Tuesday after work, Kari and I drove to Denver to visit her brother and go snowboarding. The original plans were for her and I to go snowboarding thursday at Winterpark Mountain, but she hurt her knee walking, so her brother and I went instead. We took a lesson in the morning because it was my first time on a mountain (aside from iowa), and it was Victor's first time ever. Toward the end of the lesson, Vic hit his head and wanted to take a break... I ended up snowboarding the rest of the day by myself... but whatever, it was still fun. I covered a good portion of the mountain and got up to the Mary Jane peak (11,200 feet), w00t!

The bad part of the day was when my digital camera broke... I was really mad. On the way back from the …

Nick Leeper and I have been working on a new web design/digital media company called: Truespin Media. We already have our first project going and today we launched the site.

Our focus is the for the Des Moines, Iowa area , but hopefully we will be building sites all around the country.

Check it out: www.truespin-media.com

"Ah, come on farva, man! Same team! Same team! What's Thorny gonna say, Rook?!"
-Super Troopers

Ever since I moved to Des Moines, almost every time I drive to Mount Vernon on a Friday, I am behind a cop. And almost every time it's a cop out of its jurisdiction. Later, I found out that there is some place in Johnston or something that trains Officers... so I'm assuming that the cops I follow are all leaving from this training.

So Anyway, today I was driving to Mount Vernon behind 2 cops: the first from Davenport and the second from Muscatine. We were going about 80 mph for a while and then my radar detector started going off. So I hit the brakes and see an Iowa State Trooper on the side. The cop pulls out and I immediately …

I just lost the last 6 months of my life documentation that makes up derek.broox.com.

if any of you have any of my articles saved/cached for any reason at all, please email them to me at [email protected].

i am really a complete retard. kick me as hard as you can the next time you see me. either in the face, or square in the balls.

3:10 PM Update: Scratch everything I just said. I rule. Here is the story...

First, I go to empty my "audio" table in the database because i needed to re-organize it... well, instead i accidentally emptied the "articles" table. So, I basically deleted the past 3 years of my internet life. ... this is the point where I would have cried (if i was a pansy). However, I did get really really sad.

So I …

I finally got the audio and video sections up on the site. Each has 1 file. The audio section has a song by my buddy's band (Van Johnson), and the video section just has the tech deck video. Be sure to check out the Van Johnson song.

Hopefully everyone doesn't hate me or my views on updating my website this time.

You know those stereogram (Magic Eye) things that you used to always see at malls? You stare at them for a while and then see a cool picture like a schooner or something. Well, here is an ascii one.

Man, there are so many crazy political people in this country. I seriously can't believe how many people get so stressed about politics. The caucus was yesterday, so Des Moines swelled with thousands of die hard political people. I met one group that drove from Texas just to get their stupid heads counted... and then they'll drive back home. wtf, why???

hmm, I wonder what political party I am...

Nah, no I don't.

Zach and I just put together this insanely dope Tech Deck edit. Some of the tricks we busted include: 50-50, kickflip, 5-0, 360 quadruple kickflip, 50-50 Impossible, 8 stair 5-0, rail transfers, 5-0 to bluntside, etc. There is also a guest apperance by the crocodile hunter, wrestling a live croc! Click here for the video

Warning: Graphic injury near the end of the video.

This morning started off awesome when I was getting on the interstate from University to go to work. There were 2 semis and quite a few other cars about 6 feet apart and no one seemed to notice my turn signal (which made it impossible to merge). Naturally, ultra road rage kicked in. At this point I glanced forward and saw that the light was green at the end of the ramp to get back off of the interstate, so I floored it down the ramp and came back up onto the interstate from Hickman.

At this time, I just felt like catching up to everyone that wouldn't let me in so I could cut each and every one of them off, haha, I am a loser. So I'm doing 85-90 weaving through the 3 lanes of traffic that make up Interstate 80/35 in …

Last night Nathan and I went to Mickey's Irish Pub and played pool with some cool people that we met. At this place, they had some Irish quote painted on the top of a wall... Check it out.

It's annoying enough if you mix up "your" and "you're" when chatting on AIM or something, but when you're going to paint it on a wall... seriously, come on.

Proofread.

Man... Due to this lame cold weather I've been getting really bored which has caused me to do a ton of thinking lately (and way too many updates on this site).

Watching Jason move into a 4 bedroom brick house in a nice neighborhood is really starting to take a toll on me. I have no freedom in this apartment. The lame brass door handles, and dining room light are really bothering me. I can't put my miniramp up, I can't really do anything. So I think it's time to move into a dope crib.

