I write, occasionally

Here's a collection of 654 pieces of nonsense that I've written over the past 24.94 years.

  • New Broox Dot Com

    Oh yeah, I redid the home/splash/main/whatever page for www.broox.com.

    I figured that after over 3 years of that blue design, it was time for something new. Plus I don't wear suits, I have facial hair, I'm cooler, etc. However, I'm not quite ready to admit that I don't skateboard.

    P.S. One of my cameras (Canon SD550) is broken and sent in for repairs. Luckily I had a month left in the warranty, w00t. I sometimes wonder about the reliability Canon - or maybe it's just the way I treat cameras.

  • Parties, Newton, Fair, etc.

    Things have been pretty fun lately, busy again, but fun - and slowly becoming more insane.

    Friday night was Zach's housewarming party, which was quite nice. Saturday, Jeff and I made 2 batches of beer, which I'm pretty sure will turn out awesome. We were focused on these batches, I'm excited. Afterwards, we all went to Newton to celebrate Morris' 80th B-Day. 200-300 people showed up, which is pretty insane. It's sort of sad that my parties are totally getting schooled by 80 year old folks, haha, wtf. Then, Sunday we went back to Newton for another family lunch. Things in Kari's family are a lot different than mine. When they get together, they do so for 3 days in a row several times a year. In my family, we get together for 3 …

  • Old and Boring @ Twenty Five

    What an insane birthday. Seriously. And now that my life is 1/3 over, my insurance should go down now, ha. W00t.

    Ok. Thursday, kari and I went to my parents' house for pizza, hanging out, etc.

    Friday morning, we met my grandparents for breakfast, then headed into chicago for lollapalooza - my birthday present from kari. First we got the hotel - on the 37th floor of the grand Marriott on Michigan ave - my birthday present from jeff. Then we headed to lollapalooza, checked out the grounds, met up with the DSM peeps, and ended friday's fest with Ween. What a live show - incredible.

    Later, we all met up @ Sushi Wabi for my bday dinner, which was amazing as usual.

    After dinner we went to Sonotheque to see lady sovereign play. …

  • My Bathroom Theory (No. 3): Urinals

    It may seem weird that I have so much to say about bathrooms. However, if you think about it, you spend a fair amount of time in a bathroom. Seriously, you're in there at least 5 times every single day. It's something that everyone does but never really talks about the politics of. This is the exact reason that I've written my "theories" or thoughts about things that happen in restrooms.

    If you haven't read my other bathroom rants, here they are:

    My Bathroom Theory (No. 1): Washing Your Hands
    My Bathroom Theory (No. 2): The Toilet Seat

    Moving on...

    Urinals. Urinals are seriously designed to be one of the most awkward pieces of ceramic ever. They (combined with men's restrooms) are the worst-thought-out design ever. I mean …

  • Shelves and 515 Alive

    My shelves are (mostly) done (again)!!! Haha.

    So yeah... Thursday, Rico and I finished spraying the shelves in my office - well, Rico did anyway. I just built the big ol tent and let the pro finish the work. Then I took half of Friday off to finsh sanding, assembling, and stocking them. I'm super happy with how they turned out. ...Now, I just need to make doors for the cabinets. Here are pics of all the construction so far.

    Later Friday, Zach and I installed a new intake in his focus then Soaped a bit with Nathan. At Midnight, Nathan and I headed downtown to meet the Heelys guys and go out for a couple drinks, which ended up being a mini-party at my house, playing ping pong and soaping til 4:30am.

    Saturday was also really …

  • Webcam + Project Insanity

    So I finally hooked my webcam back up, ha. I'm not really sure why I have a webcam... except for the fact that watching me work is crazy-insane (or insane-crazy?).

    Besides that, things seriously are insane. I'm finishing my bookshelves, finishing the kegerator, getting ready for 515 Alive, doing Heelys demos, getting the house ready for a party Kari is hosting, entertaining guests, getting ready for my b-day, getting ready for Lollapalooza, etc.

    However, I'm finally getting caught up on so many things, which feels really good. So I guess it's time to start an absurd amount of projects again and get them all halfway done.

  • 3 Weddings and a Graduation Party

    That's how many separate things I had planned for this weekend. Seriously, it was nuts.

