So, my buddy Harper is hooked up with all sorts of the right people. Sometimes it makes me a bit jealous, but a lot of the time I get to benefit from his hookups as well. This is a story of another one of those times.

Last spring, Harper got hooked up with some G1 dev phones - you know, the very first Android phone. He basically had so many that he didn't know what to do with, so he hooked me up with one... He was sort of like the Google Phone Santa Claus.

Fast forward to this February, Harper wound up with a few of the hot new Google phones. Having so few, he couldn't really be as generous with these, so he had a little programming contest with this group of tech dudes we chat with... and this is no lowbrow list of dudes; this …

Kari and I's buddy, Steph, recently bought a place in Chicago - a really nice place right downtown. Last Friday was her condo-warming party and we of course couldn't miss it. So we planned the trip and everything fell into place. Family was in town for Elias' baptism, and our Chicago friends were ready to party. There was much visiting to be done.

So Friday we rolled to Steph's, which was quite an awesome place. Very nice decor, paint, location, atmosphere - an all around nice place to live. I'm both happy for and jealous of her, ha.

The party was good too. There was a ridiculous amount of food and probably 30 people. It was really nice to see the Froehlich's, however I was a little sad when Dr. Bob and Cheryl left so early. …

I sorta feel like I could sue someone's pants off Napster style, but obviously I'm not going to try; because I like Harper and I like Metallica.

So let me explain.

I bought the new Metallica CD today - Death Magnetic. And once I got it, I immediately opened the CD up and started flipping through the coffin booklet... which sort of resembles a hairy vagina on the cover, but that's beside the point.

There's a die-cut coffin through the entire booklet of album art and with each page, the coffin gets smaller and smaller. All of the pages have fancy, professional photos along with lyrics to the songs. It's really a great booklet. The album art is really well done.

Once you get to the last page - the bottom of the coffin - there's a bright …

So, Nehru planned on driving to Chicago with some of his STI and EVO buddies last weekend. However, at the last minute someone canceled, which opened up a seat for me. Of course, I accepted.

The drive was definitely interesting. 4 pretty different people with really the only thing in common being our love for cars - and maybe beer. It was a good time, they were cool guys.

Once we got into Chicago we hung out at Nandy's Place for a second. It's pretty tiny, but she is on Wacker and Michigan, wtf. Seriously. So I decided I'd go hang out with some of my other buddies and find a more comfortable place to sleep.

Tag, Clock, and Mikey picked me up at Nandy's around midnight. They played a really good trick on me saying that Mikey …

So, this weekend I went to Chicago for a few minutes, which will put an end to a month straight of weekends I was out of town - without Kari, haha. Rochester, Minneapolis, Orlando, and Chicago. Traveling without Kari was a little weird, a little lame, but also nice. We both enjoy time with each other as much as we enjoy time without each other. However, 4 weeks in a row may be a little excessive... So this weekend, I am in Des Moines! Where Kari, her fam, and I will eat sushi, watch movies, drink homebrew, and love life.

And now for a recap of Chicago.

I drove straight there - no need to drop off Ninja, no tolls, etc. It ruled so much, and seemed like a super short drive - especially after that Orlando trip. And now I'm to …

So my buddy scottv contacts me yesterday and is like, "BROOKS, need your help, asap. I don't have photoshop here and I need some quick work done." He then goes on to show me the sexual harrassment lawsuit against Bill O'Reilly (from the O'Reilly Factor) and his strange falafel fetish... So Scott told me to photoshop an image of O'Reilly with his arm around a gigantic piece of falafel. Which I did (in about 3 minutes - as you will see).

Long story short, scott bought falaphilia.com and came up with a pretty good definition of "Falaphilia." Harper is hosting the site and it's getting hit pretty hard - which is awesome. O'Reilly is a pretty sick dude. And we (the guys that own the sun) rule.

Update: I just wrote the official fala…

10:09|<xy_goat> all you gotta do is start linking to some blogs
10:09|<xy_goat> like in a post be like "harper sucks" and link to me

I'm going to see this suck-face this weekend. plus i'm doing demos for heely's. it'll be fun.

Harper always does this to me and I hate it.

Step 1: Harper keeps up on new technology big time (which is one advantage to having him as a friend
Step 2: Harper buys the new technology
Step 3: Harper shows it off to me
Step 4: I get jealous
Step 5: I read about the technology
Step 6: I learn that Harper is right and I want whatever it is that he bought
Step 7: I usually buy the product

This is cycle really stupid and usually expensive for me...

but anyway, Harper was IMing me from someone's car today via his Sidekick, which is step 3 from the cycle mentioned above. So I've already gotten over the Jealousy and read about the sidekick at danger.com.

It's got a full qwerty keyboard, AIM, unlimited email via the built in …

This weekend I went to Detroit with Kevin, Ben Stockwell, Richie, and his friend Adam. ...Man, that city is ghetto, but also fun.

Thursday around 4 I drove to Mt Vernon to meet Kevin, then we drove to Richie's house to pick them up, then up to Detroit. After a lot of driving, we arrived at our hotel on 14 mile around 5 AM. We slept for 5 hours and then woke up to go sight seeing. While we were out we saw a lot of things referenced by ICP and other people under Psychopathic records. Here are some cool things we saw:
-The ghetto block that Violent J grew up on
-Old school ICP Graffiti
-Hot Hits (The record store that Alex Abbiss owns)
-Zug Island
-Burnt down houses
-Lots of other streets and places that get rapped about.

Later, …