Author: jason

I think one of the highlights of my life was when I referred to my spare bedroom as “the lab” to Courtney and she responded “You can’t call it a lab if there’s no erlenmeyer flasks in there” and I left the room, walked into The Lab, got a giant 2 liter erlenmeyer flask and brought it back in to show her.

God damn it, that was awesome.

I only mention it cause I was just listening to “Do The Brown Nose” by The Dead Milkmen and they mention erlenmeyer flasks in the song and it made me giggle.

Like this: hehehe

Dear Mayra,

Whoever you are, thanks for the open wireless access point in the Clear Channel shopping center in Tulsa, OK.

In another wonderful example of Oklahoma Style, you aren’t allowed to do any kind of motorcycle sales activity on Sunday. You can’t even look.
There’s a Buell place here and I wanted to check some out but even though the store and show room is open, there is a plastic fence around all the motorcycles and you aren’t allowed to go near them or ask any questions about them.

I don’t know if this is the fault of organized religion but that’s what I am gonna blame it on.

I’m snuggled into my seat on the bus ride back from Keystone, CO. 12 hours of shakey shake back to Kansas City, here I come!

A few months back I overheard a few guys in the hall at work talking about going skiing and I rudely invited myself. Told them if they put a trip together I definitely wanted to go. It turned out, to my surprise, that they did put one together and on Thursday night around 7pm we loaded into a Kincaid tour bus and hit the road!

The crew is Jason, Mary, Musa and myself. Jason put the trip together and it’s been a great time. Thursday we started partying as soon as we got on the bus. Jason brought a pitcher of margaritas and a pitcher of Stoli Dolis, which is just a pineapple soaked for a week in Stoli. Evil. By 10pm Jason and Mary were wrecked and passed out, Musa was pretty drunk and I had a pretty good buzz. Dinner was at McDonalds and then we busted out the bunks.

The bunks turned out to be surprisingly comfy and I’m happy to say I basically slept for the rest of the trip. By time I woke up I was having trouble breathing cause I was at 10,000 feet!

That was one of the first fun things I discovered. I can’t fuckin’ breath in the mountains! I’ve been basically short or out of breath the entire trip. It’s been annoying, but not a big deal. I imagine I’d get used to it eventually.

Anyway, around 7am Friday morning we rolled into Keystone and started dropping people off. We were the furthest out so we got to see all the lovely places to stay. I don’t know how everyone else’s accommodations were but ours were ultra-pimp. We had a three person condo so Jason and Mary got the master bedroom and Musa and I each got our own bedroom. Awesome. There was also a fully stocked kitchen, nice living room with a fireplace and two bathrooms. All this, the bus trip and a three day lift pass for around $400 each. Totally not bad.

Once we got settled in we immediately got ready and hit the slopes. It’s been a long, long time since I skied on a real mountain. The last time with was Ryan on Blue Mountain when I was like 17. So I had some learning to do. Jason’s a very good skier but Mary and Musa are both newbies. We set them up at ski school and headed up the biggest lift. Of course.

I didn’t do too bad right off the bat and felt pretty comfortable after an hour or so. We hit most of the greens on the front side of the mountain and started in on some of the easier blues. I was having a really hard time with my right thigh, it kept cramping up, and that ended up being a theme for the weekend. I don’t know what the deal is. I could tell I was being tense on my right leg but I never managed to figure out how to alleviate it. It didn’t stop me from skiing from about 10am till 4pm though! I had my iPod with me and rocked down the mountain to my new favorite band, “Explosions in the Sky” the entire time. Thanks Courtney!

We headed back with big plans to go grocery shopping and then night skiing. Yea. The next time I was conscious was 8am the next morning. Lucky for me everyone else completely passed out too.

The next morning I woke up aching but intent on doing some more skiing. Musa and Mary wussed out for the day so Jason and I suited up and hit the slopes again. This time we warmed up a little on the front and then headed for the back side of the mountain. At Keystone there’s two gondolas that handle part of the lift traffic. On the front you can go from River Run, which is the main entry point up to the top of the front of the mountain and then another one which runs from the top to the middle-top of another peak towards the back. We took that one and headed to the back. I was a little scared because there were no greens on the back. Only blues and blacks. Jason guaranteed me I wouldn’t have any troubles so I went with it.