Ah crap... Money. I think that I make a pretty respectable salary, but I just don't think I can afford what I want in a house. So why not move into a townhouse for now... Hmmm, that would be really nice... no lawn mowing, no plowing, no shoveling, a …

Jason Reiter (a college buddy of mine that I haven't seen in like 4 years) just moved to West Des Moines and bought a really nice house with his fiance. I'm pretty geeked about it. I'll have someone to hang out with, snowboard with, and maybe get him into a few more extreme sports (i.e. skateboarding)

He has an unfinished basement, so I'm gonna try to talk him into letting me build a mini ramp in it. I've spent the past couple hours working on plans for one. He has 8 or 9 foot ceilings...

If they're 9 feet, I'd like to build the 3 foot ramp that I designed tonight, otherwise I'll have to go 2 feet or something. Hopefully he's down for that, hehe. If not, I'll just have to build a box to grind or something. I really want to learn how to …

Jan 5, 2004 1:47 PM Seriously, this is getting out of hand. I had to move so many things around on my desk to get my tech deck stuff to fit in here...

Check out my ramps and rails. I am so lame.

I need to fill them with spray foam and attach them to my desk. Everything is hollow, so it's sooo loud.

Kari spilled an entire "styrofoam leftover container" of Pasta Capri in my car. It's a very oily pasta with fettucine, portabella mushrooms, and artichoke hearts.

Well, I've been off work for about a week now, which has been awesome.

I went home to Illinois straight from work on Tuesday and met my dad and sister at Old Chicago for pizza, which was actually really good. Then hung out with Rich for the rest of the day.

On Christmas day, we woke up and opened presents. I got all kinds of good clothes, a toyota supra xmod (and stage 2 engines, metal bearrings, and body kits), some DVDs, and various other gifts. Later that day we went to Snowstar, a ski resort that some relatives of ours own. They close the resort for the family Christmas party and all the skiing, sledding, and snowboarding that we want to do. I ended up riding snowskates with my little cousin Erich most of the time. I hit a 50-50 …

So, lately, I've been getting a lot of people telling me that I "look like that guy on 'Viva la Bam.'" Which is sorta funny, because we do have similar styles, my hair is getting long, I skateboard, have all the cky DVDs, own a couple HIM CDs (which are actually from Finland, woot), and even sport a heartagram belt.

The thing that sucks is people only know Bam because of mtv. I mean, seriously... isn't Bam the guy sponsored by Element, Volcom, Fairmans, Clive, or Adio? or is he the guy that's been putting out awesome DVDs titled "cky" or "haggard?" or maybe he's the brother of Jess from the band, cky. He might even be that insane fan of HIM, has the same tattoos as ville valo, and puts a heartagram on everything. Why is he just now …

Within the last couple weeks I've seen all 3 of the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time. Today was opening day for the 3rd one at the theaters and I went with a bunch of guys from work.

Most of them have read the book, which I can't even imagine because... that would suck. I mean, seriously that is a stupid amount of reading... Having seen the movies, however, I think that it is one of the greatest stories ever written. Waiting until now to see all 3 was the best thing I could have done, especially since I knew NOTHING about them. I think that something about seeing them ALL for the first time in such a short period made them even better. I had no time to anticipate, guess, hope, or expect anything out of them.

Anyway... …

So, my cube is slowly turning into a tech deck skatepark. I've now got a quarter pipe, 2 grind rails, 7 regular tech decks, 2 mini tech decks, and a tech deck handboard.

Luckily most of my neighbors are into tech decks as well... other wise they would hate me. Nick has 3 normal decks and a mini deck, cedric has 4 decks, chad has 2, minnis has 1 and jason has 1.

Here's a picture of my desk right now.

Theta Semi Formal: Lame
Food: Worse
Music: wtf
Cool: Grant, Grant's friend, Kevin Keller, Justin, Seth, Cory, Jamie, Sean, Becca, Tara, D-wiz, Paul, Nate, Jamie's date, ...and maybe Kari (I guess)
Owls: Love Pacific Sunwear

This weekend I had originally planned to go see a Hip Hop show in Ames, but those plans kind of fell through so I decided to make a surprise visit to Mount Vernon for the weekend.

I got to play poker with Kevin and 2 of his co-workers (Adam and Sabra). They were really good. We played for over 4 hours. Kevin lost his $20, but lasted a really long time. I ended up down only $2.25. It was fun. Later, Kevin and I walked into C & D's lounge, a bar formally known as Joe's in Mount Vernon. We barely got 2 steps in the door and this old townie yells, "Hey I saw you on Mtv!" With little to no reaction time I just hit him in the arm and yelled, "Yeah that's cause I'm on it!" I don't know what happened, but it like stunned the dude. He just …