So last weekend, Ando made plans to go to KC for his friend JJ's 30th birthday. Nathan and I got invited - and it was a blast... Maybe too much of a blast.

On the way down, Nathan got pulled over for doing 84 in a 70. :(

So, we got into town around 8:30, checked into our Sheraton Suite and then had dinner at Tomfoolerie's. After dinner we met up with Ando's friend, Eboni and went to Blonde. Blonde was a pretty good club. Apparently a lot of KC peeps think Blonde is trying to be too big time for KC... but I liked it quite a lot. Good DJ, good drinks, pretty people, fun atmosphere.

After Blonde we met up with a bunch of Ando's friends at the Granfalloon, which is this sports bar/grill that turns into a real bar at night - …

Holy first day. Seriously... I haven't felt this n00b in a long, long time - I'm both stressed and excited about it.

So first of all, the drive. It's longer, but sooo much better than my last drive. My drive to Pioneer was about half the distance of my new drive - however I did it in exactly the same amount of time - 22 minutes. On my old route, there was no opportunity to pass slow cars due to all the back roads, but now I can weave down i235 just the way an F150 should... or something.

Next comes the Atmosphere. I'm in Valley Junction - a small village with lots of local shops. It's basically a ghost town at 9am, which was unexpected, but I guess it makes sense. I walked up the stairs into my new building at 8:50 to find …

It seems like just a few months ago - my last block at Cornell College - when I'd drive out of town via 8th Avenue and park in a cornfield entrance at the top of the hill. This is where I always went to get away from the loud dorm I lived in to make important phone calls.

This time I was making my call to Marv Hardisty - checking on the job I interviewed for a few weeks prior. It was an interesting call - first he asked me about brooksfsw.com, one of my huge Soap Shoe web sites that I let get away. He asked me if I ran it and if I was aware that it was now a pornography site. I quickly explained what happened and that it was not my porn site. My stomach dropped and I was convinced that I wouldn't get the job - all because I let a …

As most of you know, Kari and I hosted a Halloween Party this weekend... and if you didn't come - you're lame.

We had a little over half of the turnout that we had last year... but it was still a good time. Most of our out-of-towners didn't make it this time, however Tara came down from Mpls and Jake and Ania came from Illinois.

Anyway, there were some pretty amazing costumes, like Winnie the Pooh, Zombies, Me, Richard Simmons, etc, etc. Take a look at the pics.

All the beer pretty much got drank, aside from maybe a couple pints of light. So, I think the next party we have, I'm just going to get a regular keg instead of 2 small kegs.

Also, we picked Ninja up on Sunday. He looks pretty hilarious. After a few hours of him …

My sister had a nine pound baby, haha... I'm an uncle - weird.

To my Cornell friends...

Remember Alex Strait? He was a Soccer player, Gamma, had curly hair, and was a couple years below me at school.

Apparently his body was found today at a park in Cedar rapids.

http://www.gazetteonline.com/apps/pbcs...711010024/1006/NEWS

Alex always seemed like a pretty good/happy kid to me. I didn't know him too well, but he sat in front of me in my Spanish 205 class. He one time let me borrow a really good Jazz CD that I copied and still listen to.
Sad. :-(

Until I am done working at Pioneer.

That's right. On Monday this week I put in my 2 week notice at my cushy corporate job. Why?

Back up to a month ago when my promotion (supported by 3 levels of management) was brought forward and then shot down by the director of Information Management. This caused much frustration with the corporate mind state - which I'm not going to get into...

• Tuesday, Sept 25th: I was informed that my promotion got denied - so I immediately applied for several external jobs and one internal job.
• Thursday, Oct 18th: I interviewed for a job within Pioneer that would be the same level I was supposed to be promoted to.
• Friday, Oct 19th: I interviewed for a job at a small (8 employee) web dev company called Red …

We just went up to the vet to have Ninja's leg looked at. It turns out that he completely tore his cruciate ligament in his left leg.

