I've been buying a lot of CDs lately. Well that's an understatement I think -

I considered myself to be in what I call a 'Musical Renaissance'. Sort of a great awakening of discovering new music. I've had two other of these events occur in my lifetime. One was in 7th grade when I discovered East-Coast rap like Puff Daddy, Mase and Notorious B.I.G. The second event occurred in the beginning of 9th grade when I discovered Punk & Ska.

This latest wave is similar to the last two in that it included new genres I've discovered.

Dark Ages

I consider the years I was in a relationship/married to be sort of 'dark ages' for me when it comes to music. I bought very little and made little effort to find new stuff during this time. This would be during the years of 2004 to 2010. During this time, I mostly listened the large catalog of music I already owned.

Something else occurred during this time as well that pushed me away. The 'scene' changed. The late 90s & early 2000s were my heyday for genres that I liked. Pop-Punk was on top with bands like Blink 182 making it big. Ska was still big during the late 90s as was Skate-Punk.

By 2004 though, most of those genres had run their course. It's easy to see just by looking at the Warped Tour lineup during 2005. It was all angry music such as Screamo or Metalcore.

2005 Screamo/Metalcore Warped Tour Examples

90's Emo

In the fall of 2011, some big changes occurred for me that pushed me back towards music. The biggest was: I started dating again, which I hadn't done in 3 years. Because of this I started feeling all of that pain that comes from dating all over again. Like other times in life when I had trouble, I turned to once more.

This time around, I was interested in learning more about the inspiration for a lot of the early 2000s Emo bands that I liked in high school such as Thursday, Taking Back Sunday and Senses Fail.

What I ended up doing was reading the Wikipedia article and using it as a guideline of what bands to listen to. After reading up on that, I ended up buying several CDs all at the same time. This would prove to be an important point in my Musical Renaissance.

Below are the first 5 CDs I bought in this genre. Two years later, these are all ranked very high in my collection.

• At the Drive-In - In/Casino/Out (1998)
  
• Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary (1994)
  
• The Get Up Kids - Four Minute Mile (1997)
  
• The Promise Ring - 30° Everywhere (1996)
  
• The Promise Ring - Nothing Feels Good (1997)
  

90's Emo Examples

Here's some of my favorite songs from the genre. Most of the songs are slower, use chiming/non-distorted guitars and can go from quiet to loud as the song progresses.

Easycore

The next big Musical Renaissance for me would come the next spring in 2012. At this point, I had written off the genre of Pop-Punk as being dead and I hadn't followed it in many years. Little did I know, it made a comeback while I was gone. Starting in 2007, many new bands started releasing music which would later be called Easycore. Easycore is called such as it blends Hardcore-Punk music with Pop-Punk thus instead of being Hard, it's Easy or softer sounding.

While no longer an Easycore band The Wonder Years were first band to make me realize that Pop-Punk wasn't dead and that there was an active community 'defending' it still.

The important CD during this period was The Wonder Years' CD The Upsides, which you may recall, I reviewed a while back on my site. I was fortunate enough to see them live in 2013 down in Milwaukee.

Easycore Examples

Here's some of my favorite songs from that genre. The first song listed below was probably the first Easycore song to appear which was around 2006. Later it blended more elements of Hardcore Punk.

Effect Of The Musical Renaissance

Here's a chart showing CDs I owned - comparing Summer of 2012 vs Winter of 2013. I could probably pull older data but I already had this charted out a while back so it was easier to do. As you can see there's a lot more CDs in the late 2000s which is due to my interest in Easycore.

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Well it's been 9 months, 15 days since my last blog post. At lot has transpired since then. As you may recall, I was lamenting on my dating experiences at the time. Ironically it would be only 3 days after I wrote that post that I would meet the girl whom I've been with for the last 9 months, 12 days. I guess sometimes you need to give up, before you get what you want.

It all started when I joined the dating site OkCupid. I had originally discovered the site a long time ago due to their awesome blog, filled with demographic stats. It turns out it isn't a case of there not being enough fish in the sea, but that I was fishing in the wrong sea! On Match.com there wasn't anything I could do to get girls to communicate with me. On OkCupid, it was the complete opposite. The site primarily revolves around answering survey questions which then tries to match you to others who answered the same questions.

CatEyeGlasses85 & Guitar_Guy_85

I had communicated with a couple people and then I noticed a girl named CatEyeGlasses85 kept viewing my profile, so I decided to check her out. I found that we were close to a 95% match on the site. She was also into the same music, movies and interests as me. So I sent her a message -

The song Sick Boy was written about me

-Neal

So, 'Sick Boy' was written about you, huh?

-Hanna

Well...no but I do have two versions of the song in my music library if that helps :P

-Neal

That does help! I adore Social D.

-Hanna

As you can see, we started off right away with something we both like. Punk music. Hanna's a generation behind me so I frequently find songs I like that were originally done by bands of her era. As you can see it all started with these songs -

Social Distortion - Sick Boy

MxPx - Sick Boy

Life Without Opposition

My relationship with Hanna has been different than every other one I've been it. It's been without opposition. It's been without an opposite. While I've dated girls who we both shared some things in common, it was never anything substantial. With Hanna, whenever there's a decision to make, we always have the same answer as one another.

For example:

• What do you want to watch on TV? (answer, the same thing! Dexter!)
• Where do you want to eat tonight? (answer, the same place! Fratellos!)
• Do you want to go see Mustard Plug in Milwaukee with me? (answer, Yes!)

More in common, more things to do

I've found that because our personalities match so well, it makes doing things together a lot easier! In the last 9 months, 12 days here's just some of the things we've done -

• Skanked to Mustard Plug
• Saw The Milwaukee Art Museum
• Went to the Mall of America
• Saw Dillinger Four play
• Went to Chicago, saw the Sears Tower, Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago and ate great pizza
• Skanked to Reel Big Fish
• Saw Bruce Campbell and watched Army of Darkness
• Went to a Green Bay Packers game
• Saw The Wonder Years live
• Went to a Milwaukee Brewers game
• Watched the Evil Dead Musical
• Went kayaking on the Fox River

In Conclusion

Be picky, and look for people who share things in common with you, especially the things that you enjoy the most. It makes everything much easier and the two of you much happier.

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It's been exactly 7 months since I signed up to the online dating website match.com. During that period I contacted 11 girls who I felt I had quite a bit in common with. Of those 11, 2 replied, 9 ignored me and the 2 that replied ignored me on the next message.

I haven't really been too serious about dating until this summer and I wouldn't even consider it that serious (Yes I'm a hypocrite).

After a similar experience with two girls, whom I got their numbers from local bars, I began to wonder what life might be like if I were attractive?

