I write, occasionally

A-ha, the long awaited Brooks-Baby-Rant article.

First of all I want to say that I mean no offense to any of my friends who have children, I just don't want them. Also, I don't hate children - in moderation. I mean, I do have some pretty rad younger cousins. So, that said, ready?

A random happy/high-pitched person says, "Oh! you've been married almost a year now? That's so great! When are you expecting kids!?"
I reply, "Oh! The little dears! Never!" *smile*

So yeah, apparently there is some book somewhere that I haven't read (obviously), and nor has Kari (surprisingly). This book apparently has this awesome master plan with step 1 being marriage and step 1.2 being pregnancy. This book sucks. It's so ridiculous and has …

So I had just left the house this morning and got an IM from Zach:

zachsatwork: hey something is wrong with your website
zachsatwork: Network Error (dns_unresolved_hostname)
zachsatwork: Your requested host "derek.broox.com" could not be resolved by DNS. Please verify that you entered the URL correctly and try again.

At this point I freaked out a bit because I vaguely remembered a "1 month expiration reminder" from Joker.

zachsatwork: thats it though, all the other sites are up
brooxmobile: Is kari.broox?
zachsatwork: down

So I freaked out more, pulled off at this gas station and logged into Joker from my phone while pumping gas. That's when I found out that broox.com expired 9/24 - 2 days ago. I about died. I tried …

Ahhh, home. When I'm home, things get done.

So yeah, Friday was Rico's last day at Pioneer, which was a little weird, but was also quite nice. I really don't know many people that have the balls to up and quit a job after over 20 years of service. I'm pretty excited about it. I think it's going to rule for him.

After work he had a little "thanks for putting up with me" party, which was a good time: good beer, cigars, scotch, and big fires. We also played "wear derek's hat" for a bit.

Saturday was really nice, I got a lot done - mostly paperwork, money work, and office organizing. not cleaning, organizing... I really suck at actually cleaning my office for some reason. So I was doing my usual bill paying, when I noticed …

The question is not about where I want to live, because the answer would obviously be Chicago. However, that can't happen right now, so...

I want to make this piece of art that is basically a skyline sitting on a chunk of earth. The actual skyline would be black painted metal sitting on a piece of "earth" to give a sort of glacial effect. The earth would be made of plywood. It's a pretty simple piece representing 2 things I love, the city, and the underground. Plus it would be nice to put some sort of urbanization in my extremely suburban home, haha.

My Dilemma is that I don't know what skyline to use. I really like Chicago's skyline from the southeast side, over by the Aquarium and what not. I also really like the Des Moines …

Ahhhh, a laid back weekend with a hint of craziness, a nice change. Plus it was especially nice to get treated to a great meal and night of going out - much thanks to Jeff. So Friday Kari's fam showed up, we hung out, played video/board games, ate pizza, had homebrew, etc. My body was confused by the relaxation and wanted insanity, but it worked out.

Saturday we were lazy for the most part then did a little shopping. And by shopping I mean we just browsed, but it was nice - sort of. I mean, Jeff wanted to look at amps and stuff, so we checked out Guitar Center, which I'm vowing to never enter again. Seriously. I went in there and was really impressed with the amount of gear... then I found the studio equipment room... then I …

Man. This house is in so much need of tech upgrades, it's ridiculous.

My PC runs decently but it's now over 4 years old (9/2/2002). I started noticing the suckiness a lot lately because I am constantly running out of room on my secondary HD, which is primarily used for media (photos, videos, music, etc). I mean, I have an 80gig primary and a 120 gig secondary. When you take photos, collect music, and shoot video as much as myself, after a few years, that is not sufficient. Really what I need is like 3-4-500gb. Plus new apps are seeming to run crappier than they are probably designed for *cough*itunes 7*

I was browsing around in Best Buy the other day to find that most standard configs now come with more than what my PC is …

I'm really confused about Google's index. I used to think I understood it really well, but now that I've gotten into this sitemaps business, it's much more confusing.

I mean, Google had www.cedarrapidsalive.com indexed fairly well shortly after I released it. Then I added the link to Google Sitemaps (without submitting an actual sitemap) in an attempt to get the pages picked up faster. It made things worse... So I eventually made an actual sitemap and submitted it. However, now if you check out the index, they only have 2 results indexed, wtf.

QC Alive seems a bit underindexed as well, but it's doing a little better with 514 results. However, I'd really like them to be fully indexed like Des Moines Alive, which currently has …

Hmm, so I've done enough extreme activities and hurt myself enough times that I keep a couple of those wrist/ankle/knee wraps around - and today I'm wearing one, haha. Stupid wrists.

See, Zach and I were skating last night for quite a while. I was finally starting to stick a couple grinds that felt super unnatural to me before. It was going well. So well in fact, that I started hitting them with more speed. And as some of you know, when grinding, especially with torqued grinds such as royales, it's easy to let your feet slip out from under you and fall hard, thus hurting your wrist or back or whatever.

Well, this didn't happen. Although it would maybe make for a better story. Actually, i didn't fall once. I hurt my wrist …

Seriously it is soooo ghetto. I usually try to avoid it at all costs. But I came in today to return some headphones that I got in florida and didn't like - it straight sucked. I sometimes forget how ghetto and sucky Walmart is, and then I return only to regret it - immensely.