The good news is that his knee is easily fixable with TPLO surgery.
The bad news is that it costs over $2,000.
The worse news is that his right knee is partially torn.

So right around Christmas time, I suppose we will be buying Ninja a second knee.
$5,000 on our free dog and we decided to go through with it.

...And don't get me wrong, I would like our 3 year old dog to have new knees, especially if money wasn't an issue... but the truth is - money is an issue. A big issue.

Please send money for Christmas presents this year...

This weekend was full of sweet, sweet food and drinks.

Friday, Kari and I celebrated our anniversary at Lucca, which was a great meal with decent service - I think they need at least 1 more server in there.

Around dessert time, Kari decided that none of Lucca's desserts sounded awesome, so we called Sage to see if we could come over. Here is some customer service that everyone should take note of....

We called Sage from Lucca at 9:50. Sage told us they close at 10 but since we only wanted dessert and drinks, they said to come in anyway.

We got there about right at 10:00 and they had a table set for us. But, since we wanted to stay out of their way, we just asked to eat at the bar... they weren't crabby about the set table …

This weekend was quite odd. I spent the entire time working on things, but I really got nothing done for myself, haha.

Friday, I drove to dad's house, we moved my old Nova engine from our old house to a scrap pile. :( I didn't know what else to do with it. But it was actually kind of fun. We couldn't get a hold of an engine hoist so we used old school tools. Like levers, ramps, wheels, and a 5 pulley system, haha. It was awesome.

Later we met up with Rich and Amanda at this new place in PB called "It's on the River" ... Clever name.

Saturday I woke up and took some "after" pics of dad's house, which turned out quite well. So check out the pics of his house renovation.

Afterwards, I met up with Ben, and then went over …

Basically Kari's birthday (so far) has been the usual: eating, drinking, family, friends, ya know. It's been good I think.

I got her a mafia book, a spa massage, a special t-shirt, and a fancy meal. Nothing too incredible... but yeah.

This weekend was pretty nice, Steph, Lindsey, and Kari's dad all visited for her b-day. First we hung out at home and pushed our political beliefs upon each other. Then we met a bunch of friends at Taki to celebrate. It was good as always.

After dinner we went to Red Monk, which I'm really starting to hate. It's a small hidden bar with fancy foreign beer, which is a great concept. However, there's at least 1 bartender there that just hates his job. It's ridiculous. The last few times that …

So I got a new truck. An 8 year old truck that looks like it's 1 year old.

As most of you know, I (for some weird reason) was in the market for a truck. The truck that appealed to me most was the F150, but I didn't want the F150 that you pass 76 times a day on the road. I wanted a unique one. So I got online and started researching.

While reading about F150s on www.fordf150.net I came across a "Lightning Clone" in the classifieds. It was in Ohio, looked super clean, and was really close to my budget.

Fast forward a few e-mails, calls, and weeks later to this Saturday... Kari's dad and I drove out to buy it. Even though the guy (Dan Mann) seemed nice and trustworthy and the photos looked amazing - I was nervous. I mean, if …

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time. It's pretty funny to have had a hernia when you were only 16, and my experience was fairly awkward... so here's a story about my very first hernia.

So, like I said, I was 16 years old. One night I was laying in bed feeling my balls, which is nothing out of the ordinary - especially for a teenager. As I began to juggle them around I noticed 1... 2... 3... wait, 3!?! I double checked, then I triple checked, and yelled, "MOMMMM!" She came into my room and asked what was up, to which I replied, "um, I have 3 balls." "Derek! are you serious?! Let me see!" "NO, MOM! I need to go to the doctor."

So the next day I go to the doctor to find out that I had an inguinal hernia, which …

I snack. Oh man I snack.

When I lived alone I never had snack food because of this. I made sure that all the food I had were things that only worked for dinner, like microwavable meals, frozen chicken breasts, and salmon. But now that Kari makes sure our groceries are fully stocked it's getting out of hand.

I have always craved a carbohydrate of some sort. Whether it's bread, crackers, or beer, I love it. 90% of the time that craving is Wheat Thins. But sometimes it's Wheat Thins plus a beer, which is a great after-work snack.

