On Christmas-eve-eve, somebody decided to attempt to steal my car (or maybe my insanely fashionable sunglasses from Kohl’s out of my car). So anyways, I got to wake up to my driver-side window being smashed. Keep in mind this car is only six months old so I was pretty unhappy with having to drop a bunch of cash to have a new window put in it. Luckily the Saturn dealership was open that day and did a great job of detailing my interior to rid my car of all evidence of the disaster. However, I had to go an entire week without a car. Things are back to normal now but here are some photos commemorating the incident.

To say that my life has been a whirlwind the last month plus would be nothing short of an understatement. So many exciting things are happening and so many things to keep up with.

To make up for being a horrible blogger the past month, I am going to try and jam a bunch of posts out the next few days with a lot of exciting things for people to read– so come back often and subscribe to my feed if you feel so inclined.

I have been trying to identify a good time to fly back to Michigan for the holidays. Being new to this whole commercial airline thing (never having flown around Christmas / New Years), I have been trying to figure out how I can keep the pain threshold down on buying plane tickets. I actually have come across two sites that do a really good job of outlining current fares and trends. The first, Farecast, is a very nice little web app created to help you know when to buy. The site was designed with much statistical analysis in mind and does its best to let you know if now is the right time or if you should wait. The second of these sites is Kayak.com. This site is a little simpler, serving as an aggregator of all airline fares, but it is still a nice way to evaluate trends and see what rates are across the board.

Scott Bozack of Big Gig Productions recently just returned from a European Tour with Ok Go and The Hard Lessons, serving as a sound engineer throughout the tour. You can check out an awesome video of The Hard Lessons’ performance in Melkweg by heading over to FabChannel and searching “hard lessons” or selecting their concert from the list. Enjoy rockin’ out to that. Also, check out their track “Hey, Hey, My, My — Neil Young” by heading over to the music samples section of Big Gig Productions.

Headed over to Bend, Oregon yesterday with my brother and my girlfriend to enjoy the Detroit Tiger’s game (which they lost) and some fine beer at Deschutes Brewery. This place makes some fine ales, especially their winter seasonal, Jubelale, the Black Butte Porter. These are both most haves if you’re into quality beer whatsoever.

/emo incoming

You know you’re starting to grow up when many of the girls you used to date, wanted to date, or decided not to date are all getting married. It’s pretty wild, but everytime I turn around it seems that I hear about another friend from the past getting hitched.

This post isn’t emo in the sense of OMG I am lonely and want to get married, because I don’t [not right now]. But rather this post is emo in the sense that I am recognizing how many milestones and phases in life I have already hit. Of course I still have millions more on the list that I’m working toward everyday!

First of all, who is Uncle Milton?  Well, Uncle Milton is the founder of an exclusive ant farm club that ant farm lovers can join to express their love for ants and all things ant farms.  The benefit of having a membership in this exclusive hipster organization became all too apparent one afternoon back in East Lansing when a few friends and I decided to head to the bar for a day of drunken goodness.

Being in a bar surrounded by beautiful women, my good friend Mr. Zach Walworth decided that this would be an excellent opportunity to show off his well-founded relationship with Uncle Milton and Uncle Milton’s wonderful ant farm club.  As a registered member, Zach happened to have his club card in his wallet.  After a few drinks, he began walking around the bar showing off his membership ID to many of the attractive girls present. Of course, as one could expect, these girls could not appreciate the magnitude of “hip-ness” that was to be had by hooking with Zach and spending the night with a well established player in the world of ant farms.

After many attempts with the ladies, Mr. Walworth decided to roll up the card (which happened to be paper) and smoke it.  His membership went up in flames…

Anyways, I present to you the ultimate ant farm.  And in case Zach ever decides to re-enter the wonderful world of ant farms, he will no longer need to turn to Uncle Milton to get him the ladies, he can now instead carry around a glowy blue ant farm.  That should do the trick.

I cannot believe that 5 days have gone by since I last blogged.  I’ve been so insanely self-absorbed with the multitude of things I’m working on creatively.  My mind is racing a few million miles a minute right now.  I have been doing an insane amount of reading/coding/rockin’ out the past week.  Let’s just say that all the things that are going on around me have me excited to no end!  I really can’t go into specifics of exactly what those things might be at this current point in time– but they are amazing.

Anyways, I am in the midst of troubleshooting a few things, so once I can get my head wrapped around ‘em I will hop back on here and deliver some real content!  Ciao!

Well today it officially hit 105 degrees here.  So hot.  The worst part is that I don’t have air conditioning in my apartment.  For whatever reason it seems that most of the apartments here in Eugene don’t come standard with A/C.  This is really weird cause where I come from they all have it in one form or another…  My fan really isn’t doing the trick either because, while yes it moves air, the air it’s moving is 100+ degrees so it’s basically like trying to cool off with a hair dryer.

I’m not one to complain about it being too hot– but this is so much more extreme than I’ve experienced in the past.  Michigan definitely does not get this hot.

Anyways, now to attempt to sleep in this heat…

Went to the store today and found myself in the aisle looking at lamps because I’ve been in desperate need of getting some lighting for my apartment.  Turns out they had some really good deals going and I managed to find a nice floor lamp for $5.  Yeah that’s right, no typo.  Of course, like anything else you buy in this world, it didn’t come with the necessary includes to actually use it– like say a light bulb.  Turns out the cost of me adding light to my living space doubled up when I found out that I needed to buy a special $5 3-way light bulb to use it.

Light bulbs are a lot more expensive than I remember them being.

Well, two posts ago I focused on the word ressurection, which is a good word. But now we are going for a revival, Billy Graham style. In the past, this .blog has focused on topics relating to the the web design, Internet marketing, and other technology related topics. While those topics will still make an appearance here and there I am going to be taking a more personal approach from here on out.

Now for a summary of what has happened in my life since my last post…

Oregon. Yes that’s right, the beautiful state of Oregon is now the place I call home. I moved out here in the middle of May to pursue an amazing opportunity, joining the web development team at GarageGames. For those of you who are unfamiliar with GarageGames, it is a company here in Eugene, Oregon founded to tear down those insane barriers to entry that most independent game developers face in entering the video game development industry. Along with producing amazing game development tools, GarageGames also has used those tools to make some really great games–the most popular of which being Marble Blast Ultra for the Xbox360 Live Arcade (if you have a 360, make sure you pick this up– best $10 you will ever spend).

Anyways, I have a lot of great plans in store for this site, as I am everyday expanding my arsenal of web-based languages and techniques I’m using in projects. My plan is to, as Rick puts it, “bling out” this site with some really cool interactivity and multimedia things to show off my skills =)

If you want to stick around and learn a little more about me and the West Coast, party on after the jump… (more…)