Building My Fake Profile

Before building my fake profile, I decided to do an inventory of girls between 22 and 32 in an 80 mile radius around my region. Check out my data source for more on this. What I discovered from this data is what the "average" girl is like in my area:

Average Girl

• Smokes: No
• Drinks: Social Drinker
• Religion: Catholic/Christian-Other
• Has Kids: No
• Wants Kids : Definitely
• Marital Status: Never Married
• Exercise: 1-2 or 3-4 times per week
• Age: 25
• Education: Some college, associate degree or bachelors degree
• View my data

My Test Profile

With this data in hand, I created a male with all of these attributes:

• Smokes: No
• Drinks: Social Drinker
• Religion: Christian-Other
• Has Kids: No
• Wants Kids : Definitely
• Marital Status: Never Married
• Exercise: 3-4 times per week
• Age: 27
• Education: bachelors degree

Picking a Profile Picture

I just discovered that one of the most important things on an online dating site is the profile picture. When I was creating my fake profile, my most important criteria was finding a series of pictures of an attractive male model, especially if some of the pictures are lower in quality and probably not done using a professional camera.

After scouring through modelmayhem.com search results (and being subjected to more pictures of shirtless guys than a guy should ever have to see in a lifetime) I found my guy.

Included with the picture to the right were numerous low quality, non-professional photos available for me to use. Excellent!

After running my main profile picture through Photoshop to degrade its quality and not make it look so professional, I was ready to move on to registering!

Final Result

Click on the image below to view the profile in its entirety.

The Results?

After creating the profile, match.com gave me some grief and rejected the username I had chose. I forgot about the profile for another couple weeks and then a few days ago I decided to check on its status and I was able to get it approved.

Again, I forgot about the profile for a couple of days and decided to check it again recently. I WAS STUNNED.

The fake profile had exceeded my own personal profile in every measurable statistic in a mere 4 days to my profile's 212 days. Based on those numbers, the profile I had created was 53 times better than my own.

By The Numbers

Out of single guy boredom, I decided to do a quick comparison of the two profiles. The first set of data below is a 4 day to 212 day comparison of the two profiles (essentially their lifetime). The purpose of this data is to show how the fake profile exceeded my own in a matter of 4 days.

The second set of data shows an apples-to-apples comparison of the profiles by using a weekly average.

Desirability of Match.com profiles (life of profiles)

	My Profile (212 days)	Fake Profile (4 days)
Messages from Girls	1 message	9 messages
Girls Messaged	11 messages	0 messages
Girls Winked At Me	3 winks	16 winks
Girls Favorited Me	1 favorite	1 favorite
Profile Views	184 views	214 views
Desirability of Match.com profiles (per week)
	My Profile (per week)	Fake Profile (per week)
Messages from Girls	0.03 messages per week	15.75 messages per week
Girls Winked At Me	0.10 winks per week	28.00 winks per week
Girls Favorited Me	0.03 favorites per week	1.75 favorites per week
Profile Views	6.08 views per week	374.00 views per week

Graphs!

From this data I created two nice looking graphs to illustrate how far away from attractive I am. The disparity is pretty obvious.

And here is a graph showing profile views per day of the two profiles. Again the disparity is pretty obvious.

Messaging Girls

I've had a heck of a time getting girls to read and reply to my messages on match.com. I only had 1 girl message me the entire 212 days and only 2/11 reply to my first message. With my fake profile, I had 9 girls messaged me within a mere 4 days. Two girls I replied to and one replied back within 15 minutes and the other the next day. It's obvious the girls are much more engaged with my fake profile than my real profile.

Lessons Learned

I was absolutely shocked by the disparity between the two profiles! I mean sure, the fake profile was probably close to the "perfect profile" but I don't feel like I'm the elephant man. I certainly don't feel 53 times uglier/less worthy than the fake profile, but that's what the numbers bare.

I used to think that girls just didn't like interacting with guys much on dating sites, but I've now completely eliminated that theory. I also used to think that my profile picture wasn't all that important and that my profile information could make up for a less than perfect picture. Wrong! In my fake profile, I wrote nothing about myself and yet girls were grasping for straws trying to make conversation with me.

Finally, I learned that despite what we're told about girls (and their apparent priority of personality over appearance) girls care more about looks and are just as shallow as their male counterparts.

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I first thought of it, when I was programming at work one day. I was dealing with some data that could be sorted from lowest to highest. In programming we'll often get the lower and upper bound of a range of numbers. This is essentially the lowest number and highest number in a series of many numbers. After I thought about it, I learned that pretty much everything in life can be organized by its lower and upper bound.

Happy vs. Sad: Happiness Range

Probably the easiest way to apply this is after you've had a bad day. Say you had a bad day at work, or maybe you were delayed by traffic on the way to something. Regardless, these types of things can frequently put people in a very bad mood.

When something like this happens to me, I immediately create my dataset in my head with a range of positive and negative experiences. I'll think of the worst experience I've had (my lower bound) and then my best experience (my upper bound) and determine where my current situation falls within that spectrum.

For me personally, I consider the entire year of 2009 to be my lower bound and my trip out to Utah to be my upper bound. So while getting stuck in traffic might really suck, it pales in comparison to 2009. You see, everything's relative to everything else.

Empathy

Depending on your level of empathy, you may also be able to consider other people's lower and upper bounds. I think the majority of people struggle with this so I recommend sifting through your own history if possible.

The Rage Guy internet meme (coupled with a demotivational poster) illustrates a great example of what I'm talking about.

Are You Experienced?

As I thought about my range of positive and negative experiences I began to think about how I reacted to events in the past. Say, you're in high school and in your first long-term relationship. For whatever reason it ends. For most high schoolers, they're simply devastated. Many adults will look at them and shake their heads as it isn't really that big of a deal but, those adults are forgetting something important: relativity. That break up is probably the worst thing that's ever happened to that high schooler.

Me being an Emo teenager in Emo, Canada. I'm an Emo adult now.

On the flip side, an elderly person has experienced a lot of things. Perhaps they've served in the military, or their wife or husband has passed away already. Regardless, when they look back at that high school break up, it's no big deal anymore.

The theory sounds simple, but when you hear people complaining about their day, it apparently isn't.

Other Applications

Another way I'll frequently use the theory of relativity is when I'm in a public setting with other people. Based on any attribute you can think of, there's lower and upper bound when you rank all of the people you're with. Some common attributes might be: age, height, attractiveness, body-mass-index or intelligence.

"I Work Out"

For example, when I'm at the gym weight lifting, I'm usually somewhat bored exercising, so the only other thing to do is observe all of the other people working out. Depending on the time of the day that I'm working out there may be a whole range of people working out. Sometimes, the gym is filled with people trying to lose weight who are usually overweight. Seeing as I have pretty much no fat on me, I'm essentially the most fit/muscular/etc. person in the gym at that moment.

If, in a few minutes later, a group of muscleheads walk in, I'm suddenly not even worth noticing anymore.

At Da' Club

The same applies if you're at a dance club or a bar. You might be the most attractive guy in the club on a given night, but then a group of Matthew McConaugheys walk in and suddenly girls wouldn't even give you a chance.