    First I was supposed to shoot video at Cliff's matinee wedding in Dubuque. Then, I remembered that I had to go to Jordan's wedding in Indiana the same day. And since I've known Jordan much longer, I decided I should attend his ceremony.

    Later, we found out that Victor was graduating college and having a graduation party then. And since he's now family, we decided to go to that instead. However, at the last minute his school was like, "whoops, we messed up your schedule and you are missing 2 classes that you do need." So now he doesn't graduate until October. This went down like 1 week before Jordan's wedding - after we had already …

  • MP3 Tagger (mp3 folksonomy)

    This is not about a program to edit ID3 tags. It's about tags in reference to folksonomy. (like flickr, del.icio.us, youtube, etc)

    I've been wanting this app for quite for a while now, and I'm actually quite surprised that I haven't found one yet. If I had time I'd love to write it but I simply don't... so here it is.

    There needs to be a very simple app that runs alongside iTunes. The app would allow users to add "tags" to the mp3 and then store them in the comments ID3 tag. Seriously, that is not a hard thing to do. Just append tags. I'm also surprised that this isn't a built in feature to iTunes yet. If it were, it would be the best thing ever. If they didn't want to use comments, they could even store it in the XML so …

  • Riverbend Pizza

    Riverbend Pizza is this awesome place that I worked at from the time I was 15 until sometime during my senior year of High school. Aside from mowing my grandma's lawn, it was my first real job - and it ruled... a lot. So here's a huge collaboration of some of my memories. This is going to be long and I'm not a terrific writer, so I'm sorry if it sucks.

    I worked with a lot of people while at Riverbend, so let me preface by introducing them. The most memorable/prominent were Krut, Shirley, Randy, Joey, Boone, Wingert, Morris, Tom, and Bunky. Yeah there are a couple nick names there - we had nicknames for everything really. The giant machine that we used to knead dough and grind cheese was named "Grog." The knives and dough cutters …

  • Sidekick 3'd!!!

    Supposedly the Sidekick 3 comes out July 10 and I just got mine - 4 days early, suckers. And what a great time to get a new phone - when I'm home sick. So needless to say, I've been playing with it a lot in bed, hehehehe.

    I really really like the SK3. The interface (both physical and soft) is much nicer. It's about 1/4 inch shorter than the sidekick 2 and a bit lighter. So overall it's much easier to hold. The really nice thing about going from a Sidekick 2 to a Sidekick 3 is that you already know how to use it. Most of the commands are exactly the same. There are just some added bells/whistles to learn - which is super easy given Danger's user-friendly OS. Plus as soon as I powered on the device with my old SIM card, it …

  • A Sick 4th of July

    I have another freaking head cold. I hate being sick - especially on holidays... so stupid. However, despite my sickness, a lot of things happened this weekend anyway.

    Friday, Kari and I went out to "Yankee Doodle Pops" so that I could attempt to take photos of fireworks. Being that this event happens on the Capitol lawn - parking is limited, so we followed suit with everyone else and parked on the grass between the street and sidewalk. About 10 minutes later, 4 proud state troopers walked across the lawn straight to the cars and began ticketing a row of about 40 vechicles, haha. It was pretty hilarious, so instead of moving our car like most, I just took photos and paid $14 for a good parking spot. Thanks for serving and protecti…

  • The Larson Wedding Weekend

    So Zach and Amy are married, heh. The weekend was pretty packed, lots of driving, lots of stops, and lots of events.

    Thursday we left town, dropped Ninja off in Cedar Rapids, dropped Cedric off in Iowa City to buy a Ducati (which was really nice), and finally continued onto my Parents house to have Riverbend Pizza and hang out.

    Friday, Kari and I drove to Peoria to meetup with the guys to get Tuxes for the wedding. I had forgotten my sidekick charger so I stopped by a T-Mobile kiosk to buy a new one. They had a demo of the Sidekick III and let me play - it was soooo rad. I can't wait to get it. The OS seemed nicer and smoother. The chat clients were really nice, and the keyboard seemed much better (believe it or not). The …

  • Fathers Day 06

    Oh man. I have successfully eaten 18 pounds of food again. I am about to pop. I hope that I fit into my tux for Zach's wedding, haha. I think I gained 10 pounds since I gave him my measurements... whoops.

