I write, occasionally

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.

Last year I didn't really blog about bockfest because I came down with a bad cold directly afterwards. This year I'm not making that mistake. Instead, I got my cold the day before. With a little Zicam, Sleep, and Water, I prevailed and I am now blogging.

Friday around noon Nathan, Jeff, and Rico met up with Kari and I and we busted out to Redwood falls. The drive was decent... aside from riding 5 people in a Malibu, with a little bad weather along 90.

We showed up, hung out at Josh's for a minute, grabbed some food at Chumly's, then went to the VFW for some drinks, games, and mass nakedness. It was a good time. We then told old college stories and laughed about memories past.

Saturday we drove out to New Ulm (late, again) …

is quite a hilarious holiday - Especially when you know people that feel strongly about it.

The entire day is filled with little opinion slip-ins from people, which I love. It's fun to find out everyone's current stance on valentine's day (which is often reflective of their current bf/gf situation). It's either they love it, they hate it or they're middle ground... except it's not like regular middle ground. It's like the middle ground where they make it a point that you know how middle ground they are.

Personally, I've been on all sides of this spectrum.

There was a point in HS when I fell for the valentines day trap, ya know... cards, candy, flowers, stuffed animals, jewelry, dinner, etc. Then for a while I got all …

So, Nehru planned on driving to Chicago with some of his STI and EVO buddies last weekend. However, at the last minute someone canceled, which opened up a seat for me. Of course, I accepted.

The drive was definitely interesting. 4 pretty different people with really the only thing in common being our love for cars - and maybe beer. It was a good time, they were cool guys.

Once we got into Chicago we hung out at Nandy's Place for a second. It's pretty tiny, but she is on Wacker and Michigan, wtf. Seriously. So I decided I'd go hang out with some of my other buddies and find a more comfortable place to sleep.

Tag, Clock, and Mikey picked me up at Nandy's around midnight. They played a really good trick on me saying that Mikey …

i have no idea what that means, but i think i'm the first person to ever say it. yesssss. Pron: zoh-my-gollerskates.

So anyway. Holy nuts. There are things going on in my heezy for sheezy.

Kari had her surgery last week. Lots of you saw the pics but didn't bother to read the article. And half of those that read the article but not Kari's didn't even understand what was going on... So to clarify, kari had a suspicious lump taken out of her neck last thursday. Surgery went well and initial inspection says that everything's kosher, but it's getting all biopsied up this week. We'll have the results next week.

At the same time, Kari's grandpa had some weird stuff going on. Irregular heartbeat, fluid in the chest, etc. It was …

Man, busy times... as usual.

Work has been insane lately, slightly annoying, but good... and insane. Outside of work has also been pretty nuts. I've got too many projects going on again. I'm building a book display for Kari, coding sites, planning for my next house project, etc.

Today, I wrote a pretty awesome plugin for laim aka aim lite (which is the best aim client ever). Anyway, my laim plugin just takes my twitter status and sets it as my away message at home. I hadn't been setting my aim away message in a really really long time. Now it'll be set, constantly accurate, and updateable from anywhere. I love this concept. Love it. Stalk me!

Besides that though, last weekend was nice. Kari and I went to Cedar Rapids …

Holy Freaking Weekend. Steph finally came to visit, which was awesome. We haven't seen her in over a year, wtf. Lindsey also stopped out for a minute or two, which was good while it lasted.

So, Friday was "girls night" or whatever. Which basically meant, the girls went to dinner while Nick and I got pizza. Afterwards it was just a few dudes outnumbered by girls for the rest of the night, yesssssss.

Saturday, we got lunch at a brewery, then drank beer at a non-brewery, haha. Later, we went to the Stars/Rivermen game. It was Shooter's birthday (the mascot). So in between one of the periods they had a broomball game with a bunch of mascots. It was pretty hilarious. Other than that though, great great game. I'd like to go to …

Ever since I have met Kevi we've been having conversations that usually go something like this:

keviatwork: i'm going to try to convince usa today to pay for our wedding
keviatwork: USA Today presents.... Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Switzer
keviatwork: haha
brooxatwork: i really wish i could administer punches over aim

Seriously, some friends and i have been talking about punching each other through the internet for years. I have always wanted to hook that old school AIM "warning" button up to physically harm them. And now that USB is becoming awesome... we may be getting close.

keviatwork: a usb attachment that punches you right in the face
brooxatwork: you are onto something

I think we could do something like this with one of …

Oh man, so I got a new computer at work.

Dell Optiplex GX620
-P4 HT 3ghz
-2gb RAM
-150gb HD
-DVD ROM/CD-RW
-And a ball mouse, wtf? I need an optical mouse in this piece.

Combined with my new dual LCD monitors, I'm loving life at work.

I haven't even had it setup for a full day yet and I already want to get a new setup for home. There, I'm running the same computer I got back in 2002. It was pretty fast at the time, but it's over 4 years old. I've doubled the RAM and added 120 more gigs to the HD, but it's just not keeping up with my video/photo stuff anymore.