Above, I dance with a couple girls while another guy watches in shame.

A/S/L

Finally, my last example of relativity is age. I find this one comes up quite often with people. Usually in small talk, somebody will say "oh you're still young...". While you may actually be young, age is 100% relative to the person considering it. If at work, you're the youngest employee, suddenly you're "young" to everyone else but if you're hanging out with a bunch of your younger cousins at a family get-together, you're old!. If you're 50 years old and visiting your 70 & 80 year old aunts and uncles you're young. If you're at a bar or dance club, you're likely going to be very old.

Final Thoughts

Nothing stays constant or fixed. Maybe you really had the worst day of your life. But I suspect that in a year, you'll look back and think how insignificant it was. Don't let your current state of mind scribble all over the big picture. And remember, everything truly is relative.

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Freedom Like a Shopping Cart

Song by NOFX - Lyrics

I thought I'd continue where I left off in my last blog post with another philosophical post. In this post, I'll be tackling the topic of "freedom" and what it means to me.

To the right I have a Youtube song embedded which is thematically related to this post. The song is Freedom Like a Shopping Cart by NOFX.

I've been listening to the song for the last 12 years, but the song never really meant anything to me until the last couple years when I started thinking more about it.

There's a specific line from the song that stuck in my head over the last couple of years, specifically the second half of this verse:

A Christian, an anarchist slash prostitute. Figures out the true meaning of freedom. Not freedom like America. Freedom like a shopping cart.

In America, it feels like when the word freedom is used, it's more of a political word than a personal word. I.e. people are free to vote, free to work at this job or that job, free to own property etc.

To me, freedom is more like a shopping cart in an empty parking lot. It's the lack of obstruction. It's doing what I want, when I want and how I want to do it.

Freedom Is A Lane All To Yourself

I frequently think of the topic on my drive home on Highway 41. I swear, 80% of drivers occupy the passing lane as opposed to the travel lane. Why is this? It's because they don't like being obstructed by other drivers. The irony of this is, if all of the drivers are in the same lane, they're all obstructing one another leaving the right lane wide open and free.

I'll frequently go out of my way to secure my own lane, even if it means I have to drive slower than other people. To me, it's freedom. It's being able to pick my own speed. It's looking forward and backwards without any other drivers obstructing me.

This analogy ties right back to life. I feel like everyone around me is in the fast lane trying to rush through life. Trying to check off all the stereotypical things a person is suppose to do in their life.

The Checklist

The majority of people around me aren't free. They're over-encumbered with "life". Let's face it, we've been brainwashed from day we were born: that we need to do certain things during the span of our life, or our life hasn't been complete. When an elderly grandparent dies at 80, people say "he had a complete life". When a 30 year old dad dies, they say "he had so much to look forward to, he'll never see his kids grow up". These are the subconscious phrases people say that lead to "do these things or your life went unfulfilled and therefore wasn't as valuable".

As I see it, there's a checklist to life that a person needs to follow in order to win their big shinny medal at the end and have it labeled "complete":

1. Graduate high school
2. Go to college
3. Find a job
4. Get married
5. Buy a house
6. Have kids
7. Become grandparents

Under Pressure

Life's checklist is a very rigid list. Nothing can occur out of order. Have kids before marriage? Fail! Work a couple of years before going to college? You're unfocused. Slip-up anywhere on the checklist and you're a deviant.

There's a tremendous amount of pressure on people to follow the list. Think about it, how many times have you heard somebody interrogating a young couple with:

When are you going to get married?

After that, it's "when are you going to have kids?" or "when are you going to buy a house?"

From my experiences, it seems like women have been brainwashed a little harder than men on the checklist and will typically be the ones taking the lead in a relationship or pressuring others to follow the checklist.

Personal Freedumb

I reject the list. It obstructs my freedom in life. It stands in the way of doing what I want, when I want and how I want to do it. Any here's why:

Dating and eventually marriage severally limits your freedom. On average, a person has roughly 50-55 hours of free time a week. Free time = freedom. Guess what happens when you enter a relationship with another person? That's right, less free time. Now you're hanging out with their family, seeing their friends and going to John Mayer concerts. Sure, you might be in love, but is this really what you want to be doing?

If relinquishing your free time wasn't enough, eventually you freedom will be imposed upon. Want to hang out with the guys Saturday night? Not before getting it approved and dealing with a bunch of drama. Want to watch the new Zombie move that just came out? Nope, sorry.

Relationships are a Direct Democracy, being single is a Dictatorship.

Once you're in a relationship, I'd estimate you lose 60-70% of your freedom.

Economic Freedom

Marriage also affects another type of freedom...economic freedom. Economic freedom, to me, means spending my money, my way. Want a new TV or computer? Sorry we're buying a new bedroom set and furniture.

The problem, especially in relationships is when one person makes significantly more than the other. All people have the same amount of wants and needs, but not all people make the same amount of money. When you're in a relationship with another person they will attempt to spend 50% of your income regardless of how much they contributed to it. Essentially you're losing money and your economic freedom by being in a relationship.

Another way to exercise your economic freedom is to live debt free. Each loan you have is a commitment. It means you have to have a job. As we all know, keeping a job is no longer as easy as it once was. Student loans, car loans, mortgages are all things that limit your freedom and causes a tremendous amount of stress. By eliminating debt, you increase your economic freedom and release yourself from the shackles that loans place upon you.

Home Ownership

Home ownership is another thing that limits freedom. Homes are permanent, life is random. Homes do not allow for rapid change. Apartments do. Lose your job? Now you're stuck paying for that house for the next 30 years or until you can sell it. Good luck selling it. Get hired by Facebook? Now you can either pay for two mortgages or turn down the job.

Homes limit your choices and therefore your freedom by imprisoning you in specific location.

Maintaining The Status Quo

As you move through life's checklist, your number one priority will be to maintain the status quo. This means: keeping your job, your house, your wife and your kids.

These are all things you need to devote time and money to in order to keep. If you're unable to do that, be prepared to deal with a lot of unnecessary stress. Stress that you wouldn't have to deal with if you hadn't subscribed to the checklist. Giving up time and money means giving up freedom.

In order to keep your 3,500 square foot house, condo in Florida and 2012 Lincoln Navigator, you need to keep that $90,000 a year job. Lose that job and suddenly you're not able to maintain the status quo anymore.

Having these things doesn't give you more freedom, they make you a slave to your job. They make you work more hours, meaning less time to actually enjoy the things you've worked for. Remember more work = less free time.

The more "stuff" you have the harder you have to work to keep it.

Freedom Isn't Free

Of course freedom isn't free. You will essentially be living on the fringe of society. Be prepared to be regarded as the old, weird single guy. Be prepared to have people constantly pressure you to "get into a relationship". Be prepared to almost never hang out with your friends again since they prefer to hang out with couples. You'll also be forced to witness others celebrate their accolades as they progress through each phase of life's checklist.