    Anyway, this weekend was pretty decent. I went to cky with Kevi at the House of Bricks on Friday. It was a fairly laid back show - maybe due to Kevi's gf being there. Maybe due to us not having enough money to have drinks, ha. ... But overall, a good time. The 2nd band was straight up METAL. I mean, metal. It was nice, but hurt my ears a bit - speaking of which, Dillinger Escape Plan is here soon too, hmmm. So yeah, we met Jess Margera which was kinda rad.

    Saturday, my parents showed up and brought me a trampoline which I'm super geeked …

  • Locked PC Wallpaper Display Problems

    OK, there isn't a whole lot of good documentation about this online, so here it is.

    If you change your desktop wallpaper with Windows systems (i.e. 2000 and XP) you will probably run into this problem at some point. Sometimes during startup or when you lock your computer via CTRL+ALT+DEL a previous wallpaper will be displayed even if you delete the file from your computer.

    This is an Active Desktop issue. The explorer shell displays layers on top of the actual desktop (e.g. start menu, icons, and the active desktop background!). When you lock your computer, the layers are cleared, revealing images set on the actual desktop - your annoying old wallpaper!

    For me, this always seems to happen when changing from a JPG to a GIF …

  • Friends, Lisa's Wedding, etc

    OK, so this weekend was nice, busy, fun, expensive, awesome, etc.

    Friday, Tara came into town to attend Lisa's wedding with us. We stopped over to Vicki's house to hang out with my cousins - who were in town for Vicki's hip hop recital, haha. I so wish I could have gone. Later, we had some people over, grilled out, hung out, etc. It was nice. Afterwards some of us went to Cedric's party and then met up with Rich and Sean downtown (who were in town for Paul Wall). Cedric's place is really quite awesome. I had my doubts about it matching his last place, but it is pretty cool - definitely nicer for sleeping and general living, ha.

    Saturday we had to wake up and go get some Mac n Chicken with Rich. Then Tara, Kari, and I headed …

  • Reboot, haha

    My home computer has been running pretty bad lately. It's obviously due to my lack of rebooting... but I have so many things open that I never want to reboot.

    So out of curiosity, I downloaded an app to find out the uptime of my home PC: 28 days 7 hrs 3 mins 36 sec.

    I think I'm going to reboot now, haha.

  • Sweet Summer Blues

    And it all begins - again. I have this love/hate relationship with summer. I love the weather, all the hanging out, skating, traveling, driving, partying, etc. But I hate hate hate how poor I get. And even more so, I hate complaining about how poor I get. It is straight depressing. I owe people money. I come home every day and look at all my projects that I can't afford to finish and just get sad. I spend the few extra dimes I have on hotel rooms and gas. It's retarded.

    Today I found the car I've been describing for years. My perfect car. Perfect. A white 98 Automatic Eclipse GSX with less than 50,000 miles. Not owned by a kid, garaged, stock, and taken very well care of. Man. It is seriously soooo rad. It's the first …

  • Memorial Day Insanity Again

    What is it about Memorial Day that is always insane? Last year it was Mt Vernon and Chicago, this year it is Des Moines, Dubuque, and Iowa City.

    Thursday before Memorial Day, Rico talked me into hanging out with him and the British kids that are staying at his house right now. It was a really good time, we all hung out, then went out. They are cool guys. They thought Royal Mile (our 'london pub') was hilarious.

    Friday, Zach and I ditched town for a Heelys demo in Dubuque. We got into town and our hotel dude was a skater like us - so he ended up totally hooking us up - better room, cheaper, and free drinks, ha. We met Zach's cousin BJ and my friend Josh at some fest downtown. It was a fun time, then we went to all kinds of …

  • Expressive Expressive

    So I had this "working styles" training at work on Monday. Usually you take it your first year here, but I kept denying the appt and finally got made to take it, haha.

    Prior to the training, a survey is sent out to 5 people I work with, they answer some questions and based on those questions this company determines my working style/personality type. Then we learn how to work well with other personality types.

    The 4 styles are (feel free to skip these if you don't care):
    Analytical - Polite but reserved, logical, fact- and task-oriented. This person’s focus is on precision and perfection. Other strengths include persistence, diligence, caution, and a systematic approach.

    Amiable - Devoted, consistent, dependable, and loyal, the …