 9am, and waited for the rest of group to arrive. While waiting we signed in, got hard hats, and safety glasses. We were given a quick talk about the Habitat organization, then a brief safety briefing. People that get homes in the program have to help work for the organization for 250 hours before they receive their house. We were lucky enough to be helping build a house for a woman who was there helping build her own house with us. It was cool to get a chance to talk to someone that organization was actually helping. (I also figured by the time the project is done, if anything ever breaks or goes wrong she will now have all the experience required to fix it, which is cool.) So after meet and greets with the crew, and Kate's coworkers, we got to work.

The first task I was assigned was spackling, basically all the window and door frames had a bunch of holes from the nails used to install them. I went around and filled all the holes with spackle and waited for it to dry. Then I sanded off the spackle to leave a smooth surface to paint over. Ben, Kate, and many of the coworkers were painting the ceiling and walls as I did this, by the time they finished up all the windows and doors were ready for them. After spackling everything there was to spackle, Ben and I were teamed up to build shelves into the linen closet. I had never build shelves (nor much of anything), but the project lead gave us some quick directions and we started taking measurements and collecting wood to be cut. We then were given a quick briefing on how to use some of the power circular saws. We then made bunch of cuts and measurements. We had to not mess up because we had enough wood to build the shelves but only with 1 inch of extra wood to spare. we did screw up our first set of cuts and cut everything 1/8 of an inch to short. That turned to be just fine as we cover the missing section with the actual shelf. We got that all installed, and I spackled it of course. The day was winding down, but I was given one more task, using a straight bar rip part of the door frame off the wall with out breaking it, because it wasn't installed correctly. I pried it off carefully. Then I began fixing the wall so the frame could be installed flat and correctly this time. I reattached the frame, and of course spackled the hell out of it, before calling it a day.

It was cool to learn a bit more about construction, make various angled cuts, and work with power tools (I managed not to hurt anyone, crazy). It was also cool to chat with the full time employees of the organization and see how good they were about reducing waste, recycling, and building very energy efficient homes. It was also really cool to talk with the woman who would soon be moving into the house we worked on with her family. The house is about 3 weeks away from completion, and was really coming together. It was cool to be able to show up at the beginning of the day and very easily see the progress that our team made while there. I honestly just has a good time in general, even when it started snowing while we were working. I would highly recommend volunteering for Habitat, sometime if you never have. It was my first time and others said it wasn't always as rewarding because sometimes people show up and are just not be capable of really helping at the current stage of the project, so I am sure the experience various greatly depending on how useful you feel while there.

Anyways, thanks Kate for letting me tag along with your company. I was even on good behavior and didn't make you embarrassed at all, that is until we were about 20 seconds away in your car...

SPACKLE!

Currently everything is in a weird state, so I am kind of bouncing around while preparing for a new big challenge. Unfortunately, I can't really publicly talk about what is next for myself yet, but hopefully I can make it public pretty soon. So that has been kind of stressful, it will require me moving (back to Boulder), so we are currently searching for a new place. Something that makes that harder is the fact that the house we are currently renting sold, and the new owners haven't let us know when they want us out. We could have to be out by the end of the month, which wouldn't go over very well.

As part of preparing for my next project, we have put Seekler in maintenance mode. Meaning, it will no longer get any new features or real work. We will fix any huge or security related bugs, but that is it. It is kind of sad, but it was definitely time to move on as we just couldn't see that project taking us where we wanted to be as a business. We did a little write up about moving on from Seekler, over at our Pretheory blog. Thanks to everyone who supported us and tried it out.

The nice thing is during this awkward between projects time, while we are working, we are also just taking care of bunch of little things. It gave me time to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, I am planning a trip to visit Erin in NYC, and I am doing spring cleaning and filling bags to bring to the salvation army, selling stuff on craigslist, and giving away some things I just don't want to deal with moving.

Also, one of my best friends just got engaged, so we got together to celebrate that, which was a good time. Congrats to Jesse and Annie, I wish them a life of happiness together, and really enjoy hanging out with them both. So yeah that is a nice little recap on things that have been going on lately.

The Flobots are taking off and incredibly fast. The signed with Universal, who agreed to re-release their album untouched even though it mocks record executives. They are the number one requested song on radio stations in LA, Detroit, Utah, and a whole bunch of other places.

Most recently their single Handlebars hit the top 100 downloads on iTunes. It is currently 85 as I read this. I am seriously considering buying another copy of the song to just help them on their way. They have some shows in Boulder and Ft. Collins coming up so if you can check those shows out.

Rock on Jesse Walker, Rock on!

It is time for me to yell at myself for being a bad blogger. Normally I post snippy comments on my friends blogs when they stop making updates, and here I am not making updates.

I know I am lame, I apologize. I actually have a lot to post about, but can't seem to really focus enough to take the time to write anything out. I will try to get on it pretty soon. We haven't put a new post over on our blog at Pretheory for quite awhile either... argg, I am being a bad blogger multiple places.

I am actually making some posts over at the Energy Drink Review blog, as the company that bought it has hired me to contribute some reviews and posts and clean the site up a little bit.

OK so there is a lame post about not posting... It says almost nothing worthwhile or of value, but at least it makes me not feel guilty about not posting for another day.

How is it that visibility doesn't have an 'a' in it? I guess I pronounce it visa-bility. Seriously though say the word a couple times and tell me that you don't feel it should have an 'a' somewhere in there.

Damn you english, give me spanish with out the masculine feminine and also drop the accents because I don't believe in those either.

Application writting sucks.

I am back and I am sick I was sick the last couple days of the trip and that sucked... I really wish I could fall asleep but my body will sleep no more...

Well wonder no longer. The best action movie with Harrison Ford is Raiders of the Lost Ark. At least according to a merge of 88 different people's best movies lists...

What to know the rest? check out The best action movies with Harrison Ford.

We beefed up the tagging and users on the movie list so now you can figure out all sorts of fun movie questions...

On that note I am gone for a week so I wouldn't expect to see any new posts for a little while.

I just passed the two year relationship mark with Erin. Hooray pretty sweet accomplishment. We will be celebrating by heading out to San Deigo together to visit my brother and Doc and then heading down to Mexico for a couple days. It should be a good time. I am pretty excited for the trip because I need to just enjoy a bit of time away and clear my head. A simple vacations sounds like a good thing for that, right?

So Erin thanks so much for being you, I have enjoyed all our time and adventures together. I look forward to all the craziness we share together in the future.

To celebrate check out the best xkcd comics about relationships.

I just got my tax returns and I am so happy because it is the first positive influx of cash I have had in months... Argg at the current rate we are going it will likely be the last for awhile... Arggg I don't want to have to get a real job.

Oh well off to Costco...

A friend of mine is doing the Avon Walk for cancer because her mom is currently fighting her third bout wiht cancer after winning the previous two. She will be walking / jogging a full marathon. I just wanted to shout some incuragement, and let others know that if you want to help out or support her or a good cause you can donate to her walk. My donation side of life is pretty tight right now, but I donated what I could. Anyways just wanted to say, Go Christa and good luck.

Her team name is awesome also: Joggin' For Jugs

Christa's Avon Walk Page

Steve was in town for a couple nights... We had a really good time, we didn't do anything in particular, but all the nights were fun.

I forgot how sore I can get after playing basketball, it was still a blast though.

We tried some new Sushi place in Denver on Saturday, it was pretty awesome, I think I had my favorite piece of veggie sushi it was called a salad roll.

I am so amazingly happy to have water back that I can barely express the joys of flushing toliets and washing my hands.

Early meetings make me afraid of sleep, I feel like I won't sleep well because I am scared of sleeping in to late and missing a meeting... I have an alarm set, Ben would be around and wake me, and yet I am annoyed with the idea of trying to fall alseep...

We have been with out water since I woke this morning. We called the construction company that is working across the street, because they have knocked out out water (x3), gas, and power before. They got back to us about 5 hours later saying it wasn't them call Denver water. We called Denver water which got someone here to check things out in less than an hour, and they said all our house is good but the water main is dead and it has to be the construction. So now Denver water is sending the main/valve team out to talk / work with the construction crew to see why the water is out.

All I know is right now we have both sides saying it isn't really their fault. At least Denver Water is acting quickly and putting pressure on the construction team to figure things out, but I might have to cave and go buy some water bottles. Once we get water back we are going to fill our fridge with water bottles (refilled bottles, not purchased) seeing as each time this has happened we have wished we had some extra water around.

Best part was we had a meeting this morning and had to go to that with out showers, classy. I have another more dressy meeting at 5:30 so if we don't get water back soon, it will be awkward. Stupid old house and stupid construction.

Update: The city now says the water is making it to the curb side meter, which is where the cities responsibility ends. Two problems they could do a little additional checking, but the curb valve is inaccessible, because it has moved so much over the years under the ground. That piece is the home owners responsibility. Even with that part fixed (requires digging a 4 ft hole), they might just be able to tell us there is a blockage in the houses plumbing. Either way means we need to get out landlord involved to fix our issue. Normally it takes us a couple days to get a hold of our landlord. So we might have to evacuate our house (go stay with friends) until we can get water back. We left a message for our landlord.

Update 2: Roadside valve connection realigned. Denver Water coming (at 2:30) back to check pressure and verify which side of the meter the plug/jam is happening. If it is on their side the city has to fix it, if it is on our side we have to get the landlord to fix it. 1 and a half days with out house water, having a guest staying at our house the next 2 days.

Update 3: So the pressure coming in curbside is pretty much nothing, not enough pressure to get the water out of the basement. So they call additional teams, Denver water figures out that they think it is the main. Which in turn they will dig out tomorrow, if they find that the contruction broke the main, then they have an issue and have to fix it / pay for it or whatever. Either way was were told we should have water by the end of tomorrow. I have morning meetings and have to find another house to shower at, and we have a guest staying at the house tonight... nice isn't it.

Update 4: We have water back 3 days later... got turned on at 4:30ish today (friday). Yippie for water I am so excited I have just been running around the house flushing toliets.

A bunch of friends and I saw the sold out Flobots show at the Gothic, on Saturday night. It was a good time. It is fun to watch the band really make it big. Over the weekend, I heard their song on the radio twice, and heard it mentioned or in ads on 93.3 over a dozen times. The shows are still fun, but I actually had more fun when the shows were smaller and we could all be up close to the band with plenty of room to dance. Now we could try to cram in with a ton of fans uncomfortably or dance all the way in the back (which is what we ended up doing). When your that far back you just really don't get to feel as much of the energy of the crowd.

I might actually get to see them at a tiny show again sometime soon. I should be in Cali when the Flobots are playing LA, so I will be making an effort to see that show.

Well my crazy weight loss continues, but now I have to revise my thoughts that my glider caused most of the weight loss. I haven't been on the glider much lately as I have been busy, but I have lost another 5ish pounds, putting me at 124 lbs, which is really light for me, back at my HS weight. I never wanted to drop below 125 so I am on a mission to gain some of it back, preferably with some muscle, but if I just gain some flab that will work too. So I am thinking that reducing drinking was the cause of this weight loss. I have been drinking a lot less since the new year, and I guess it caused me to shed another 5ish lbs. To bad I don't feel really awesome, in fact my body has been feeling kind of crappy lately. I also have had far more allergic reactions lately than I normally have. Anyways, I have been trying to do push ups and sit ups a couple times a day just as a little break or part of my getting out of bed routine. So hopefully if I keep laying off the booze and eating healthy and working out a bit I might start to actually feel in better shape. I thought once I lost some weight I would feel like I was in better shape, but it just hasn't really changed how I have felt very much. My heart burn has been slightly better but that is about it.

Erin went back to NYC today, which is sad. We had a pretty simple, but wonderful time together for Valentine's day. Next up is her bday, and we will celebrate part of that during her Spring break. So I guess we have some more exciting times to look forward to.

Alright that counts as a short little rambling blog post... getting a few thoughts out of my head.

Happy Vday everyone. Yippie for Hallmark making me spend money I don't have... hehe I joke I kid, while it is dumb and hilarious that we have such corporate holidays, we need them because we didn't create enough cool national holidays in the first place. Everyone needs a break no and again to make them think about the more important parts of life. If I was part of a religion that had a ton more holidays and traditions I would probably be covered, but I am not so I will take some joy in a corporate holiday. Yippie for relaxing good food and spending time with someone I love.

Tonight Erin will arrive from NYC so we will get to spend the evening together, and we will basically be celebrating the holiday for entire 3 day weekend. We have various activities plan and should get a good amount of time to just spend with ourselves which should be great. It will be a nice weekend to not really worry about work, money, or anything else. So I am thankful for this nice little holiday break. I hope it find everyone else well also...

A Valentine's Day card from my mom. Thanks mom.
(For those keeping score posting my valentines day card at low resolution is likely copyright infringement, thanks lobbyists)

All that and no voting apparently the Denver Clerk was not correct. I couldn't vote if I was registered as an independent. The Democratic party does require you to be a registered Democrat, not state law as this is left up the party, but apparently it is a party law. I was turned away, which sucks big time. I hate voting.

Anyways the 2 parties that I don't want to be associated with strikes again, apparently to participate at all I have to declare one not as crappy as the other, which makes me mad cause they both suck. I will be updating my registration tomorrow and become an official Democrat which makes me angry.

I understand why they try to prevent other parties from voting, but unaffiliated just means undecided. Dave apparently you were right and I needed to call the Democratic HQ since they were the one that had the final say. I guess I will need to learn to check with multiple sources.

Cheers to all those that actually could get out and really vote. I just got cold and my shoes wet to come back home!

Oh well at least I tried and at least I am excited about an election for once.

Tonight I will be caucusing for Obama. I hope those of you that can, go participate as well. I didn't think I would be able to because I was registered as an unaffiliated, but apparently that isn't a problem in Colorado, I just sign some statement of intent.

Get out there and spead the word, even if your not for Obama participate, vote.

A first for us and Seekler, tomorrow we will be live listing, during the Super Bowl creating a list of the best commercials during the Super Bowl 2008. I haven't done a live list before so it should be fun, we can get a bunch of our friends together all with our laptops and begin ranking the commercials as they air.

People that know me, know I could care less about the football game, I don't even know who is playing, but most years I haven ended up at a friends super bowl party. So I might as well use it as a chance to promote Seekler right? I don't really care about commercials either, but you have to admit sometimes commercials really can be an art form and often times the best and the most creative commercials are launched during the super bowl. So If you feel like participating have your computer ready, play along, tell your friends as we rate all the super bowl commercials from best to worst live.

Best Super Bowl Commercials of 2008

UPDATE: We are currently ranking these live

UPDATE 2: Thanks for those that participated, linked, or checked out the Super Bowl lists... It was a pretty good little success, best Sunday traffic we have ever had! If you have an account, can you digg it?, as it could help.

This morning we woke bright and early to catch Barack Obama talking at the DU campus. Apparently we didn't wake early enough. I was up just getting moving when I got a text message from Dominic who had seen on the news that they weren't letting anymore people in. I thought that was odd since the doors weren't supposed to open for another hour and a half, but apparently large crowds had begun gathering and it was expect that far more than 8,000 (which the planned center could hold) had arrived. So I quickly showered, skipped shaving for time, and we left the house early.

We arrived at 8 AM to find a huge line that had built up wrapping around much of the DU campus. In fact 3 different lines had formed, and it seemed there were no event organizers to tell you which line was for what or if they were all the same. We go to the end of one line, sent out search parties to learn about other lines. Eventually settling in and not really expecting to ever make it in to see Obama as there were clearly far to many people there. About 10 AM the event hadn't started and we were still very far from the building in a huge line that had only moved perhaps 300 ft. That is when Dina decided to give up and head out, which was starting to sound like a good idea as it was freezing outside and we had been around awhile. At 10:30 Ben and I decided to start doing shifts inside and outside in line so we could stay warm. I had pretty much given up and was just waiting for Ben to crack so we could go home and eat. Then while I was in warming up Ben called and was like get out here the line is moving really fast. I caught up with our group and sure enough we were flying towards the Magnus Arena. We got in, barely we didn't get in the main speaking hall we were in one of the two overflow rooms, some of the last people let in. We sat down and waited...

Barack Obama didn't begin his speech for quite awhile, apparently the reason being that with so many people not being able to get into to the venue or the overflow rooms he went outside to speak and shake hands with all the people that were going to have to just be turned away or sit outside in the cold to hear his speech. I think it was really cool for him to try to make sure that everyone that came out to support him would at least get to see him and hear a few words from the mans mouth. After talking to the outside crowds Obama walked in shook hands and talked for a bit in each of the overflow rooms. Then finally went to the main area to give his speech. After expecting less than 8,000 visitors, Obama reportedly had over 13,000 people come to hear him speak. It was pretty impressive. There was a energy, excitement, and a happiness to pretty much the whole crowd. As Obama's team and group likes to say there was hope. I am glad we got to see some of that excitement, and glad we got to see the man work the crowd.

As for the actual speech, most of his points I had heard before, hence being a supporter. It was interesting to learn some new things. Obama has many plans to help support and help education through out this country, one that I hadn't heard of is increasing the size and funding of Americore, helping make sure everyone can afford college. Instead of requiring military duty for college support you can due a term of duty in Americore, which has a variety of projects many of them focus on improving education in some of America's worst schools. I think it is a great idea to help provide options for those that wouldn't be willing to do military duty, by helping pay for their education if they will help improve education for others.

I like Obama's strong stance against lobbyists, I think for far to long corporate and foreign lobbyist have had a larger say about our governments activities than our people. Why is it no one can go down for more than 6 months to 2 years in all the stock and Enron scandals, but you can get 5 to 10 years for stealing a car? We have laws protecting copyrights for hundreds of thousands of dollars for each violation, and when the vary industry these laws protect get caught and convicted of price fixing, they get a tiny fine that is less than a single individual could be find for copyright infringement? Do these sound like laws for the people, created by the average citizen? Lobbyists have skewed the views and policies so far towards corporations you can barely see any laws to protect consumers anymore. Besides not taking money from lobbyists during the campaign Obama plans to open up a ton of information about their activities so we can know what bills and what people they are trying to buy in Washington. Just making the information public and accessible would be a huge step in the right direction

I am not the biggest fan of Obama's health care ideas, but I am not really against them either. I honestly don't know enough about the gigantic health care mess to claim his ideas are worse than any others. I think other ideas have sounded a little better to me just in a gut reaction sort of sense, but he still has a plan and still will try to force improvement. So no of course Obama isn't perfect.

Obama wants to end the war in Iraq, which I think is good, but I really haven't heard any good idea of how we can get out of there with out making a big mess worse. What kind of withdraw plans does he have? Slow? Fast? Just let the place collapse? I don't know his thoughts and I want to end the war as well, but I would like to know more about his exist strategy.

Obama talked about all these issues and more today. He also talked like every other politician, repeating key points over and over. He said some things that just don't mean anything, are we ready for change, yes. I think everyone runs on the platform, the platform of change and we could do better. Does he love America? Yes. Is he proud to be an American? Yes. Does he have some heartbreaking stories from some small town folk he has meet on the campaign trail? Yes. Does some of this political speak just sound like every other politician trying to unity not divide while bringing greatness to our country before him? Pretty much, which is fine... cause that is part of the game of politics.

When he does actually discuss and state his thoughts on actual issues though, I generally agree. I get excited, thats a big part I am actually excited about the possibilities if he were to actually become president. I can't really recall the last time if ever I was politically excited and motivated by a candidate. The last few elections have just been powered so much by my distrust of another candidate, I wasn't voting to support anyone. I was voting trying to stop what I saw as the worst of two evils.

So I am really glad I got to be part of the experience today. I am really glad I got to actually see the man if only for a few minutes. I am glad that I got to hear him speak happily and passionately about the future. I was happy to see so many people out to support him on a could winter day. I am happy that I can really be excited about voting and supporting a candidate. I am for Barack Obama, and it feels good.

Currently I am taking some time to just try to sit back and think a bit before moving forward in any real directions.

Tomorrow I will be seeing Barack Obama speak. It should be interesting, he is currently the candidate I am most excited about... Hopefully he can keep that up when I see hear him and get to form an even more intelligent opinion of him.

Well this week has been disappointing. We spent some of it doing PR and a bunch of it going to meetings and talking with people in the Denver / Boulder start up community trying to become a little well more known in that community. It hasn't gone as well as I would have hoped. We met some people, got to give our product pitch a couple places. Some people seemed really interested, while it was hard to tell with some others. The biggest thing is now that we are public and not supposed to be working on code all the time, which we enjoy doing a lot more than going to meetings, I feel like we should be moving faster and getting noticed more. It has been slow growth with mild positive feedback.

I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm right out of the gate, but I guess that means we have some key areas to focus on. Anyways the start up roller coaster is a series of high ups and downs, and I guess I am currently on a bit of a down swing. The weekend is quickly approaching, and we have some good ideas for things to do to help turn things around some. So I guess we will get a little bit of a break and rest and then try some little changes and see what happens. Ahhh the confusion of the start up life.

The house I am living in might have actually sold! We don't really know what is going on and we are trying to figure that out. If true I might have to be moving much sooner than I had hoped or planned which would be bad. I really don't want to deal with moving right now. I am really trying to kind of focus some of my energies on other things for now.

Anyways, I am trying not to worry about it until we figure out for sure.

and I would walk 500 more... or at least I will if my glider (elliptical machine for those of you who call things by there real names), lasts another 500 miles.

So I bought the crappiest and cheapest glider ever about 3+ years ago, it has been with me at 3 houses now. I used it a lot for awhile, then in my second house hardly ever used it and it was banished to a corner or a closet most of the time. Since quiting my job I found the need to try to get some exercise because I wasn't walking 2+ miles everyday anymore. We started trying to do random work outs sit ups, push ups, jumping jacks... and some time on the glider. It worked out alright, but I wasn't really getting to my goal weight. Because I would get bored and stop before ever really getting a good work out.

Then we bought Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii, and I started playing marching band (causing me hit 400 miles), which has really quickly added another 100 miles to the glider. My original goal was to make it to 1000 miles and then junk my glider. After it started falling apart and requiring duct tape to stay together, I lowered my expectations. I made my new goal to cross 500 miles, which I just did...

Now my goal is just to take it 100 miles at a time and celebrate each one... Rock on my crappy little glider, we might just make 1000 yet!

Lately I feel like I have had to many thoughts or just to much on my mind. Frequently I have some thoughts that disappear before I can get them out of my mind in any worthwhile state. I guess I need to keep my little notepad around me some more again and begin writing down parts of thoughts to help remind me of my ideas...

Arggg what to do for springbreak... Trying to get to Cali, but some little issues are coming up.

Awesome I get to spend Valentine's day with Erin, Rock on!

Arggg so much work to do, and ways to improve the site so little time.

Awesome, after a great launch that sent to many people to the site, it looks like in just a couple of days we have improved the performance of some parts of the site by over 1000%, boo to the yaaah!

Arggg not seeing Erin for a month...

Sweet, got to see a great concert with Dom and Nicole over break that Erin and I really enjoyed.

Arggg meetings, networking, business plans, revenue stream, meet and greet, PR, and marketing are coming up a lot more in our day to day work life.

Sweet, I like music and I have some cool ideas of things to listen to and givea shot in the next little while.

Arggg expensive bears, hard to train turtles, and un findable (or un existing?) unicorns!

Sweet eat your vitamins and walk on your eliptical machine (which I have and always will call a glider)!

Well another year passes and like most years I decide I might as well make a lame list of my new years resolutions... What are your goals for this year?

Also, if you happen to watch bad TV you can add in who is your
Favorite American Gladiator. I don't really watch much TV, but I loved watching the original American Gladiators, so I might have to check out a couple episodes for the hell of it.