Obligatory Takeaway Paragraph

I guess if there's anything I'd like to get across in this post it's this: Actually stop and think about what you want from life. Not what other people think or what society thinks but what you want from life.

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The Setup (You need this) ...sorry, RBF inside joke - I've always wanted to write blog posts that dig a little into all that is Neal but I've usually chickened out and found something lighter to write about. In the past couple months I've had nothing to write about...since I went on vacation in May, so without further adieu...

About two years ago, during deer hunting (note for 3 years in a row, November was pretty much the low point of my year and therefore I'm in "thinking mode") I was watching Demetri Martin a lot. If you know anything about Demetri Martin, you know he loves to draw witty charts. Around this time I drew a chart of my own which I've thought endlessly about for the past couple years.

Above is my version of the chart I jotted down on paper back then (although it looks a lot nicer using Google Charts!). The bottom axis represents time while the side axis represents my happiness. I was recently in a short relationship (I no longer am) but once the dust settled, there I was thinking about my chart again.

Single

The single line on the chart represents my happiness/mood when I'm single. As you can see, life is less interesting but also less stressful. Each day is very predictable and I know exactly what I'm getting. I like to call this the safe route as I'll never really dip that low.

In a Relationship

The in a relationship line on the other hand is quite different than the single line. Life is full of excitement on this line. I liken it to riding a rollercoaster whereas the single line is more like walking from one side of the amusement park to the other.

The downside to the "in a relationship line", is of course, the second half of it. Unless you've found the person you're going to grow old and die with, all relationships have a start and an end.

Gambling

It's always a gamble. It's like investing your money, and not just a little, but more like all of it. Relationships have a greater potential for return but are also extremely high risk. Single is a safe investment, but isn't going to pay off anytime soon but you'll never lose it all.

I could also relate it to Final Jeopardy. Do you risk your entire amount or just a little? It's a choice you need to make because only you know how much money you're playing with.

Equality

I titled this article Yin & Yang because there's another hidden meaning in the chart. You'll notice that if you were to add up the negative (-) and positive (+) for both lines, you'll find they're equal to one another.

It's all the same in the end

I interpret this as saying "It's all the same in the end". What this means is that neither route will give you more happiness or lack of happiness than the other. They're equal. This means that neither route is right or wrong but simply just is.

For every positive experience you have, you will have an equal and opposite negative experience

The quote above is another philosophy I've recently subscribed to. I think it fits nicely in the lens of single vs in a relationship. I'm sure not everyone would agree with this, but at least in my own experience this seems to hold true for me.

Obligatory Final Paragraph Where I Draw a Conclusion

Haha, okay this is blogging OCD on my part as I always feel like I need a final conclusion paragraph.

I think the gist of my post is it's ultimately up to you to choose what you want. Life too boring? Try a relationship. Need some stability? Go single. Both paths lead to the other eventually. My other point is of course its all a wash. Pick the path you think is best for you at the right time and roll with it.

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It was October of 2008, which now, seems like forever ago... I was sitting in the basement of my house at that time, diligently placing markers on a custom Google map of the places I'd like to see in the western United States for what would be my first vacation since moving out of my parent's house. It should be noted that at this point, I was already 0 for 1 for successful vacations on my own.

Fast forward 2-3 years later, a wife, house, and a job later and life was finally ready to let me take a vacation again to many of those original great places. The spreadsheet, vacation.ods had been sitting on my hard drive ever since October 2008 roughly 75% finished waiting for me to finally finish the job. So in March of 2011 I decided it was time to really do it this time. I pitched the vacation to my friend Mike who had a window of time available at the end of May to do the vacation.

Okay, I'm tired of writing in the past tense in story mode! Present tense now! After a week of rest I finally have some time to write up this much needed blog post on my vacation to the Colorado Plateau. This vacation was resurrected this year out of a notion that my life was becoming stagnant/routine and that in 2011 I was going to try to mix things up and put myself in more uncomfortable situations than normal. I was quasi-inspired when I saw a "things to do before graduation" sheet of paper on a high school kid's wall which prompted me to draw up a list of my own of things I wanted to accomplish in 2011. Following through with my 2008 vacation was a top priority on this list. The vacation took me in a giant loop through the state of Utah, into Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona.

Day 1: Salt Lake City

After a long day of traveling via the airlines from Appleton, to Minneapolis we finally arrived in Salt Lake City. Right when I got off the plane I could see the giant Wasatch mountains that surround SLC. Having lived in Wisconsin my entire life, I must say mountains are a dramatic change. I don't recall a single point during my vacation in Utah when I couldn't see mountains towering over the horizon off in the distance. In Wisconsin, we're lucky to to even see the horizon with our flat, tree laden ground.

After getting our rental car, and checking into our hotel we drove around the city. We attempted to hike a large hill on the side of SLC but it started raining and we (mostly me) became exhausted running around in the rain. After that we ate at a really really good restaurant in SLC called Red Rock Brewery.

Day 2: Antelope Island

Day 2 was our day to tour SLC. Having sort of done that the night before, we decided to check out the Great Salt Lake. In that lake sits a state park called Antelope Island State Park. We drove around Antelope Island for 15 minutes and found a hiking trail that leads to the summit of the mountain/hill. Being spontaneous we started hiking up the 3.5 mile trail. The views from atop of Antelope Island were awesome. We enjoyed 360 degree views of the Great Salt Lake and neighboring cities. Also we ran into wild bison roaming the hills 2 miles up the hiking trail.

After almost reaching the summit the weather started getting really nasty, with wind and rain. We took shelter under a radio tower but the situation didn't appear to be improving and the remaining climb didn't look too inviting so we headed back down. On the way down, we saw a 60 year old hiker practically running up the hill. At this point we realized we needed to pick up some hiking gear if we were going to do any serious hiking on the remainder of the trip.

Day 2: Driving to Moab, Utah

The drive to Moab was a 5 hour trip that took us up the mountains, through giant valleys and through snow laden areas of the mountains. Towards the end we started entering the desert and the roads started straitening out again. After a difficult drive through the Ashley National Forest I welcomed these long straight roads. Apparently I enjoyed them a little too much because I ended up getting my first ticket ever in my life (some people find this surprising) while 10 minutes from my destination of Moab.

Day 2: Dancing in a local bar in Moab, Utah

I was pretty wore out after my 7 mile hike on Antelope Island but Mike convinced me to check out a local bar in Moab after we arrived. It's probably a good thing I did this as I was still sort of upset about getting a ticket. When we walked into the bar it sort of felt like in the movies where everyone at the bar realizes your not the normal patrons. However, It was a pretty cool place with a large outdoor patio area and a live band playing country and southern rock music. After a couple non-alcoholic drinks I somehow ended up country/ballroom dancing with an attractive local girl which I consider a highlight of my vacation. I don't know if I'll ever forget the girl repeating "never let go of your girl" in her southern accent as we were dancing...lol. Day 2 complete!

