I write, occasionally

Wow, what a weekend.

So, if you didn't know, Kari's grandpa, Morris Reynolds, died last Tuesday from a combination of old age and liver cancer. Whoa, right? Just jump right into it, Derek! Well, that's kind of the way it worked in real life. It just sort of snuck up on everyone... I mean, he was driving 2 weeks ago... sorta bumper cars style, but he was still driving.

That said, this weekend was full of Reynolds family time and funeral activity. As with any death, it's never a pleasant experience. The visitation is always awkward, lots of hugs with people you don't know, etc. I was pretty ok through the entire thing, but Saturday at the funeral is when it really got me. We went to breakfast at Morris's favorite breakfast spot, Midt…

Fathers Day this year was pretty fun - and reynolds style. It seems like all of my family gatherings are becoming more and more reynolds influenced lately. And by that I mean they are 100% based on Food and Drinks. Probably a little too much of each. Well, the drinks thing may be a little more influenced by college than Kari's family... I guess we all have to bring something to the table...

So this year, we made huge reservations at Taki. Basically a reservation for 20 people around a grill. Before hand, people trickled into our house for homebrew, cocktails, games, and swearing. It was a good time. Then we piled into cars and went to Taki, where we got treated to good food and free Hennessey. And finally back to our house …

So... Back to Kevi's wedding weekend. Friday after we got to Orlando, we checked into Hawthorne Suites, which rule btw. Kitchen, living room, 2 queen beds, an amazing free breakfast, open bar from 5:30-7:30 daily, free wifi, and a nice pool - all for only $90 a night.

So after checking in, Kevi gave us some pretty rad gifts. Kari and Amy got wine and Zach and I got branding irons for stamping steaks, etc. I might use it to stamp some of my woodworking things as well. He also gave us some nice grilling spices and such - I'm excited to try it all out.

Later, we went to rehearsal and dinner at Ohana's where we got more gifts. I got a bottle of Glenfiddich 12 year scotch and Zach got some Effen vodka. <3 Kevi. Dinner was …

I really hate to rain on someone's wedding, which I won't do. But I'm totally about to blow up about traveling to Kevi's wedding. Omg.

So first of all, Thursday, Zach, Amy, Kari, and I were scheduled to fly out of Des Moines around 5pm and show up in Orlando at 10:30pm. So we arrived at the DSM airport around 3:45 to check in, when we met an NWA employee named Betty. Imagine Betty as the bus driving Chris Farley in Billy Madison - only thinner, older, and more female. She was totally stressed out, mumbling things under her breath, and yelling at people. There was one point when her glasses were falling off her face and she had 2 phones - 1 on each ear. I completely missed a golden photo opportunity. So anyway, Betty informed us …

Well, let me rephrase that. Mosso tries hard to be awesome - they just released a beta application without the beta label. Harper convinced me to join Mosso based primarily on the billing/user management system - which rules by the way... but it's really the only part that rules.

When I first joined Mosso, Harper and I got to have a conference with one of the founders of Mosso, Todd Morey. It went really well; we all liked each others input, and aside from a few minor provisioning bugs, it seemed like things would work out really nicely.

The fact of the matter is that my sites are not reliable. I know nothing about server management, but when I had my own box, I was down less in 2 years than I have been in 2 months with Mosso.

As of last Friday, I've been at Pioneer for 4 years... and I'm still an entry level programmer! Haha, weak. However, I somehow carried over 9 days of PTO this year... which Brings me up to 18+9... 27 vacation days for the year + 1 floating holiday, yesssssss. Plus, only 1 more year until I am completely vested in Pioneer Pension.

Aside from that, I should note that I'm slowly making progress on the bar. Rico came over Saturday morning and we got the actual countertop all mounted. Time and Funds are killing me. I should be able to work on it again in August, haha, sad.

Later Saturday, Jeff and Iulia stopped over to grill. Then Elizabeth, Jon, Joe, and Andrea came over. And even later, Cedric, Nathan, Chuck, and Ando stopped …

I am getting a little bit tired of blogging about weekend events. I'm not really good at writing about them anymore. It's so cookie cutter Friday this, Saturday that. Maybe I should quit and just post photos... or become a better writer, ehhh. At least this weekend I have something that I really want to document.