The back side turned out to be my favorite, and I have some regrets about that. More on that a little further down. We started off on a trail called Fox Trot, which was labeled “Easiest Way Down” and it turned out to be my favorite trail. It was narrow and curvy and lined with cliffs and trees the whole way down, but very shallow. Nice, smooth, easy ride down to the bottom. Unfortunately I completely wiped out once and almost rolled off the mountain. I went to lift my right leg to stretch it, caught and edge and completely crashed. Woot!

Once we hit the bottom we took another lift up another mountain and hit the real “out back” of the mountain. None of the trails were groomed and they all started at hard blues. We took the easiest one down, which was called Elk Run and it was really fun. A little hard for me at times, as it was pretty steep and a little icy but I still enjoyed it. Back up to the top on another lift and we took another harder route down making our way back to the front so we could meet Mary for lunch.

Unfortunately about this time my right leg was pretty much giving out. I was having a lot of trouble maintaining control and I kept accidentally crossing my skis, which is like, bad. I wrecked a few more times trying to get to the bottom and by time I finally made it down I was completely done. Both legs were cramping and twitching and I could barely walk. Hooray for weakness!

We had some dinner and I hit the road for home while Jason and Mary stayed behind to practice some more. I pretty much cried the entire trip back.
I had barely settled in to take a little nap and Musa knocked on my door and told it was time to go tubing! This turned out to be pretty much the most fun of the trip and I can’t wait to do it again. We took the gondola back up the top and met the tubing hill!

The tubing is awesome. You plant your ass in a big truck tire tube and a ski dude throws you down an awesome tube hill. It’s a path about 15 feet wide shaped kind of like a half pipe and… actually, shaped exactly like a water slide. It comes up on both sides to keep you in and has two or three dips / jumps. It’s a total blast. They said people were getting speeds of about 45 MPH that night.
You could go straight down or opt to have the dude spin you and you could also link up with your friends and go down in a big train. It was $22/hr and worth every single penny. Highly recommended if you find yourself in Keystone.

So after that it was hot tub time and then finally, thankfully bedtime. I slept like shit, which was pretty awesome.

And now it’s Sunday! My legs were still hurting too much to think about skiing so Musa and I manned the bar while Jason and Mary practiced. And now it’s bus time and hopefully sleep time. I don’t feel like being awake for 12 hours of the dead of Kansas.

So, that’s my first ski trip to Colorado! I had a blast, and I’m gonna do it again in late February or early March and you are all invited! So start saving your pennies and go with me to Snow Creek a few time to practice and we’ll come out here and have a great time. Even if you don’t ski I think you could have a blast at Keystone.

Goodnight, I hope.

Oh, I have a few pictures on Flickr at this URL. Pretty huh?

So, Thursday night after the Thanksgiving Day Afterparty started to wind down Patrick and I decided to go camp Best Buy for the coveted Nintendo Wii. I had heard they were opening at 5am and would have about 50 Wiis in stock to sell for Black Friday. I had come up with the theory that no right minded individual would get up at 3am to stand in front of a retail store and figured we would be the first to get some hot Wii action.

Unfortunately Overland Park is full of non-right minded individuals. When we arrived the line was already around the back of the store. Let me draw a map for you.

   Mii (and Patrick)
   |
   V
++++++++++++++++++
+                +
+                +
+                +
+                +
+++++|      |+++++
             ^
             |
             People that got there at 8pm the previous fucking night.

So it was stupid to wait, but we waited anyway. Around 4:30am or so a bunch of Best Buy employees started handing out tickets for the sale items and popular items. They just came down the line announcing what they had and you could take a ticket if you wanted to buy it. Finally, the moment of truth came and the Wii guy came out and told everyone that they had not gotten their shipment and that would definitely have them at open on Sunday morning.

You may remember that in my map up there some people had been camping for almost 12 hours. Woops!

Defeated, we headed home and made tentative plans to come back Sunday.

