Wow I haven’t written a post since Nov 17th. Definitely not meeting the Project 52 challenge. At least I finally have something interesting enough to write about: This weekend I’m making my 6th trip to Las Vegas.
It’s hard to explain why but Vegas has always been my favorite place to visit. Maybe it’s because out of all the times I’ve been there this is the only photo that even approaches work safe:
That picture was taken in The Centrifuge at MGM. She was our bartender and in a quote I’ll always remember stated: “You guys need to move your beers; I’m going to dance up here.” Talk about awesome.
But that’s not my favorite Vegas moment. Oh no. How could it be? With stories like this to choose from:
- The time my brother was picked up by a Hooker at Tao
- The time I saw the Pledgemaster from Sorority Life at New York, New York (yes, this was a very popular MTV show at the time).
- After a night of drinking meeting two coeds at Studio 54 and coining the phrase “Two 4’s equals an 8!” (I had to wash my balls in boiling water the next day)
- Winning $250 in the Pleasure Pit with half a rod on.
- The time my brother and I spent 6 hours sitting drinking Everclear punch just because the bartender was hot. We passed out watching Everybody Loves Raymond at 11pm that night.
- The helicopter ride with the drunken redneck. The next morning – some 11 hours later – we saw him wandering the floor of the Rio with the same denim Austin jumpsuit he was wearing the night before.
- Spending some amount of money – $40/$60? – at an O2 bar with the Oldanis. Seriously who does that?
Sure I’ve gotten into plenty of ridiculous situations here at home but nothing like Vegas. And that’s why I love it.
This will be my first Super Bowl weekend in Vegas so we’re looking for a good place to party. Maybe all you can eat buffet/drinks. Anybody have any good places?
February 2nd, 2010
Well I finally did it. Spurred on by the First Time Homebuyer’s Tax Credit and a desire to stop having the police called on me everytime I have people over, I’ve purchased my first home.
But this is no ordinary home. Located in the Shaw Neigborhood, this home is a Queen Anne-style Victorian era home of 2200 square feet, modern amenities, and historic charm. Or something. I just know it’s pretty cool.
The neighborhood is cool too. I can walk to Tower Grove Park and the Missouri Botanical Garden or go drinking in the CWE, South Grand, or Morgan Ford Strip.
This house was built in 1897 so it’s a little different than the vinyl siding builder’s grade houses I lived while I was growing up in the suburbs.
Here’s a few pictures (Note: not my furniture):
Updated Kitchen:
Master Suite:
Updated Bathroom:
Basement Mancave:
Dining Room:
So far I feel OK. I’ve been watching a lot more DIY, HGTV, and The Food Network than before and I’m worried about mowing the grass but for the most part I’ve been a lot less stressed out than I figured I would be.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think of my new digs!
September 29th, 2009
Well I’ve been back in town for 2 weeks now and I still haven’t written about my trip to California. I’ll get to covering the whole trip next week but first I want to address something specific – the toast I gave to Laef and Allison at their wedding.
I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily bad at public speaking. I mean I give presentations all the time but this was different. This one involved me saying something nice about people. I’m pretty much dead inside so that makes it difficult for me. I was actually nervous. That was surprising. I haven’t felt like that since college and I had to give a presentation on Strategic Management and Lean Operations after not cracking the book for an entire semester.
I think these pictures speak volumes.
Before the toast:
Rocking the mic:
After the toast:
I followed the basic template — introduce yourself, say something funny, tell a story about the groom, thank everyone, and wish the couple well. It went over OK I think. I managed to get through it without any F-bombs or tales of binge drinking and promiscuity (and that was just about the bride!).
Reflecting on my toast there are I few things I meant to say that I didn’t remember to. I think the next time I give a toast I’ll be better prepared and maybe not write it in the limo ride before the ceremony!
August 7th, 2009
Well I’ve taken one more step towards adulthood/death. After 9 years of living in various dorm rooms and apartments I’m shopping for my first house. I have to say it’s not without a little trepidation either. In fact if it wasn’t for Obama’s First Time Homebuyer’s tax credit I probably wouldn’t even be putting myself through this. I don’t even care if this will send us into an inflation death spiral at least my mortgage will be $8000 less than you suckas!