So, this Memorial Day wasn't quite as insane as the last 2 years, but it was definitely fun.

It started Friday when Doug kicked us out of work at 11:30am, which was sooo nice. I basically hung out for a bit and got the house ready for company. Then we met up with lots of peeps at the Iowa Cubs game for a sort of "going away party" celebration for Stacy. As always, it was lots o fun - despite getting beat 13-3.

Well, for the past 2 years Memorial Day weekend has been insane. Each consisted of a two-city party tour. Cornell and Chicago in 2005, Dubuque and Iowa City in 2006. But this year, I think it may have happened a week early with a trip to Iowa City and Cornell.

But before I get into that, let me back track a few days to Wednesday when Zach, Minnis, and I went to the Code Brown show. Gaiden sounded amazing and Luke sounded one of the best I've heard. Either Vaudeville is finally figuring out how to run sound, or he's just getting a lot better - maybe both. The headliners from Deep Thinka records were good as well. I'm pretty sure they freestyled 3/4 of their set.

Ok. Back to the weekend.

Friday, Kari and I busted out to …

Mother's Day this year was pretty fun.

Friday Jeff came into town then we got sushi @ Taki, went to Court Avenue, etc. Pretty routine night. Definitely good.

Saturday, Teresa and Vic showed up, we cooked some homebrew, then we all went tailgating at the Iowa Cubs game. This time I didn't have a 102 degree fever!

The actual ballgame was pretty fun as well. It started off good with the cubs in the lead, then went about 7 innings without a single run, then all of a sudden syracuse jumped up to 11-3 in the 9th - so tons of people left. Then the cubs suddenly rallied it and brought in 5 runs for a final of 8-11. It was hilarious. And since we'd all had a few drinks, we screamed various obscenities at the blasted 3rd base …

Things are about to happen financially. I'm excited. As yall probably know, Kari got a new job with like a 40% pay increase and I got a ... not so big raise, but still a raise.

So, I'm going to be in the market for a new PC (and maybe even a new car) very soon and I'm stealing harper's post about asking what to get.

First and foremost, I need a desktop.
1. Because my current desktop is from 2002
2. I'm very inefficient on laptops and really never use them unless I'm traveling.
3. I just got 2 bitchin 22" widescreen monitors that my old PC is having a hard time running.

And really my only requirements are that it's gotta be fast, reliable, fairly inexpensive and have much storage for video prod and various other media.

So, …

Whoops, I forgot to blog again.

So yeah, last week I was in Orlando for an RFID Conference. It was really nice. The resort I was staying at (Disney's Coronado Springs) was much better than I thought it'd be. I was sorta worried because...

1. I don't like Disney
2. I don't like kids

But, there really wasn't much disney parafanilia and there weren't many kids. Just a really nice resort that served good drinks and held a pretty incredible conference.

As far as the actual conference goes, I learned a ton. I saw some really nice applications, and I met some cool peeps who knew what they were doing. It's going to be exciting to implement a solution at Pioneer - which leads to a funny story. Every time I was talking to a …

All in 1 weekend. Ahhh, this is nice.

Friday, Kari and I checked out waterfront deli, went to a party at Fry's for a bit, and then headed downtown to take part in some Drake relay festivities. Plus, Lindsey was in town, which always makes for a hilarious evening - when she calls us anyway...

So, Last night was Jody/Matt's wedding in Minneapolis. It was really a nice wedding. And the reception was also quite ridiculous.... Kari's friends are a blast. Pics coming soon...

And now, I'm currently sitting in the MSP airport waiting to go to Orlando for an RFID conference. I'm pretty excited.

Via hiptop...

So last week seemed super not productive. I really can't think of anything good that I got done aside from entertainment and such so I'm currently checking my Twitter just to figure out wtf I've done lately, hahaha.

OK...

Last Wednesday, I picked up Minnis and met Nick for a hip hop show at Vaudeville. It was a good time as always. I think Minnis had fun too. We saw some pretty amazing homemade lights for this instrumental band.