I just had a nice big vacation to end 2007. The end of every year is always crazy and a little overwhelming. I have this incredible build up for all the end of the year events and come the beginning of January, it is always just another year, just another where am I in life? At the end of the year, I have my once a year trip home with to see the family, then Xmas, followed by my birthday, ending with new years. High hopes and expectations for everything. This year things were different. This year I was home longer than I have been since I was 21, my brother couldn't make it and I did my birthday and new years in Springfield for the first time since I was 21. Luckily everything isn't over and back to normal already. I am back in CO and sorta working, but Erin doesn't leave for NYC for another 10 days.

Random thoughts about my break...

Holidays don't feel right with out your family around, Shawn you were missed and it made being home feel a little off.

Be kind to your body, I really don't think I had been getting enough sleep or sleeping well lately, while home, I would take naps, stay up until I was tired, and sleep in not getting out of bed until I felt completely refreshed... This frequently led to not arising from bed until the early afternoon, but I felt great because of it.

Favorite foods, there is always something to be said for comfort foods, being home and getting some Magic Kitchen Thai food, Mel O Cream donuts, and home made lasagna really hit the spot.

Time together, since doing the long distance thing, there is really never enough time alone with Erin. We had some amazing times in Springfield, basically doing nothing. We made each other amazing Crab legs for dinner for 16 bucks. We rented movies, laid in a field (looking at the stars), went on walks, bought cookies, and did nothing special. It was great to know how happy I could be doing nothing in particular.

Everything changes, this year was the first year we didn't do a big planned new years trip in a long while, and I thought being in our home town for so long during the holidays I would get to see everyone. I saw pretty much no one, everyone was only home for a day or two and was pretty much with their families.

It really is fun to bring someone who has never seen where you have grown up, and show them around all the little sights of your town. It was nice to be back and just be happy showing where I came from as a history.

Nothing big nothing profound, but it was a great trip that has put a smile on my face and made me happy about where I currently am in life.

As we come to the end of 2007, we start to think about 2008. I have started to think about all the cool movies coming out in 2008. There is a great list of the most anticipated movies of 2008 growing on Seekler. It is currently or most searched list. So if you haven't created your own best movies of 2008 list, nows the time. If you are interested in what movies I am looking forward to, here is my list of most anticipated movies for 2008.

We also added a cool new feature, when you expand an item, by clicking on the title, you will see the number of reviews an item has. If you click that link you can read all of the user reviews for that item. If you have a favorite lis tyou have been working on you can go back and review your items now. On any list go to your list view and you should see add review / edit review links on your items. These can be small little review about why you placed this item on your list, or large in depth reviews where you really go into the details about the item. Most of my reviews are just short snippets about why it made the list, and how it ended up at it's position. Like for the Dark Knight my review is, "Batman Begins was the best comic movie created, I have high hopes for the sequel. If keep the more grown up and darker batman it will be an amazing movie."

So if you feel like it give that feature a look, since it is new most items don't have reviews yet, but we are busy importing a bunch of reviews. We have already populated a bunch of reviews on our most anticipated movies of 2008 list.

Looks like that might be the final feature to make the cut for this holiday season, but I guess we will see... I love movies, rock on for an exciting year coming up.

The Flobots are in rotation on 93.3 thru December. Thanks to everyone that voted for them, it is not to late, if you weren't part of the crew that got them in the top 10 for the radio, you can still help by getting them in the top 3 which gets to play at a large concert promoted by 93.3...

Just sign up and vote here:
http://www.ktcl.com/cc-common/globalcontestfinder.html?contest=26974

Anyways thanks everyone who has called, messaged, or emailed about the Flobots being on. Unfortunately I haven't caught them on the air yet, but I never really listen to the radio. The closest I came was when Jon messaged me that the Flobots would be on in the next hour, but I was still in a movie theater seeing I Am Legend... After the movie I made it out to my car and tuned in to 93.3, but I had apparently already missed the song being played.

The IMAX preview of batman, was pretty sweet, seems like a creepy and cool take on the Joker.

well back to whatever I am doing...

On Tuesday we celebrated Hanukkah by having a dinner with some of our friends. The dinner was put together by Dina at our house. We cooked some traditional Jewish foods. We lit the menorah, and Dina told the story of Hanukkah using pictures from a children's book to help all us non Jewish people to get the story. We then received gifts, played dradle, chatted, and played video games.

We also finally got a chance to meat Dina's boyfriend, which was nice since many of us were starting to doubt that he existed... Crazy

Anyways that was a good time, followed by a Jimmy Eat World concert with Jesse on Wednesday. It wasn't the most productive week ever, but I had a great time and got to see some good friends.

Friday night we tried to go see I Am Legend on the IMAX screen only so we could see the 7 min special IMAX The Dark Knight preview, but even arriving 2 hours and 45 minutes early the show was already sold out. So we ended up not really doing much of anything... Another night I wish I could have just spent with Erin... oh well

Lastly, if you haven't checked out Nicole's project 365 yet you definitely should. It is a cool and interesting project.

Congrats to Ben on 1 year out on your own. Ben has now been with out a regular job for a full year. I consider that a nice list accomplishment, something I hope I will also achieve. I can say that time has seriously been flying past, so quick I can barely believe it. We have come up with a ton of ideas, dealt with all the business necessities (incorporation, lawyers, and accountants), and gotten to pitch in front of some of the most influential tech startup investors in the country. It has been an amazing learning experience, and I have truly enjoyed it all.

After I quit my job, my to-do list had a nagging item that I kept ignoring, update my resume. Making sure I would still have a list of the most recent projects and things I had been working on before I left. One day I mentioned that I have been skipping over it forever to Ben, and he said that he eventually just decided not to deal with it. He didn’t do a final update on his resume after leaving his job. I guess then I decided, screw it, I won’t update my resume either. It is almost as if updating my resume, would be like admitting that eventually I do want another ‘real’ job, where I have to have a nice resume, covered with all sorts of things I know, but haven’t used for years. Things I am not even interested in working with. It was a great feeling realizing, that no I am not going to update my resume, because this is what I want to do. I want to succeed. I want to make this startup work. I don’t want to go back trying to prove my worth to other companies and people, all of them thinking I seem a little young to be qualified for anything other than entry level software development. I don’t really want to even think about if I have to go back to that right now. In fact I don’t really have to as, I know that there is still a decent amount of time left for us to keep working away.

So update my resume was removed from my to-do list long ago, as something I just don’t have to do, because I already have the job I want.

Hooray, today I glided past 400 miles on my little glider. The glider is seriously falling apart, missing pieces, and dangerous to pretty much anyone but me. My dream is still to rock this past 1000 miles and then destroy whatever is left. Unfortunately I kind of doubt the glider could take another 600 miles considering its state while only at 400. So my more near term goal is to rock the glider past 500 miles. Helping me achieve this new goal is a game I call marching band.

In marching band I walk on my glider while playing guitar hero 3 for the Wii. I don't play the hardest songs or anything while walking on the glider, but it gives me a good chance to get a little better on songs I have already beat. Anyways, instead of only walking for 1.5 miles and getting board and getting off the glider it helps me to normally walk for much longer passing 3 miles or so each time I get on the glider. At a much slower pace, but hey you try walking on a glider that is falling apart while playing guitar.

Good times, cheap thrills, and trying to be healthier...

To all friends and family happy thanksgiving, I hope you get to relax and spend the day with some people you love.

I hate turkeys. If you go to the grocery store, you start to get mad at turkeys. You see turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Somebody just needs to tell the turkeys, "Man, just be yourselves!" I already like you, little fella. I used to draw you. -Mitch Hedberg

Starting tomorrow I am on brand spanking new health insurance. The best part is that is doesn't suck nearly as bad as my old health insurance. I can actually go see a doctor if I ever need to for a reasonable fee. My old insurance basically covered if I was hit by a bus. My new insurance would likely also cover a skiing accident without making me go to broke. I also get to see a dentist which my last plan had no dental... Rock on for $40 teeth cleanings...

I am getting pumped about the upcoming holiday weekend.

This post is dedicated to my mom who thinks that if I am not making blog posts that I must be in danger or not doing well. All is well I just haven't had a bunch of time to write since returning from traveling and my focus has been in other places.

Anyways, my xmas list so far is rather boring this year as it is more practical and need based than any of my xmas lists have been for years. My mom thought I shouldn't wait for glasses and might need them now, I present this picture showing they are still holding together. I have glued them 4 or 5 times now, they are breaking more frequently, but I think they can make it until xmas... Yes for Simpson's fans once I get my new glasses I will probably miss my old glasses.

It is a Pretheory Halloween!

A weekend with so many thoughts packed into my head it just makes you want to collapse and not deal with anything. Slowly then accepting and dealing with the duties of each day. I got to see many friends and have many great conversations this weekend. A friend made our house dinner for letting her and her boyfriend stay at our house for awhile when first moving into town. Many loud shouts of joy, happiness, confusion, craziness, anger, and everything else went up around our little bonfire this weekend. The craziest thing that has been really sticking lately is that we can never really take back things that we say, that the sound waves are always just moving further out into space and slowly becoming infinitely smaller, but still propagating further. Anyways it was wonderful to get to see our friends and celebrate our end of summer, right before the first snow fall of the season.

Lately my general feeling of health has been all ups and downs... for instance I kind of feel like I need to throw up right now... That seems bad, but two days ago I was so giddy and excited that I could barely fall asleep because I felt on top of the world.

Oh well I guess that is part of life.

I didn't notice for a long time, You can now buy the Flobots Happy Together cover song off their website. It was originally supposed to be included on the new album, but It had some issues and wasn't correctly mixed in time to make it. I had been looking forward to that song for awhile, so if you wanted it as well go grab it from the Flobots.

Flobots Happy Together

This is genius!

Good: Local theater makes their own production of a movie. Better: It's Point Break. Fark: The actor playing Keanu Reeves is selected at random from the audience each night

The actor playing Keanu Reeves is selected at random from the audience each night

Well I got back from the wedding wasn't feeling the best, but a few ups and downs and then my body finally gave in and I got sick. Lame, luckily it was just a really annoying and bad cold, but nothing that made me fully useless.

I left my cell phone charger at my bro's wedding so I have gone over 2 weeks with out a cell phone and I think I am going to lower my minutes and user our Vonage line more, as I am really trying to be home pretty much all the time, because we have about 6 months to get Seekler at least moving forward with good progress. Work Work Work, but at least we are learning a ton, which is cool.

I haven't posted much lately, because of being sick and extremely busy. I will try to get back to doing a few more regular posts soon. Time is flying by days disappearing at a time, and it seems each day is just baby steps forward. It is nice to have some specific goals in sight, in reach, but every step of the way you see something else that perhaps you should spend time on as well...

Seriously come one come all, the Flobots CD release party for the Fight with Tools Album is this Friday, it sounds like it might get close to selling the Gothic out and we want to make sure that happens, so get everyone you know that is interested in good music, and get them to the show.

The Flobots have become a political force to be rockened with, and I don't have enough time to always follow and do things about the political injustices in this country, but I love being able to support an amazing band, that I know is out there fighting the fight for me.

Flobots

Well my brother is about to marry his girlfriend of the last 6 years, and my good friend for many years, Meghan. So I am off for a short while to help him to celebrate his wedding. I am extremely happy for him, and it should be a really fun event for everyone involved. So off on another quick trip, letting the busy business and worries fade away for a few days.

Congrats to my brother Shawn and now I should go finish packing.

I am just incredibly busy right now. Far to many things to work on and think about an certainly not enough time to deal with them all. So posting to my blog has been falling to the back burner, while I try to keep everything under control. Hopefully I will get to catch up a little bit this weekend.

This weekend my plans are to try to work on most of my tasks and not blow through all my free time doing nothing. Last weekend was great and I really should have posted about the amazing times Steve, Scott, Dom, Nicole, Larry, Ben, and I had... but I just can't get to that now, perhaps I will post an appropriate photo that captures the moment sometime. Anyways, this weekend should be nice and relaxing with some time to catch up on everything I am behind on.

1,781 miles and it is very hard... Wow Erin is calling as I try to post this...

View Larger Map

I have meant to make a real post about Erin leaving (Erin moved to Manhattan for grad school) for awhile now. For those that don’t know we decided that we would stay together and deal with long distance. It is a hard time dealing with someone you love moving so far away. Some may think it is the same as when she left for Honduras, but it is really different when the end of the timeline is so far out. Basically it looks like we will have to deal with 21 months of long distance, which is an amount of time hard to think about when it is longer than you have actually been together. I take some comfort in the fact that we didn’t see each other for nearly 4 ½ months while she was in Honduras and telling myself we won’t have to ever wait that long to see each other again.

It has been a roller coaster of emotions since Erin left, and I think I am finally starting to balance out and return back to a normal mindset, unfortunately part of the fun of having Erin around is that I am never in a normal mindset, my mind is constantly high on love, which causes it’s own set of issues, but is different none the less. I mean having her around is wonderful, but a constant battle between work and just enjoying being in love.

I have said many times in the past that I would never do long distance again. I guess it is hard to ever say never especially when love is involved. What happens to love conquers all? What happens to all you need is love? What happens if you just decide love isn’t worth the difficulty of long distance? I mean in all these cases it would destroy some of the reasons we all find love so amazing, it is supposed to be something of a force to be reckoned with. Love will make you walk into something you know will hurt, and smile because you couldn’t have it any other way.

The Mayers and their long distance, my brother was in two long distance relationships, the first ending, and the second he is less than a month away from marriage. He recently pointed out that him and his fiancé Doc did long distance for 2 years, and that Erin is my second long distance relationship and we are facing about 2 years. So I guess if that is a trend, it isn’t a bad one to follow. Obviously some things change as you get older and more mature, and you learn certain things in all your relationships the older you get. Maybe the more you know about what you want out of life the easier dealing with distance becomes?

I still freak out and worry sometimes. I still feel awkward occasionally when I wonder why I am not moving to NYC, and don’t have a good enough answer at the time. I still wonder at what point something is compromise, and at what point one is giving up on their dreams. I am still afraid of loosing the most important person in my life. These are things that will be flying through my head, that will join some of the other questions that seem to float around never finding an answer, like “what is the point of life?”

I don’t know what is different. I don’t know if we made a wrong decision. I only know that we love each other. Currently we can barely escape each others minds, but we can’t hold each other in our arms. I know that it hurts both of us, I think that in some ways it hurts our relationship. I don’t know any other way that we could have both followed our dreams, while staying together other than giving long distance our best shot.

Erin I miss you, I love you, and I dream of when we can be together again.

Well if you have heard anything about the RIAA's tactics it is likely you agree they are going a bit overboard, this group is bringing a class action lawsuit against them for abusing the courts.

Sueing the RIAA.

About time!

I really miss Erin.

Erin is moving to NYC in about 15 hours. I am sad about that.

Erin leaving for Grad school in New York is quickly approaching. She will be leaving Thursday morning. It will be hard but if you haven't heard we will be doing the long distance thing, which is scary, but currently the best thing for us. I will miss her an insane amount, and I can feel the crazy stress this is adding in my life building up inside of me.

Tonight is the Flobots show! It should be the largest concert the Flobots have ever played, opening for the fray at red rocks, I am really excited it should be a good time. I know there should be some new music which should be exciting. The Flobots also finally launched their new website so go check that out.

Lastly we launched the first version of Seekler, not that anything is really available to the end users yet it is still pretty sweet to get our first real launch and push of production code out of the door.

I am feeling a bit nostalgic, this morning I bought Super Contra over the internet for the Wii so I could play some old school superNES goodness. Now I am missing old lame movies, and I just feel lazy and don't want to use my brain. To bad I am supposed to be accomplishing this.

KAHN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I climbed St Mary Alice glacier with my mom, which I have wanted to do since I came to Colorado so 5+ years. It was a great hike and I had a wonderful time. To bad my camera had dead batteries so I have no pictures of the event at all, but I can say it was beautiful and really worth the hike. It would make a great afternoon or day trip for Denver people (day trip means get some meals in the mountains and possible go off roding for awhile.)

I had a great time and got to see Robin an old friend this weekend. I also enjoyed some hiking and delicious Indian food.

Most importantly I forgot to mention that we were at a party that involved making and drinking liquid nitrogen margaritas, over the weekend, only the first batch exploded after that we learned the perfect method. Rock on for college house parties in Boulder. Holy crap did I feel old at this party though, oh well I can hide in the crowd as a short 20 year old so long as I don't have a beard at the moment (meaning I shaved within the last 2-3 hours).

Well after far to much time and thinking we have a product name.

And the winner is ... "Seekler"

So there you go countless hours into a simple little made up word, rock on business.

Yes there is still a lot of work to do, and I am sure that I will be loosing a bunch of page rank for while while I switch URLs from my old blog, but there is a variety of good reasons for the move. I won't really get into all of that here. I know right now I am just on the default template, and I will make it look nicer soon, but it is far easier to read and simpler than the old blog that I had, no more dealing with the crazy matrix templates. Hopefully this will just be the first of many new things I can release in the coming months. There are all sorts of exciting things coming up, and I am looking forward to all of the next steps.

If you find any problems with the new blog let me know and I will fix whatever issues there are, all my old posts should still be available in the archives. I have merged my old computer science blog in with this one, so if you don't like my CS posts you can just ignore them.

peace, love, and learning,
Dan

It seems to happen every summertime that all the blogs I run and all my friends that write in them just slow down on posts. With less frequent updates and more big events just not well covered. Oh well it happens and I haven't been good about posting lately either. So I guess soon we will get back in the swing, or perhaps we will have to wait until it starts to get cold out.

Outdoor movie night with the Big Lewboski was a big success thanks to all that arrived and made it such a good time.

Doing a bunch of business law/banking stuff which is boring

Waiting for my laptop to come in the mail

Finished catching up on my emails

Reading and in various stages of completion of 5 books
(2 business, 2 programming, 1 non fiction for fun)

Forcing myself to memorize the spelling of entrepreneur, since I want to use it so often and continually forget how to spell it

not using "."s

Forcing myself to memorize the house number and Ben's number as I realized the only phone number I know with out my phone is my mother's home number

Helping play negotiator for some lame friends

Finally working towards beating Zelda

Killing you softly with my song

I am starting to go crazy from all of the social networks and managing all of them. I guess it is a good way to keep in touch with some old friends, meet some new people, but I don't really use them much anymore. I am trying to be a little better about managing my accounts and growing my network. Mostly I am trying to focus on growing my network of more professional relationships. I guess it might help sometime down the road while pitching our idea, looking for help, or just generally promoting our project.

Social Networks drive me nuts because this is the list of networks I have been on.

Friendster (not active)
Orkut (not active)
Myspace (active)
LinkedIn (active)
Facebook (active)

I most recently joined Facebook because it was my girlfriends network of choice and where she was posting all her pictures online, so if I wanted to see her pictures I pretty much had to get an account.

Anyways I am probably forgetting some others I was a part of at some point or another, but perhaps I have fallen out of the young internet early adopter stage of my life because I don't really get the point of all these sites, perhaps it is just a easy way to blog and link up to all your friends with out having to know anything about managing a website. Oh well so that is my little rant about to many social networks and trying to keep them all up to date as they are all in various states of decay I am sure.

I used to have a system where if I wanted to respond to an email but I was busy I would put a star on it to deffer that email to be responded to later. Well I got really bad at that and had 357 un responded to emails that I had considered important enough to respond to. So I started going through them yesterday. I am now down to 130 emails to deal with, with the oldest ones ranging in at Nov 12, 2006 5:52 PM.

Yippie for progress and trying to add a bit more organization to my life.

One thing I kept thinking while in Honduras was how I have way to much shit. I just own far to many things and they are bothering me, consuming my thoughts, time, money, and mind. So I am trying to reduce the number of things I have to think about or deal with, and getting on top of the things I want to be thinking about and paying attention to.

Today I bought a bunch of little notebooks to carry around so I can write things down when ever I think of them. I started a labeling system in my email for faster archiving and retrieval. I bought some file boxes and file folders, and cleaned through some various junk.

Also after months the lovable little Roomba has finally been fixed and is back on its merry way of slowing cleaning the whole house.

After being gone for so long Ben and I are also on a catch up with reviewing energy drinks marathon and have been getting 2 or 3 reviews up a day.

Sadly with all that other chores and server switching headaches I haven't touched a single line of code for our primary project. Soon with a bunch of other business related stuff out of the way, hopefully we can get back on our primary goal soon. We did get our first alpha release out to a select small few who are testing and commenting on the current system, not a bad little milestone to reach I guess.

Oh yeah a pretty picture from Honduras...

A really cool video that Dom sent me Sunday, October 22, 2006 9:30 PM, that I just got around to watching now. Thanks Dom.

A man draws with incredible accuracy an entire city from memory. I wish I had a memory that could even touch this.

I will have photos tomorrow, but no one may care, because Steve did an amazing job covering the bachelor party on this episode of UVNU check it out.

I am back from Honduras safe and sound. I will try to do a couple different write ups and post a bunch of pictures soon, but for now I have a bunch of things to catch up with.

The entire country of honduras smells like a back yard barbq. I am not
kidding it smells just like our back yard while we were grilling.
There are fields on fire all over and such so it smell like camping.

Crazy.

Power has gone out multiple times always to my amusment. I guess the wet season has started so it is raining a lot but we are having a fairly awsome time. I will write more about the experience sometime soon likely after returning.

Well the bachelor party is over and I think it was a complete success. I am exhausted and have a lot of cleaning and packing to do, but I had an amazing time. Great fun with great friends that kind of weekend that really renews your love of life.

So tomorrow I am off to Honduras for a fun and crazy trip with my lovely girlfriend Erin. I doubt I will post until I return so peace out.

Well way to much is going on at once and I am going to forget a bunch of things. Hopefully I don't forget anything to important. So tomorrow is my last day to tie up loose ends... Yippie for some very exciting but very busy couple of weeks.

Why oh why can't I be batman?

Playing basketball lately I learned that I need to be much taller and in far better shape. I bet batman can jump like 3 freaking feet.

Booyaah late night movie night... I'm off...

I know a certain someone who may or may not have seen this image already but will no doubt be excited by seeing it again... It seems one DeLorean owner really loves back to the future, or there is a sequel coming out in about 5 years and this is actually a version that is back in time to save the world.

Now I kind of want a DeLorean, but it has to be done up like that!

I now have a little bag were I am tucking away all the important things that I know I need to bring to Honduras... I am starting to get excited... The trip should be a blast. Rock on for world travel.

The state of freedom in this country is scary for many reasons, one in the news lately is that it has become illegal to even print a standard 128 bit number, because that number meant something special to encrypting movies. It was against the DMCA to ever republish it, a company could now own a FREAKING number, and all uses of it. Well since this whole fiasco started some smart people found a way every single person can own a number and therefor make it illegal for any company to use, so go get the "deed" to your own number and eventually there will be no legal 128 number left to ever print under the DMCA.

"the folks at Freedom to Tinker would like to point out that you too can own your own integer. They've set up a script that will generate a random number, encrypt a copyrighted haiku with it, and then deed the number back to you. You won't get a copyright on the number or the haiku, but your number has become an illegal circumvention device under the DMCA, such that anyone subject to US law caught distributing it can be punished under the DMCA's anti-trafficking section..."
Read more about the ridiculous DMCA laws here.

Congrats to my brother who is now an MD, woohoo another Dr. in the family, better mean I get really cheap health care. Rock on for completing a goal that takes forever to achieve.

Also, congrats to my friend Dina who will be writing some for the Denver Post. Check it out here, Dina in the Denver Post.