And you know what the worst part of walmart is? It's the customer service department. Because it is there that even non-ghetto people act ghettoly. But when you have ghetto people acting ghettoly in a ghetto store, it's horrible. I had a woman in front of me today returning a toolset that she apparently bought for her husband. She was like, "he didn't wan'em. Said they're cheap!" No kidding, lady. She was also returning some opened dog pee pads, among …

So, this weekend I went to Chicago for a few minutes, which will put an end to a month straight of weekends I was out of town - without Kari, haha. Rochester, Minneapolis, Orlando, and Chicago. Traveling without Kari was a little weird, a little lame, but also nice. We both enjoy time with each other as much as we enjoy time without each other. However, 4 weeks in a row may be a little excessive... So this weekend, I am in Des Moines! Where Kari, her fam, and I will eat sushi, watch movies, drink homebrew, and love life.

And now for a recap of Chicago.

I drove straight there - no need to drop off Ninja, no tolls, etc. It ruled so much, and seemed like a super short drive - especially after that Orlando trip. And now I'm to …

...seen the Grand Canyon 66 times, spittin wicked sh*t rhymes.

So yeah. If you didn't know, I had this Map that kept track of everywhere I've traveled to. It made use of the Google Maps API (v1) and was fairly ghetto. So I upgraded to v2, used xml, and integrated it into derek.broox.com.

Peep /travel

If 1 more person asks me if I heard about the crocodile hunter dying from a stingray barb to the heart, I am going to punch them.

I was in Orlando, not space. Tanner sent me the CNN story Saturday. I know about it.

Ok so, kevi totally changed everything in his life up again with a new place to live, new job, and new gf... Imagine that. In fact he still owes me a case of dewski for winning this bet...

how long were you at yellow book?
2 months
how long were you at the hospital?
3 months
how long were you at stamats?
1 year 4 months
ok, i'll bet you another case of mt dew, you quit your current job within 2 years
ok
haha
should i quit my job here at geolearning before april 7, 2007, i will give you one case of mt. dew
Derek R Brooks
Kevin E Switzer

So that said. We had a mini going away party at my house last wednesday. Fun time.

Then I somehow managed to let kevi talk me into helping him move to orlando. He sold it by saying …

Ok, so Canon fixed my cam for free, woot!. It was actually really a fast fix and they sent the cam back to me yesterday... So I checked the tracking status today and was quite surprised to find that my cam was supposed to be delivered today... just in time for my trip to Orlando tomorrow! I then checked it again at 11am and found this:
Sep 1, 2006 | 10:12 AM | Delivery exception | CLIVE, IA | Customer not available or business closed

So I called FedEx just like I normally do with UPS to let them know I want to pick my package up. They said that I cannot pick it up because the package wouldn't be back to the station until after they had closed. wtf. How come every other shipping company can get back and give me my package? …

Hmm. I sort of said, "yeah right" when I first heard about this this morning. Because netrality and freeness is really what the internet is all about. And I rarely like to stand behind causes - but since internet is what I do... this one seemed scary enough for my attention.

The bottom line is this: Internet freedom is under attack as Congress pushes a law that would give companies like AT&T the power to control what you do and see online.

Apparently, some bigger companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon are wanting to control the internet. They basically want people to pay for their sites be seen. For example, if I don't pay AT&T, x amount of money, my site will load slower and be further down the chain than Harper's site, …

Welp, as most of you know, Nathan, Chuck, and I went up to Minneapolis this weekend, which started out as a birthday bash for Josh, but ended up being a celebration of all our birthdays. Mine's in August... Nathan's is in June, and Chuck's is in November, haha.

On the way, we ended up making a last minute pitstop into Clear Lake to pick up Monica and drop her off at her BF's place just outside of the cities.

We got to our hotel around 9ish, which was in a pretty rough part of downtown - greyhound station, dudes getting handcuffed, etc. Actually we saw people getting cuffed on 3 separate occasions right in front of our building, haha.

So, we quickly threw our stuff in the room and walked straight to Gluek's bar. As soon as we …

This error has been forwarded to MySpace's technical group.

Why does MySpace suck so bad? Seriously. It's horrible. I think I see that message more than whatever it is I'm actually trying to look at.

This is going to be so "college" and "lame" and "sappy" and "retarded" of me. So I apologize up front.

I've been meaning to write about this since the first time I saw SLC Punk, which was some time in college. In the movie, there's a quote by the main character, Steve-O (Matthew Lillard), that was interesting to me. Actually there were several quotes that sparked some thought - which is weird for such a "B movie," but this one in particular really got me.

Steve-O and Bob are visiting their friend Mark, who's talking about all his sweet/expensive stuff - laserdiscs, shower head, remote control, waveless waterbed, etc. He's doing so in an almost "bragging" manner - even though he's not meaning to brag at all. To which, Steve-O …

Welp, Rochester was pretty rad. We tried to hit all the hot spots in 1 night, which made things quite insane. It ruled though because everything was pretty much within walking distance.

So we started the night off by eating at Newt's. I had heard that Newt's has the best burgers in town. So we went in expecting to order their burger - a normal, but really good burger. We didn't realize that they had a several awesome burgers with special recipes. I had this burger with Jalapenos and garlic ground into the meat prior to cooking. Zach had a Cheyenne bleu cheese burger, and Nathan had a burger with eggs and bacon on it. Seriously, best burgers in town... or maybe even the country!!! (chalk another one up for Minnesota, Josh).

So, my Car Insurance only went down $10 a month... booo. Maybe it will go down more when Kari is 25 too.

On another note, I really love the Asian Market. There are always interesting things there, plus everything is always spelled wrong. I seriously can't believe how you can spell the same word 2 different ways on 2 signs, 8 inches from each other. Or how you can spell something wrong with the correct spelling is directly in front of you. Haha.

Anyway, yeah.