So, I need a new PC to compliment my new 22" wide screen LCD from Jeff. And then I'll compliment that with another one of the same monitors. And then compliment …

We scored our first point in broomball last night! haha. We're still 0 and 2, but we managed to score a point and defend one more than last time, bringing the final score to 1-13.

Most of our team has official broomball shoes now, which make a ridiculous difference. Basically broomball shoes are moon shoes with some super foam on the bottom that squishes/springs nicely when you run. Somehow this magically keeps you from slipping. The hard part is when you slide/dive for something, because then it's really tough to get back up. Basically your knees are still really slippery but your shoes get traction. So you end up pivoting on your shoe while your knee spins around you in a circle. It's stupid. However they're still awesome. …

I got to hang out with a lot of different people this weekend, which always rules.

Friday we met up Tia and folks at Taki to celebrate her birthday before heading to the Loft to act like idiots. It was a good time and really nice to see those peeps. Pics.

Saturday I finished up the guest bedroom, edited a short vid for the 2030 Society, and then went out for Kari's Colfax Christmas party. It's pretty hilarious to watch teachers party. It really makes me wonder about the teachers I had growing up... So after hanging out for a bit we had a mini after party back at my place where more elementary school teacher debauchery happened.

And Sunday I completely slept through morning, woke up just past noon and realized, "we have our …

If you didn't know, iTunes has an audiobooks category similar to the radio and podcast categories. An advantage to audio books is that iTunes will remember where you left off on your book so it will always start where you want it to.

The problem is that if you rip an audiobook CD into iTunes or have an audiobook in mp3 format, iTunes will not let you simply drag your song into the audiobooks category. There isn't even a buried setting to change the category. So Kari's dad had me help figure out a solution to organize his audiobooks using this category.

The short version:

1. Show audiobooks in iTunes (on the general tab of your preferences).
2. Convert your track to AAC (.m4a file type).
3. Rename the actual file to .m4b.
4. Remove the old …

I was just walking through the hall and someone asked how my nye was, which reminded me to blog.

So in a nutshell, New Years was pretty blah this year. There was no plan, no party, and no going out really. It was quite different from my last couple NYEs spent in Chicago.

The weekend was good though. Friday, Cedric, came over to watch B13, this awesome french action parkour movie. It was pretty awesome. Then Nathan stopped up and led us in debauchery.

Saturday, Kari's parents came over to help pickup and setup furniture for our guest bedroom (another amazing Christmas Present from Santa). We got the furniture from Sears of all places... and it's the most solid "assembly required" furniture that I've ever had. Everything is …

Minnesota is so freakin... I can't think of the word. It's not hick. However, it's similar to hick, with better people. It's so... wilderness or something. See, everytime I go to Chicago I think, "Des Moines is so small town." Then on the drive to Mankato, and up 169 to the cities, I think, "Where do these people shop? eat? go out?" and then I realize that Des Moines is actually a big city compared to a lot. Everywhere I've been in Minnesota is so small town, with smart and friendly people. Then when I get back to Des Moines I appreciate my "big city." Shortly after this roadside pondering I reached rush hour traffic just outside of Minneapolis on 494. Then I saw the skyline off in the distance and went back to thinking Des …

There are two things to note about this year's Christmas.
1. Insanity (running around wise)
2. Awesome

So late Tuesday night, my dad, Chris, and Bre'anna showed up at my place. We basically hung out for an hour then went to bed.

Wednesday was kinda funny cause both Kari and I had to work but then met back up with everyone at Vicki's later. We had some sweet tortilla soup, hung out, played catch phrase, etc. No big woop.

Thursday, Kari and I completely ditched family to go to the Pink Spiders/Kill Hannah show at House of Bricks. It was nuts, seriously. We showed up right in the middle of the Pink Spiders set, which was perfect timing thanks to our sweet Pho diversion. Greg (bassist from Kill Hannah) put us on the …

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Last weekend was quite fun and completely random. This week will probably be the same.

It basically started when Kari decided to end her night at 8:30pm Friday, which left me quite bored. So a couple calls later, Cedric, Nathan and I somehow wound up in Ames. I've never partied in Ames before, it's quite different. We met up with Diverse at phuel, then found Nathan's sister and went to Welch Ave Station. After getting ditched by Cara we randomly stopped into this columbian restaurant to have some dos equis with people who didn't speak english. Then after brainstorming our new salon idea, we went to the London Underground. It was a fun night ending with some amazing Gyros.

Saturday was just retarded awesome. The Bad Kids …

Another weekend at home. This is getting a bit out of hand.

So yeah, it was pretty laid back. Zach and Amy came over to play ping pong, eat pizza and hang out on Friday. It was a fun time. Then Nathan and I met Chuck at stix where we had a $50 bar tab which we were not charged for, yesss. We didn't even drink much, we just drank expensive... and ordered more pizza. Service like that is hard to find, I just wish it came more easily at a place like Aura.

Saturday, Kari's parents visited. Kari and Teresa shopped while Jeff and I made some Porter and Dark Belgian Ale, mmm. I'm excited. I think we're getting a lot better at brewing. Now we just need to streamline - a 10-15 gallon pot, gas powered cooker, and a wort chilling …