Unlike the Australian Beardo project, I didn't travel with my beard. Instead my girlfriend went to Honduras giving me the first opportunity in a long while to grow one hell of a beard. If your not familiar with the Beardo Project, you might want to check those out before continuing on. I know to many it will make no sense and seem strange, but sometimes a man just needs to grow a beard.

The beard stays, you go.

So yeah I didn't do anything strange or really out of the ordinary this time with my beard, but it was still a good time. I did at least finally get a chance to grow one again. Women have been incredibly successful at suppressing the beard. When I have a girlfriend, they hate the beard so much, it really isn't worth the fight to grow one. When I am single I seriously diminish my dating chances by growing a beard, so I tend to only grow them during brief really busy or anti social stints, when I don't want to date. Seeing as I have been with Erin for the last year, I haven't had the chance to grow a really big beard. Erin left to go volunteer in Honduras for 4 1/2, I saw my chance, and I took it.

Dan + 3 months =

Dan + Scissors + Beard Trimmer + Mach 3 razor + 35 min =

So all the scraggly haired ups and downs over the last few months were great. I went skiing and had ice freeze in my beard. I showed up to work and over an hour later was asked by a co worker why part of my beard was blue to learn there was some toothpaste in my beard (Kristin, waiting an hour, I thought you cared...hehe)

Anyways, feels good like I said in another post, I feel like a new man, so why not make some changes. I guess the beards loose again while woman can claim another point in life. The beard will be back no one knows when, where, or why but it will be back... The beardo project, aiming to make the beards loved by everyone.

In the next month...

* See midnight showing of Spider man 3 to keep up my geek cred
* I have to build some sort of wood structure (Corn Hole tossing game, what a name for a bbq name)
* Get a pre Alpha version of the software released
* Throw my brothers bachelor party
* Shop, pack, prepare for Honduras
* Sign far to many legal forms for me to be comfortable with
* Cut costs even more
* Come up with a Contract agreement with a new client
* Enjoy my new found freedom
* Visit my lovely girlfriend in Honduras and forget my stresses for awhile

The best part is I am so excited about everything all I would want is more time for this part of my life.

Tomorrow is my last day at work... well my current company that is, I am really excited about striking out on my own, hopefully we can start to crack out our vision on the web...

Well it looks like we are moving forward. I have 4 days left at my job and then I get to work, think, and build our application full time. The latest step in the right direction is Pretheory is now an official LLC entity in Colorado.

Tonight after working... I decided I get to celebrate by watching a movie... Tonights movie is Twelve monkeys, I also got to celebrate by talking to Erin long distance on the cell phone and getting to say goodnight, I miss her...

One week and two days left at my job, then I get to go crazy and start to try our Pretheory company idea full time. Exciting!

Another little announcement on the energy drink website, a partnership with Sobe that has been a long time coming has finally begun. They are sponsoring the site for a few months, which should be exciting. We might try to come up with some special promotions or something, but only time will tell.

Who is coming with me? Who is coming with me? You? I know these people who were announcing the show wish they could be there...

