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. …

So my buddy, Harper is currently serving as the CTO for the 2012 Obama Campaign. This spring, he told me I should interview to join his team. However, after taking the 5 hour commute and a couple other minor details into consideration, I declined.

… and regretted it immediately. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, working on technology for our president with a team of baller engineers. There would've been a lot of sacrifice, but the experience and knowledge I could've gained would have been completely insane.

So fast forward a few weeks... I began talking with Harper and his team again.

Today, I accepted an offer with Obama for America - so did my friend, Nick.

Most of you probably know that I'm not a very political dude. …

I'm not going to say anything profound in this article. I'm sure all of this stuff has been said, but this time, it's coming from me... and as you probably know, I'm not into politics - at all. I've never followed them, nor have I paid attention to them. In fact, I've always said that, until a presidency is directly affecting my daily life, I have no reason or need to vote. ...I realize that both of those statements can be argued, and they have been... but that has been my reasoning.

Basically, I've chosen to be politically ignorant - and I do not think that misinformed, underinformed, or ignorant people should be voting, whether it's their right or not. I've always trusted that the majority of Americans, who are (hopefully) …

Instant Messaging is one of the greatest inventions ever, it opens a whole new world of friends... literally. I recently got invited to Orkut.com, which is super dorky, but also super fun and addicting.

The internet has also helped me meet several other people from around the world... example 1, Mart (a fellow soaper/skater):

Derek R Brooks: you are a douche
RG7420MC: You are an American
Derek R Brooks: haha
RG7420MC: Round one goes to Mart
RG7420MC: Cheers
Derek R Brooks:: you probably know more about the politics of my country than i do
RG7420MC: Ahahaha

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.