I write, occasionally

Here's a collection of 656 pieces of nonsense that I've written over the past 25.02 years.

  • 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 …

  • 7 Months Later

    Thanks!

    Yeah, we got married exactly seven months ago and just sent out the last of our "thank yous" today. General wedding etiquette is six months max. But... well, you know.

    You've also probably noticed that I never uploaded the wedding photos. Trust me, I've been nagged about it a ton (by lots of peeps). Kari kept saying "upload our wedding pics" etc. To which I simply replied, "no."

    My plan was to not upload them until Kari sent out the thank-you letters. This was probably obvious, but my little secret is that I've had all the wedding photos organized, resized, and even ordered for months. Seriously - months. They've been sitting right on my jump drive waiting for me to upload them, haha.

    Well... about 20 minutes …

  • Moms, Projects and Such

    First of all, I am 2 for 2 in polk city, haha. I drove through there for the first time since getting pulled over and got pulled over again, haha. Same reason, same spot, different guy, he let me off. I'm done driving through that town. There is no crime! Dudes gotta pull people over for a missing license plate.

    Besides that, the last couple weeks have been pretty normal - busy.

    Mother's Day was nice. My parents and Kari's family each visited. We went to Vicki's, out for sushi, and then to a little Jazz bar. It was a good time. Sunday we cooked, hung out, etc.

    Saturday Nick and I had a meeting with this dental office in Grinnell. We're doing a site for them, however they are pretty oblivious about the internet. We …

  • Don't EVER Answer the First Question

    Tonight I got pulled over and I broke the FIRST FREAKIN RULE IN THE BOOK. The FIRST rule. I seriously about smacked my forehead right in front of the cop. I answered the first question he asked me. That question that you are never ever EVER supposed to answer.

    I've read 2 books about getting pulled over, and I've been pulled over somewhere around 20 times now. Of those 20 times, I've gotten 2 - maybe 3 moving violations. Thus, I consider myself semi-pro at the act. This is the kind of knowledge you don't gain from Harry Potter books, you gain it from experience - and books that are actually useful.

    So anyway. I'm driving through Polk City and see a police car on the side of the road - I'm speeding, but not by much... plus …

  • what the wtf

    ok. this is the most messed up, no-sense making trip ever. seriously, i am so baffled by it that i had to blog it, haha.

    kevi's gf is flying up here from florida and kevi is picking her up from the airport. this is where normality stops.

    from the airport, kevi and his gf are driving straight to florida. and by "straight to florida" i mean that they're stopping in texas to pick up kevi's mom, haha. then, once they get to florida, they're hanging out for 4-5 days. after that, kevi's mom is flying back to texas and kevi and his gf will drive back to des moines.

    obviously this doesn't make a whole lot of sense so i tried to figure it out mathematically.

    ~700 mi - dsm to mt vernon
    ~1,140 mi - mt vernon to orlando
    ~1,400 mi …

  • The Zachelor

    So this weekend was Zach's bachelor weekend. Turbo, Rick, and Jake came up, we partied a lot, etc. It was a pretty crazy/good time.

    Rick pulled into the driveway Friday and barely said "hi" before he started pulling Coronas, chips, and salsa out of the trunk for Cinco de Mayo, haha. The rest of the night was fairly laid back - hanging out, rock bottom, etc.

    Saturday, we woke up, went to look at a Ford GT, and then worked on the pocket bike. We rebuilt the carburetor, tuned it a bit, and now it runs like a champ. After that, a bunch of us paintballed which was a really good time. There was an amish lady playing that had a dress on - I totally shot her, haha.

    Later we all met up at my house, grilled, hung out, dropped by …

  • Bad words

    WTF are bad words? haha - yeah I said that. But seriously, what is swearing? Why is swearing wrong? I've been thinking about this for a long long time. How can a certain word be bad? Who says it's bad? Seriously, it is just a word.

    I first started thinking about this in high school. Someone (maybe it was me - I don't remember) said one of those words that isn't quite a swear word, but it's not quite a good word either - like "piss" or something. So I made an argument saying that the word wasn't even a swear word... *ding* I immediately thought to myself, "wait... what is a swear word anyway?" During that ding someone next to me acknowledged my swear word comment by saying, "well yeah but you still shouldn't say that" …

  • Sites, Homebrew, and Weekend

    This weekend was pretty nice. I got a lot done.

    Friday night, we met nick and Nicole at A Dong then went up to Mars Cafe for some hip hop and breakdancing. It was nice. The bboys definitely stole the show. Later we stopped by MH's surprise party. Fun Fun.

    Saturday night I had a little last minute get together. Some buddies came over, we shot blowguns, shot blowgun darts out of paintball guns, played pool, sampled new homebrews, etc. Then we all went out to Stix.

    The homebrew setup is becoming pretty nice. I've started modding a chest freezer to be a mini kegerator. I'm building a wooden collar for it so that I can take my co2 tank out of the freezer, mount a couple tappers, etc. Eventually the plan is to have tappers …

  • SP, KH, OMG

    Oh man, the past couple weeks have been insane. Work has been pretty stressful - a lot of weird things are happening, but they're panning out to be not so bad. Regardless though, it's prompted me to start updating my portfolio. Here's what I've got so far... yeah there's still a lot to do. I think it's probably important to always keep your portfolio and resume up to date, I'm gonna try to stay on top of that more.

    Besides that, Soul Position and Kill Hannah were awesome last week. It was nice to hang out with Greg a bit. Jeff and I also got the homebrew kegged, w00t! I'm pretty excited for that. I got co2 yesterday... and we're still trying to figure out good refrigeration. Our current cooler sucks - it's either freezing or …

  • Easter in Sin City

    So Kari's family and I spent Easter in Vegas this year. I hadn't been there yet, so I had to see it. And now that I'm back I must say that the city was pretty amazing. I've already got a list of things to do for the next time I go back.