Then we started getting string cheese - and who doesn't like string cheese? Beyond carbs, I crave cheese... so now I've got this perfect cracker, cheese, beer snack. It's like heaven.

Then, a …

was a blast. It was pure chaos all day. Just driving around seeing people you "knew" in amazing cars all throughout the day. It was a good feeling for sure. Most of us were connected only by your love of cars and driving... we were all buddies for the day. Fun, fun.

Anyway, I'd venture to guess that this is one of the biggest video projects that I've ever done for someone. The amount of planning and organization required to pull this off was ridiculous. I definitely couldn't have done it alone and maybe could've even used even more help.

So, if you're not familiar with how a rally works. It's basically a set of checkpoints spread out over hundreds of miles. In between the checkpoints are routes, called "legs" that take you …

Man, I really haven't had the energy to blog... but I suppose it's time to write about last weekend.

So, Nathan, Josh, and I met up in Minneapolis for another big going-out fest, similar to what we did last year for Josh's birthday. The plan is basically to go to Minneapolis on Friday and come home on Sunday - that's it. Everything else just sort of falls into place, which is generally chaos.

We first walked into our hotel, right next door to the greyhound station and a salvation army home, to find that a goth festival was going on. There were tons of goth/metal kids and all sorts of "Crypticon" gear - the name of the festival. It was pretty hilarious.

So after checking that out, we decided to venture downtown for dinner. …

As a computer programmer I like to stay on top of new technology - like computers. That said, I think it's important that you buy a new computer at least once every ... 5 years, haha, wtf?

No, for real, I bought my last computer 5 years ago this month, which is pretty baffling.

Don't get me wrong, I upgraded it a bit over the years, but it's still ridiculous. Especially since I think my wife (who uses her computer for e-mail, aim, and myspace) is on her 3rd new computer since then, haha.

So, since I haven't really looked at computers in so long, I was sort of amazed by how much the specs haven't changed. The processor speed increase has slowed quite a lot... but we have faster buses, and dual cores. So here's what I just …

What's been up lately? Well yesterday we had another outing at Lake Panorama, which was nice. I golfed for the first time this year and shot pretty good - only hit 1 duffer and 1 slice. However, Nick and I got paired up with JD in a best shot "tournament." And if you don't know JD... all I can say is that he's really good at golf. So our group ended up 3 under, which was a 34, w00t! ...25 of those shots were JD's, haha.

After golf we went to Nehru's for a fantasy football draft. I'm not into football really, and especially not into fantasy football, but since Doug couldn't make it - I drafted his players, haha. I hope he does good. I have no idea what I picked.

Aside from that, Kari and I have been sticking around town. …

Why are windshield wiper controls so different in every vehicle? Seriously. I somehow wound up driving a LOT this weekend, in 4 different vehicles. Between Kari's SUV, mom's new car, dad's SUV, and Jeff's truck. By the end of the weekend I was almost taking Jeff's truck out of gear just to clear some rain off the windshield.

Anyway, Kari and I visited the QC to visit some family and celebrate my birthday this weekend. It was nice to see everyone. However, this new "splitting up time" thing is really draining.

So Friday, we met my mom, Juliet, Jeff, and Nina for dinner, which was a good time.

Saturday we woke up and went to Galena with Nina and Juliet. I really don't remember Galena being so big. I imagined it more like …

My car has been running horribly lately. The engine sounds horrible, it idles bad, etc. I mean, what can I really expect from an engine with 175,000 miles on it.

Well... Monday I pulled into the garage, shut the car off, and heard a new *CLUNK* noise. I thought, "great... something else is broken" However, I sort of just brushed it off for the evening.

The next morning, I tried to start it up and got an awful awful noise. Not like a dead battery or anything. Just this loud whine and the engine never turned over or anything. So I was basically stuck working from home.

Throughout my work day I made periodic trips down to my car to sort of mourn and gradually check things out as I thought of them. One of the first things I …