Saturday night around midnight I decided to head to Best Buy to do some recon and see what the situation was. I arrived and there were about 6-8 people already in line and Best Buy wasn’t supposed to open until 10am! I shot Patrick a SMS and let him know and then I hit the sack. Around 4am Patrick called me and told me he was going to suck it up and go for it and by about 6am he had me convinced too.

So Sunday morning I arrived at Best Buy at about 6:15am with a sleeping bag, a lantern, a pillow and a good book. The line was already around the corner of the building but when I got in line I was 34th from the front. The official Best Buy line was that there would be 50 Wiis for sale, so I felt pretty good about my position. Over the next few hours while more and more people showed up I passed the time playing the two longest games of Uno ever with some other campers and around 8:30am the Best Buy folks announced that they would be handing out tickets at 9am and they had in fact received Wiis but didn’t know how many yet. “Around 50, we think.”

The guy in line in front of me seemed to take this as some kind of personal affront. He thought that Best Buy guys were deliberately being vague or lying about the number of systems available. I thought they had probably just gotten to the store and hadn’t unloaded the palette yet. Oh, and at one point someone walked from a car towards the front of the line and people just completely freaked out. “No line cutting!” “Don’t let him cut in line!”

Settle down, consumers. Please.

So 9am rolled around and they did the ticket thing. Patrick was #28 (if I remember correctly) and I was #36. Booyah! The last person to get a ticket had arrived around 8am and I’d guess there were probably 50 or so people in line behind him.
Patrick and I cruised over to The BK Cafe for some breakfast and went back to get some damn Wiis!

By time we got back the line had shrunk down quite a bit but there were lots of new faces. Patrick had a good time telling everyone that if they didn’t already have a ticket that they were screwed and quite a few people simply didn’t believe it. One particularly pasty geek who turned up at 9:45am whined that “They said it would be first come, first serve!” and we tried to explain that “Yes, it is. And we were here more firster by about 6 hours.”

And then we got our Wiis, and no extra controllers cause they were gone, and we got Zelda and Excite Truck and it completely rocks.

I haven’t played the PS3, but I have played the XBox 360 and every other system ever and I can say that so far the Wii is the funnerest of the bunch. Excite Truck is a total blast and the entire experience is just “FUN!”
The graphics suck, and it’s low powered and not HD or surround sound and it’s just totally fun. I can’t wait to get home and play some more Excite Truck.

So, James, that’s the story of the Wii.

I’m trying to decide if The Sonic Bed is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen or not.

I mean, I need a new bed. And I love me some music. And I like to build things…

I only wonder if it would annoy me that the covers don’t drape down to the floor. And speaking of covers, it would be a real pain in the ass to change the sheets on this thing.

But then again, who changes their sheets? I mean, really.

I spent a pretty significant portion of this weekend learning how to make a pretty good Key Lime Pie. On Saturday I got some recipes together, bought a lime squeezer from Function Junction and set out to build the perfect pie. Four pies later I think I got it. Here’s my recipe in excruciating detail.

Jason’s Friggin’ Key Lime Pie
—

Crust
**
16 Whole Cinnamon Graham Crackers
1/4 lb melted butter (one stick)
3 tbsp. white sugar

Filling
**
1 cup fresh squeezed key lime juice (approx. 10,000 limes)
2 14oz cans condensed, sweetened milk (The kind with the cow on the front)

Instructions
**
Smash the crap out of the graham crackers in a big ass bowl with a potato masher. Once the pieces are too small for the potato masher to mash use your hands, feet, elbows or whatever else you have available. Let Sonja chew them up for a while if you need to. You want graham cracker dust.

Add in the sugar and melted butter and mix with a fork or something until it’s combined. Then work the whole mess with your hands to make a fairly dry dough kind of thing. You could probably use a mixer too.

Pour all that stuff into a 9″ pie plate and use the back of a spoon to form the crust. I like to make the edges about 3/4″ thick and that leaves a good amount to form the bottom of the crust. Pack the edges pretty good against the side of the plate so the the whole thing doesn’t creep down the side of the plate.

Bake the crust for 10 minutes in a 350 degree pre-heated oven and set it aside to cool.