Should be a good show and we haven't hit up the Flobots for awhile so now is just the right time...

~~~~~~~~~~~
Saturday, April 21st

Where: Herman's Hideaway

w The Pirate Signal, Tormented Religion, and S.T.O.I.C.
S. Broadway and Iowa
$7 ($3 with tix from us)
21+
8pm
Flobots on at 10:30

UPDATE:
Yeah I am going backwards but a little interview with the Flobots while they were in Cali

Due to some spam bot harvesting issues across all the blogs we have now implemented a simple harvesting deterrent. It isn't anything particularly complicated or amazing, but since it was taken care of in the core code it applied to all site instantly which is nice. So if you notice now anyone who has a link in the comments the email address still works in a mailto but has some alterations that prevent most bots from being able to work with the addresses. I didn't want to do anything that would hamper the ability to use email to bad, so after checking out a few different methods I went with the email alteration. The fix works with all existing addresses that have previously been entered into any of the sites.

Anyways just letting those who are blogging with me know...

I now have plane tickets to Honduras, it should be a blast traveling out of the country and seeing how other parts of the world live.

Hurray for Honduras!

After the title to my car getting lost in a paperwork shuffle, many mailings and DMV visits, emissions tests, and $140 I finally have the car in my name registered in Colorado. Admittedly I could have taken care of this about two months ago, but at that point I wasn't sure I would be living in Colorado much longer so I decided to wait it out. I think this is the last of ties that had anything not in my name...

Thanks to Dom who helped get me directions after Google Maps led me to the middle of nowhere, which wasn't close to the emissions testing facility, and again when I got to a DMV that didn't do license plates.

So my week off has been about a bunch of little errants and shrinking my todo list, but I also got in more skiing than I have all year. We skied Copper Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. The snow was amazing for this late in the seasons. It actually snowed on us some of the time which was perfect. We also got to spend the night in Vail to celebrate a good friends birthday party. Over all it has been a great week off.

My body is sore all over from skiing but in that good kind of way, honestly I think it was worse on Friday than it is after a few more days of skiing. I guess my body is getting used to it. Which I think means I need to try to work out more while I am ahead before I become lazy again, skiing is just way more fun than going on a run.

It is sad that I only got up skiing 5 times this year, and it is time to pack all of the gear away into the basement. I am hoping that with out a standard work schedule I can get up more next year, because the weekend crowds are crazy and one benefit of starting your own company is you make your own hours. I could easily work a Saturday to go ski on a Thursday.

So I have a week off before returning to finish out the month at my current job. Then it will be all start up all the time. I am spending a bunch of my time off, tying up loose ends and getting things ready to go to Honduras.

So Pretheory didn't get in to either of the start up seeding groups, that we applied to. I guess that won't change the plan since applying to either of these wasn't in the original plan anyways. So now that I am pretty much done with the job, we know where we will be, and what we are doing I guess it is off to the races.

It is weird as I have been trying to prepare and get back into the swing of development for this I have sort of felt like I am studying for finals. It makes a little bit of sense, but it really should be a completely different thing.

We did our Seder dinner last night which was a good time. Interesting songs involving goats, cats, dogs, and the angel of death were sang. A treasure hunt involving prizes was played, and I actually learned a little more about a bunch of Jewish holidays. Everyone was pretty tired by the end of it and crashed pretty early.

It sounds like we are going to try to get some skiing in while I am off as well, since this is the last weekend of skiing which is always a good time.

I am done with my taxes (thank god) and I am getting some money back (sweet).

Well we are finally started to get into some of the actual coding which is nice. The only problem is that now I am programming such a large portion of the day that I have been dreaming about it. Last night I was trying to get my unit tests to pass and trying to debug a database failure... Lame

I wish I had some time to change around the look of this blog, but I just don't have the time and I know if I am spending time working on that kind of stuff it could be better spent on some of my other sites. I must admit I am blog jealous of Dominic Filosa and Nicole Filosa who have both been slowly messing around with their sites and making them much simpler and cleaner.

Now that you have fixed up your own blogs, perhaps it is time to turn your attention to the Fall Out Boy site, I just extended your domain for 1 year, so you might as well not waste it right? Anyways, nice work the blogs look good.

It sounds like I will get to go to my first Seder dinner next week so that should be fun, yippie for spending a little time getting together to know another culture a little bit better.

I currently lost my wallet, so I am going to go tear up my room, house, car, and such until I find it. I am pretty sure it is somewhere in the house. I know I had it in Boulder on Sunday, and I really haven't done much since then...

I did have a friend suggest that the closet gnome with an axe from my old Boulder house possibly stole my wallet to lure me back there...

I haven't been playing a whole ton lately, but I have been trying to be better about being active for at least 30 minutes a day. So Ben and I our working out 3 times a week, which means I need to do something the other 4 days. So far I have been trying to play Wii tennis on those days and figuring it can't hurt. So I finally reached the pro level (1000 pts) for the first time earlier this evening. Yippie for being a Wii Tennis pro. Now I can apparently brag about my Wii skills... hehe

Next up I plan to start playing boxing a bunch until I can make it to a pro Wii boxer. I think that will be a little harder than making it to tennis pro. I know it will burn more calories in the same amount of time, because I start to sweat like crazy after a couple boxing matches. It should be a good time, and I can go way higher with my Wii tennis score, it looks like you can get a score of about double the pro level, so I am already facing much tougher opponents, now I just need someone to play against that will be a challenge, we got two wiimotes, someone want to become and tennis or boxing master? Challenge me?

I just got back from skiing for St Pattys day... Good times it was warm and beautiful out, the skiing was a blast, not the best snow, but hey oh well.

Erin just sent me a very weird site she found... Seriously it is a small and weird world... Apparently Erin and I were married in 2004, who would have thought. I guess you learn something new Every day.

Some of the earliest pictures I have of Erin and I hanging out together was from Patty's day a year ago, I think it might have been around our first kiss. Anyways good times and good stories I will miss her a whole lot for this years St Patty's celebrations...

Green House Party 2
----or alternate title----
Pictures for Erin

The cups are red

My beard makes an entrance

Hose through the window, cleaning sucks

Annie loves me, and Jesse she is a winner

It looks like someone punched Ben

We found the table by the dumpster and put wood on top

Yeah so we aren't really classy but dancing and singing until pass 3 in the morning is always a good time... It is really fun to dance around when there isn't a person in the room who isn't dancing along with you...

It was much smaller than our last get together, but it was a great time, thanks to all of you that came, sorry to those who missed it.

Next up skiing...

Over at the energy drink site, we launched a new feature today, Energy Drink News. We now have categories and we have daily energy drink news posts. This will keep a bunch of what is going on in the market in one place with a little bit of my commentary so I can share my opinion on what is going on. This feature will hopefully help keep my ear to the ground in the ever changing world of energy drinks, and provide an invaluable resource to all of the sales, marketing, and other business people in the energy drink industry who spend time reading through my blog. The front page is now reserved only for Reviews, we also have a new energy drink preview section where I will make posts about drinks yet to hit the market but have been announced. So a couple exciting things going on at our little energy drink site.

Energy Drink News

Sucks to work most of Saturday, but I guess that is what I signed up for. Also after my allergy attack I was in no condition to go skiing...Made good progress though, so rock and roll for that. I guess I still have a lot more to do and finish working on this weekend though... Lame.

I am all trimmed up my beard, and I am in a black turtle neck. Steve Jobs on his best day doesn't have a chance to match my geeky look.

Living on a budget sucks... Realizing you need to lower your budget more sucks harder.

One day your a number one star the next day your a costly burden.

One day companies love your attention and thoughts, next your an enemy.

You can always thing about the great things you want to share and say, but it takes up a lot of time to write anything good.

I love erasing things from my to do list.

I love lists in general, such as this one.

I am far to tired to safely be writing anything... night.

I have had two bags of clothes that I was supposed to bring over to the Salvation Army like 3 months ago, today I finally brought them down there... One less thing on my list to worry about. One less thing in the house to keep track off.

Now I need to try to sell those tires I have on Craiglist... Dom, I should probably call you for advice because I don't even know what information I need to include about the tires, my current post would read something like,

"4 used tires, black, all the same size, $100 OBO. Booyah."

Spell check things that my spelling of Booyah should be corrected to Yahoo. That is some good advertising.

Happy Birthday Erin, you might be far away but you are in my thoughts often.

Best of luck making the birthday chocolate chip cookies.

Hopefully I will actually get to spend some of the special occasions with you next year... hehe missing Vday, Bday, and our 1 year anniversary... Ah well I guess there are far more important things in life, and knowing how we feel about each other every day trumps the importance of any single day.

I hid your gift somewhere in Honduras...

I am very happy with the way my life is going.

Erin I love you.

My dog butterscotch died. I am sad. I am understanding. I am confused. I am respecting. I am here, and my dog is not.

Butterscotch was a good dog, who was having problems and I couldn't have expected to live much longer, but I still remember every time she was there for me, which during some times in the past were really important to me.

I will always miss you my dog, the first I have had from after my birth to live past her death. Part of life, but not a happy part.

Well Erin happy Valentine's Day. It is weird to have a girlfriend to share this holiday given the many of my memories of this day. I remember getting together with a bunch of other single disgruntled guys and going out, I remember feeling incredibly lonely. I remember missing relationships of the pass and wondering about relationships that may come in the future...

I guess it is a little bittersweet, I am happy, I am not lonely, I do miss you and think about our future. Really it is all good things, except it is still a day that I am sure will be filled with little awkward thoughts instead of spending it dreaming away about what will be... or just focusing on the current moment.

I will probably work extra hours because I will be in a big empty house alone, then I will come back and relax. I will raise a glass of wine to you and cuddle up with a blanket to watch a movie. Then I will lazily return upstairs to my bed to fall asleep dreaming with images of you filling my head.

So what to give a girl who is 2068 miles away? Who to live life, learn, and help others spends her own time and money? I guess all you can offer is some time and money of your own towards their goals and beliefs.

I decided that I needed to make a donation to a charity helping out in Honduras, as it seemed to be the only right gift to help your little mission. Unfortunately many were mostly trying to spread religion more than healing. I found some smaller local ones, but it was hard to tell if many of the organizations were still running when the site hadn't been update for over a year. Then I stumbled on to this site, projecthonduras.com is an online portal for information on ways to help Honduras. Which in turn lead me to a group of medical professionals who make trips to Latin America, primarily Honduras, to provide free health and educational services the people.

The group MEDICO has this blurb on their site describing their mission.

"Since its inception in 1990, MEDICO has devoted most of its time and resources to helping the underprivileged in Latin America, primarily in the country of Honduras."

If your looking for charities you can give donations for MEDICO in Honduras from their site.

So Erin while I couldn't get you flowers, but who knows I might get some for myself ha, I got you the best thing I could think of to send you way.

I also fixed up the rest of the templates on Erin Miller's blog so now you can see the top and side navigation from anywhere on the site. It might the nerdiest gift, but there is your time and money towards your trip. So good times for working on a blog, keep up the posts I am only checking to see if it is updated like 15 times a day.

So everyone else... Happy Valentines Day! For those in relationships enjoy a day of reminding the person you have chosen to be with why you are with them. For those who are single, everyone has been there at some point before. A special shout to Inappropriate Dave who I know will be at his third or forth Anti-Valentines day celebration in Boulder, remember no women like to be called a "behemoth" even if is followed by "your sexy".

and thats that... I am out...

UPDATE: You can also volunteer in Latin America specifically Honduras, or you can Make a Donation to help feed pregnant women in La Esperanza, Honduras.

So I have been trying to take care of various tasks today. Hopefully I accomplished some, and shrunk my ever growing and large to do list. I removed and added some new pictures to the random picture rotation at the top so enjoy whats new...

I am not really against having more people come work in this country. I am against some of the ways companies do this. Bill claims Microsoft can't find enough highly skilled workers and they actually have to pay more trying to bring them in with H1-B visas. The problem is that these leave a paper trail to tell more of the truth... The claim is they are highly paid and highly skilled position the truth is the majority of the hires are actually entry level programmers... Remember all the CS students coming out of college saying they can't get a job, yeah. Also, see how MS has some of the highest levels of applicants ever year out of CS companies? See how they reject people like myself who generally are actually more highly trained than entry level programmers coming out of many other countries (we tend to have more real world experience with actual development time). So basically while I will agree there is a overall hard market to get programmers, but not for one of the biggest companies there, which is preferring to hire this young people, because they are more controllable, cheaper, more willing to work unfair hours (60hours a week is common work hours in many of their countries). If you make your case for more visas, your claiming I am not highly skilled enough. Some simple programming tests could prove this not to be the case. So I say it again, bite me Bill.

I can't get enough employees in the US, Bill Lies about use of H1-B visas.

Over all I think they should be able to hire and bring people in from other countries, but I don't think we should be increasing the levels for a few companies at the top that are ignoring large parts of the local hiring pool. If you think you need students trained in certain aspects of CS better around here start investing and lobbying for better education. Not a way to help sink our education system further behind. Your claim of getting non entry level workers is debunked by your own paper work.

I frequently get asked why I support the EFF, as it was time to renew my membership today. I found some good info on the site to help explain that.

Reasons why bloggers should support the EFF

There are many others as well, but I figure that gives anyone a good start if they care.

Erin has safely arrived in Honduras. I received my first email. I also learned that all the computers were set up to use Firefox in Honduras go open source!

As the reality of Erin leaving sets in I find myself saddened and quite in a dark place. It wasn't as if I didn't know this was coming. It isn't as if I haven't been prepared to be apart for 4 1/2 months while she was in Honduras. I know this was something important to her and that she needed to do for herself. I know that it will give me time to do some things for myself that I have wanted to do. I still sit here feeling a incredible sadness wash over myself. I mean the last year of my life seems to have flown by, and with many big and sad events happening in my life I still find that I am probably in the best spirits and the happiest I have been in years and I know in a large part that is because of being with Erin.

It is funny that in many ways we are so different and have different goals, thoughts, and beliefs, but in the end we are so incredibly compatible that we seem to keep each other in balance normally featuring the best of both of us. She calms me and makes me take moments just to enjoy the world. A step back to appreciate all that I have. In this world we are so incredibly lucky, there is little I have ever be left without, my hardships are limited, and I am left open to try and accomplish anything.

So many have so little and such little hope, facing scary health, political, and other problems that I have been lucky enough to avoid. Erin actively goes out of her way to not only be aware of people in need of help, but to try to do something about it. She doesn't just go and volunteer, she pays to actually go out and make a big difference. She respects all that she has been given and has a feeling that she must share and spread the luck and life that she has. I am in awe of the things she does, says, and thinks. Hopefully I can always be worth part of her time and energy.

So while our paths my spread for a short while in time as we both walk alone. I know our paths lead in the same direction and will cross again. So Erin I love you, best wishes on your journey, share your spirit and joy of life with others, and I will see you soon. I will keep you in my heart and thoughts.

When words fail you...

Erin and I in Mexico together.

Together at Dom and Nicole's wedding.

Awww doesn't she look cute sleeping after a night out with the girls.

Erin loves it when I ruin pictures by making faces...Was funny when I was two and it is still funny now.

Erin and I at the top of a hike in Vail.

It looks like my EFF donations continue to do some good protection the little guy and privacy rights...

EFF wins blogger case against Apple.

Nice!

Shawn might come to med school here, it is still pretty unknown but he interviewed and I would be excited to have him here. It would be pretty sweet if Shawn and Doc moved to Denver, then if Matt and Julie decided to head this way as well...

I just like getting all these cool people I know in and around Denver, good times.

Well I guess the work I have been doing is at least getting noticed. I got a promotion, nice deal. So that should be a good thing in a little while.

Well I guess Erin is ready to announce to the world her own little place online. For xmas I gave Erin a blog that she wanted (among other things I am not that nerdy). So now she has gotten it set up the way she wants it and started posting to it. If your interested this will be a great way to see what Erin is up to while she is in Honduras, so I wish you and your new website the best of luck.

I now give you the writings and musings of Erin Miller.

Bonus she actually can write unlike myself.

I am apparently pretty good a managing projects and coders, but I definitely like coding more than managing... So I will have to learn to loose some control and delegate more. With that said, at least I will get to read up and learn some more new things. So off I go to finish reading the World is Flat. Which while I find interesting and mildly depressing, overall it makes some good points. So if you have a job and you wonder if it will exist in the next 5 to 10 years it might be worth a read.

I love white boards. I like bulletin boards. I cough at and around chalk boards.

A romantic weekend for two is always a great way to really put all the reasons you love someone to the front of your mind, which is a good thing to do once in awhile. Yippee for nice hotels, and money to blow.

Should I introduce categories to my blog, so people can ignore certain types of posts?

my dog Butterscotch is very sick, she is a 14 year old Yellow Lab who I had a great deal of fun playing with over Christmas. She is really old for a lab, but I am still sad.

This was the first dog that I had from puppy on I took the dog to obedience school and trained her. She was always a good dog even if she was really whiny about when she would go in and out. She never did stop loving to steal all of my socks to sleep on or eating my chap stick.

I love you my pup Butterscotch.

Today
Mostly Sunny
36� | 13�
Sat
Chance of Snow
35� | 16�
Sun
Chance of Snow
27� | 6�
Mon
Mostly Sunny
27� | 11�

So again snow only on the weekend all weekend long... Seriously why why would you do that weather. Seriously if you mess up one more weekend before February I will not be your friend anymore. So consider this a warning, you may snow mid week during January, but not on the weekends.

Thank you...

I read a bunch of interesting things this morning that I guess I should share with you.

A little bit of little man syndrome:

The Height Gap - If you haven't heard many advantages come with being tall. More interesting is entire societies have height trends depending on how they are doing. Many times height is tied to a growing economy and our income gap could be partly to blame...

I should be learning new things:

Want to learn new things and spend some time on self improvement, a list of some of the best free educational resources online, for almost any topic, including learning new languages... Free Online Education

Relationships require learning too:

Relationships are always wonderful, but not without challenge, and this is a good little read about the parts of a relationship that probably aren't worth wasting time fighting over... everyone has things that bother them more or less, and just because your line is different than someone else's doesn't mean you can force and expect them to care about something, or at least so I read in the interesting, Marriage is not always 50/50

Musing on the oddness of society:

A interesting and twisted look at the trends and causes of the shrinking thin models, and how thin now is a sign of money Body Image from Botticelli to Britney.

"Today, worrying about extra poundage is a chic neurosis everywhere from network television to Bridget Jones' Diary. We associate extra weight with things that we consider low-class: fast food, dietary ignorance and lack of gym membership. The rich, on the other hand, can shop at Whole Foods, go on the South Beach diet and cultivate enough Protestant work ethic to deny themselves dessert. If an archaeologist digging up a Barbie doll some 40,000 years into the future hypothesized the artificial Aphrodite was part of our religion, he wouldn't be far off the mark."

The article in its entirety I don't know if I agree with, but I think it would be an interesting area to research more as it is something I have thought and written about in the past. A paper I wrote years ago played with some similar thoughts, Deriving the Beauty of Women.

All work and no play, makes Dan a dull boy:

Besides all of the interesting reading out on the web, there are always great books and things to learn, but sometimes you need a break to just enjoy the simpler things, and with all of that I will leave you will a simple flash game that I enjoyed for about 20 minutes, Tower Defense

I ask one simple question, where is the best albums of 2006?

I know where the best albums of 2005 are, but what no updates? Has the musical world come to a halt. Until I hear otherwise I declare that K-tard and Paris Hilton, made the best albums of 2006. Hopefully they will get together and make a mega super great album in 2007.

So what are some of your favorite songs and albums of late?

As for me I don't think I was listening to as much music in the last year as I have in the past.

My Christmas traditional head butt:

Hanging out at the first old crew home owner's house:

I am here and I am alive, and guess what I am 25!

Yeah no posts for awhile but my life has been running in crazy circles for awhile and I still feel like I am behind. Most importantly thought I do have internet in my house again, ending my half living at two places and no solid internet period, which was driving me crazy.

I am in my new house, which might sell soon so we might be gone quickly, and I still haven't set everything up. There are plenty of items that I can't even find, so I just slowly unpack and try to organize and put things away and I hope to have everything kind of set up and ready in about a weeks time.

I am trying to catch up with stuff from work, home life, and other little tasks so for a little while I am sure I won't be around the most, but I assure you we will start to have some fun again soon... I need to figure out some of my finances and other things before I can start running around going out on a nights notice again.

I wish all my friends and family a happy new year, and I say 2007 is going to be a wild and crazy ride that hopefully will be as amazing and exciting as 2006, which was a pretty great year.

Merry Xmas I hope that your surrounded by the ones you love.

An interesting year is coming to an end with far more major life changes than I would have guessed. This time last year it seemed I was uncertain of much, but looking forward with excitement to what I could do... It seems this next year I will begin to see what really happens with my life and how many of these changes will play out... It should be interesting.

To my family and friends, I love you all... happy holidays.

No one is here in my office everyone went home because of the snow.

It is freezing outside.

I hate moving.

I hate that I might have to move again soon.

I am sick of traveling around.

I am tired.

I haven't started Xmas shopping yet.

We did have a great welcome to Colorado party for Ben.... but moving and dealing with all the things I need to do. I have been to stressed out lately and I need some just chill out and hang out time... Ahhhh

So there is a quick little post, I don't know how or when I will get things done by January 10th.

Much thanks goes out to Dom's dad for the cool van I borrowed.

peace

I can't say much for obvious reasons, but it has begun... I am on a one way ticket to somewhere...

BooYaaa

I will always miss you.

I wasn't close to many of my grandparents which is unfortunate. I didn't get to know many of them very well. I did get to know my last living grandparent who past away recently. I felt like I was extra close to him because we were both engineers and had similar interests. I guess the things he did and studied will not ever hit my ear for another 50 years (classified)... I loved him, respected him, and after learning he read my blog and my internet life was a little afraid of what he would read! I miss and love my grandfather but I guess now one of the only people I was afraid of not respecting me has past... and he did love and respect me. I have a new future... I am sorry for all those I offend, but I am who I am, and I love honesty and just putting thoughts out there...

Grandfather... I miss you with so many... thoughts and conversations I never will know how to express it...

I guess this is what I needed to say... awhile ago... I am late, but here I am finally saying I loved you and I feel like I will make you proud.

apparently I am mad at various associations today...

The RIAA is shameless, while trying to fight for copyright to go from 50 years to almost a hundred in the UK they have apparently dead artist fake signatures saying they support it being extended...

Riaa is shameless

Well I am glad that I stopped donating to MADD, they are not working towards better transportation and education and safer roads. They are just pretty much against anything with alcohol. Anyways it turns out 81% of the money you donate to it just goes towards running and administration... I bet some MADD CEO is getting paid a million dollars for his non profit charity, bit me MADD no more money for you.

MADD uses only 19 cents of each dollar donated for charitable work.

have you donated to anything this year? It is time for me to make my yearly xmas donations... Got any new charities in mind I should look at?

I know I owe a real post sometime soon I have over a month of unshared thoughts boiling up in me, but for now another shout from an article will have to be cool enough...

Myspace Offensive

A quick thank you Shout to Dom and Nicole for coming over and getting some pictures for me to send out... Hopefully I will get to use them sometime soon.

In the mean time my project is supposed to go live the 13th and I have been putting in over 12 hours ever day this week, I worked last Sunday, and I expecting to have to work this weekend, so hopefully all the hard work pays off.

until next time my friends...

peace, love, and happiness,
Dan "I am sorry I probably haven't called you back" Man

I found this and interesting read on alternative gifts for kids...

Gifts for kids... that pay off in the future.

Not something I have to worry about but since Erin and I were working on our xmas lists yesterday I thought it was worth posting...

Well I guess it is that time... time for a Xmas list of things that I might be interested in this year to guide family towards things I am interested in. These are just thoughts ideas and suggestions feel free to ignore them.

1) Money for me to put towards a certain investment many of you are aware of... I know money is lame and my family doesn't normally do that, but in all honesty it is what I probably need most, but if you want to be more fun have no fear look below.

2) A shirt to match these pants, my brother got me this cool outfit shoes, pants, and such, but no shirt to go with it... I have no shopping skills so I can't find anything to match it and every time I wear the outfit someone tells me the shirt I tried with it doesn't quite match. I tend to wear small or medium shirts depending on the store.

Me confused trying to look cool... I know to normally wear brown socks with these pants, but it was a quick photo shoot so just let it slide.

A close up so you can see the color and pinstripes better. (click to enlarge)

3) A pair of Gap jeans in this style or damn near close, my favorite pair of jeans (pretty much the only ones I will wear) are falling apart and I need a replacement. So if you find something that would be similar to these jeans go for it. The jeans I love that fit so well are size 30 x 30. Here is everything I know about the jeans... Gap Low Rise Boot Fit they are 100% cotton, they are amazing and I love them.

My favorite jeans and I spending a moment together... ah how relaxing and comfortable...

A close up of some of the holes starting to appear. (click to enlarge)

4) A suit travel bag. I guess it is time I have a good bag to travel with my suit, other hanging clothes items, room for a basic bathroom kit and other over night items. Something I can use while doing short trips that require me to dress up like interviews and such. Something so I can show up with out all my clothes being a wrinkled mess.

5) Plane tickets, what can I say I like to travel, but I can't visit and travel everywhere because I can't keep blowing all my money on plane tickets... Do they sell vouchers or something like that? I don't know but it is just an idea.

6) In car navigation system. Something I can move car to car preferably. Those that know me also know that I could get lost in a large circular room. I generally can't drive anywhere unless I have driven that route a few times before while following careful directions, at which point I can only get to that spot following one route that I memorize. If a road is close, I am screwed because I generally have no idea where I am at any given point. I don't know where I am or how I got here right now.

7) Decent fall/spring gloves. I have really nice ski gloves, but now that Erin and I have to walk a dog in the freezing cold it would be have nice to have something to warm my hands... It would also be nice while walking to work I guess.

8) Anything that is a selfish waste of money, but things that are great to do... Gift card to a really nice restaurant I wouldn't normally spend money at. A nice bottle of wine, vodka, or tequila. Some really good cooking ingredients that are expensive sesame oil, olive oil, spices...

9) A duplicate of Erin so I have have two of her. Then when she is busy or at work I can still hang out with her, not to mention how often we could travel if we added on a 3rd income. Then when Erin is gone in Honduras I would still have another Erin to spend time with. Your all smart get working on a duplicator, Calvin and Hobbes made one why can't you.

10) A time machine... to many reasons to even begin mentioning here.

I found this pretty impressive.

My grandfather passed away this morning... I am sad. He was with family and had no pain, he was a great man and he will be missed, but he did go in the best way possible.

It is nice to get a couple of days off to spend with friends and family, I hope everyone has a good time.
peace,love, and stuffing,
Dan

Hey for those that missed the CBS video or wanted to see it, here is the video clip that I recorded.

Energy Drinks on CBS

Well I guess my fifteen minutes of fame is being extended a little longer. Yesterday evening CBS came and filmed an interview with me about energy drinks. After the interview they taped a bunch of my friends drinking and trying new energy drinks. So I will be on national news this Sunday. Likely some of my friends will be on as well. It was kind of crazy having a news crew over to my apartment for the afternoon to film everything, but I enjoyed the experience and getting to see how that all works, over 5 hours of set up and filming for 3 to 5 minutes of actual air time, crazy. I had no idea energy drinks would ever get this big, but it is nice to be the default energy drink expert.

So find your local time and channel and you can catch me on CBS,
CBS Sunday airtime and channels

My Brother and his long time girlfriend and my long time friend Meghan "Doc" Dougherty are engaged. I am very happy for them both, I wish them both the best of luck, life, and everything else.

