I write, occasionally

The year that I…

• brought in at Chicago house parties with Kari, Drea, and friends.
• mostly spent living in Chicago, apart from visiting my wife and working my ass off.
• learned to scratch records (sort of).
• watched my uncle get inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• met the President of the United States.
• watched Kari learn that the biopsied lymphnodes in her neck were not cancerous.
• spent Saint Patrick's Day with friends on the green Chicago River.
• learned to make umeboshi onigiri.
• attended a good friend's lesbian wedding at a dude ranch.
• visited Minnesota, Washington DC, Arizona, Indiana, Marion, Des Moines, and Lake Okoboji.
• watched a Chicago Cubs game from a rooftop.
• went to the Chicago Blues Fest, 80/35, and Lollapalooza.
• saw the Lichte…

I moved to Chicago for 466 days, where I lived in 3 different neighborhoods and visited 375 different places — 239 of which were restaurants or bars. I walked around 10,087 steps (or 7.67 miles) per day, slept roughly 7.19 hours per night, and gained 1 pound before returning to Iowa.

I was actually in the city on 400 of those days and ventured out of Chicago on 117 of them. 68 of those (spread across 17 different trips) were spent in my actual home, with my wife in Iowa. I was also fortunate enough to get out to Washington DC, San Francisco, Arizona, and Napa Valley.

I spent 302 days at Obama's campaign headquarters, where as an engineer I committed over 140,000 lines of code written in 6 languages to 19 applications across 1,675 commits. …

A few weeks ago … err actually I guess it was more like 2 months ago (the concept of time has completely broken since I've taken on this crazy job of mine), I decided to try a little experiment in gluten free eating.

First let me start off with the gross backstory… For years, I've been prescribed with various medications to make this random rash on my ankles go away. Doctors have told me it's eczema, a fungus, and several other random types of dermatitis. Some of the treatments have helped, but nothing has really made it go away. So I've pretty much just lived with it - as annoying as it may be.

After some conversations over the fourth of July weekend, I began wondering if these spots were my body reacting to a gluten allergy. Apparently …

• Anamanguchi - I took a lunch break to check out this 8-bit rock …

I'm 30 years old, love music, and am about to become the sickest DJ my bedroom has ever seen.

But first, let me give you a a bit of a backstory...

In the late 90s (high school, for me) I found house music. I had mostly been listening to terrible metal and rap at the time… but once I heard those crazy electro sounds, I started to become super interested. I even started going to some under-18 dance clubs in the Quad Cities.

As soon as I heard a DJ mixing these crazy electro tracks on ridiculous house systems I fell in love. I still remember that first club pretty vividly… Not only was I blown away by what I was hearing, I was also blown away by what I was seeing. There was an entire room of people just raging out, crazy raver kids, etc. It …

Once I got to work, things were fairly normal - well aside from most everyone else being dressed to the nines… especially the ladies.

But then around lunch time, about 30 giant secret service dudes started showing up along with cops, dogs, etc. We had a mandatory office leave while they swept the entire place. (Remember, this is Obama's campaign headquarters. These are the people who love the president and are hired to re-elect him. Security was still this tight)

After the sweep was done, we all came back to the office and went through security similar to an airport (or a hip hop show), but with qualified professionals. Not the TSA.

Once through security, we hung out for a bit, working as usual while tip-toeing around the secret service …

After my shower this morning I thought to myself, "What should I wear to make myself presentable to the President of the United States?"

I don't really like dressing up and I wasn't about to start… but I felt like I should at least make an attempt. My normal attire consists of a hat, a pair of skate shoes, an unwashed pair of jeans, and an inappropriate/inappropriately priced screenprinted tee.

To me, the only real variables of this outfit were my hat and shirt.

So I glanced at my 2 stacks of t-shirts and thought, "I probably shouldn't wear a screen printed shirt... Maybe I should throw on one of my 'fancy' flannel button ups."

After looking through those for a bit I remembered that I worked in a 76 degree office and that everyone in the …

• I finished sleeving my left arm
• Bought a bike
• Learned how to "cook" raw food
• Had to cut down part of a tree I planted
• brewed a lot of beer
• Turned 30
• Made a whole lot of new friends

• Minnesota for Bock Fest and a death defying canoe …

• Tinie Tempah sounded great. We only stayed for a few songs of his set, but I wish we would've stayed longer.
• Skrillex was …

Let me start off by saying, I don't care about diets and dieting (I think most diets sound completely awful and unhealthy). However, I do care about being healthy, so I thought I'd share a bit about how I lost 20 pounds over the span of a few months.

The extremely short version is that I stopped eating like a dickhead.

And all that really means is that I began snacking less and started paying attention to my food portions. That's it. No gym, no additional excercise - I changed 2 simple things and now I get to sag my pants until my ass shows!

Feel free to leave now, haha. That's it!

But if you want to know a bit more about it, here's the rest of the story.

I got back from a trip to Ireland last fall and weighed 199 pounds. This is about the 4th …

• Devo - The dudes a…

1. Make your home office shine
   or better yet - make your home office make you shine. Having a comfortable and versatile work environment is huge. Not only are you working at home, but you're also living at home... …