Now what ya do is take the condensed milk and lime juice and mix it together. I definitely recommend a mixer for this part. Just pour it all in a bowl, use the beater attachment, set the motor to Awesome and play with Sonja for a few minutes. It should thicken up some and that’ll be great.

Pour the mixture into the crust, toss the pie in the same 350 pre-heated oven for 12 minutes and then set it out to cool.

Let the pie cool on a baking rack for 1 hour and then chill it in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving. Garnish with shots of Jaeger and hard drugs.

Mmm… that’s good.

I’ve seen some great shows in the past few weeks.

Built to Spill at The Bottleneck was excellent, as always, and The Prids opened which was a really nice bonus.

Band of Horses at The Granada were completely incredible. Very, very good show.

The Velvet Teen at The Jackpot Saloon were very cool. I had never heard of them, really, until Jono mentioned he wanted to go and then Courtney got turned on to them at the last minute. It turned out to be a great show and the drummer rocked a hole right into the stage and his drums flopped over.

Last night I went to The Bottleneck to see Mew who I’ve been addicted to for the past few weeks and they were completely great. Completely rocked The Bottleneck. I didn’t stick around for Kasabian though.

Yea! Rock!

Hey Sprint! Wanna lose my business after something like 10 years of continuous service? Fucking call me one more time and try to offer me “New, great services”

Stupid assholes.

I realized this morning that it’s been a really long time since I’ve gone to a music store and bought a CD. I’m not sure when the last one was.

I used to be really proud of my CD collection, and I guess I’m still proud of my music collection but there’s no longer a growing pile on my floor to show it off. Just a hard drive waiting to crash.

The reason for this, of course, is iTunes. I’ve always bought my music whether it was in plastic form or download form. It’s not really a legal vs. illegal or moral vs. immoral thing. I’ve always just wanted the best quality and that came in CD form. When the iTunes Music Store went live I decided their 128k AAC format was “good enough” and I’ve spent a lot of money there since.

iTunes just makes it so damn easy to buy music. I’ve always been the type of person to buy an album cause I like one song I heard and now it happens all the time. I’ll hear a song on XM, or the radio, or in a movie and I have the entire album like 10 minutes later. Talk about appealing to my restless nature.

I’ve had all my music on my computer since about 1999. Back then I ripped all my CDs using a really bad MP3 encoder and I recently had to do it all over again. So I’m starting to wonder why I’m keeping all the CDs. I don’t think I’ve actually put one in a CD player in years so they are just taking up space. I could probably sell them for a few thousand dollars, too. Of course, that would be illegal and immoral.

It’s funny, if I want to take an album with me on CD it’s usually faster to put a blank in the computer and burn it from iTunes than to find the CD in the pile.

The only problem with all of this is that if Apple ever suddenly goes out of business, or gets sued into oblivion, or even if their server is just down one day, I can’t listen to my music.

For a while I was converting all my iTunes music to straight AAC without DRM using JHymn but then Jon Lech Johansen (dvdjon) moved to the US, found out about girls, money, good food and wine and stopped working on it. Now the options are pretty slim and pretty much don’t work.

Was there a point here?

I’ve been super busy recently with vimoMail, vPod 2.0 and two other new projects that are still so secret that I’d have to hack your computer and delete all records of me ever saying anything if I said anything. That doesn’t mean I’m not still acting like a idiot on the weekends. I’m just too busy to write about it.

What else? I’ve got about 7000 miles on my bike now. Since March 31st. And… no one is buying vimoMail. Please buy vimoMail.

After a whole bunch of work and hiding in my cave of software development vimoMail is now for sale! vimoMail is a Java J2ME mail client for phones. It supports POP, IMAP, SMTP and all kinds of other good stuff. Go check it out!

This project has been a lot of fun, and will continue to be. It’s been a great learning experience. I learned a ton about J2ME, re-learned a bunch of Ruby + Rails, learned about SMS gateways and got to write some Java that actually requires decent performance, which is a big change from the norm.

Hopefully everyone thinks they just can’t live without vimoMail and I get absurdly rich. Yea!