Photos From Day 2

Day 3: Arches National Park

Day 3 started out with a visit to Arches National Park. Most of the beautiful scenery in Arches requires a couple miles of hiking to view. The most famous arch, Delicate Arch is a 1.5 mile hike up a slickrock hill (3 miles total). While the hike takes awhile, it was well worth it! Delicate Arch sits on the edge of a giant canyon and offers a great view of the surrounding area. I was surprised to see roughly 100+ people hanging out at the top of the hike enjoying the view. We ate lunch with the arch in our view and then headed back down.

Next up we embarked on what would be our longest hike of the vacation. Called "Devils Garden". The hike was roughly 9-10 miles total after we checked out everything. We saw Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arc and Double O Arch. I'm pretty sure that by doing this hike, my legs were injured for the remainder of the vacation. Even still, it was worth it as we got to ascned to the top of the park and hike on some pretty primitive trails. At one point we even encountered a guy running through a remote trail of the park drenched in sweat looking for his friends he had gotten seperated from. Fortunately for him, a couple miles later we found that he had caught up with them but we were worried.

I would say, that of all the parks, we probably spent the most time at Arches so I might be somewhat bias in my thinking but I thought Arches and Moab were my favorite stops during the vacation. I'd deffinately like to visit there again perhaps for a bit longer next time.

Photos From Day 3

Day 4: Mesa Verde National Park

Day 4 started out with a lot of pain. While at Arches, we both used sun screen, but forgot to use it on our neck and head. After roughly 8 hours in the Southern Utah sun, our faces were bright red. Also, my legs were pretty much shot from the 12-13 mile hike the day before and the 7 mile hike the day before that. Fortunately, Mesa Verde National Park's hiking trails were all relatively short.

The park literally sits on top of a mountain/mesa. The drive into the park took 30-35 minutes and included going through a tunnel and up long, steep, curvey cliff roads. A lot of people I talk to aren't familiar with the park by name but it's Pueblo Native American cliff dwellings have been featured in a lot of videogames. Below is a video from one of my favorite videogames, XIII, which had levels which were both very similar to Arches National Park and Mesa Verde.

Touring the park was much more "people oriented" than previous stops since in order to visits the cliff dwellings, we had to leave at a specific time with a large group of people and with a park ranger. This led to an amusing conversation with the park ranger and a couple other visitors over my NRA hat. The park ranger jokingly asked if NRA stood for "National Recreation Area". When then talked about the recent law allowing concealed carry on federal lands in which another guy said it was "disgusting". Regardless, the park ranger actually supported the law as well as another visitor. Speaking of laws, we also managed to narrowly evade another ticket on our vacation while at Mesa Verde when we passed a park cop and he quickly spun his car around and followed us after we were driving a bit fast.

After touring the cliff dwellings, we checked out the museum and then went back to our hotel for what would be our only double stay at a hotel.

Photos From Day 4

Day 5: Monument Valley

Day 5 can be summed up by driving. I drove over 400 miles for 8 hours and into 4 different states. The drive took us through some of the most remote areas of our vacation. It's appropriate that the day included a lot of driving because one of my primary stops during our trip was at the famous Scenic Byway of Route 163. Almost everyone recognizes the picture of Route 163 as it approaches Monument Valley. To be honest I don't even know why this stretch of the road is famous, but its been ingrained in people's collective memory somehow. I've always liked how the road appears endless. If you look close enough you can actually see the backside of the buttes in Monument Valley in the distance.

Monument Valley is the only stop we made which isn't a National Park. Like most of the places we visited, there is a great deal of Native American history at the parks but Monument Valley is still owned and operated by it's original tribe, the Navajo. Because the park isn't funded by the Federal Government (assumption here) the dirt road going through the park is pretty terrible. We were driving in our 2011 Toyota Camry rental car so I drove extremely slow. If I had to do the visit again, I would probably just walk the road or see if bike rentals are an option.

Day 5: More Driving

Like I mentioned before, our drive through the rest of Arizona was pretty remote. Our first real sign of civilization was in the city of Paige, Arizona. If I had an extra day during our vacation I would have probably stayed a night in Paige and checked out all the cool sites nearby. Unfortunately I didn't do enough research on the area to learn about them. Paige reminded me a lot of Moab but with much more water. Both Lake Powell and the Glen Canyon are located here. Also, the extremly beautiful Antelope Canyon is located nearby Paige.

Photos From Day 5

Day 6: Bryce Canyon National Park

Day 6 started out in Bryce Canyon National Park. My first impression was "wow it's cold outside". The city that neighbors the park sits at roughly 7,000 to 8,000 feet in elevation which explains why it was only 40 degree out when we arrived. The road of the park snakes around the rim of the canyon which contains a giant "amphitheater" of spiked rocks called hoodoos. After a short day of touring the park we moved on. It would have been nice to hike around it more as I'm sure there's some pretty cool things to see.

After that we drove back to Salt Lake City up highway 15. It was cool to drive on a road that has a speed limit of 75mph which was the first time I've done that. Unfortunately for most of my portion of the drive it was raining pretty hard so I could really only go 75 or 80.

Day 7: Travel Madness

Day 7 started out in Salt Lake City back at the same hotel we started out at. We had to clean out our rental car and get it washed since it looked pretty bad after a week of driving around in the desert. We also had, somewhere around $40-$50 dollars left of groceries that we never ate so we left all of that in our hotel room. Not sure what the hotel cleaning staff thought of that.

Airport Madness

We checked in our baggage and went through airport security. This was the first airport I've been do that had that body-scan security machine. I think I even had my carry-on searched for whatever reason.

During our wandering around the airport Mike discovered that the airport scenes from the movie Dumb & Dumber were filmed at the Salt Lake City airport so I tried to find some of the shots that took place in the movie. Unfortunately I think the airport has been renovated since then. Apparently the scene where Lloyd Christmas falls of the jetway was filmed at gate B2 which I have a picture of below.

Finally, when it was getting closer to our departure time we walked down by our gate only to discover that our plane had been downsized to a smaller one with 30 less passengers. Now we were on a waiting list to see if we would even be able to get on the plane. The next available flight was at 7pm that night, which was 5 hours later than our flight. After about 30 minutes we discovered that we would be able to get on the flight. Once we were boarded we had to wait 30-45 minutes and then the captain told us that the plane's generator was leaking! So then we got off the plane. After another 45-60 minutes we were finally on board a new plane and flying to Minneapolis. While I really enjoyed Salt Lake City I didn't want to stay there another night and have to get a hotel!

When we arrived in Minneapolis it was already at the exact time our flight to Appleton was leaving. I wouldn't be surprised if our very own plane was waiting to get on the runway when we landed. We headed over to the customer service line and found that the next available flight to Appleton would be 2 days away or we could fly to Green Bay the next night. Since my car was parked at Appleton there wasn't much of a reason to fly into Green Bay so we decided we would try to rent a car.