My two biggest fears are:
1) I’m not exactly sold on St. Louis being my forever home. Hell 40% of me thinks I should just pack up and move to LA, or Italy, or Australia, or anything else. I’ve always viewed home ownership as cementing (i.e. trapping) yourself into one place for an extended period of time.
2) I don’t want to live in a shithole. In St. Louis you can get a very nice apartment for $900 a month in almost any neighborhood you want. I’ve lived in UCity, CWE, Clayton, and Maplewood. All because I wanted to. Buying a house is not the same. If I want a nice house I can afford I won’t be able to live in the “hip” neighborhoods or I can get a nice neighborhood and a POS house. Not a favorable situation.
The other big decision I need to make is Suburban or City. With a suburban house you get a bigger yard and less crime but also less activities in your neighborhood. With a city house you’ll have a slightly higher chance of being shot in the head on your way to your car in the morning but all the bars and restaurants are right there.
I think I’m leaning more city. St. Louis has some freaking sweet rehabs in the city. I mean imagine I lived here:
or here even:
The coolest place I’ve looked at is at the top of my price range but a completely rehabbed 3 story house. This sucker is 115 years old! I think that is really cool. Imagine living in a place that is older than every human on the face of the Earth (ok except for one).
I’m going out looking again this weekend (in 110° heat no less) and I’ll hopefully have a better idea of the neighborhood and type of house I want. Either that or I’m moving to Mexico to open a dive shop. I could go either way really.
June 26th, 2009
This weekend I was tasked with hosting a bachelor party for my friend Laef. Now I’ve attended many bachelor parties in my time with varying degrees of debauchery but I’ve never had to plan one myself. I can have fun doing anything but making sure somebody is doing something they enjoy is not something I’m used to (I’m selfish like that). Laef opted for a chilled out weekend at Lake Tahoe – a place I’d never been but was looking forward to.
The trip to Reno took about 6 hours. This was complicated by the fact that I was seated next to a giant who needed a seat belt extension just to fit into his seat. He was ON me all flight. Awful. By the time I got a rental, drove the hour to Tahoe, and checked into the cabin I was ready for a beer. In fact it’s safe to say I’ve never been more ready for a beer in my entire life.
The first night we stayed in the Cabin. Drinking, playing Wii, smoking cigars, and relaxing in the hot tub. It was great.
The next day was even better. After waking with a blistering headache I still managed to drink a few beers with my eggs (Blue Moon truly is a breakfast beer). We played some Hold ‘em, BBQ’d lunch, smoked more cigars, and hit the Tub again before getting ready to head out.
We hit the Montbleau casino in Stateline first. This was based on a recommendation by our cab driver (who was either a millionaire or a compulsive liar). We hit the sportsbook and for the first time in my life every bet I placed came in. I took the Lakers and the Under and also bet on the Padres to beat the Cubs which they did. My winnings went a long way since they had drink specials of $7 pitchers and $3 Jäger Bombs.
Later that night Mike was DEALT this hand (there’s a reason this picture is blurry):
which paid for dinner and a round of beers.
…Skipping over some things for privacy/survival reasons (there’s a reason there aren’t more pictures)…..
Then we played blackjack until 4am. We headed back to the cabin played a little Wii and tried to choke down some Jalapeno Poppers (which were Nast!) then crashed out. Because I was with a few dipshits we had to wake up at 7am and drive the hour to Reno to catch their flight. 2 hours of sleep was not good times. I spent an additional 3 hours in the airport waiting for my flight then spent 6 hours on a plane until I made it home safely to STL.
All in all a good weekend. Fun was had, beer was consumed, and Laef had a good time. Now I’ll be spending the next week drinking water and eating vegetables.
May 26th, 2009
On Saturday I hosted what will hopefully become an annual tradition – the STL BreweryFest. In the 5 years that I’ve been back in St. Louis I’d never taken the Anheuser-Busch tour. That had to end. After mapping out a plan to hit some of the microbreweries in the area (3 at least, 9 at most) we were set.
Layla and I woke up early and rode down to AB with the Oldangerouses to take in some Clydesdales, Beechwood Aging, and free samples. I was a little surprised to see that Stella Artois was on tap but I guess it’s all part of the InBev family now. I had an American Ale and a Shocktop. Both were delicious.