I am going to be the best man for the wedding which is nice, the wedding date is September 15th 2007, so as of then my family will grow.

It is very exciting news a very long time in the making.

Do not install windows media player 11, especially on media center PCs. It is nothing more than DRM (Digital Rights Management) software that takes away abilities and legal rights of the users for the benefit of the movie and music industry. If you installed it you just lost the right to watch movies on TV! If you uninstall media player 11, you get those rights back. Uninstalling requires 2 reboots and three visits to add/remove programs...

After installing windows media player 11, I tried to record Hoosier, a movie. I received this message, when trying to record. I then tried to just watch the movie live with out recording and received the same message. I could not even watch the movie because of the copyright protections. I could still watch and record TV shows and everything else I tried.

After uninstalling media player 11, you can see my movie reappear. No issues. Now realize I PAY for cable and what cable does is deliver content to you. If I hadn't owned an old TV, I couldn't have watched this movie.

So the MPAA/RIAA says that they can put a copyright flag on TV and I can't record or watch it on a device that could possibly record it. So why am I paying for cable for the content I get to watch over cable. If I can't even watch it on my media center (my primary TV setup), what am I paying for? The cable companies pay for the rights to the play the movie, based on my subscription and advertising fees, I am delivered the content which I should be able to view as I choose. It is legal and has been set in law that you can record cable TV for personal use because you paid for that content and putting it on VHS was considered fair use of content. Fair use is disappearing with technology that makes it easier to use our rights. I lost a completely legal recording of a movie to watch for myself when I wanted because of installing media player 11, which works for large corporations while throwing away and ignoring my legal rights to view my fully paid for cable. This is a sad state where Microsoft is selling you out because there isn't competition and because big business pays more than you or I. For shame, I am so angry I barely know what to do except say, Linux Myth TV here I come...

I have been notified by the State of Colorado, that my information was stored on a stolen computer and I may now be at risk for identity theft, yippie for that.

What makes you happy? What makes you enjoy life and make it worth everything? I guess right now I have to many options and paths I can choose from and I don't know what I should really focus on... So when it comes down to the simple parts of life what is really the most important? What should you strive for? What do you change your life for? When do you stop and realize this is what life is supposed to be about? So share some of the greatest moments of your life some of the best decisions you have made, and some of the biggest regrets... tell me in private if need be but, If you had to say what made life what would it be?

Getting sick should be more like playing tag as a child. Once you give it to someone else you don't have it anymore, and their are no tag backs!

Rid the bus, cough, exit bus... bwhahahaha public places would be cold transfer centers.

If you haven't heard I am in the news all over from a AP article on energy drinks, yippie for that so here is one of the many reprints of the article...

Energy drinks in the news!

I am looking for new apartments all around Denver if anyone sees any really good deals please let me know.

It is fun to go grocery shopping when your in a relationship you talk about all the nice meals you will make together, talk about your future. Sometimes it is nice to be the sickenly cute couple. We were walking around the grocery store arms around each other, being that couple and I just thought well we should just enjoy it now because soon she will be in Honduras.

We did the Halloween Flobots concert Friday night which was a good time. Dave, Erin, and I went to the show. I still haven't been feeling that well so I was DD, Erin and Dave got there drink on and I got to meet a good friends new lady so that was nice. The show was great, and they played a new song for the first time that sounded awesome.

Last night we went to Erin's old house in Boulder for a costume party. It was a pretty good time, both nights we went out, I dressed as dead Shrek, Erin painted my face, it was fun. Erin went as a masquerade person to the show, then she was a cereal (morning food) killer on Saturday night. So we all enjoyed ourselves and Erin got to see a bunch of old friends so that was nice. It was also nice to drive around Boulder a bit, just to see some of the crazy and really well done costumes. I have said it before and I will say it again, Denver doesn't know how to do Halloween like Boulder.

It looks like a friend of the flobots released their video for handlebars. It is worth taking a look...

Flobots Handlebars video

I am lame this will be like the 3 year in a row I don't have any outfit planned, nor do I really have time to figure one out for Halloween. So I will through something lame together the night of some costume event (likely the flobots Halloween show). Anyways apparently to get into the spirit of the holiday celebrating, the killing of witches in New Salem, as best I have gathered, we went to haunted houses last night. I haven't been to a haunted house in 4 or 5 years, so it was amusing, we went with a bunch of Erin's friends after grabbing some really good Mexican food. There were a bunch of 13-15 year olds, kids that were dropped off by their parents. Some older 16-18 year olds, then a very small amount of people our age. I felt old, but overall it was still a fun good time. The girls screamed and ducked, while the boyfriends laughed and held onto them, funny and amusing, but at $50 for two people to go through the haunted houses, I really can't imagine how it was worth the money. (just for others we went to the 13th door, and Curse of Slaughterhouse Gulch")

After a night of frights, we all got together at my place chatted had a beer then headed out down town and went dancing. It was a good time, fun stories, a couple drinks, some good dancing pictures, and a long cold walk home at the end of the night. Anyways, it was fun to go out with a group of all Erin's friends, then come back and stay up talking until about 4 in the morning, I didn't really accomplish anything yesterday except taking my friend to the airport at 4:45 in the morning, but I had a good time.

Anyways suggestions for quick, easy, and fun Halloween costumes?

I don't think Score her has been getting enough attention lately, perhaps we haven't put enough time into it, but for awhile the site was doing quite well, now it is doing OK, but on a down swing. I think my writer friend has done a great job writing for the site, and we are now over 200 articles strong, which is pretty sweet. We get decent search engine traffic, but our article links are pretty low. So I am asking my friends, readers, and bloggers out there to check it out and link up their favorite post. Just pick one you found interesting, amusing, or informative... trust me karma will get you back sometime soon, and it always feels good to help spread the word...

Some of my favs:
Mind your manners
Hot Girl Syndrome
Women Only Want Tall Men

So go find some articles you like and link em up, Dating advice articles

Tuttle a personal shout to you for this one.... because I also think your writing is under appreciated!

Well thanks to everyone that helped make the party such a success, we were tired and had to drive down to Boulder to see a show, but coming back cleaning wasn't too bad. I was feeling pretty good all day just tired. Erin had a little head ache, but while cleaning up we found that we had gone through 15 bottles of wine. Seeing as at the peak we probably had 15 or so people, it looks like each person had a bottle of wine, which is a pretty good ratio.

Pictionary was a blast as per usual, and it was great to see some friends that we haven't seen for awhile. So thanks for coming by, and for bringing delicious wine and snacks. It is great to see some many friends just having a great time and smiling together.

peace...

It is 3:20 in the morning and the wine party is over, and it was great.

Well where am I, in my little trip of life? Could I possibly know how far I have come or gone? I don't really know I feel like I am exactly where I need to be, but at the same time I don't ever remember dreaming of this part of my life as a kid. Being perfectly happy, amazingly happy, but completely unsure of which way to direct my life (in my dreams their is only one path).

Should I really be pursuing the things I do? Follow love at all costs? Should I work harder, make more, or do this and do that? Is this the feverish early 20's where I have my last big chance to really focus and make a discovery and change the world and it's thinking on a topic, because hardly any of the great discoveries and ideas come out of people over 30? Why focus on that if I will miss the chance to start a family? Is starting a family as good or better than a world changing idea in your field? Is spreading love and happiness to and through the people more important than just spreading it through your family? Are those the same things. I don't know, I feel like I am completely on track, headed the right way, but still as lost as ever on this trip through life.

I used to really believe the older adults, the parents, the teachers, the married couples, and such had this all figured out, but they don't. As I have become older, as I have had more real conversations with these people. I realize they are very good at many things and can always teach you, but they are never more sure of their life or the choices they have made in the past, than I am as I make my choices today and tomorrow. So here is a day and night that I think I made only the right choices, and I lay my head down happily to the pillow to sleep and dream of all the perfect possibilities of my future. I am scared and excited... So what do you think are we as a world headed the right way?

Well there is a quick 30 second brain dump of the things I think about now a days when left to my own devices... I stare off thinking about this and the world to a beat in my head, one that I would surely attempt to rap to if I had a drink or two... hehe

So sometimes your cleaning through your desktop and bookmarks, so you find all sorts of little goodies, from simple things like, Cool eye trick, Cool Sketching, and Words to live by. You also wonder if you spend to much time on the computer and you should follow others advice about, Why every man should lift weights or visiting the 12 great places you haven't heard of. I guess it all just depends on your happiness and what you like, but sometimes you do wonder, is Hef really having a better time at the Playboy Mansion than you are at home? I don't know, but I feel like I cleaned house a little bit and hopefully shared some of the weird things that pass through my head.

Flobots USA went down for about 5 days, it is back up and better than ever with a few new fixes, and hopefully some more features just around the corner.

The Flobots will be rocking out a show this Sunday in Boulder that Dave is putting on so you should be there.

Many thanks to Ruby and its dev log for saving the flobots DB that was almost lost in a weird mystery. I am starting to dig, Ruby pretty well.

After people wanting the reviews in alphabetical order for years, I actually found the code to do it today, I was working on other parts of the site, but it is quite cool to finally have that feature finished... So onward to the next biggest complaint what should I be doing to make the Energy Drink Reviews site better?

Well I don't have much to say right now. I am just amazed by the way things work sometimes. Sometimes stupidity just makes you want to give up, what is the point of trying when the stupidity of the world just never ends. Oh well perhaps it is just stress, perhaps it was just a bad day, perhaps, perhaps... either way I am not in a good mood right now, this hasn't been the best week.

To all the old friends out there, that you never see enough, email enough, or call enough... because it is so great when you finally do hear from one of them.

Best wishes to everyone, your all in my thoughts.

One of the best parts of being grown up is no one is constantly telling me to eat weird foods they know I don't like. I don't have to eat or make anything I don't want to, that is probably enough reason to live on your own... hehe

which sadly leads to the 25 signs you've grown up... I am sorry to say it looks like I am old on most accounts. On the plus side I think I am having some of the best times of my life right now, which is pretty nice. I am enjoying "playing house" as Erin calls it, which while a fairly large adjustment is pretty amazing overall. So while I am not ever going to fully be grown up, I will always enjoy being immature and a child sometimes, I guess some of the wild crazy days are past, while the quite nights of conversation by a fire will perhaps reign until I have children (but I have some other plans before I get to that).

Dell, MSN, HP, Apple, Myspace, YouTube, and many other big sites... be careful.

From slashdot...

"Dark Reading and SC Magazine covered a story about hackers posting cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilies en mass on dozens of high profile websites including Dell, MSN, HP, Apple, Myspace, YouTube, MSN, Cingular, etc. The media coverage drew the hacker's attention to the publication's websites where they got a taste first-hand. On message board wall-of-shame is PC World, MacWorld, Fox News, the Independent, and ZDNet UK. "...not only did we get the "scoop" on the XSS site problems, but we also got the message loud and clear: Don't assume you're immune to XSS vulnerabilities. They're everywhere." The news comes shortly after Mitre (CVE) released statistics showing XSS has become the most popular exploit. Unfortunately new XSS attacks are growing increasingly severe and scanners are unable to find many of the issues on modern websites." -slashdot xss attacks

Firefox has the most known vulnerabilities right now, but they aren't being attacked near as often, also they have the fastest patch release time, so the fixes come before the major exploits normally. Things are getting nuts normal big sites I trust are being exploited. So I would recommend firefox, and I might avoid the large sites like myspace, youtube, and such for the next few weeks while people find ways to tighten up security a bit more. I might take my stuff down again while I check other possible exploits. Google ads was exploited once and if you can't trust google code who can you trust, I might have to begin pulling some ad sections until the browsers are fixed.

Ok I removed all the exploits and took out the code that was attacked. I fixed the code that was exploited, and it can't be done again. I did how ever screw up while restoring the database and lost some images and moves that were added, which sucks, but I will have to add some new content again soon. So enjoy the oddities that are wastedbrains. I guess it means my sites are big enough to be worth attacking, hey it has happened to myspace like 3 times in the past year.

peace,
Dan "10 years, well over 5 million unique views, 1 exploit... not bad" Man

Some code on wastedbrains was exploited and used to spread malware, and trojan viruses. If you used IE to visit my site between 9 - 08 - 2006 and now you might have caught a virus. It is an IE bug so if you were on other browsers you are fine. They found a way to insert malicious code through iframes and redirect to any other sites javascript and other frames they wished. The site will be down for a few days while I fix the exploit and remove the code from all of the video and image pages.

Based on logs it looks like the max number of people exposed to this was 2,700 people between 9/08/2006 and 9/19/2006. (probably a far smaller number were hit)

So one more time if you use IE and visited the image or video sections during that time please run some virus scans. I highly recommend the free virus scan from AOL, as it is free and has the highest security ranking currently.

Free AOL virus scanner
Virus Scanner rankings, free AOL on top

Yippie for animals being smarter than we thought...

Smart birds

Just watch out for the dolphins, once they grow thumbs they will kill us all.

Yeah I know not a real post again...

Funny earth is old

A fun little post someone made for friends who have just gotten married... or my other friends thinking of getting married...

12 Rules for Marriage

I know I haven't made a big post for awhile, but some much has been going on, and work has been keeping me to busy. So I have been trying to spend my free time wisely with people I care about, and sadly while I love my computer it doesn't love me back so it has been getting the short end of the stick.

I enjoyed seeing old friends and meeting new friends in all the wedding related activities. I had a good Labor day, celebrated by sharing a single beer in bed, while watching a movie, which was about perfect.

Posts about dreams, goals, fears, future, and more will all slowly work their way out of my head, their are quite a few posts I have started in my head that I will get to shortly.

I just got back from my good friends Dom and Nicole's wedding. It was a great time, and I was so happy to be a part of it. Congrats and best wishes for ever.

I love you both.

It is my bros birthday today. So here I am wishing a great friend, great person, and a great brother a happy birthday.

I hope you have a great day, and that I have successfully filled your mail with little bits of stuff over the next 2-10 days... god bless random shipping times... from many different places... bwhahaha

Ok my friends' wedding is coming up, part of what I wanted to give them was a wedding photo album from all the creative people on fark. So I have been submitting their picture to be photoshopped every day now for awhile and they are ignoring my requests. So everyone out there if you have fark account submit their picture and request it to be photoshopped. There is only a week left. Yes, they will read this here before their wedding but, I need every ones help.

If you have a fark account:
go to the Galleries with Dom and Nicole Pictures, and pick a picture with Dom and Nicole submit it for a photoshop. Click submit a link, and put something about friends getting married and wanting an album.

If you don't have a fark acount:
Go to Fark sign up for an account and reply to the confirmation email. Wait 24 hours (can't submit for one day), then follow the steps above.

Seriously it will take like 5 minutes and if all of us start submitting they will take one eventually. Show your support for Dominic and Nicole, and help me out.

Thanks,
Dan "Fark the farking farkers" Man

Celebrity in this country has gone far past being out of control and getting to the point that watching any normal news leads you to be highly uniformed of what is going on in the world. People wonder why American's are so uninformed of the rest of the world, look at our mainstream news...

Mainstream Media Coverage of JonBenet Ramsey story vs. NSA ruling

From CNN.com:
Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, pointed to the alleged airplane plot that was disrupted last week. �It is disappointing that a judge would take it upon herself to disarm America during a time of war,� he said in a statement.

I like how defending the Constitution is disarming America, instead of supporting our freedoms and what made this country great in the first place.

Our vice president said people voting for senators against the war, were really supporting the terrorist goals... Seriously, it can't be so black and white. I kind of want to puke.

This put a quick smile on my face...

Grand Theft Cola

I had a great time at the Flobots show yesterday. I got to watch the Flobots rock out Red Rocks in Colorado. I had never been to Red Rocks and it is a very pretty site. I don't think the rocks would do as well for the punk shows where you want a group of people and dancing around. It even made it harder to dance to the Flobots, making it hard to rock out during the Flodown, but it was still beautiful and a really good time. I had a great time, thanks to all who came to the show.

The Flobots rocking out at Red Rocks. I got signed by the band members, Jesse and Andy sign my arm. I haven't seen Dave this happy since the Victoria's Secret show. Jonny5 gets his arms pumped up for his pictures. Here is the fully covered arm, with signatures from all the band.

The Flobots chilling out after the show, they signed a lot of autographs. Erin and I chilling at the show. Jonny5 made me sign him, if he was going to sign me. Another shot of Jonny5 with my signature. The back of my arm... Good times...

Well Erin and I just celebrated 5 months together, that is pretty cool, and we see no real end in sight. Yippie for us. Spot Erin's dog is back over staying at my place for now. Here she is watching Dog TV...

Name: Sexy Suds Glow in the Dark Bubble Bath Price: 8 friggin bucks Rating: 1 We decided that to celebrate we should take a glow in the dark bubble bath together. Thinking this would be a fun, slightly sexy experience. It quickly turned to a tragedy (a little over dramatic here), as we learned while the bubble bath in a bottle glows quite well. Once this mysterious liquid is poured into my bath tub, not only does it not glow, it fails to make any bubbles. Yes we kept it under a bright light to "charge" the glow, yes we poured it in under the faucet while water was coming out to create bubbles. The experience with Sexy Suds Glow in the Dark Bubble Bath left something to be desired. If there was absolutely no light in the bathroom, it had a faint not blacked out look perhaps a little creamy barely visible light, the whole experience just filled my head with the word, "Lame!" All was not lost as candles were lit and relaxation was enjoyed. Consider this my first and likely only bubble bath review.

Lame Bubble Bath

Erin goes over to baby sit some kids of a family friend, minutes after their parents leave...
3 year old boy: "You're Erin right?"
Erin : "yep"
3 year old boy: "Do you have a vagina?"

haha I love that little innocent kids don't see wrong or right, they just wonder...

Erin gets home after working all day and then baby sitting, she tries to parallel park, but doesn't really make it. She had tried to park behind my already parked car. I see her frustration and ask, do you want me to pull my car forward a few feet (there was a space in front of my car too), she says yes.

The amazingly silly things you will do for someone you love.

I have more emails than I have time to respond to. I have launched two websites this week (work sites not more of my fun site). I have re taken claim over the search of Dan Mayer becoming number one again, silly graphic designer and me trade spots every few months.

I need a new USB mouse but Dave doesn't work at Comp USA anymore so I don't really know what to do.

All is well in never never land, for now I don't have to grow up.

It happens to us all those unfortunate times that your to busy and some of the things you really need to do, fall through the cracks.

Erin I am sorry for how busy I have been, tomorrow I will fight my way back to a better work schedule.

Also, I would like to note there is no good way to dance to 80's music.

Well the ugly cover that looks nothing like me still features my name on the cover, got the energy drink business wired.

Look at me, I am an attention whore... hehe
Dan Mayer in Westword

all started by my site about energy drinks what a fun and crazy world we live in.

Aslo my baby's got sauce, your baby aint sweet like mine.

(Note I started this post 2 weeks ago, just finishing up way later)

I guess after my previous post, Get Busy, and Dave's post/response Impact, I feel I have more to say on this subject so I will continue the topic now.

While I know I would be missed by friends and family and those around me. I feel that nothing significant would really change. I have impacted plenty of people's lives and change who they are, as many people have change me and will always be a part of who I am as well. I guess I am feeling like if everyone in the world put some effort to leaving or changing the world in a positive way before their time was up we could make a difference.

I am in the Village Voice and so is Dave, rock on New York... Yippie soon I will be famous.

Dan and Dave in the news

Currently I am a busy little bee pushing 60ish hours last week... carrying two pagers, and not liking it very much.

UPDATE: Everyone grab some copies of the Westward that comes out this Wednesday I should be in it. I was supposed to have my picture on the cover, but I guess they liked some other cartoon thing better, but the story I am part of is still the cover story, fun stuff. Another step closer to being famous.

Apparently I made a silly comment on Dom and Nicole's and they decided to take it seriously, so I ended up with a green chili invitation to their wedding. I love my friends because our humor is beyond explanation.

So here is a picture it is the green stuff on the lefT:

Dave This post is all for you, the days you don't have time for the full movie, here is the short version of the Big Lebowski. Even as I make this post I realize how many of my family members read my blog and wouldn't like this video, to them I say don't watch it... Sometimes you have to make a post for a man, the right man for the time, and we call that man, Inappropriate Dave.

Short version Big Lebowski

Also note it is Dave's Birthday today so happy birthday Dave. A good friend who will always lend an ear, even if that ear will only result in slightly inappropriate responses.

I am learning a lot of things... Like I have a great time trying to keep up with Erin's family but that they are all in far better shape than I am... Here we are at a peaks pass, during a 9 mile hike... at least I bought running / hiking shoes (trail joggers). Anyways good times, that remind me why I wish to work hard towards my own company and freedom is to enjoy times like this with my own family...

I hate Internet Explorer. I have spent about 2 hours trying to debug, a javascript error that only occurs in IE. It works fine in Firefox, and all other browsers. Anyways I was hoping to accomplish a lot more, but I guess at least I tried.

Today's lesson is about sriracha hot sauce one of my favorite hot sauces. It is the best Asain hot sauce out there. I did however learn that if you leave a bottle a little close to the stove while boiling water it heats up. When you open the bottle that it is heated up it will proceed to shoot hot sauce out the end. So today's lesson is never point Srirache hot sauce at your face as you open it or you will end up with chili sauce in your eyes. I learned this the hard way with a blast of chili sauce, but now you have been warned and can learn from my stupid, so very stupid, mistakes.

I still love you Sriracha hot sauce.

I just made a Thai Peanut sauce so spicy I am crying while eating it, oops I put way to many different chillies in this mix, but it is tasty. I mean I like Thai Peanut Stir fry, but wow this one was a kicker, I am afraid to touch my eyes. It definitely cleared my sinus though.

Note: Eating a banana helps cool your mouth down afterwards.

It reminds me of the time I made a way to hot and spicy stir fry, but Dom and I were determined to eat it, so we are both scooping it in with snot running out our noses and watered up eyes, and laughing about how spicy it was... Ahhh good times with hot sauces.

Current favorite song: Death Cab for Cutie: Marching Bands Of Manhattan

A friend of mine is working on creating Imatong of Boulder, group dedicated to helping Sudanese Refugees. On July 22nd and 23rd they are holding Sudanese Women Refugee's Conference at the University of Colorado. I help build their website and realized I needed to get some links up to it so others could search and find this group. Imatong is currently mostly a student group, but will soon be expanding to Denver as well. Their first conference should have a number of speakers and hopefully a couple hundred refugees attending.

Imatong of Boulder

Long as I am mentioning projects I work on, Dom and Nicole are accepting donations for their wedding and honeymoon on the Fall Out Boy wedding website.

I finally saw Body Worlds, which I have been trying to see for months, it was pretty incredible. It ends on July 23, the final weekend it is open for 64 hours straight. That is pretty cool. Rock on people of Denver for selling out the show for pretty much the entire time it was in Denver. Most of the time even with tickets the wait was over an hour... All the extended nights and weekends were added because it was doing so well, soon enough this city will get some sweet culture.

Body Worlds Hours

I highly recommend it if you haven't already seen it. It was pretty amazing to see some of the things. I also was shocked to see how fast a fetus grows in 8 weeks to already looking like a very tiny person.

Apparently I was born as a part of the Boomerang Generation, which means I should move back home, because the job market isn't as good as it used to be... Sweet I finally have a great excuse to be a slacker, my whole generation was a group of slackers, you can't blame me, it was the rough times in society man...

hehe I think I am doing OK and probably won't have to move home, but I did find this amusing.

Brush then floss or floss then brush?? After a little google research the answer to the questions seems to be you should floss first and then brush afterwards... that makes sense to me... so let the flossing begin.

a good night I had spending it with friends, relaxing, and ending it with a cozy goodnight phonecall.

sweet dreams my friends.

"Get busy living or get busy dieing..."
(Yes this is kind of a drama queen post, and yes I am OK with that.)
((No nothing is going wrong and I am very happy right now.))

I currently think some how I might have had a bit to much of both... working quickly towards a busy life, and headed towards to quick of a death. It seems lately I see mortality around me every where. I assume it is mostly just because I was really sick recently. Some health problems in my family are coming more to light. I think also just some of my own fears of death have been exaggerated lately.

With thoughts of death floating around through my head, it makes me wonder about life. An odd pair that always comes together life and death. I have been thinking about my life, what is important to me, what I want to accomplish, what mark I may or may not want to leave, what I should see, say, and do. The majority of my life is filled with positive things, people, and memories. As you have less time for everything in life what do you focus on, what do you strive to achieve, what goals do you pass on realizing they were a dream of the past that may no longer be practical or relevant?

I know the people that are truly important to me, and I do feel that they would all know how much they have meant to me, but is that enough? Sometimes those unspoken feelings should they be spoken just as a reminder. The I love yous to friends and family? Is that enough if the people around you know your thoughts?

If I died tomorrow would I feel like I didn't leave enough of what I truly feel is me and my thoughts behind? Would I feel that so many thoughts and unfinished projects, art, and writings would be lost? If I knew I was going to die would I do anything different? Would I prepare? Would I finish art pieces, letters, and projects?

I recently had a sudden urge to get rid of many of my things, get rid of my movies, video games, TV, old books, old computers, and anything I don't use. When I die, will I really wish I had spent more time watching movies I have already seen? Playing video games to say I beat them? I truly doubt it. There is something to be said for down time, relaxing, and just enjoying simple time to let your mind unwind and refresh. Is it OK to know you waste a certain amount on time, and that is just a part of living a happy life. You can't always be trying to make every moment count, because otherwise you will be to warn out to really give it all when you need to be there for a moment that really does count.

I guess all these fears and emotions lead back to if I did suddenly pass, would I look back on my life and overall be happy with the route it took and the accomplishments I made along the way?

Can you put a meaning on a life?

Is being happy good enough?

I unleash these thoughts after a slow and pleasant evening, looking at art, watching a movie, and preparing for bed. These are the thoughts that will turn in my mind as I lay my head on my pillow and slowly every so slowly drift off into sleep.

stop just using demos of winzip and winrar, this is a complete solution that is all open source and all good...

7 zip, better than winzip and better than winrar

Winzip used to be a must install once i got a system running, because it was so simple and useful, but now I will just install this every time. This and FileZilla which replaces any FTP program you may have used are pretty much essential installs for any machine. so grab that now as well:

FileZilla better than wsFtp

We get our news filtered and munipulated... So what we know is limited...

A great movie about TV news, Spin

This movie has been out for almost a decade, but has been mostly overlooked.

oh yeah guitars are neat... Shawn learn to play like this.

"Just read on Zeropaid that Spain has recently voted in compulsory copyright licensing, levying a tax on all blank media. This includes cd-r, dvd-r, flash media, printers, scanners, cell phones, everything. The tax will be collected by the government and 'given to the copyright holder.'" -Spain Copyright

So this doesn't make any sense there are plenty or reasons to use blank media for your own backups, photos, word documents and such, that aren't copyright related. So if I am paying copyright owners every time I buy blank media in Spain, shouldn't I expect I can burn, trade, and download any of their copyrighted material for free seeing as I have paid for it based on media?

I am pretty sure that is how I would look at it, but basically they say it is illegal to do that, but we say that is all your doing with blank media so we will charge everyone money as if they are doing it, but make the act of copying it to media illegal, so now your paying for something that is actually illegal to do. Why is it that our government are owned by big business. This does NOTHING but hurt consumers, and pay large companies that are refusing to innovate.

Google I hate bundled programs. I hate watching any quicktime movies because I have to install crappy bloated itunes. Why would I want a huge itunes download just to watch quicktime video?

Why would I want google toolbar if I download shockwave to play games.

Google you used to be better than this, put this with your adsense scamming and a great leader is falling hard and fast to be just another corporation looking to expand their profit/market shares anyway they can...

Google bundles toolbar with adobe products

perhaps just a rough adjustment year?

Nicole Ruiz is the source of all evil.

languor: lack of energy or vitality.

I had an amazing time at Rachel's wedding with Erin, last night. It was a good time. Dinner, Drinks, and lots of Dancing... yippie

Here are some cute pictures...

A great little video about humans and what we do...

We are people, hear us Roar?

Waiting for Scott and I just keep finding funny and cool things...

Who you rolling with bob Saget