Then Friday, Zach and I got invited to this last minute Yakuza party. Yakuza is basically a Japanese mafia. They wear fancy suits and have ridiculous tattoos all over their upper bodies. Try to imagine the Crazy 88s from Kill Bill - except real and without masks. So the plan was to meet at Vertigo …

So, I haven't really blogged about life in over a month. It started out that I was overwhelmingly busy. It sucked. Then I became even busier.

So, now that I'm back down to semi-normal busy-ness again, let's bring everyone up to speed.

-Sometime back in March, Kari and I met some friends at a cabin in north eastern Iowa. It was a great time. No cell phone, no internet. I really want to do it again but with nicer weather... maybe summer, fall, even winter - just not muddy.
-I got kari's car all fixed up. New Tires, windshield, and fog light (she tailgates like none other).
-I "upgraded" to a Mosso account for my web sites, which I would slowly move off of my old server as time allowed. It was a dumb project to start in the …

Well, I was trying for a month without blogging, but this is an emergency blog which all began this morning with:

rich: so my outlook wont check my dick4d email
rich: anymore

Rich is a friend of mine whose websiteI host. I'm currently in the process of switching hosting companies from my dedicated box to a mosso account. However, half of my sites are still on the old server, which went down: reynoldsgrid.com, solidgrind.com, dick4d.com, aeongrey.com, desmoinesalive.com, qcalive.com, iowacityalive.com, cedarrapidsalive.com, victoreynolds.com, aylarexroth.com, n8than.net, dsmpaintball.com, and truespin-media.

A couple hours, calls, failed reboot attempts, and e-mails later, I get this e-mail: After running hardware tests on your …

omg. So I've been staying up past midnight every school night in the past couple weeks. It feels pretty good to be excited enough to work late again.

But that said... as soon as you see this article, you'll be looking at my site on a new server(s) at Mosso. I love/hate migrating sites. Everytime I do it I wind up fixing everything up to be nicer. So, if you notice anything broken, please let me know.

I completely changed the photos - urls, sizes, directories, etc. It was a mess, but now it's pretty. You should be able to browse them easier and I think google images will show me more love.

I'm pretty tired today. But... I've got much work to do.

I don't know if this is the best way, but it's the first way I've figured out to sync all of my calendars, so here it is...

I used to just put all of my appointments into Outlook at work, then use IntelliSync to sync it to my phone's Calendar. But then I realized that wifey and I had a really hard time keeping track of each other's schedules. I can't easily share my Outlook calendar with her... and I don't look at the paper calendar inside the closet door to find out what she's up to. So here's how we solved this...

1. We setup Google Calendars under our respective accounts and shared them with each other.
-My Calendar (my default)
-Kari's calendar (her default)
-Brooks Calendar (for things we're both up to, family visiting, …

Why do I do this to myself... I always get excited about too many things at once and try to take it all on.

So a couple months ago I started a book display for Kari. She had been wanting this one for her classroom that cost like $250, but I said we could easily build it for $50... So I did. Except, it's been sitting in Rico's shop for about a month. The only step left is to sand it, haha.

Instead of finishing it, I ripped up half the carpet in my basement to begin building a bar. It's still sitting there 1/4 finished and has already consumed a good chunk of my bonus check.

In the mean time, Nick and I started building a potentially large scale website - it's a huge project with a quick deadline. It's going to be pretty awesome, but a …

Whoa buckets, this weekend ruled. I stayed home and really had a lot of fun with wifey.

It basically started Thursday afternoon when my internet died. Nick and I had just launched some new features at our alive sites (mainly user accounts and a mobile site); I'm pretty excited about it. Now we're starting a semi-secret project with a couple other dudes in Des Moines. I think they're gonna get rich... Hopefully they bring us with, haha.

So yeah, Thursday and Friday it Blizzard...ed, which caused Pioneer to give us a snow day on Friday. I think it's the first full snow day we've gotten since I started here. I spent most of it at home working on projects. I was finally able to start laying hardwood floor in the basement! After …

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!"

I might be saying something more along the lines of, "Dude, that was awesome," but other than that, I think it's right on. I really really love this quote. This is how I try to be. It's been the basis of many tattoo ideas I've had... if I could ever step up to the plate and quit preserving my body.