While in line for the rental car a random guy behind us who apparently was on our flight also need to get to Wisconsin. He offered me $75 if I'd drive him to Wausau, which was on our way so I took him up on the offer, considering the blasted rental car was going to be $288! After a 5 hour drive home and several deer sightings we were home around 1am and my vacation came to an end. Miraculously, my luggage somehow made it to the Appleton airport the next day, even though there were no flights scheduled.

Photos From Day 7

Final Thoughts

I'm super happy that I decided to take the vacation. Even though I spent a little more money that I planned it was deffinately worth every penny. Its easily the most exciting thing I've ever done and also some of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever seen. I've already begun researching some other places I could check out in the area because I feel like there's still a lot more to see.

If you've made it this far in reading my blog post, thanks! Its probably the longest one I've written so far!

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The game was on sale for $40 and with my $5 certificate, I got it for $35. On March 5th, I bought the game. By April 5th, according to Steam, I had logged 125 hours in the game! Based on my estimation that is a new record for myself and gaming.

Civ V is a turn-based strategy game which reminds me a lot of the board game Axis & Allies. Basically, what this means is you have a set number of pieces of the map and you can move them all once per turn X amount of spaces depending on the piece. The game is quite similar to Chess and I would bet it actually requires more skill than Chess because there are many more variables and conditions to take into consideration.

An epic Civ V game of mine. As you can see I ended up nuking my opponent several times and I'm in the process of amassing a large army to attack.

One of the main factors in the game consuming so many hours is that it's highly addictive. Unlike most other videogames, Civ V is not a game that you can conquer in one night. Often times I'll spend hours building my army up only to attack another night. Had I attacked any sooner, I would have likely lost the game.

Another fun element of Civ V is I can play online with my friends. This extends the gameplay of the game even more as playing with friends forces you to change your playing style a lot.

Well I'd like to talk about it more but I'd rather be playing it!

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I'll leave that chart up to your own interpretation but I think it speaks for itself. I wasn't able to find data older than 1990 but it would be interesting to see if Wisconsin ever had a surplus.

Source Data:

• http://www.doa.state.wi.us/subcategory.asp?linksubcatid=374&locid=3
• http://www.wpri.org/Reports/Volume18/Vol18no2.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Governors_of_Wisconsin

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Well, my old(er) computer finally met it's demise. The computer was only 3 years old and I probably could have patched it up to extend it's life but it was really time to move on. The computer had difficulty playing modern games and it would have cost me quite a bit of money to fix it only to still be stuck with an under powered machine.

As you can see, my new computer is quite an upgrade from my old one, doubling it in most cases. The main game I wanted to play on it is Grand Theft Auto 4, which has been out for several years now but the game was really designed for computers that were not available at it's release. I'm happy to say that my new computer plays GTA IV flawlessy and using high graphical settings.

Well, back to playing more games!

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The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter - Winston Churchill

Well it's that time again. Election time. If you're like me, you're wishing the Supreme Court hadn't struck down the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform act because we're now stuck with a million more commercials than we use to be.

The problem I have with these commercials is:

1. They're negative
2. They make promises the candidate can't implement without 100's of votes in the state legislature
3. Uninformative: i.e. does candidate X support abortion? Yes/No

Because of this, I decided to do my own research (you know, like a good voter should?) and see where the candidates stand on what I like to call "black & white issues. These issues are typically polarizing and seldom, people fall in the middle on them.

I tried to avoid issues like healthcare, education, jobs & cancer (nobody supports cancer, people you're preaching to the choir)...since these issues any candidate with a chance, will say they "support it". The only real difference is how they support it.

Results

The results weren't too surprising with both candidates, for the most part, sticking with their party lines.

Further Reading & Sources

• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Asks Both Candidates
• C-SPAN Political Debate Between Scott Walker & Tom Barrett
• VoteSmart.org Profile on Tom Barrett
• OnTheIssues.org on Tom Barrett
• Issues Taken From Official Website Of Tom Barrett
• Issues Taken From Official Website Of Scott Walker

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I'm a little slow to blog but I figured I'd dedicate a post to my best friend of 20 years: Tyler Gitter who recently got married. It's been a little over two weeks since his wedding, but the fun times shared by all are still in my memory.

I would have to say it was the most fun I've had at a wedding (including my own). It was probably more fun than my own because I didn't have to worry about having many responsibilities but I was still part of the wedding party (as the best man) so I was free to have a good time.

I suppose I should start from the beginning. For Tyler's bachelor party we went go-kart racing down south of Madison at the Sugar River Raceway I sucked pretty bad at go-kart racing, typically coming in the bottom three. After watching all the crazy videos online of the go-karts, that apparently can reach speeds of 55 mph, I was more interested in walking away without injuring myself than winning. Regardless of my sucky-ness I had a really good time racing. Check out my Photo Gallery for some images from our bachelor party.

After that we cooked out at Tyler's new apartment and then watched random videos on YouTube for an hour or so on his TV set. After that we went out to some bars in downtown Madison. Naturally being the only sober person, and designated driver, I almost ran into a parked car trying to leave Tyler's parking lot.

The Day Before The Day

Tyler and I hung out a bit the day before the wedding and he stayed over since him and Shayla couldn't "see each other before the wedding". He was pretty nervous that everything would fall into place so I tried to keep him calm as best I could. The rehearsal went pretty well and everyone ate at a pizza place in downtown Appleton.

The Ceremony

Originally Tyler and Shayla planned to have their ceremony outdoors, at Memorial Park in Appleton but it was really windy and I doubt many people would be able to hear what was going on so they moved it indoors at the park. I thought the wedding accurately reflected Tyler's personality because half the time everyone was laughing at all the funny remarks. It was nice not to have it be all uptight and serious.

...And My Favorite Part Of Weddings...The Reception!

The food at the wedding was definitely some of the better wedding food I've had. Perhaps I've grown sick of the stereotypical food since I worked at a banquet hall for a couple of years, but it was excellent.

For the Garter Toss Tyler wanted to do something a little different. We ended up re-enacting the Gun vs. Sword scene from Indiana Jones to the tune of the Indiana Jones Theme Song:

Dancing

I brought my best dance moves for Tyler's wedding. I was still aching a week later from all the jumping around I did and apparently I left an impression with people because they're still talking about me dancing around. It was hands down the most fun I've had at a wedding. I did plenty of break dancing and whatever else I could think up. The picture below captures the essence of the night in my opinion:

Stereotypical Last Paragraph

I had a blast during the 5 day wedding extravaganza and I hope everyone else involved had as much fun as I did. I wish Tyler and Shayla the best and to many years of arguing whether the towel should be hung on the shower curtain after it's used or tossed in the laundry basket (just kidding...hehehe).

Photos by Robert Janes.