please say this video is real.... please...

The Power of old people

In my life I have never seen liberal media, all though I think it has been called that as long as I have been alive.

Fox sells the Simpsons (with many controversial episodes (gays rights, gay marriage, immigration) on one network, and complains about it on the news network - I think that people consider FOX news and not advertising is one of the most socially detrimental things currently around.

I deny your reality and substitue my own.

Also, I just wanted to say I think Erin is pretty... and I miss her while she is in New York.

Lastly I am way behind on the things I have to do...

Seriously what has been going on in this country, when did Americans become afraid of discussing anything? Do we just want to carry on and ignore the changing world around us? I know many things going on are changing and there is progress on some levels, but there is an attempt pushed by our president to add an amendment that would make gays lesser people in our country? Do we really want laws on the books that put values of some over others?

Colorado art show bans many pieces deemed to controversial... if art isn't controversial and putting forth a message what is the point?

Banned Colorado art

it is four days later and I can finally walk again... I was barely capable of getting to work on tuesday because I could barely walk. Crazy how much running can hurt your feet, and if I do that crap again I am so getting running shoes... Oh well, yippie for the weekend.

I was convinced to run the Bolder Boulder, it was a good time, but I hurt my right foot (luckily it didn't hurt until after I finished the 10k). I woke up this morning and now I can barely walk, it should be interesting to see how I get to work, since I normally walk. My guess is I will limp my way there, but it might take me awhile. Anyways yippie for something everyone in Colorado (or at least Boulder) is supposed to do at least once. It was a pretty good time with bands, belly dancers, free drinks and food, and many crazy people running in costumes. Now if I could only walk again, if you don't know what the Bolder Boulder is, here is the site.

Bolder Boulder 10k run

Oh yeah my time was 74 minutes for the 10k, considering that I have never been in any run before that doesn't seem to bad. I also wasn't planning on running it so I ended up running it in jeans and converse, which was not a smart move... hehe

sometimes some things are just to cute and silly to pass up... here is a crow that is this little kitty's mom,

Crow and kitty

Alright I have been listening to the Pearl Jam album all week at work, and I have really been digging the album. I like it a lot, the song on the radio, is one of the lamest tracks off the album. I really like some of the songs, and think they have released another solid CD. I dig Marker in the sand, parachutes, comeback, and inside job a lot. So anyways if you were considering picking it up, I would recommend it. I mean Eddie Vedder should have his voice patented, because he has such a unique sound. I dig his voice, and Pearl Jam evolves a bit but keeps a lot of the sound that has always made me dig their deep sound...

wow don't I sound like a pompus audiophile... hehe whatever I am digging it.

I dedicate this post to Nicole, because she was sad, and I don't like to see a pretty girl sad. hehe

So for the first time ever a girl has a set of keys to my apartment. I am pretty sure I should be freaking out about that fact, but instead it is just really cool. Anyways, she now has all the basic stuff here, but we need to get her some hangers, no sense in her trying to always live out of a travel bag. So I this means I am growing up, but right now I am having to much fun to really worry about things like that.

Dom, Nicole, Erin, and I are going out in Denver on Friday night, if your interested I am sure it could be a good time.

I so stole this post from a friend and put my own answers in because I thought it was clever... Yeah clever how is that going for you? Anyways, my guess is these lists have been floating around blog to blog for awhile now, so I might as well sign on up right?

Nine lasts:
1. Cigarette: Clove Erin's graduation party Friday (before that can't even remember)
2. Beverage: Water, before that energy drink to review...
3. Kiss: My hand to get rid of excessive chap stick, before that Erin Saturday morning before heading off to Ft Collins, we wanted to go for a walk and have a short picnic, but there wasn't time I was already late.
4. Hug: Krista to congratulate her from graduating college
5. Movie seen: Last Boy Scout, it was on TV
6. CD played: Death Cab for Cutie (a collection of their Mp3's what's a CD?)
7. Song listened to: Death Cab for Cutie, Thats Incentive for about 35 seconds/currently
8. Bubble bath: No Idea, to long... new summer goal I think so.
9. Time you cried: Wednesday.

Eight have you evers:
1. Dated one of your best friends: They always became best friends, but never dated anyone that was a best friend, I had tried a couple times though.
3. Kissed somebody and regretted it: Yes
4. Fallen in love: Yes, but worse yet, out of it.
5. Lost someone you loved: Yes.
6. Been depressed: Yeppers
7. Been drunk and threw up: Yes, but can't recall the last time that happened.
8. Ran away: Yes, from High School to another HS for one semester before returning, it might have been the smartest move in my life.

7 states you've been to:
This question bores me, and I will not even give it the respect of me answering it.

6 things you've done today:
1. Programmed
2. Cleaned
3. Went for a walk around the city, it was a beautiful day in Denver today.
4. Did something special for someone.
5. Called my mom to wish her a happy Mother's Day!
6. Ran off over 450 calories on my glider machine, which yes Dom I know over counts, but every little bit counts.

5 favorite things:
1. Creativity, Creativity is key.
2. Learning if you didn't learn something new today, what was the point?
3. Passion, all forms of passion... If it is something that you can find the unending pursuit and love of, that is just amazing if it is Art, Music, Film, Goals, Love, or anything else if someone has true passion for it I can respect that (except baseball, which you can't be passionate for because it sucks so badly hehe).
4. Laughter, when everyone is laughing, it is unlikely that anyone is getting hurt.
5. Surprises, I actually link this one with the first a lot. If someone can really surprise me, and make me do a double take, they will probably hold a position in my mind for a very long time.

4 people you last talked to:
1. Erin
2. Mom
3. Nicole's Voice mail
4. Matt and Julie

3 wishes:
1. Time Machine
2. World Peace, hey if were wishing why not.
3. Everyone to be in love.

2 things you want to be when you grow up:
1. I want to own my own business and work on things I find interesting.
2. In love.
(Evil answer, I kinda just wanted to put down better than you... you meaning any reader, I guess I am evil, or kind of competitive.)

1 thing you regret:
1. Not Studying Abroad

It is finally time to select the best of the Denver music scene. The Flobots are up in the running for the hip hop category, and Bop Skizzum is up in another category. So you should go ahead and go vote, and tell your friends and make them vote.

Vote Flobots in the Westword

Show your support for the local music scene.

Also, Happy Mother's Day Mom, I hope you had a wonderful day, Love You.

One day I might finally have this all straight in my head...

difference between affect and effect

an interesting read, by some feminist college student.

Feminist thoughts

It is funny sometimes how weird things feel when your surrounded only by people that agree with you, but based on the laws or social norms, you know your whole group is actually in the minority.

Sometimes things move so quickly, and sometimes you don't know exactly what to say. I guess with quick and fast changes exciting possibilities arise. There are many things going on right now, but the most exciting of them all is how things have been progressing with Erin. It just seems like everything matches up perfectly. Everything is just going so well between us right now that it is almost scary, to quote a cute girl I know... hehe

Wow just learned that my Bro is coming to town to chill for a long weekend. He will be getting in tomorrow afternoon. Sweet, celebrating with My bro, my girl, and my friends.

I hate the fact that I am driving somewhere and apparently mostly going straight, but probably going to get lost. There should be no where that you can drive straight but actually go on 5 different roads.

My quick path of straightness as an example:

1. Turn left at Champa St - go 0.8 mi
2. Continue on Kalamath St - go 1.8 mi
3. Continue on S Kalamath St - go 1.1 mi
4. Continue on S Platte River Dr - go 0.6 mi
5. Continue on US-85 S toward Santa Fe Drive - go 0.3 mi
6. Continue on S Santa Fe Dr - go 2.6 mi

I am not even counting the Kalamath to S Kalamth as a new road. City designers are stupid, and I place the blame squarely on Dominic, because he is a architect and that is about as close of profession that I know.

I have always been a fan of Kevin Smith and his movies (Chasing Amy, Dogma, Clerks, Mallrats, and such). I had heard of some of the problems Jason Mewes, has had with drugs, but obviously knew nothing in comparison to the real story. Like the movies Kevin has written he wrote a 10 essays talking about the 13 years or so of Jason's drug addiction and the problems it cause, and the amazing story of him finally getting sober (which he has remained for 3 years). The story of friendship and the bond these two share is incredible. It is a story that might even be better than all of the movies he has written, but with a still great writing style that makes it seem much more natural and conversational than other films.

Anyways, people always talk about the problems with drugs and addictions, but nothing seems to really hit home with many people. Sometimes you just can't see how steep and slippery the slope can be until you see someone that has fallen over the edge, and this is a story of someone who definitely went over the edge and was lucky enough to be able to climb back up. I highly recommend reading all of the articles in order, it will take a couple hours, but it is a very powerful and scary read.

Me and My Shadow pt1
Me and My Shadow pt2
Me and My Shadow pt3
Me and My Shadow pt4
Me and My Shadow pt5
Me and My Shadow pt6
Me and My Shadow pt7
Me and My Shadow pt8
Me and My Shadow pt9

So if you read it let me know your thoughts, I thought it was well written and one of the more honest things I have read about drugs. Interesting and scary. Jason Mewes congrats for turning your life around, and best of luck for every day in the future.

(side note: I think it is funny that Jason now drinks a bunch of redbull which we all know is a hobby of mine.)

Erin and I actually went to see the rally in the late afternoon, and it was pretty impressive. Almost more impressive (in that i don't see why they would really come out to piss off another group that picked one day to voice thier opinions) was that an odd group of people came out to protest the immigrants. To protect those people there was over 100 cops in two lines shoulder to shoulder one right in front of the anti-immigrants and then about 10 feet of empty space no one could go in, and then another line of shoulder to shoulder cops, in a half circle around the group which was basically backed up against a building. (I was also impressed and happy to see the police maintaining peace well) There was no violence when we were their just people yelling back and forth at each other. It was definitely something to make you think. I really don't know the solution, and I don't think I have even develop my own thoughts on it very well, but it was kind of amazing. I mean we need to be able to make it easier for people to come legally into the country, and find some solution for all the people already here, I just don't know what it is.

Well I am pretty pumped about running off on a short Cali vacation. I will get to see some old friends that I haven't seen for awhile. I also dig Cali so that should be fun. I am insanely tired right now, which sucks but I guess I can sleep on the flight. Hope everyone has a great weekend. Perhaps I will have some fun stories when I get back.

Alright I finished spell checking the energy drink site awhile ago, but I finally did a pretty quick redesign. The text and colors should be easier on the eyes and easier to read now. I reorganized a couple things that will also, help users find what their looking for. So yippie for the sites re design. go check it out and let me know your thoughts on the new look.

A New Look for Energy Drink Reviews

UPDATE: My LOGO SUCKS... anyone have any ideas or make one for me we have some talented design friends out there.

I have been wondering when and how Google would be making money off of Google personal. I think this is the first appearance of a ad tie in with Google personal. It is an interesting tie in for advertising? Are we expecting more of these to come?

(Note I am not trying to article jack by putting this on my blog I never saw an article or anywhere to link I just noticed it on my own Google personal)

Well it took awhile, but after all the Fark people gave me a lot of crap I decided to finally go through and spell check every entry to Energy Drink Reviews. So now with all of the entries spell checked and a bunch of spam comments deleted hopefully it will be up to a little higher standards than before. I am also now spell checking all of my entries to this blog, so it should be a little more clear and easy to read as well. If you catch an error anywhere feel free to email me, or let me know in the comments.

Yippie for progress, which we all know takes time.

For Easter I hung out with Erin and did Easter Dinner with her family. After that we played bridge and then went on to whiffle. Finishing out the evening hanging out outside during the start of the sunset. I had a great Easter weekend and hoped all of you did as well, so best wishes to all my family, friends, and readers.

So I haven't download pictures from my camera forever. So I finally hooked it up cause I needed to send a newspaper some pictures of energy drinks for an article. I found all sorts of old pictures on there, and decide it was time to post halloween pictures... it only seems natural to me to have halloween in warmer weather, I think we should officially change halloween to the first friday of every April.

I saw the flobots last night, it was a good time as always the venue wasn't right for them to much empty space and high ceilings, also the sound sucked, it was very hard to hear the lyrics because the mike was to low, and the other instruments were to loud. Oh well I dug their new song.

My friends and old room mates Dom and Nicole launched a website today, so check it out, and if you have a website drop a link to it. They are trying to get Fall Out Boy to play their wedding, which they had discussed with the band before they got so huge. So they are gathering signatures and hoping someone notices, so far they are at 80 signatures. So spread the word, post to your myspace, facebook, or blog.

Fall Out Boy Wedding

It should at the very least be a fun little project, to see how many people notice it and how much we can spread it online. So all you Fall Out Boy fans that leave comments all over our blogs, put them to use on all your message boards and others sites, and maybe we can at least get an email from the band of something.

you're so cute when you're slurring you're ing your speech...

one of the best lines in modern music of modern life right now...

I guess I have much more to say right now but I don't know how to express any of it. Lets just say I was hit wearing a bullet proof vest and nothing went through but I felt the hits...

Whoaaa I dont know where time is going right now. It seems I have no time for anything. I thought this would be a slow week and it seems I always have something to do, or I end up staying late at work. I haven't even started my taxes and I need to get on that.

I have however found a really exciting prospect at work, and if I could get on the project I think it could be really cool. It was all the kind of stuff I was hoping to work on when I first took the job, but that original project was cancelled. Now a similiar one (well similiar applications of programming) has come up. It seems like good timing and a good fit so if I could get on this project I would really have to start to put some time into it and show my worth, so I could keep working on such cool stuff.

Outside of that, I have been more into music lately which is kind of fun. I haven't however been able to motivate myself to work on many of my web projects enough lately so that is sad, especially because last month was such a record breaking month. I think part of it is that I know that pretty much no mater what I do or release this month that I probably wont be close to topping some of last months stats.

Props to those out there helping someone out, or helping out the world. If you can make it Flobots April 14th, and Dom is pushing Saves The Day on April 18th. So it sounds like a good week for music and a good chance to hang out.

It is spring people, time for the concert crowds to really start to get moving. Lets start out this season right.

With that peace out... I am going to jam to some music while putting away my laundry.

I know I have posted about diamonds before, but I will have to do it again, because I found an even better article going into all of it.

Diamonds are worthless, making people believe in non existent value.

It is kind of old and not everything they talk about has worked out that way, but still good history of why DeBeers is crap.

I finally got my car registered. I have had my car unregistered for months trying to get it all figured out. This is a temporary solution, because the title is still missing and it is registered in IL. We are filling for a lost title and then getting it transferred into my name, and then finally I will get my car registered in Colorado. While I was parked at the hospital I got a ticked for not having a valid registration.

Arggg... I really need to start my taxes.

I am going Dancing with Erin tonight so that should be fun. I don't think i really remember how to swing dance, nor does she. So it should be interesting to see how exactly this works out. Oh well I currently have zoot suit riot in my head... As well as a dirty name of a swing band that I always crack up when I think about.

I really didn't have TV for a long time and I liked it, I have slowly gone back to watching more of it, especially since I can now record all the shows I like and not watch any of the commercials. Anyways, someone made this good post about quiting cable and it made me wonder if I should just give it up again?

Quiting Cable

Well things are going well. Everything thing seems on track for the way I have wanted it. It is almost scary how well things are working out currently, which of course means something will go wrong soon and have to be dealt with, but for now perfect. I have nothing to really write or to say, because when everything is going great and keeping me super busy or out of computer contact... well I just don't write or post often. My posts by date might even make an interesting graph... hehe

After I started writing this post... I got an incredible email.

Have you ever received a call, email, or message from someone and it basically says you helped change my life... You had no idea that at that very moment you changed my life for the better for ever... I just got one of those from a close friend. It was incredible, it shows why friendships can be so incredible. To those of us that have helped or changed someone for the better, and to all of those that have made me a happier and better person.

appropriately enough... thinking about things lately i could say some others have change my life very significantly in recent months as well...

and random funny childhood memories... K.. I... K.I. Killer Instinct...

I finally fixed my washer and dryer and got them working... I can barely explain how excited I am to have a washer and dryer again.

Well so much stuff has happened and most of it has been ignored here on my little space on the internet. So I dont exactly know how to go through it all so i just wont. I will just say everything is great. CU starts springbreak this weekend and I will be headed up skiing with Erin. Got a nice little place in Breck, and it has had some good snow lately, snow it should be a blast. It seems i have been running around with my head cut off trying to get all sorts of little chores done, and then dealing with weird spikes on a bunch of my different websites that screamed for my attention. I have gotten a lot done, but there is still so much more to do.

I was supposed to launch a new site at the end of last month, and it is still no where near a reality. Another site was supposed to launch a month ago and it is almost finished. I have a bunch of work i am supposed to get done for the Flobots, need to help out Robin with a site. I need to fix ^2's blog, and meant to help another friend with some CSS design. All and all things are great and grand, but where does all that time go... sometimes it seems I have to much time that i dont know what to do with myself, and other times it seems like it is hard to just sit down and not be thinking of all the things I should be doing.

Work is going well, and it looks like my project it working out to be a success so that is awesome. I am building a pretty cool simulator for it which is kinda interesting. Namely because I think it might be the best test bed, I have ever made.

Ahhh... and It is time for me to go, so peace out friends, family, enemies, and more.

Dan "the Anti Boredom" Man

Fark.com is a huge site that is very popular with young twenty somethings and on sunday night I finally got farked. Someone posted my energy drink site to fark and it got approved for the front page. It sent me an insance amount of traffic and it was really cool to experience it all, even if most of them really just ripped on my spelling and grammar. Either way it was really sweet and it was a goal of mine, so one more goal down.

Dan on fark

Lots of things where said about the site and some of them were addressed here.
My Responce to Fark users

Suprise suprise people that download the most music online are also the target market and the LARGEST purchases of legal music. Most try music on P2P to discover new music and see what they like. This study was done by the canadian RIAA which has been one of the loudest groups claiming P2P is destroying their business... seems their own research show that isnt true.

Summary of the canadian RIAA study that shows P2P isnt the problem

I had a great St Pattys day running around Boulder and partying it up there. House parties with green beers, bars with strong drinks, and carbombs in the scumdowner bar were some quick highlights.

It is always kinda nice to go back to boulder for a little while I really enjoy it there. Good times.

Last week in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin , professor of law at American University, was requested to testify.He did so.

At the end of his testimony, a right-wing senator said: �Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?�

Raskin: �Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.�

This is a great prank, it might even be taking it to far, but it shows the effectiveness and weaknesses of humans and how they can and will be explioted...

Basketball Prank

Well all those little things I had been putting off i finally have been starting to get to... a slow week can be worth 1000 hours of free time... yippie...

Yeah I know this post was lame, but it can't ever be better than 50% gold here or someone might start to accidently take me seriously. I wrote this whole post just so i could use a sign off that i liked.

Peace,
Dan "running blindly backwards with scissors" Man

I found this really funny from an article about republicans looking for who to run in the next presidential election.

-washingtonpost
Most of the activists said they would support any Republican who wins the nomination. Their biggest concern was finding someone who can beat the Democrats.

"I'm for any Republican who can get elected," said Craig Capehart of Dallas, Texas. "It would be nice if they also had policies that would be good for the country."

No that is blind party line politics for you.

Funny things people have said in court

Well on a friends suggestion i tried to rent Lords of war last night. I decided to give another shot to online movie rentals. I have done it a couple times in the past and decided it might be worth giving another attempt. The cost was down from $4.99 to $3.99 which is nice, but it should be more like $2.00. I guess pricing doesnt matter when their service sucks and just doesn't work.

Yeah I paid my $3.99 downloaded my file, and imeadiately I just have windows DRM (Digital Rights Management) Errors. So i just downloaded from thier service and it wont let me play the file, because it believes I have tried to transfer it to another computer. First of why they hell should it care, when it is a time based DRM and I can watch the file for 24 hrs. How aobut you can move it anywhere you want play it anywhere but in 24 hrs it goes bad. No i think this concept would scare them for some unknown reason. So CinemaNow, which has solutions that involve deleting a bunch of hidden system files and editting your registry with warnings that if you do this wrong none of your DRM files will eer be able to play again. That is bullshit and I am not going to risk it. They are loosing costumers and increasing their costs by having overly restrictive and complicated DRM.

Seriously the only good thing I can say about CinemaNow is that they did refund my money and let me cancel my account. If their service actually worked, they might have found and occasional customer, who would participate in thier 2 dollar tuesdays, cause that is a good price, but no, they wont support Firefox, which they would be easily capable of, they use overly protective DRM, and it flat out just doesnt work sometimes. I have rented from them twice so i will say it doesnt work half the time. (which i am sure isnt true), but if an advanced computer user like myself can't watch a movie easily off their system what in the hell do they expect for parents.

Screw you CinemaNow, for ruining a good idea and slowly running yourself into the ground. I want SIMPLE online movie rentals.

This game seriously looks amazing. I will definately be buying it and learning how to evovle a cool society... very interesting.

Spore the evolution game

it is like the sims, sim city, warcraft, age of empires, and everything else combined.

I have for a long time said I hope to find a woman, who doesnt want a diamond for her wedding ring. I found a nice little site that sums up many of the reasons diamonds are just bad. So hopefully their are some women out their that haven't been to brain washed that they feel they have to have a diamon. In the end though who ever I fall for will play a role in this decision, I just hope she also sees the reasons not to support this horrible trade.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring

ladies, if you couldn't have a diamond ring, what kind of ring or stone would you want?

UPDATE: The good wired article on diamonds New Diamond Age, Debeers Sucks

I for a long time have been telling people I was 5'5", now after not actually looking or measuring myself for a long time. I have learned i am actually 5'6", I never knew I was five six. So i can now look at the whole world with a new view, a one inch taller view.

haha ok so not really a big deal, but it was amusing to me. Whooopie an extra inch.

peace out,
Dan "5 foot 6" Man

Wow finally I will get to settle down a bit. I am back from vail and dont think I have anything to crazy in the next while to keep me busy. I should be able to get everything under control and settle my life down a bit. I am excited about being able to plan and think for the future again, instead of just trying to finish out this week or that month.

So all is well in the world of Dan. Skiing is a blast, even with bad snow.

I also learned there are many many cute nurses and physical therapists in the Vail Medical Center. I always have loved nurses. Seriously besides the cute outfit, it does say a lot about their personality. It says they are a good caring person, who is well educated, who wants to help other people, who is willing to take some risks for others, and is passionate about what they do. All of that I get from their job... I am sure I could be wrong sometimes, but most of the nurses I have ever known or talked with have help to reinforce my generally positive attitude towards nurses.

Last night My mom got into town and we went out to dinner with Dom and Nicole. So after that i brought my mom over to her hotel we had a nightcap and i went to get a cab home. The cab came in and the guy looked like he just woke up, i told him where to go, and he didnt seem to understand english. I got the address to him and then he drove a bit stopped and said he didnt know where that is. I started to try to tell him and he just kinda honked at another cab that came over, and told me to get in that cab, because he didnt know where to go. I am pretty sure he was drunk.

Anyways the other cab got me home no problem. It was a nice little dinner and hopefully will be followed by a nice weekend.

Man people have funny tastes on the web. Currently the most popular video on wasted brains.

Funny Lightning bolt

weird anyways the video section will hit over 100,000 sometime this month which is cool if you have any clips i should add send them my way especially if they are originals! I love funny videos, and you know you love it to.

Dom more of that crazy animation guy, spoon to big.

My main computer is working again SWEET! I am getting some stuff done, yippie for that. Not alot though because work has me pretty involved right now so it is hard to come home and work more.

Damn being busy.

I now have a washer and dryier, i just need to get all the right pieces to hook up the dryer. I also need a wrench to tighted the water hook ups for my washer. I guess I will have to get on that soon.

This is possibly the most boring post I have ever made on my blog, sorry but more of my free time is going towards finished the book I am reading, State of Fear. I really like Michael Crichton, but man he made many of the characters so one sided and weak it is amazing. I get that he has a point and agenda in the book, but so far it has been so one sided while only refrencing that some beleive there is support on the other side that it is hard to take serious. It is kinda like the DARE program, which basically tried to tell kids that if they ever try a cigarette they will be addicted for life. Anyways, it still makes some execellent points and is a good read.

I might have forgotten because i am trying to keep track of to much, i know many of my readers know that my main computer (and alot of my data) wont boot and wont run and that i have been on a back up computer with no sound card (old server) for a couple weeks now... but i realize i forgot to tell a few people and i am still getting questions about it so... yeah if i was helping you with a computer project i am kinda screwed on that right now sorry bout that. It was brand new 6 months old who would have thought it would try to dump everthing and not even turn on anymore.

This was a great weekend thanks to all that helped make it happen. Dom and Nicole I had a spledid time, and I value our friendships more than I think any of the three of us will ever be able to vocalize, good times.

I can hear clearly now the fuzz is gone. Wendsday night i went deaf in my left ear. Friday i started going deaf in my right ear at work. I hadn't told anyone because i felt like an idiot since it started after i used a que-tip and i thought i just ruined my own ears. I went to the hospital tonight and both my ears were impacted with ear wax. Not to big of a deal. My left was completely so i couldnt hear out of it at all... my right was just partically. Anyways it was a very odd and weird sensation to be particially deaf for two days. I like hearing in stereo. So yeah be careful with cue tips, but actually the doctor told me it was quite common and could have happened without me doing that eventually. It makes sense cause i never use cue tips and only used them because my hearing was seeming to get worse.

oh well so that scared me for a bit i thougth i would go deaf and now i am good... exciting.

Some very cool high speed photography of liquids. Very interesting and cool looking.

so very cool high speed photography of liquids..

I am back home and everything has been flying fast and crazy at 1000mph since i got home. If you havent heard from me, if you havent gotten a responce. I didnt mean to leave you in the dust. I didnt mean to overlook the date (sorry about that), but I am just so gone, and lost in the maze of programming that who knows when I will next come to... It is bad for my friends and people i know but the experience of actually seeing and walking though a completely non physical entitiy is very scary and very cool and that is where i am so i guess it is a trade off...

but i dont mean to step over or leave anybody or GC behind, but I am afraid i just cant keep up right now. Trying to slow it down again until i know everything that is going on, give me a week or so... best of luck to you all!

After posting some about NASA science being under attack, i thought this was a nice addition to the thought:

"Generally attack against science is part of a greater attack against intellectualism in general. I think right now we're in an anti-intellectual period in the United States, but I think the pendulum will swing back in the other direction again."
-Physicist Alan Lightman

I think part of it has to do with their are little to no good intellectual role models right now, while we are currently turning more to sports figures and bimbos like Paris Hilton which are becoming role models.

Well to all the couples out there happy Valentines Day. I guess for everyone else yippie for a annoying day where I realize there is over 13 billion dollars spent by americans, who know who they want to be with, while I have no idea.

Oh well any day, holiday, or whatever that brings people more together and more sharing of love than hate must be a good thing. Considering untolerant people have killed many people and attacked many people and buildings spreading general terror, because they can't accept that not every one is a member of their religion or follow their beliefs.

Happy Valentines Day and spread some joy because happiness can be addictive. All is well in my currently busy little world, and all is set for my next trip.

Steamboat was a blast and a good time for everyone i think. The snow wasnt the best which is unfortunate, but it was a good time anyways. So hell yeah for getting to hit steamboat my favorite ski resort, even when I only got to ski it with bad snow. I also wasnt skiing well for most of the time which was odd, but i started to really get into the grove at the end of the second day.

lastly
if you like good sci fi movies read this.

I love the daily show, The Daily Shows take on the vice president shooting a man in the face.

Some people are making insane statements that the vice president is getting more flak over shooting than he was for leaking information or for starting a war under believed to be known false pretenses... I dont think this is true at all cause he is still being attacked about those other issues to this day, and he is just currently being attacked about the shooting which will die down much quicker, albeit far funnier.

Cheney seemed not to know basic safety rule