    Friday night we flew out of Cedar Rapids to Vegas. The landing was nice since it was nighttime and the airport is right next to the lit up strip. As soon as we stepped off the plane there were slot machines, which was pretty hilarious. Jeff won $4, ha. We then headed to our hotel - MGM Grand, which is huge huge. Like, there are multiple theaters, a gigantic casino, tons of restaurants, bars, clubs, shopping centers... seriously nuts. Our rooms were nice as well. Big ol king sized beds and all …

  • So Fresh and So Clean

    Welp, last week my site broke... so instead of fixing it, I decided to write a complete new design, ha. Actually, when I say "design" I really don't mean "design" at all. As you can see it's not much different than before. Lots of grays, same header, etc. However, I reprogrammed the entire site. That's right - I rewrote every bit of code, haha. I also changed the DB around a bit.

    That may seem a bit dumb, but over the last 6 years, I've just been adding on and enhancing certain parts of the site. After a while the code started to get pretty sloppy. Plus, I've learned how to rule at programming since then so I decided to rewrite - completely. I'm super glad I did too because everything is much much lighter and the DB stuff is …

  • Public Juice is Closer

    Alright, I put up the 3rd and never before seen preview for the upcoming film "Public Juice."

    While I was at it, I also put up the first 2 Public Juice previews... plus I put up a video of Cullen soaping... oh yeah, and I tossed up higher quality versions of One Brother and Saint Louis.

    Check them all out on the videos page.

  • BDs, DMA, GDP, LOL

    blog, blog, blog. i hate not having time to blog, cause then i have to write these really long articles about a billion things - then everyone is all like, "that is long, i'm not reading that." it really bugs me when people don't blog. i like to know what's up, and then i don't do it - stupid.

    so yeah. last weekend kari's dad came down for his 50th birthday. the plan was originally to see some sweet aerosmith and cheap trick, but steven tyler apparently turned into a pansy all of a sudden, haha. stupid 60 year old rockers... always getting weak. instead we just did the normal thing, ate lots, made beer, went out, etc. it was a good time though. we toured a dude's insane homebrew setup and learned quite a bit.

    during that …

  • Des Moines Alive and Joker.com

    So desmoinesalive.com is almost 1 year old and is doing really well. Some pretty cool things are happening. First of all, we got myspace! haha. So now we can be friends with bars, restaurants, ballers, party people, etc. Hopefully it'll help everyone involved. I really like providing a good useable service - sorta like Google does. I bet Google must love life. I need to make more sites like this. I should make Google.

    On another note, joker.com has been killing me lately. I'm getting so annoyed. Apparently there have been a bunch of DDOS attacks on their nameservers which has taken ALL my sites down for hours at a time this week. I have been so annoyed. So at one of the not-broken times I went to change my secondary DNS to …

  • St Patrick's Mustache Party

    Oh man, the mustache party was really fun... really ridiculous, but definitely fun.

    We had 35-40 people over and 3 - 5gallon kegs of Rock Bottom beer, which didn't quite get finished, but we got close.

    There's not really a lot to tell, but you can see most of the story through the photos.

    As for the winners...
    Longest Stache: Minnis
    Best Stache: Chuck
    Worst Stache: Nick
    Most Creative: Nehru

    The thing that sucked was that I woke up Saturday morning with strep throat. Fever over 103, etc. Way to ruin a good weekend! I was so mad I couldn't hang out with my buddies from outta town Saturday night. Stupid, stupid sick.

  • Cornell, SolidGrind, and Stuff

    Man, Man. I'm having some fun lately. Awesomeness is awesome.

    So last week I was sick... which I suppose was not awesome at all. In fact it was really lame. However, I got better in time for the weekend and went to visit some friends in Mount Vernon. We ran around, partied, ran around, etc. At one point we met up with some peeps at Cedar River Brewing in CR. While there I talked everyone into going to club Element, haha. It's a dance club in this old gym in CEDAR RAPIDS. It was sort of funny, but definitely fun. The best (worst) part was when I was dancing with drea and she straight up kicked me off the dance floor. wtf? am I that bad? that white? I bet it's this freakin beard. Once I shave I'm trying again. Don't get …

  • Bock Fest and Sick Fest 06

    Oy, I'm home sick - it's lame. I'm all bundled up on the couch with 2 laptops, juice, and cold medicine, looking for some mindless things to do. Maybe it's a good time for a blog.

    First of all - this weekend. So much fun. Nathan and I rode up to MN with Rico. He was visiting his family who happened to live 20 minutes from Josh... so it was obvious that we should ride along and visit our buddy.

    The plan for the weekend was to attend Bockfest at the August Schell brewery in New Ulm - which was a blast. A lot of things happened and I've already told the story about 10 times... plus I don't feel like writing a whole lot - so I'll let the photos tell the story. It was a great time, I met a lot of people, got to hang out with …

  • Kevi, NIN, Going Out, and Garage Doors

    The last week was pretty nice with a couple sort of crazy things. To start out, Kevi and Stacy split up on Monday which was like, "WHOA." Everyone's still sort of in shock it. So Kevi came over to hang out for a bit/get out of the house. Then I went out to play pool with Nathan/Chuck. Tuesday, Kari and I went out to 43 for "V-Day." It ruled - I ate a deer. Later we met up with some friends @ Star Bar.

    Thursday, Zach and I went to NIN @ Wells Fargo Arena. Moving Units opened, which was this band that sounded like a mix between Kill Hannah and the Cure. I liked them. Then NIN came on - it was a flat out rock show. I mean, the first hour or so was all old, fast stuff, all loud. Toward the end they did stuff from their new CD. It was a high …