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Trip 1: 311 & Pepper

I made the first trip down with my good friend and co-worker Kyle. We arrived at Summerfest early enough to see two bands. The first band was a Reggae/Ska/Punk band by the name of Pepper. Pepper was the opening act for 311. I would say I probably liked their style of music more than 311 but it was early in the night so the show wasn't as exciting at this point.

Pepper playing at Summerfest 2010

Next up was 311. Mike and his friends arrived at this point and we worked our way up in the crowd. At one point we got a really wimpy mosh pit going but since it was a Reggae/Rock band that quickly ended. After that we moved our way up to the 2nd row, right off the stage.

Finally, 311 played their song "Down" which was a favorite of mine so I ditched the front row and returned to the scene of the mosh pit expecting it to be going on during their most popular song. I was disappointed to see a bunch of hippies just standing around like it was a hippie jamfest or something.

So I started jumping around a bit and bumping into people. After a few minutes the crazy die-hard mosh pit people surfaced (shaved heads, no shirt on, tattoos, they're easy to spot) and joined me. We only moshed for a song or two until a cop came in and told me to 'KNOCK IT OFF'. It was child's play compared to the Reel Big Fish show last year where I was scared for my safety.

311 performing 'Amber' at Summerfest 2010

After the show we ended up getting stuck in a parking garage for 30-45 minutes. Overall it was a good time.

Trip 2: Slightly Stoopid

The next trip down to Summerfest was to see another Reggae/Ska/Punk band named Slightly Stoopid. The band apparently was hired to the record label that one of the Sublime band members started in the 90's. The band is mainly a Reggae band but has horns and has a few faster songs as well. This show probably had the most weed smoking of any of the shows I've been to before. It probably didn't help that we pushed our way up to the front again, but that's where all the fun is.

About quarter of the way into the show a crazy dude climbed up the rafters at the Potawatomi Casino stage and after some encouragement, on our part, jumped. I was surprised to find that a fellow YouTuber captured this epic event on video. If you crank up your brightness on your monitor you can see the entire thing unfold.

Crazy guy at Slightly Stoopid jumping from 10-15 foot support beam at Summerfest

Some other highlights from the show that I can recall was me fighting with some 18 year old girls who couldn't handle my need to mosh during one of their few fast songs. Another interesting moment was when a fight broke out (at a Reggae/pothead show mind you) between two guys eventually ending in them both choking each other and falling into the bleachers. The verdict is still out whether it was for real or staged since security ran in and everyone seemed to be friends again.

Wrapping It Up

Overall it was a good time at both shows. I really wanted to see Less Than Jake, but they played on a Sunday night and nobody was able to make that. Regardless I think the other two shows equal a single Less Than Jake show in value.

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Reason 1

Work... It's safe to say I've never, been busier at a job than I have in the past 3 weeks. I suppose I took it for granted at my previous jobs that working 40 hours a week was normal. For the past 3 weeks I've logged 55, 53.5 & 50+ (not done yet) this week. A few people have left and a new one started coupled with there seeming to just be more work lately. Because of that I've been getting home at night, plugging in my laptop and working till it got dark out. I tend to prefer working long days during the week and completely tuning out on the weekends.

Reason 2

Great Success...! This has affected my online presence on numerous websites, with Facebook, Twitter & NealGrosskopf.com. I simply have less to say after earning my greatest achievement to date. It just seems like nothing can top the fact that I'm out of the house! Every other life event dwarfs in comparison to that and seems so insignificant that it's not worth talking about. I've also started to change my perception of giving out information to the masses on the teh internet(s).

Reason 3

Netflix... After discovering the awesomeness that is Netflix I've been watching movies and TV shows constantly using the streaming service. Also after a 11 hour day, once I'm finished with work my hands are starting to hurt, and I need to get off the keyboard and give them a break. Netflix is the perfect solution to this.

Excuses, Excuses

Blah, blah ,blah. I'd like to say "I'm going to try harder to post more" but I know that's not the truth. I must say that after seeing the large spike in traffic, I am interested in getting back on the horse again and writing tech articles. The last spike was the second highest I've seen so I know I can still churn out a few good articles and help out some fellow web nerds.

Stay tuned.

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I recently got a pretty good deal on an old school original Xbox along with 25 games. Since then, I've been re-living the glory days of the old Xbox I use to own before it was stolen. Probably my favorite game from the Xbox was Doom 3, which I've been playing constantly for the past two weeks now. Another pretty sweet game is Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory which is a stealth-based third-person shooter. The game has pretty good graphics for an original Xbox game and I find it to be pretty fun.

Then, on my birthday, I woke up decided I felt like buying a new TV set. I've been using my crappy 25 inch TV for the past year or more since the old one was a casualty of the before time. I didn't really mind this since I seldom played any games on it and when I watched movies I usually wasn't paying much attention to them. Then, Best Buy had a 36 month no interest deal running which was exactly what I was waiting for before buying another TV. I did some quick research and decided to buy a LG 42LE5400 LED 42 inch TV.

A couple cool things about it is it's only 1.2 inches thick (as you can see in the picture, it's only as wide as a nickel and more narrow than my 24 inch flat screen computer monitor). Another awesome feature is it has the ability to hook up to the internet for select websites. One of these is Netflix. I had previously used Blockbuster's mail service which was ok but once I started using the Netflix integrated service I was really impressed. I can now select movies on my computer and they'll instantly show up on my TV and I can start watching them streaming. Apparently the TV was a good deal because my friend Tyler went out to Best Buy that same day and bought the exact model I bought.

The picture quality for my LED TV is really awesome, but my main problem is I don't own anything that outputs in 1080p (HD). Time to upgrade. I ended up buying some cheap HDMI cables from Amazon along with a cheap HD Antenna which works great for the price. I had looked around some local stores for HDMI cables but they are wicked expensive, usually around $5 a foot with the shortest cable being 6 feet long for $30. I also bought a floor model LG Blu Ray player for $100. I got it mostly just to upconvert my DVDs so they're not windowboxed anymore.

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with my recent purchases.

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I'M FINALLY 100% HOME FREE! Today, the couple interested in my house finally signed all the paperwork and "closed" on the house. I've wanted to write more about the process and how things were going but for some superstitious reason, I waited until it was all finally over. Gone are the days of throwing away $1,381.44 a month and the $16,577.28 I wasted over the last year in a futile effort to keep my credit score at a decent level. Foreclosure and credit scores really aren't as bad as society makes them out to be, it's all scare tactics fabricated by the banks.

Putting It Into Perspective

From November 1st of 2008 to November of 2009, I had 26 house showing, 15+ open houses and dropped the price $10,000. Pretty much nothing was happening and it appeared that I was going to be sitting on it over another winter wasting my money and time. Then in late October, a couple looked at it several times and made an offer of $148,000 which was $11,990 less than I had it listed at. At this price 'we' would have lost roughly $19,000 split in half. At this point I was plenty happy with the offer and was glad just to get the heck out of the place

As usual, nothing could go easy. I went to court and a probama judge basically did nothing. At this point I was 100% ready to give up, I was worn down to the point that if all I had to lose was a hundred points on my credit rating, oh well. The first thing I did was go out and get a credit card in an effort to help my score while I stopped making payments. As November wore on I waffled back and forth on whether I would make December's payment.