There is something going on with my server and i am having problems figuring out what... and it is pissing me off. It isnt this server, but on the other one... it looks like we are getting TONS of traffic to much to handle well which is kinda good and kinda bad... either way i will be angry until i figure out what is going on.

I am going skiing in steamboat this weekend and it is snowing so i am pumped about that.. i heard they have gotten over 3 feet of snow this week. Rock on skiing in steamboat.

Grrrrrr Says I... Science is good and learning is good...
Political appointee's trying to suppress NASA science

Suppressing global warming info

ID is not science

More ID is not science lets teach it in science classes

How could we let this happen. We are attacing multiple countries and holding hundreds of people yet we apparently aren't watching the worst of the worst terrorist very closely and they escape. I have verious thoughts on the war and what should be happening, but i do know that if we have people and have realy good evidence that they are involved in these acts of terror we shouldnt be letting those escape. We are condeming entire countries which probably had little to do with terrorism, so when we have the people who are actually to blame we can't pay less attention to them. This is a horrible shame and I hope they are recaptured soon, this can't look good for our country.

Terrorist Escape

How could we let this happen?

if you know you know cause it is down to T - wednesday and if you dont well i guess you weren't told about some calls this month.

All is told, all is said, and all I am me all out there... so Here I am... Rock me like a hurricane... or rock me like I am who I am...

sometimes it is just so easy to put a silly smile on your face...

David Lee Roth

also there is talks of a return to Squash Hockey saturday afternoon are you in?

Well lots of stuff has been keeping me busy. It was a big fun weekend.

The flobots show went off great, we partied hard before the show, during the show, and were up late after... we managed to sleep 8 people in my apartment which if you have seen it seems pretty funny, which it was.

There is live music of the Flobots, up on their site now. So if you want to check out some cool and very different music give it a listen.

After that i had to clean up my place quite a bit sunday due to multiple exploding Pepsi, one of which i quest answering the question can you add carbonation to a carbonated soda, the result is a messy soda explosion, so please try it at home. That is if you have access to a carbonator.

Well I video taped the show this weekend which means I needed to get all my old video software out and ready to edit, but it was on one of my 4 failed harddrives that my two external USB harddrive mounts killed (note to readers never use an external hard drive for serious use, back up and remove it, dont do lots of reading and writting). I recoved 3 of the drives two which had data i would ahve been sad to loose, I am still missing one drive which has my photo collection from highschool through sophmore year of college, and every episode of friends on it. So there are currently 4 computers partically taken apart being reassembled and fixed in my main room. Rock on lots of computers.

Add in a bunch of site work, installing multiple Unix flavors on multiple machines, a healthy dose of work, talking to a friend who's friend was shot, some warcraft 3, and some frustrating parts at work and you have a busy time on your hands...

Oh well fun stuff and good progress across the board.

The top 10 most censored news of 2005 yeah I am scare and yes you can hold me.

top censored news of 2005

Some i found obvious like closing more and more of the ability for public scrutiny in the government, what a suprise. Others scared me more like more about the oil for food scandal, using the tsunami to strengthen military, and others... go read and leave your thoughts here...

How many rights and freedoms should be taken or reduced to protect us? Are we safe enough? I say yes because we still kill ourselves far more often than others kill us intentionally.

The guys that got hired to act and write on SNL the stuff that got them the job...

Great Before they were stars comedy

some very funny stuff watch the short stand up to see if it is your thing then if it is watch awesome town their pilot and the episodes before it... great stuff and great fun... I always hoped to do something like this durring college but it takes alot mroe work than people give credit for especially when you have other classes...

Oh yeah some old school fun:

Springfield Crew Fun video

Sometimes things just are't as simple as you would think, you can try to catch and deal with all the angles. Sometimes you miss a couple, sometimes you see something as safe and go for the risk. Anyways, I guess you can't always be ready for everything or have the foresight on every issue.

Well it will be a busy couple of weeks... Oh well I guess you always rise to the challenge.

interesting article about many of the myths surrounding video games in our current culture.

Video Game Myths

I have heard all about all sides of the video game debates for a long time, and I think it is interesting to read this take on it all. Overall i think some people can get addicted aand to into games, but people have found ways to abuse anything and become addicted to anything so i dont think punishing everyone for those that abuse something is right. Anyways, very cool piece to see what some of the actual current research says, versus what some of the proposed laws claim or assume.

long as were on that topic, if you have always wanted to find smaller more personal ways to help charities by throughing some money at the MADD and other orginizations of the world, this might actually make more of a difference and drop less of the money in the multi million dollar salaries of many charity organizations executives.

Give Meaning Charities for your beliefs

A great article about loving work and how to get there, Ben pointed this out to me...

Love your work?

I am hoping that i am working in the right direction to make it to the point where i do just love everything i get to do... I am sure it will take awhile and alot of struggles, but hey at least I have an idea.

I know what projects I want to be working on and make happening, but I need to be better about Good and Bad Procrastination.

I think the best advice is work on the little things that can turn into big things, because nothing makes you keep working at something harder than seeing and idea become a success. That is why i try to many times break down big projects to a bunch of small tasks because one day i will sit down and say i can get a few of these tasks done and often, I just finish the whole thing right then.

Mythbusters which is currently my favorite show... has some cool outtakes and such online.

Lost experiments

Interview on slashdot with mythbusters

Oddly, I like watching the show trying to find faults in failures, in their tests, and reasons they could have performed better at some of the attempted myths, and ways to make others wehre they succeeded far more realistic and simpler.

Many internet people crack me up, somewhere apparently found the video on wasted and linked it up, and now the most popular video on my site is GemSweat. The statistics on my websites crack me up, just wait till i do a post about the top searches that end people up at my sites, some make sense like energy drinks, bands, and other intrests but others I have NO IDEA how they end up at my site, one example, "how can a man make his breast grow real big like a womans?", someone typed that into google... and somehow ended up on my server.. What the hell??? If you have seen it you know how bad it is, if you haven't go watch the worlds worst music video:

GemSweat - worst music video ever

Could you even finish watching it? It did make me laugh though, and that is always good. It has been downloaded over 425 just so far this month!

Well I know no one cares, but i spent ovwer an hour and a half trying to configure apache2 to work with tomcat 5.5, which sucked. I got it all working, what does this mean to all of you my friends? Probably nothing, it means that finally all the content on wastedbrains will start being indexed properly cause it has relied on some very ugly and fake page forwarding that search engines normally associate with pretty shady sites. It also means when your at a page it will say the url so you can email it to people instead of always being at www.wastedbrains.com no matter where you are on the site. So the full switch isn't done yet, but now all the technology is acting appropriately so it shouldnt take long to make the small page rewrites to reflect the new url mappings. Congradulations to myself cause I have been meaning to do this for over a year... just never got to it. If your having the same problem How to integrate apache2 with tomcat 5.5 (thats for google friends not really you).

yippie one step closer towards Ben and I's little practice project launch. So who is bored out of there mind? Anyone? Anyone even reading it this far?

It must be great to be an animal, because you always get to see all the other animals naked. You get to see the goods, before you make a move...

29 healthiest foods on the planet

Well i am proud to say i eat many of these, but I am going to try to start adding more fruit to my diet. So as I just finished iwth some carrots and pinto beans, I am about to eat my cup of low fat strawberry yogurt... later in the day to be followed by a cup of pears... I guess today is a healthy eating day... hooray for being healthy for 1 day. I am also happy to see there is nothing but fruits, veggies, and fish on the list so take that beef eaters. I guess i now have a good reason to eat more crab, yippie...

How did you do on the list? (Difficulty: Dom hates Carrots, Nicole must mix chrunchy and soft)

Here is my list of the healthy foods I eat in order of my favorites

If you know me you know my true animal weakness... (No I haven't bought the DVD yet, and yes I know I should have it already.) But this is still up there on the adorably cute factor... Yes it is cute little baby bears... See how one is licking the bubble trying to like the peoples faces. I want one, everyone has dogs or cats. I want a little bear cub or a spider monkey.

I hate it when it take over 2 1/2 to set up anything and tonight it took me over 2 1/2 hours to make ruby on rails work inside of apache server... Thank god it is working cause I was just about to give up.

So what hobbies do you have that you love, but at the same time frustrate and aggrivate you.

I love my computer but damn if painting and art isn't far more relaxing. Oh well I have knocked off about 30+ little mini goals since thursday last week. So what if this little goal took far longer than expected it is completed. Which puts me one step closer to working on some of the more fun goals on my seemingly endless list. Oh well, if you dont start you will never get done.

I also ran 2 miles today... whoopie for trying to get in better shape for skiing.

"So get busy living or get busy dying..." -Shawshank Redemption

Well I have been back fro awhile I am fully recovered from my Vegas birthday/new years trip and I am getting back to work on a variety of things. Vegas was a good time as usual, and i gambled some, but after learning i could actually loose a few years ago i dint gamble much might have lost like 40 bucks (I was up $190 at one point but made a dumb move to go all in, in texas hold em). It was alot of fun running around seeing old friends and celebrating the new year. I was dead tired from basically running around and celebrating since Dec 21 when I returned home Jan 1st, I returned home to find my appartment that Shawn and Doc stayed in trashed... but in a fun way... Shawn was nice enough to make a little web page about it. So without anymore introductions here was my appartment when i returned and the process that got it that way.

TPing Dan Mayer's Apartment

So yippie for 6 or 7 bags of trash and having all my food labeled with my sharpie.

Well that will end the new years chatter from me, and now moving forward with new challenges... I am supposed to have a starter project out with Ben by late Feb... So keep your eyes peeled for that and best of luck and best wishes to everyone.

Well it seems lately i have been slacking on my goals... I think a big part of that is because during my 2 weeks off i didnt do any work on my sites, art, programming, my job, and I really didnt accomplish anything really worth while. It was a good time, and it was great to see everyone, but it was just missing any sense of a great importance or a greater goal. It made me feel lazy and wonder what the point of it all was... no some of the thoughts on that topic are far to much and unsettled to go into here, but it did make me start to think of things I have set out to do and not finished. So I started trying to just take little baby steps and find some that I could accomplish in the next few days. So with that I finished one tonight. I finished Dave's Tattoo.

I dont even know how many months ago I started it, and for months it sat un touched... Then finally I picked it up again a few months ago and was planning on finishing it, and oddly enough Dave and Squared convinced me to quit on it that night to go see a move and then go to Dom and Nicole's party. So I will try to get some pictures of it up pretty soon. I can't right now cause I seem not to have my digital camera... hmmm the search will begin...

Anyways, after weeks off it has felt good at work to be using my brain again and get back to thinking. Tonight it felt good to finish a goal. I guess in the end I ended up with a pretty good gift to give a friend as well. So dave next time your around we can scan it in and play with some sizes contrasts and all that other stuff and see if you still want it perminately on your body... at the very least you will have a cool drawing.

peace,
Dan "Should i sign posts like i do emails man?" Man

Yeah i go in spurts of watching tons of movies and then none at all. I have seen a lot of things that are out on DVD and all, but I am just so sick of everything about theaters i can't make myself go in one even for movies I want to see.

It costs so much that for 2 people you should just buy the DVD
People are always loud and talking
If you see anything remotely new the theaters are packed
Cell phones (even some of my lame friends txt message during movies, god i hate couples that cant leave each other alone for 2.5 hours)
Loud kids
If you want good seats you need to show up early
They run freaking TV commercials before the movie why would i ever pay for a tv commercial
The movie starts so late after the commercials and all the previews that seeing anything becomes a 2.5+ hour experience
Movie times never seems to work unless you plan way ahead
Food costs, i would like a lemonade that doesnt cost $2.95

So i just haven't been to the theater for such a long time. I just wait for things i want to see to come out on DVD and many times can buy it when it first comes out for 13 bucks from target or amazon.com. So even if the movie isn't that great it is still cheaper to buy it and check it out than see it in the theater with a friend. I also just buy used DVDs 2 for 10 bucks... can't be that.

Happy new year everyone... I am home, I am tired, and I will probably be busy for awhile.

If you have seen my spoon is to big, this should be familiar... A little more tame, but hey think of the children
Cold Hands, warm heart music video

Well I am 24 and about to run out the door for a quick birthday and new years trip. The planning of all the trips and visits over this break was insane, but it worked out well. I got to see a lot of my family, friends, and will get to spend a quick vacation with some of them.

I got to go with my brother and his girlfriend to a Flobots show, which was an incredible show, with a sell out crowd. I got to show them around Denver with another friend of mine and theirs hitting a bunch of the more interesting clubs and bars. We had a great dinner near my place at the painted bench. It was good to get to just spend some chill time with my bro.

Anyways nothing really changes and I dont feel any older, but i guess life slowly will pass you by and long as your having some fun it always seems to pass by quick enough. So next year my car insurance will drop, this year I dont think anything really happens. I guess each year you are a little more sure of who you are and what you really want. I think this should be a very interesting year coming up with lots of big changes, and busy schedules. Some more weddings on the way for friends and family as well. So I know secretly what I am hoping for and working towards in the next year, and best of luck in your goals as well.

Happy New Years, and remember it is always the brand new dance of 1994!

for those in the know, the 27th is the flobots show...

Anyways i will be back in town (denver) briefly from the 27th to the 30th. So feel free to give a call to hang out and such while I am back.

Things are going pretty good in springfield. Less people are home every year, but I guess that is part of growing up, and being in a situation where most of your old friends are spread around the whole country.

(If your in springfield and read this call me I will be in town for awhile, if you dont know my number my email address is on the main page write me and I will get back to you)

I used to love the holidays, and in some ways I still do, but much of the magic and joy has been fading away, replaced with stress, struggle, memories, and more.

I still try to do a lot during the holidays making my yearly donations to various charities I believe in, calling old friends I haven't talked to in a long time, and spending some time with the family. It isn't the same when you were a kid and your next few months of joy could come for just getting the right gift. It isn't the same as when you had someone to share the holidays with. It isnt the same as when you actually believed in Santa and the spirit of giving because people were inherently good.

Well this year things are getting really busy before I head home. I thought I would have about 2 and half days to finish a project at work, but they didnt have everything ready for me until around noon today. I flight out tomorrow so to get it done before I go I will be into the office about 5 AM. Which for those of you that know me, I am truly not a morning person.

On top of that I had a lot to get ready with laundry, packing, and cleaning. Trying to remember all of the various tasks I am hoping to accomplish while home on break. Yeah thats right a bunch of goals work like goals for my break. My bag packed with a couple programming books to help guide the way. I still have to figure out one more xmas gift before the 25th as well. It should be a fun time while home, followed by a fun time in Denver, ending with a crazy great new years in Vegas.

The cherry on the top of the beginning of the end of the holiday stress was that there was a pretty large attack on my server (no not the one hosting this site, but over at Wastedbrains.) It seems someone found a way to use my mail server as a Spam forwarding server, sending out literally millions of spam messages each of which was recorded onto the hard drive entirely filing up ever last bit of space on the drive. More than half my system flagged as Spam and sent to the �Bad Mail� folder, but others were sent out. I dont even know what setting they got into on the mail server so I just had to shut the whole thing down (not that it had been working right lately anyways). So after stopping the spam, I had to deal with deleting Millions of messages from all over my server, folders so large you cant open them or they crash the file browser, so large that if you try to delete the whole folder it crashes as well. No you have to go in DOS mode and delete each file one by one running a batch command, my server has been deleting files for over 10 hours and seems to be about halfway done? Which all of this is making my sites run much slower than normal. Just a few weeks ago I had to delete thousands of Spam messages from my various blogs. It seems that all my sites are under attack and that on top of it they are getting far less traffic than they used to. Partially because search engines are probably starting to think my server is part of the Spam problem, when I am really one of the Spammers victims.

The office Christmas party was a great time, and I think everyone had fun, so I was glad it went over well and that no one really got in trouble or embarrassed themselves. I had a wonderful evening getting to know some of my co workers better.

Lastly I got to help Matt learn how to build some web page stuff for his boss, and since I write code by hand and dont steal software anymore, we had to find a free GUI web page designer and I learned how much better dreamweaver is than any free GUI html editor.

With that Happy holidays to everyone, those who are stressed from the holidays, those who don't celebrate the holidays, those who are happy, those who are sad, those who are with families, and those far from home. Happy Holidays, and to all a good night.

Well I went to traffic court and dealt with my ticket since my court date was scheduled when I will be out of town (Vegas New Years Baby!). Anyways they dropped my ticket from 6 points to 3 points i brought in a liscense so that was fixed, and I told them I am still in the process of trying to get my car registered (apparently no one knows where the title/registration for my car went after the divorce). Anyways, all in all it wasnt to bad and I had to pay $225 for speeding 22 mph over the limit. I guess i deserve it for all the speeding that I have done, but I am sad that I didnt make it to my 25th birthday without being pulled over.. Damn close though as I will be turning 24 on Dec 30th (Vegas birthday yippie).

Tonight is the office christmas party, it should be a good time... hopefully everything works out there. I will be the only person with a vegitarian dinner.

I went out to a show with Robin and some friends from Boulder last night, it was a damn good show. The Flobots put on a great performance. They even had a very interesting stage war with a local theater group that apparently the flobots are cross promoting with... It was pretty funny to hear some shakespear done in a rap style... They also brought up some highschool kids that rapped for one song. Every show the flobots puts on is wildly different which I really digg.

Before the show was also went to the apparently world famous Casa Bonita. Which everyone talks about in colorado but I had never been to. It is kinda like a fair, carnival, and chucky cheese all wrapped together with mexican food (horrible and gross mexican food, but good sopapitas). Anyways they have cliff divers little caves, shows, puppet shows, an arcade, prizes, a live band, and more... It was pretty crazy I can honestly say I have never been anywhere like it. I do think that their beans taste like horse hair though. Good times.

Anyways I think that covers it... it should be good to take a break and get out of town for the holidays, which are approaching rapidly.

If you want to see something that is strangely scary check out the bendable woman dance.

peace out, and remember kids... brush your teeth or satan will kill you.

A short collection of stuff:

There will currently be a big change for me at work. I am really excited about the possibilities that will open. As well as being able to explore multiple projects. Soon I will actually be able to work more efficiently... yippie for being able to be better at what i do.

A group of friends top ten songs for 2005 some good music and good recommendations.

Considering that I am a geek, i thought that i should share a funny article I found about a Guide to dating a Geek. It is pretty funny and I bet most past girl friends would agree with parts of the article.

Skiing in Vail over the weekend was awesome, I was skiing with Matt, Jesse, Julie, and Brad... I was skiing in some hip deep snow. Apparently it is a record breaking season for snow... yippie Seeing everyone was fun as well as getting to chat with Jesse about him and his girlfriend.

I owe some kudos to T-mobile, because they made a billing mistake... Which I shouldn't thank them for, but when I called and told them about the mistake they actually fixed it and refunded my money right away. So I figure when a company does something right you should mention it cause it is so rare now a days.

Anyways, I have been having a good time lately, but been pretty busy, if your around and want to join, me and some friends are going to the Flobots on friday.
This friday at the blue bird, and Robin will be coming over from Boulder as well. So come to the show if you can, after that I will be out of town for awhile after that... let me know if your in for the show.

Well after sucking my first day up in new boots, and just being out of shape... i have been working my legs out and I am currently wearing my new boots around to break them in... I am pumped for this years ski season.

After seeing the movie First Decent (Pretty good Snowboarding Documentary) with some of my friends, I have gotten a little more in the winter mood. Yippie for skiing. Anyways I am planning on going up saturday... So put your warm clothes on cause it is freezing and snowing in colorado, which means you might as well have some fun with it...

Also, I learned that you can use a rice steamer filled with oil to fry tofu... Watch out Dom cause I might try to make eggrolls again, which means I might burn down my apartment...

congrats to Dave and Dom^2... there finally firing him!

Recently a friend was in some need we talked a lot and they seem to a least feel better about the issue and have some ideas on improving things. Anyways, it is always nice ot know that your friends can talk to you, and that you can be there for them... I always thought it was a funny joke and a good statement from family guy...

Stewie: Knock, Knock Brian
Brian: who's there?
Stewie: me, Stewie and I will always be there for you...

Anyways, I am glad my friends are able to come to me, and that I can go to them when I have things I need to talk about. One of the simplest things you can do when lending an ear is help them to just realize they are not alone. In many cases they are upset about things and feel like they are the only one with those problems, when in reality alot of people may be suffering from similiar problems. Anyways, the recent experience just want to let me remind people that I can always lend an ear and listen...

For those with hard decisions to make... best of luck.

For those doing great right now remember the hard times you had in the past and reach out to someone in need.

With out a support group we can never be more than a single point of failure.

Perhaps it is all just to easy...

Anyways my busy busy time of a double life is coming to an end... So now I can relax and catch up with my sleep... get my head back in the work game and such... It was a blast i had a ton a fun, I did like 3 weeks worth of stuff in the last week and a half... fun fun... need sleep and to get away from being so damn social... I can only handle so much of people and i am at my people limit...

I am sure most of you that read this know me well enough to know what I am talking about... I just like a bit of alone time...

Anyways I woke up at 5:30 am last night (went back to sleep at 6:30 (after writting it all down)) with a good idea that shouldnt take to long to put together so ben and I are going to try to get it all done and in place by mid feburary... yippie I am excited about the possiblilities...

Anyways all is well and there are far to many things going on until sometime in january.

3 clicks gives a dollar to fight aids...

3 clicks to fight aids

It takes 20 seconds click on the map around where you live and click why you want to support and thats it one more dollar for aids... stop reading this go do it...

This is the sad state of the movie industry... when things like this happen, they still profit millions, and spend their time trying to restrict how we used purchased movies (I still can't easily put a DVD i own on my pocket pc, it is easier to steal a copy off the net of something I own and put it on my Pocket PC)

basically Superman V has been in the works for over a decade, with so much money being poured and dumped into it... All by people that HATE superman and comics... I wonder if the success of Batman Begins, will show them that if you actually make a comic movie based of why people like the comic it will turn out far better, than just STEALING the superman name, and making a movie that has nothing to do with Superman... Read on for what will make you like Tim Burton far less (who i have always loved, but is so creative he shouldnt ever mess with other peoples original ideas (which is why i have avoided Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) (Nicole read the article before getting mad cause you like Tim Burton as much as I did)) and will make you like Nicolas Cage more... for refusing to be in a Superman movie (who's comics he loved, that Destroyed what Superman is). Even Justine Timberlake turned down the role saying that it destroyed Superman... (Props to Kevin Smith for dropping hopes on it as well)

Superman V: The Whole Sordid Saga

So I was starting to wonder why we accept such mediocrity from everything... I like some shows, but I always have to accept certain things in them that are horribly flawed... All the shows you watch, movies you see, and music you listen to is created to appeal to the largest cross section of people, which I dont think matches well with most peoples personal tastes...

I guess i have just been getting sick of seeing everything be lowered to the common denominator lately... but is there a way to fight back?

(This was also set off by the episode of HOUSE last night, which I have normally liked and the last few episodes have been bringing it to a less interesting and more mundane quality...)

back to work... XML sucks!

Alright well I had an incredible thanksgiving break... I will give the quick and short version...

Wendsday after work out with co workers party it down till late night... luckly we leave Market 41 about 10 mins before four people were shot at the bar... Yeah Lucky we left I didnt want to witness or be involved in my first shooting.

Thursday Turkey day... Wait for my friend Pilot Steve (Formerly Air Force Steve), to show up, then go buy a 19 lb free range turkey, pack up for skiing in vail, find gear for trip, buy some booze... pre party out to the bars... Good times were had by all... except our wallets which suffered that night.

Friday up early out to vail. Skiing with almost no lines, it was great. (Except breaking in my new boots was really painfull) Met up with Jesse and skiied some runs with him... Steve, Jesse, and I ski till the lifts close, then take off to Matt's place in Vail to cook up the Turkey. We start cooking that up (which will take 3 1/2 hours to bake) and play video games, watch movies, build a fire. We run around cutting up every piece of fire wood we could and we have a blast doing it... Matt's place was trashed when we got there and actually cleaner after we left.

Saturday chill in vail grab lunch in the mountains, chill around my place in denver... Finally waking up enough to get ready and head out for saturday night downtown, Steve and I are on a mission to meet some girls...mission accomplished... but who knows if a number leads anywhere...

Sunday chill, relax, and work on some web stuff... Sleep in... yeaahhh

Monday get back to work which sucks, but while cooking Dinner Steve decides we need to go to the Nuggets game. So we grab some cheap scalped tickets and we are in our seats to watch the Nuggets get destroyed by the New Jersey Nets, but it was a good game, and fun anyways...

Well that ends my fun for a good while... Steve will still be around for a bit, but I have some big deadlines to make at work, so I will be busy with that which isn't near as fun as runnning around town with my friend Steve.

Also for those that remember I used to love BUSH i never even heard when they broke up but, Gavin (the lead) made a new band called Institute and I just got their first album, so far it has enough of the BUSH sound that I like it, so if you liked BUSH check out INSTITUTE, Distort Yourself...

The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it.

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Happy thanksgiving everyone... I hope you have a great day with family or friends. I am in colorado this year spending the day with some friends and the weekend in vail skiing.

peace out,
Dan "Turkey Burger" Man

Well i introduced a bunch of friends and my email list to stumble upon, and now i have another pretty cool site/service for you. This one wont interest everyone quite as much, but i still think it will interest some of you, especially the links page which is off the front page. The site is called Digg.com and is mostly for techine stuff, but has some cool other stuff as well. Anyways, go over sign up an account and start recommenind sites you like or saying you dig them if they are already there.

Digg links

I added the flobots to the digg site to try to promote some of their music, because the entire old Flobots hip hop album as free mp3s which is pretty cool.

Nicole I almost named this post HAHAHA again just to anger you... i realized moments after i posted last time that i had the same title twice but it just cracked me up. Also, reading through the whole Howard Hughes book messes with your head.

George Carlin when talking about getting rid of semetaries as they are wastefull useless and outdated....Plowing through them we need that phoporous for farming...

"People talk about recycling, let's get serious..."

anyways it cracked me up guess you had to be there...

Oh yeah I really liked the movie Derailed, it was pretty suprising and well done. I thought it was a little slow at a couple parts, but over all it was great with a good ending... I chose to see this movie.

with the sony stuff happening and many other things... then i finally saw that match.com is tricking their users... how can anyone trust any company anymore... the biggest profit house lie and cheat and because of it they make more money and they are never punished.

Match.com sends romantic emails to their users from employees to keep them subscribing longer...

man talk about getting your hopes up...

i just got the original Star Wars trilogy and the Ultimate Matrix (10 dvds) collection on DVD....

I could be unproductive and useless for days if I wanted... I will try to stretch it all out though. Cause well I should be accomplishing more than just watching tv and movies in my free time...

Like tomorrow I will be getting a hair cut, new tires, drivers liscence, and various other chores done...

Man my mind is warn the hell out.

FU sony... If your robbed you have to erase your music... sony can and will install back doors on your machine... if you loose the CD you must delete your music, if you travel outside of your resident country delete your music...

Um hell no, and I never agreed to any of that 3,000 word EULA just by open a legally purchased CD and putting it in my computer...

Sony EULA from hell

Yeah i want to buy one of these disks and put it in one of my old machines, just so i will be able to participate in a class action lawsuite that is being put together in new york and california.

At the same time the punishments are being increased for copyright violations, how aoubt computer fraud which the sony copy protection installed on the disk completes? I would like that violation to be far increase where sony will probably pay out about half of the PROFITS it made as a fine...

