nice table

Originally uploaded by rachelcollier2004

My Mom’s dog, Chopper. He’s a slobbery stinky dog, that I love to death. Anyways, I thought I’d share.

Taylor, Trinity, and Hal all dropped by our place last Friday night. We played a bit of Rockband. It was fantastic. Here’s some video.

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So, I had to rebuild my site lately. I’d heard a lot about the new version of Wordpress lately. No my site is on wordpress.

For a while, I’ve heckled folks who keep their blogs on wordpress. I guess I really shouldn’t have, since it really is an awesome tool. It’s lightweight, quick, and gets the job done with super-ease.

I’ve settled on a pretty minimalistic, if not Gator-esque theme for the site. I don’t want people to have any sort of hassle to see what I’ve got to say, so I elected to not add too much to this.

Anyways, I just thought I’d say something about it…

Preface: I wrote this pretty drunk, so please take the following with a grain of salt

I’ve learned a lot about relationships lately. Chief among the things I’ve learned, is what I don’t like about myself. It’s a strange paradigm, but one worth examining: Why is it so much easier to see the flaws of others in our relationships with them, than it is to see the flaws in ourselves?

Usually, the ugliest part of ourselves is what we convey to try to achieve social acceptance. That is, the part of us that usually is the worst, is the part that we’ve developed as a coping mechanism to adapt to the environment we want to be in.

Read the rest of this entry »

I always act too quickly. I was at home the other night, learning up on microformats, and realized that I needed to update my site in order to take advantage of the support I can get for them, with Drupal 6. Instead of doing the migration via a development site, I immediately started changing the live site. When things went south, my site was down.

It’s been a busy week, so the site has remained down since then. I’m just outside of Knoxville, TN right now, and the computer that I saved all of my old DB info (like, ummm, any content) is back home in Altamonte Springs, FL. So, this is the only content available right now. I should have everything up and running again sometime early this week.

Last Saturday night my wife and I had our housewarming party. It’s been about 4 months since we moved in, but with getting settled, crazy projects, and other stuff going on in life, we finally got around to having the party just now. Overall, it was a good time; minus a few minor details.

My dad showed up around 11am. I had invited him the week earlier, but I really didn’t expect him to show. I’m super-glad that he did though. Not only is dad a lot of fun to be around: He’s super useful as well. I was able to get a hell of a lot of stuff done before the party, that I probably wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Many thanks to dad!

Bill and Amanda were the first to show up to the actual party. I was a little upset they didn’t bring their XBox360 and Rock Star. We spent some time at their place the week before, and had a great time with that. I even had my buddy Austin bring his drum seat and sticks just for it. Oh well.

Chris and Kiel came after that, then Shandyn and Eric, Greg and his wife Nevin, my buddy Matt, then it gets nuts.

My workout partner Tony came with his wife Mardi. They got us a bottle of Johnny Walker Green Label. I was pretty stoked about it, as the picture shows:

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also show the picture of Tony’s wife Mardi, with my wife, Melissa:

I was really stoked that Greg made it out. I’ve mentioned it before, but I feel like I could talk with that dude for days. We’re sorta on the same wavelength with tech stuff. Outside, but sorta in …

My buddy Austin showed up with his girlfriend Jen. They’re easily some of the coolest people I know. Austin was the best man at my wedding. I’ve known him since the 6th grade. He’s a nutbag, and he’s a Death Metal drummer. We used to rock out in industrial parks when we were underage. Awesome times… Jen is pretty much the female version of him. I guess it could also said that he’s the male version of her?

Taylor and Jason made it out as well. They’re a lot of fun to hang with. The only time I’ve ever been maced was hanging out with Jason. You know you’ve had a full night when local cops are telling you how to deal with a face full of mace. That reminds me, I’m supposed to be working on their website.

Of course we were all blessed with the presense of the amazingly talented Bender . I give that guy shit all the time, and I plan to continue. Bender usually tells a joke for us when we’re in a social setting with alcohol. So, after a few rounds, we started chanting ‘Bender’, and demanded either a joke, or shotgun a beer. Bender chose to shotgun Coors Light. Gross. Anyway, I should give him credit for some of the work he’s doing for an upcoming project of mine, Florida Death Metal.

Here are a few more candid shots of the good times:

That one is Melissa’s sister Megan, Kristina, Lisa, and Melissa. The following is a good one of Krista’s baby, Kaydon:

That’s a really good segway to the next part of the story. I had a moderate amount of alcohol to drink that night. However, I guess I didn’t know exactly how much I had.

To say little of it, I had too much. I wound up very sick the next morning., incredibly sick. Austin thought it’d be funny to talk smack about it all, and throw stuff at me. That super sucked, and I wound up starting the worst round of vomiting that I’ve ever had. I even punched a hole in the wall next to the bathroom. Melissa was pretty pissed about it all, so I’ll have to fix it.

I spent all Sunday either throwing up, or sleeping. It was a total waste of the day. Melissa was awesome and stayed around to take care of me. It’s a shame that I allowed myself to get that sick, but it’s great she was around to help me get out of it all.

I shouldn’t let that overshadow how much of a good time I had the night before. There was a great collection of the some of best friends that I’ve had the opportunity to every have.

So a whole bunch of us got together and had a few drinks, a few laughs, and made a lot of good memories. It was really good to see everyone. I’m reminded of why I work so much, and why I love being alive. I have the best friends and family I could ask for.