The second stop was Square One Brewery in Lafayette Square. I hadn’t been here before since I never hang out in that neighborhood. We were joined by my cousin, his friend, and a very hungover Matt Smith. Now the party could start. The beer was actually very good. The Oatmeal Stout and Irish Red in particular were good. Some of the other participants recommended the Spicy Blonde but it wasn’t for me. Square One is also a distillery and they make their own Agave. TJ suggested we do a shot but I didn’t want to take a midday nap so we passed.
After some debate we decided to skip Morgan Street, The Stable, and Mattingly and head to a new place near SLU – Buffalo Brewing (nevermind that their website is terrible). I know bartenders hate making samplers but that’s what we were there for! We ordered 6 for the table. Even Matt sacked up and had a few. The Buffalo Gold was the lightest beer I’ve ever had and the Imperial IPA tasted like gasoline (100 IBU!) but the Belgian Dubbel and Extra Stout were holy delicious.
Our final stop was a place that I am all too familiar with – Schlafly Bottleworks. Considering I can walk there from my house it’s pretty safe to say I spend a significant amount of time there. The No. 15 and Kolsch did not disappoint. TJ managed to dump an entire beer on his wife and somehow my cousin got into a shouting match with a hippie while I wasn’t looking. Considering we’d been going for about 8 hours that was almost expected.
Next time we’ll have to hit Alandale, Trailhead, and Ofallon. St. Louis truly is Beer City, USA!
Special thanks to Mrs. Oldani for getting herself knocked up so she could be our Designated Dave all day long.
April 15th, 2009
After staying out late last night talking about code and meeting tons of people I had no desire to talk to anyone. Matt and I pretty much kept to ourselves today. We saw a panel on Natural User Interfaces and apparently Minority Report is coming. After that we saw a pretty cool Silverlight demo. I have to say after seeing that, playing around with a Surface, and seeing what WPF can do I think Microsoft is up to some really cool things. About time.
We also took in some Stubbs BBQ which was freaking delicious. Then we walked roughly 50 miles on an abortive quest for some Dublin Dr. Pepper. It was quite unsuccessful. I think I’ve gained about 17 lbs after all the beer and food this week but I’ve worked off about 12 lbs walking around Austin.
It’s cool here and I’d love to come back.
March 17th, 2009
Well we survived another day. On Monday I saw panels on The Browser Wars, Entrepreneurship, Freelancing, and Idea Generation. We also swung by the Microsoft Bizspark Accelerator where startups demo their product and a panel lead by Guy Kawasaki pokes holes in their ideas. It could be a little brutal at times. I didn’t get to see all of them but Gigotron (a music discovery engine) and Ringlight (a file sharing service) both looked cool. We also got copious amounts of swag. I think I’m setup on Microsoft t-shirts for life.
Later we walked around the University of Texas campus and had a pint at the awesome Dog & Duck Pub. We went down to The Speakeasy to see Them Terribles. They were good. After trying to figure out why an army of scantily clad hot chicks showed up in a sea of nerds with ironic t-shirts on we found out that the band was shooting a video and had hired models. That explained a lot. But the band played a good show and I got to act like I was really into it as they lip synched their single 5 times. After that we went to The Geek Party at the Iron Works and did some networking. Matt managed to harass Dan Rubin for 30 minutes.
Our cab got poached on the way home so we ended up walking the 2 miles back to the hotel. All in all a good night.
March 17th, 2009
Well we’ve been in Austin for 2 days now and SXSW has been as exhausting as I expected it would. We got in Saturday and managed to check in and walk through the trade show (mega lame) before hitting the parties. We swung by the Mobile Social BBQ (they ran out of plates right before we got in line), Dorkbot (I can’t even describe how awesomely weird some of things I saw there were – this will get it’s own post), Live/Create (we sipped on the free vodka and waited for the band to play. After a seemingly endless setup time they never did. We booked outta there), The Bigg Digg Shindigg (way overcrowded and a little too cold to stand outside), Happy Cog’ake (very crowded and kinda lame), and then we went off the schedule and hit some (or all) of the bars on 6th street. Getting up today was not pleasant.
Today was more about the content. I managed to see panels on Gestural UI, CSS3, iPhone Development, and How to Fund a Startup. They were all pretty interesting although I didn’t necessarily “learn” anything in all of them. We also stopped by Screenburn which was totally awesome. We played some old school NES and drank some free Mountain Dew. We’re avoiding the parties tonight so tomorrow should be even better.
March 15th, 2009
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