Sony, I will avoid buying anything from you, no playstation 3 no matter what it does... I would far rather deal with some of the crap microsoft does than to deal with you...

now i just need to figure out what movies to avoid that are related to sony.

Well I am done with the Rocky Mountain Software Symposium (RMSS), No Fluff just Stuff. Which was excellent. I learned a ton I wish I could go to one of these ever 3 to 6 months... Anyways I learned alot and have some great stuff that I can put into use on my projects at work. I also learned a ton of just really cool and interesting stuff. That will make me a better programmer all the time, as well as get me moving on new technologies faster than others. Anyways, it was really cool and interesting. Hopefully I will get to use and play with some of the code before i forget all of the cool stuff that i just learned... check the new RSS feed reader that is on the front of wastedbrains to see something I coded up real quick...

I highly recommend the no fluff just stuff tour to everyone.

Well the inevitable happened. I was pulled over for speeding this morning on the way to work. I was 22 over the speed limit, and this cop showed no leniency, probably partially because I didn�t have a drivers license on me. I left my in a bar awhile ago, and have since been missing the license� So the first time I am ever pulled over, no leniency (it would have been nice to be moved under the 20 mph threshold) and a mandatory court date, So I wont know how much the ticket is for awhile. Anyways, it was bound to happen eventually. I was about 1 year and two month short of my goal of reaching 25 with out ever being pulled over hopefully this wont raise my insurance or start a trend. If I was paying attention I would have seen him for awhile and been able to slow down, but who is awake at 8:50 am I want to sleep, I am half asleep... oh well

Yarrgggg this isn�t the start of a good day. I knew I shouldn�t have gotten out of bed this morning.

I cant spell worth anything, but i believe I found a word that i have been misspelling almost my whole life...

I have always put quite, when I mean quiet...

Shhhh it is the library be quite... I used to say..

I now know it is

Shhh it is the library be quiet...

Damn how have i lived this long with out choking on a pretzel.

Well I hadn't played for a long time, but a friend Matt has been getting me back into it lately, we played a ton of games and tore some enemies up. Starcraft is a great game that is still what I like to call a larger more complex game of chess. Anyways, I have loved going back and playing some games.

I also built my first example app using the rails framework, which is for the ruby language. Ruby is definately cool, and ruby on rails was really pretty impressive, althought it seems alot of the features and functions of rails exist in many other languages, they just made everything about using the framework far simpler, you dont have to do all this manual self configuring, using XML config files that get so large and nasty that you have them all over the place, instead rails does all the basic configuration and file layout for you and only when your try to extend past the expected functionality do you have to worry about writing anything. It gives you the ability to build full blogs in minutes. Neato. I have just the little project I have always wanted to do that this seems well suited for and a good way to learn more about Ruby.

currently reading: Secret life of Howard Hughes

what do you think you were born to do? I always wonder what my calling really is. It seems creativity is my main talent, but many ideas i have might not be profitable at all... others would cost far to much to ever figure it out they would work out.

So why do I have such a hard time just testing out and working on my ideas? I come home have time think i will work after dinner, but no I just watch a movie or TV and I get nothing done... then I wake up and I am like shit I wasted another day.... So how do you motivate yourself on the things you care about... when your content... I mean when your upset about a situation it is easy to motivate yourself to change it, but when your well enough and content, it is hard to motivate yourself to push through and work harder...

What motivates you?

Well halloween wasn't near as cool this year. It was ok a fun night out at the bars, but last year we had a amazing time. I guess Denver just doesnt get into it like Boulder does, so for future refrence and fun have your halloweens in college towns... Last year we saw some people that had hand made some of the most amazing costumes I have ever seen. In denver we saw a bunch of crap, not good costumes, nothing impressive...

Oh well still a good time. I went as some sort of axe weidling guy in a cape... I like capes... hehe

We gained an hour of sleep today and that is awesome it makes me happy.

Maybe it is a bad thing that I am mostly attracted to only really smart women...

Education makes it harder for women to have orgasms

RIP my last damn computer only lasted from sometime junior year, until about 2 months ago when it started dieing i believe because of a failed disk. Anyways, I will somehow fix and revive it as a development machine (or so is the plan), and now I have a new computer, a media center, meaning I plug my cable in and my computer can figure out what shows are on when and record them for me while i do other stuff or sleep or smoke crack. So it will be kinda nice to have the media center edition, and maybe it will finally motivate me to set up my projector and my sound system (british accent, not bloody likely!)...

Anyways after setting up my computer it need 11 security patches that caused reboots before having a stable working and relatively safe enviroment. I shall celebrate, by taking my new media center edition on a spin with the hardest to process and biggest games I have to throw at it... Well a new rein of my computer king, and a much simpler way for me to work with and edit video, which means another video project should be just around the corner...

I like strawberry yogurt... it is the best yogurt.

I think sports are a stupid and cheap way to keep the average joe from looking at the fact that the top 1% has been screwing the rest of us for centuries...

that is all for now with my short lunch time announcement... Thanks for listening...

i still haven't found something well enough to my liking/simplicity that i feel like going for it... Any other ideas?

also I feel like i need to learn years more of the wrong stuff just to get to the right stuff... I guess that is the same in most professions, but it is annoying and it would be best if I just could have it dealt with for me, but i guess that is to hard or my whole profession would be simpler.

sometimes things work out well and sometimes timing is everything and it all just falls apart... but hey you cant have it all and long as you can live past those times and still smile another day i guess all is well....

that said while timing might have been off... Today I got tickets for new years it was hard to call where to go and we ended up screwing those that were having money issues, but we will try to make it up to them while we are there... so anyways Our new years group will be rocking out the closed down and fireworked up las vegas strip this new years. It is the 100th anniversary of vegas, and we will be there with some of our closest friends people we grew up with and we will have one hell of a toast and one hell of a celebration. So raise your glass and shake your ass, cause it is time for a new years to add another memory of a year gone by and memories of the past... I love these people and i will truly be said the year we cant manage to pull this off at all.

peace, love, and mother Beeping Party,
Dan "vegas" Man

I was about to celebrate a different milestone, but vegas set that back a bit, but i think it will be worth it but keep it posted in the coming months cause it will be an exciting moment.

HELP i seriously have no idea what to be for halloween. I want to do something fun, but not expensive. I want it to be humourus, but not upset people.. i want it to be something that will make women come up to me and talk to me / ask me questions.

SO HELP give me some ideas and suggestions... and no I wont go as Dave, cause i did that last weekend for fun.

peace,
Dan "I am on an island somewhere.. at least in my head" Man

Well alot of stuff has been happening lately. So here is some of the little points...

I got an unexpected call from a friend that i hadn't seen recently with free tickets to see NIN (nine inch nails), but the doors were already opening and I was still at work... hehe run run and straight to the show, home late, straight back to work, fun but tiring.

I have been pounded at work with some schedules that just don't seem feasible... luckily apparently no one thinks it is feasable... So I just ahve to work harder and more, and maybe we will get close enough...

Dom and Nicole... always for a crazy time when we get together partied with them pretty hard friday night... pretty sure they dont remember us getting home that night... I wonder if they remember that we were going to start a horrible band and have a least 3 songs to play live on a crappy bar stage... hehe fun little dreams..

Saturday was the Flobots, CD release party and it went well the place was pretty packed... Good for them I hope they sold lots of CDs... I got to chill and hang out with all of them and some of my friends Dom^2 and Dave came.

and now it is snowing... I really do like the changes of the seasons. I mean some good things and some bad things come out of it. Overall it should be nice to have winter and I will probably get to ski a bunch with Matt and Jesse at vail.... I do however truly hate the holidays now... they just bring stress... old memories and an overall sense of cold lonelyness....

On the bright side, I tend to get alot of work done during the winter just cause it isn't that nice out and nothing else is really going on.

lastly the new years trip is coming and going and falling and fading... I honestly have no idea if this is going to happen... I would like it to, but at the same time i have some issues with it as well... what a suprise me having issues with something... call the news... hehe

I enjoyed reading and chilling out last night as the snow and rain pounded against my windows... it something i enjoy and i picture being in a small cabin by a frozen over lake with a hot fire crackling in the fireplace as I read through a book and write about my thoughts... nice huh...

i had plans for friday but they fell through cause my friend sucks...

Anyways if you aren't up to anything give me a call or I will be forced to be bored.

well i had a good weekend with lots of food and some nice conversation. I even got to go to estees park and hike around for awhile which I haven't gotten to do lately. Anyways all is well and I am tired yet again. I am trying to just do my work and read some stuff about programming this week and not worry about much else. Perhaps if I find some spare time I should get my hair cut as it is starting to look really bad.

My main computer is dieing and I dont know why. I thought it was the harddrive, but i ran some tests and ran a live OS (a os that runs from CD and memory) and it still crapped out... So I am thinking that it must be my motherboard, processor, or memory... the problem is, if it is any one of those things it is still rather hard to figure out which unless you have spares of the other parts... and since computers hardware just doesnt play nice together i have plenty of all the pieces but they are all incompatible... I have extra memory, processors, and motherboards... just only really one set of each that would fit together... This leaves me with no truly good solutions.

LEarned about some Junit stuff today seems pretty sweet, I guess I will have to learn more... that is when i have the time, which seems that whenever i think i am about to get more time something happens to make it dissappear... oh well I guess if your busy you stay out of trouble right?

Flobots This saturday be there or be somewhere else that is way crappier...

Some of the people i know have been having trouble uploading and such to the gallery of pictures of my college friends. I will write an email with better advice on how to use the system and post it here as well, but right now I have a couple other more important parts of my sites to be working on....

We got linked up for scoreher again, So i need to take care of some things there, even if the people linking it think Ben and I are writting the articles.. that is crap anyone that has read my writting knows i couldnt have possibly made a site with that few grammar errors. It did however bring in tons of comments, being linked from metaFilter, even if i have to pay to try to make a comment in my own defense... so I will just let it slide and say, my friends (which i webmaster for) writting that site appreciated the extra traffic and interests, despite being called men... hehe

Also I am busy working on my friends band site and htey have some up coming shows... so i will get to the photo galleries dont worry...

I loved Get Smart and I am sad to see this... I guess everyone has their time...

Get Smart dies

Carrie says:
only morningstar chicken nuggets-humm good veggie meat
Dan Mayer says:
yeah those are tastalicious
Carrie says:
nice use of two words that should necessarily go together!

I found this amusing.

This is really just intersting a mistake in programming of sorts caused a plague in a virtual world having all the weekest players die un knowingly while the strongest were the only ones that cool live. It is just interesting to see how things can manifest them selves in online virtual worlds. So cool in fact.

World of warcraft plague

Not a lot has been going on lately cause I have either been at work working, or I have been at home working on site stuff. Lately the site stuff has been pretty interesting I am learning alot about tracking where people are coming from what they read and what they like. It is all pretty cool to me.

Unfortunately my computer is dieing. The main hard drive on my main computer is starting to fail. It will eventually give up entirely. I am hoping to side step that issue, by purchasing a new hard drive this weekend. The probelm is that my computer is one of the many machines that comes with windows pre installed and no real windows disk to be heard of. So what am I supposed to do? Call up tigerdirect and say hey my computer failed way past warranty send me a copy of windows? It is such crap that they DRM so much of technology that it is just harder to use. I own a copy of windows that came with this machine, but I cant use it. I tried to watch a DVD a minute ago and a weird error i get once in awhile on my computer said DVD copyright error can't play media... I tried a different player and it couldnt play media because the copy protection on the disc does not allow it to be played while the TV out on my card is enabled... I DONT EVEN HAVE A TV OUT CARD. Seriously Screw the industry for making everything freaking impossible. I am thinking about not comming up with a windows solution and to instead, install an alternative OS like mandrake, red hat, or linspire which I got a free copy of during their free giveaway. Who knows with Open office 2.0, firefox, and Gimp... may I really do have little left keeping me on windows...

Last but certianly not least Scott dropped by for just a few hours. It was cool him and his friend from Boston Mike had 4 hours between plane flights in Denver so Dom, Nicole, and I met up with them for dinner... had some laughs had a chat and then took him back on his way to the airport. It was good to see you Scott...

DAVE... did you start a new job? Dave did you cry when the Buffs won...

t minus one week till my mom visits... anyone have good ideas of things to do in denver? ... wait let me say that again... things to do in denver that dont involve getting drunk at bars...

I know I am supposed to stop rocking out the posts about another site, but I had to on this one.

Point: All women only want tall men a post at ScoreHer that is relevant to me... hehe I seriously wasnt the one submitting this to the girls... but I have my own thougths on it obviously. I just find it funny that it came from elsewhere... Oh well good article and hopefully it will provoke a good responce.

oh yeah proof that girls are the root of all evil... hehe

Well on sunday i worked a bunch with dina on our site, and I am happy to say that after doing some work we decided it was time for some promotion, so with our first real attempts a promotion we got posted on a big site, and today we hit 6,000 readers on scoreher... I am sure this wont last, but it is a nice little grand opening, so check out our final design and read our articles which sits at about 50 right now, so maybe the site will make it, maybe not, but I could use all your help getting the word out about, ScoreHer dating advice for men from women, I would like it. A little help in any way can make the different... comments, ideas, articles, point counter points, and everything else... seriously help a brother out... hehe if you know anyone with a webpage ask them to link it... if you know a girl ask her to submit her thoughts... If youdream of a freedom later on in your career get me moving... hehe Anyways this will be my last anouncement of scoreher, which is now officially released, go check it out click the links and everything else, cause everything helps...

peace,
Dan "given it a shot" Man

First off a cool tool that i found and installed on my firefox called stumble upon. I highly recommend it while stumbling through humor sites i found this which is freaking sweet... Seriously cool...

Human bounce

Dom nicole you need to install this i think you both will really like it... oh and go give positive ratings to all my sites after you install it.

nintendo nintendo... why dont you realize you do things the market isnt ready for...

They may just have to much creativity for their own good... they showed their new concept for their entire video game system called the revolution it is all based on a weird controller that can sens motion.. yes it seems kinda cool and fun for different games, but as much as some people might like the new type of game how will i play my metal gear, how will i play mario cart, smash brothers... how will any developer support you system and other systems, how will you support pc games?

here is the promo video:

Nintendo Controller

I currently have 666 comments on my blog and that scares me... so quick someone post a comment.... thanks

also I went to the DJUG (Denver Java Users Group) for the first time tonight... I didnt know that such big people came around to give talks, some people from red hat, mac, and others two speakers each 2nd wendsday of the month, which is pretty cool. I also was approached by two recruting firms looking for people to hire, which was kinda cool. I am happy with my job and such, but i know other CS people some that aren't happy and some that are still coming out of college, so there you go... hook a brother up.. hehe

Their is alot of discussion going on slashdot about the beta of googles blog search and many saying they just want blogs out of the main index, who wants to find kids whinning about dating and such. There is a real and far more important issue about the search than being a blog it is that the main index is timeless while the blogsearch is currently relavent results...

What I posted on slashdot:
There is a useful aspect of the blog search on the fact that it is time relevant. I mean googles index has no idea of time it is just the best believe result for your key words. Blog searches taking into account time offer much different results search president bush on goolge it will be the same things for months and months, search on blog search engines you get currently relevant results about the president in the last few days, such as bush talking about new orleans currently. I find this more valuable then to find a blog site or a non blog, I want timeless information and timely information about the same thing. Search machine learning come up with large sources and ideas on google search it on blog searches and read developers of machine learning techniques and how they are applying it and working with it right NOW. That is very usefull, if you just say to blog or not to blog, who cares.

so what are you thoughts have you ever wanted to search but tell it to only find the most current infomation on the topic like i have? Other things that might make this new search more useful sometimes?

great video about trusted computing.

I don't trust them.

argg that was a rough one last night. oh well... Fun it was.

alright i get to work a couple of 11 hour days... they are the best... especially when followed up by the fact that i have some project promises i need to get done on time. So i guess i am going to be really busy for awhile and probably not get enough sleep, which will lead to me being sick... again, which is how i ended up with my 11 hour days in the first place... oops...

it has been awhile since looking at the dinner and a movie post ben made on my site... and apparently that is still a pretty popular thread... so i was wondering is there any new ideas for dates...

Sick of dinner and a movie

here is a picture of my new baby... i need names people... hehe I love robots... i am a geek.

today was great it was like getting presents for xmas. Seriously i didnt have anyone to hang with cause i cant really talk yet (lost my voice) and i watched sin city which i now i own on DVD which is just amazing to watch.. i mean the visuals... damn they are good.. then i also got my first robot/pet i guess i decided awhile ago i needed a vacuum.. i decided i hated to do that.. it only cost 50 bucks more for a roomba... so i decided to try a roomba out over buying a decent vacuum.. shit all i can say is this thing is more fun to watch than TV and it cleans your house... until it breaks... which is apparently their problem.. i love it.... i am working on a name for it any ideas???

it sucks i am at work on a saturday... but i guess you do what you have to do and i can talk again which is cool.

it took over 1 hour on the phone to cancel my old cable modem service at the house i moved out from.. Beware comcast customers.

(also this sucked cause i still dont really have my voice back so it hurt to talk... but most of the time i was on hold watching TBS.)

well probably from my prescription cough syrup i had some crazy dreams last night involving:

The host of double dare
A talking gorilla
Labrynth the movie
The actor who played Urkel beat boxing
Two tiny monkeys
Ivan Pavlov training the monkeys and gorilla... I believe to fight the host of Double Dare.

Anyways fun times with the crazy subconcious... I am back at work, but can still only kinda speak.

Well I am off to the hospital to figure out why I lost my voice, I dont really feel that bad, but i guess there is a bunch of mucous in my throat. I figured if I can't talk for about 2 1/2 days i should probably go do something about it. Anyways the wedding was a blast.

I danced with pretty much everyone. We got some great pictures. The wedding was beautiful. Matt is off on his honeymoon. Julie looked very pretty in her dress (which the photographer might have made refrence to a few to many times.). Anyways it was a great time and a blast to see everyone. I hope they have a great honeymoon.

off to see a doc...

Well it seems that the past is always there... Just when you look away it pops back into your head, thoughts, or mind. Anyways speaking of that I looked up some of the past highlights from my friends and my blogs and thought I would share them with everyone, these are the posts that are viewed the most often to this date on the server (since april 11, 2005 i lost the logs before that, when moving servers) (we have had over 30,000 people view readers comments on our posts since then) So our reads opinions are being heard as well... So what little thoughts in your head keep popping up again and again?

Our most popular posts:
Dominic's March posts from 2004, particularly,
we should mind our own business and his prettiest girlfriend in the world

Dom's April posts...
Summer Fun and His Hot Girlfriend

dom's Party Kids
and of course dom's Fall Out Boy

RockStar Party

lastly dom's pro-anorexia? post which is scary but real... anorexia follow up

Nicoles most popular posts:
Hottest Girl Ever of course this is up there... hehe

Nicole's first Ticket

nicoles fall out boy wedding fantasy, Wedding Fantasy... what ever happened to the falloutboyWedding.com website?

Dan's Stuff:
oddly enough my resume is up there, Dan Mayer's Resume

Dan's March, Duct Taped to a wall, and Technology can't fix and help everything in our world

Sexy Background

Funny Videos

Mexico Pictures... to which someone posted that i need jesus? ...odd responce

and there was music

Ben's stuff:
Ben Brinckerhoffs Slide Show
oral hygiene for electronics
Squam and simple rules

Dom^2's:
The Fray

Energy stuff: Redbull Review
Moster Review
Energy Drink Ingredients
This stuff is actually by far the most popular so i wont be listing them all... hehe

these were just the new most popular pages since i moved to the larger server on april 11th 2005... man I wish i had the stats before that too...

well it had been awhile since I had an issue with the police. I went to dom and nicole's house warming last night. They met some neighbors that were from russia. One got to drunk and kept coming back and banging on the door and then broke through a window. Then his friend apparently got brought in for resisting arrest when the cops came, about the guy breaking windows and such. It was kinda a weird night cause the guy causing all the problems got busted for nothing really and just had to go to detox, and the nicer one that caused no problems got charge and in far more trouble... No good, but i dont know what happened cause that was outside the building... either way... wasnt expecting that for an evening...

Time to clean....

man today was a great day... i feel awesome. yippie for that. go look at the pretty clouds outside. Great temp, nice sunshine, great day.

??????? ?????? ??????
yep thats about right.

I have been in front of a computer far to much lately... my brain is getting fried... ahhh

oh well i guess it is my chosen profession. Also, I think I am learning a lot lately... time to read myself to sleep... reading a programming book of course.

Alright I have made some updates on wasted, scoreher, and this site. I now have a ton more images that load randomly when you first come on the site.

if you want to give some more feedback on wasted check out the new first article and look at all of the get play book articles that have been added.

Score Her Dating Advice for Men from Women

anyways check everything out let me know.

besides that i have been working on stuff alot lately obviously. I did alot of art last night. Tomorrow I will help dom and nicole set up their wireless.. then off to boulder for a date. Tomorrow some hiking and then working on the sites some more.

well trying to save money doesnt work... when ever your close some cost will stop you... hehe

anyways the engine light came on my car awhile ago...
I got the oil changed cause i was way over due.
The check engine light went back off...

a few weeks later... light is back on.. I bring my car in to have it checked out...
Knock sensor
timing belt
and leaky oil pump...
So I am out a bunch of cash and my car is fixed up. Well sucks doesnt it.
So tonight I am a cheap date and staying in to do some art that i promised for a friend.

Kodak... see what develops.

Alright I have been working on a website with a friend for a little while. She is doing the content and writting while I host, code, do the computery stuff. We aren't fully done or completely ready to launch or anything, but we are seeking some friends initial comments and feedback... we are also in need of a good logo for the top left where we just have our name in large text... so everyone tell me your initial thoughts on...

Score Her

all comments, advice, suggestions, article ideas, one liner ideas, pick up lines, and other info is welcome leave a comment or you know where to email me...

I decided that you can learn anything if you give it enough time and use the internet... a couple things that were weird and mysterious to me that i didnt want to learn but needed for my server now make sense and I can do quite simplely... unlike spelling which makes no sense.

yeah for DNS, name forwarding, resolution, and virtual servers....

yippie.....

i just learned there is an actually state farm insurance guy named Dan Man and I am jealous.

well i guess u cant have it all.

dang it i have to much other stuff to deal with and now my cars check engine light came on... it turned on on the way home....

Well time to slow down a bit and look at what has actually been occurring around me... watching what has been changing lately...

So much is going on that I can barely adapt fast enough, I guess I feel as if I might have had just an incorrect belief or focus for most of my life, something that I wish was more correct, but as I learn more about society it seems I was doing wrong. It seems that their is a certain amount of selfishness required and needed in our current way of life. Which I attempt only in the most "strange" (we'll say) of situations. So at this point do I have to try to adapt? Do I just continue on as I have? At which point is waiting for the one, just hoping for impossible expectations?

This next part I expect to make no sense but to me (in my secret code (dom & nicole)) it makes sense...

If below the line you do drop
the tears just fall harder
for at and above the result is expected
but when you stagger and fall it should be
more to a acceptible level that you see
when you fail to see the result believed
your added pain is soon received
I dont know what to do
I leave my thoughts lost to you
After the drop I am back on standard
but it doesnt mean I am set right
and I know that it will drop tonight
so let it just remain.........

If you have an interpertation of that email me I doubt it should be posted...

Finally enough time away from the mask to once again say hello.

sweet I have a break for about a month and a half before my next wedding... rock on... i think i am camping next weekend and finishing moving out and helping dom and nicole move the weekend after that... so i am still a little busy for now but yippie for not being invovled in any more wedding stuff...

Not that this means that stuff wasnt fun and great it is just a little heavy and stressfull as well. So cheers to the newlyweds and cheers for dancing with a lot of peoples moms on the wedding dance floor.

Tonight I was at some sort of wedding BBQ and tomorrow is all the bachelor party stuff... It should be a really good time... Steve will be in town, Scott should have fun... it was funny how many warnings i got tonight to not mess up his face.... i guess people thought we would shave his head or eyebrows or something... hehe funny, I am pretty sure it will be a wild good time, but will leave scott relatively unharmed.. just hung over a bit.

Also I have a pretty cool project to work on at work which is fun makes the days go by quicker an dI get to learn some cool stuff.

Yippie i have the first season of Lois and Clark on DVD... 44 dollars well spent, 36 hour long episodes... plus 2 extra DVD's.... and 1 DVD with an episode of small ville... yippie...

My love of Teri Hatcher still exists, to bad she is all famous again and she wont ever even go on a date with me... hehe

well it is one night till the concert (Motion City SoundTrack), 4 the BBQ, 5 bachelor party, 6 wedding rehersal, 7 wedding, and on the 8th day he rests... Anyways this would be a pretty sweet week if I was the one getting married and such. Unfortunately, I just get to witness and be a part of the happy occasion. Well I ran a shit ton of errants which is good, but I still have alot to get done by wendsday... this sunday should be a pretty busy day, not to mention that I have a big new website to release on july 30th...

ahhh only a little longer and life with settle down a bit... to bad that isnt exactly what I am looking for either... So raise your glass and cheers to everyone out there, make a cheers we should share together and share it with me here...

Yippie Motion City Soundtrack who's new album is out now... Damn I am pimping out this band, but what can I say they have stuck a cord with me... the trick is they have their fun songs and their really deeper meaning songs... Do you know which one hits me the most? Guess guess......

So what makes you better off today than yesterday?

If you aren't on your way to becoming what you want what are you doing? When will fight club come to get you?

If you complain about things but you dont do anything about it, is it your fault? What if you dont know what to do?

If I didnt learn something new each day I would be bored, luckly today I learned to successfully debug multi-threading race conditions... what did you learn?

ahh like the famous there is never any time scream from saved by the bell... i feel a bit to much coming up.

I have my places pool party saturday and a cool concert saturday night... Yippie...

So I will be going to that if your interested in either join me. the concert is motion city soundtrack... I think the pool party starts at 11 and the concert at 7... so start the pool party late and cruise on into concert time seems like the way to go.

I need to finalize some stuff for Scott's B party, get my hair cut, buy chairs, beer, wood glue, fix table, clean place, and clear out some extra sleeping space... that and I still need to move out of my boulder place entirely and I really need to get on that one.

Oh well at least I am done traveling for awhile... So for now I dont want to have to leave Colorado for anything short of me getting the perfect woman or a million dollars... if you dont know what to do with a million dollars consult the movie office space... hehe

Well I recently saw a homeless person while I was on my way to work one morning, they were walking with a small trash bag and picking up trash from the sidewalk and the side of the road. It made me think about how someone that has pretty much nothing still takes the time and cares about the apperance of their city, their home. It was kind of weird and forced me to stop and think for a bit. I think since I have developed such a hate for society lately that it was refreshing and good thing to see someone with so little still caring about others. Obviously not out to get any true benifit from helping out, but just a desire to do good. So what have you done to help your fellow men (and women) lately?

There are alot of homeless people around denver and I happen to pass some of their main hang outs while driving to and from work, and I have started to become really curious about some of their stories. How they got there? What they want? Their stories, histories, families, girlfriends, boyfriends, and what little things they still love. I was thinking how sometimes on a really nice summer day, when I pass the homeless park (a park filled with homeless people by a food shelter), that it must be kind of like a little party with old friends greeting each other while relaxing and waiting for a nice meal... perhaps i paint to pretty of a picture, but I am sure once in awhile they can forget their worries for a short while as well...

So sometimes I just focus on the little joys of life... the feeling of the sun on your skin, the calmness you get when you look out over trees blowing in the wind, that feeling the moment your drifting off into sleep, the tingle as someone's finger brushes against your skin, the look in someones eyes as you give a hug goodbye, and many more little things worth noticing to just remind you everything is alright...