Thanks Upper Management

Then out of nowhere our entire Marketing department got outsourced to a totally awesome marketing agency with super cool audio effects on their home page and we (as in the majority of us) got laid off. "Well that makes my decision easier" I thought. December's house payment was skipped. Ironically if I had made December's payment this entire process would have been pushed back another month and probably cancelled.

In the meantime, for whatever ridiculous reason the people that made an offer on my house still wanted the place, I hated with ever fiber in my body. It was difficult for me to fathom that somebody could desire something I despised so much but I digress. Ultimately all "parties" agreed on a short sale. My credit score would likely be hurt just as much as a foreclosure but at least I wouldn't have to live in hell for another year.

I ended up finally finding a job (at a company I will keep to myself and at a time I will keep to myself and moved to a location which I will keep to myself). As the months (i.e. 3 of them) wore on I started to panic more and more. Would I come home some night and find the place on fire? What about if I woke up one morning and the basement was filled with water? Then there's the furnace, how much longer will that thing last? It looks like it's as old as the house? I was just waiting for Finagle's law to come into effect...but it never did. For those months nothing ever went wrong. I was shocked. "How could this be?" When everything that could go wrong did for the past year nothing did during the short sale process. The place still stands, the basement is dry, and the furnace works like the day it was installed.

Then I expected some crazy amount of money to be due at closing which I knew would be a huge issue, but it never came. $0 was due and it was all over. So here I sit, in disbelief that I'm finally homeless.

Fin...

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Well here is my stereotypical year in review blog post. You can also view last year's post. Overall, my site had a great year. Traffic was up almost 200% compared to last year. Almost all of this is due to the articles that I wrote. I also found Twitter to be a great help in increasing traffic. Here were a couple tweets by some high profile twitter users regarding my site this year:

1. Smashing Magazine - 106,556 Followers
2. Nicholas Patten (NY Designer) - 37,470 Followers
3. Elijah Manor (Co-host of The Official jQuery Podcast) - 31,569 Followers
4. Alex Puig (Twittexperts.com) - 30,378 Followers
5. jQuery (Official Twitter Account) - 16,436 Followers
6. Chris Coyier (CSS-Tricks.com) - 14,346 Followers

I was also featured on cssglobe.com and 456bereastreet.com.

2009 Statistics for NealGrosskopf.com

• Total Visits: 95,830 (32,580) +194.14%
• Total Pageviews: 165,086 (61,301) +169.30%
• Most Popular Page: CSS Browser Hacks For Firefox, Opera, Safari & Internet Explorer 24,834 (Same, 16,690 pageviews)
• Most Visits in a Single Day: May 12th with 1,831 (October 10th with 1,371 visits)

Top Search Phrases:

Compared to last year, most of my top searches on my site were related to articles I wrote. This is due to my SEOing of the articles.

1. firefox css hack: 661
2. opera css hack: 556
3. jquery content slider: 387
4. css hack for firefox: 313

Visits By Region

My site improved the most internationally while in Wisconsin I had sort of a poor year. I consider most Wisconsin visitors to be people that know me personally.

Wisconsin
3,633 (3,890) -6.42%

US
32,866 (13,733) +139.32%

International
62,964 (18,847) +234.08%

Target Sites

This includes sites such as Digg, Delicious, Twitter etc. These are sites that I market my articles to. As you can see, I improved my targets sites immensely in the last year:

15,856 (2,734) +479.96%

Wrapping It Up

Due to my work situation for the last couple months of 2009, I ran out of ideas to write articles on. Because of this I sort of ran out of momentum towards the end of the year. My goal throughout the year was to break 100,000 visits and I came up 5,000 short. For 2010, I'll set that same goal and hopefully break it this time around.

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Protip: Networking

The first place I looked was within my inner circle of friends within the web community. Having worked at a couple different companies in the past few years I first checked there. I also have a couple friends in the area, on Twitter, that I checked with. Here's a great example of a tweet I followed up on. Also, if you let people know that you're looking for a job, often times they'll keep an extra set of eyes open for you, doubling your search effort. I found out about one job due to a co-worker hearing it on the radio and scribbling it on a piece of paper for me.

Protip: RSS Feeds!

I found many, many jobs via RSS feeds. If you're not familiar with RSS feeds yet, they're sort of like being sent an email every time something on a website gets updated. Check out this video which explains them in more detail. Sometimes it requires a little digging, but most big name sites have RSS feeds now. Careerbuilder, Monster, Craigslist, Dice & Jobster all have RSS feeds that you can subscribe to. I've even created a Career Builder RSS Feed Generator on my site if you want to get started. By subscribing to RSS feeds I'm alerted of roughly 80 jobs per day from around Wisconsin.

Protip: Optimize Your Resume

I would estimate that Careerbuilder probably has the highest amount of job postings. Because of this, the better you are at using it, the more exposed you can become for future employers. An old co-worker of mine discovered that you can apply search engine optimization techniques to your Careerbuilder resume by sprinkling in a few keywords here and there. This works great for programming languages that you may know or have worked with, but may also apply to other sought after skills in your specific industry.

For me it was essentially tossing in every programming languages I have ever used i.e.: HTML, CSS, ASP, ASP.NET, SQL, PHP, XML, XSL, VBScript, VB.NET, JavaScript, jQuery, Java, C++.

By doing this, HR workers looking for candidates will often search on one of these keywords and my resume will likely show up in the results.

Protip: Bumping Your Resume To The Top

Another trick I learned was Careerbuilder sorts resumes by the last modified date. This means you may have a perfectly relevant resume but if you haven't updated it in a month, other resumes might be showing up before yours. To solve this, try to make a slight modification to your resume each day to keep it fresh. It could be something as simple as moving a sentence around.

I discovered this on accident. Basically I hadn't updated my resume in a long time and I noticed very few people were looking at it. Then when I was told that I lost my job, I made a few changes to it. The next day my 'view counter' had gone up dramatically (see below).

Protip: Develop A Schedule For Each Day

This is something I had good intentions with when I was finally unemployed, but I had a hard time sticking with it. Originally I made a schedule that I could adhere to each day to 'keep me busy'. My original schedule looked something like this:

• 7:30 - wake up
• 8:30 - work out
• 9:30 - look for job
• 11:00 - free time
• 12:00 - lunch
• 1:00 - learn new web technology
• 2:00 - free time
• 3:00 - look for job
• ...

What I found was I was starting to stay up maybe, a half an hour later each night and was starting to wake up later each day. This can turn into a bad habit (especially when you have people calling you at 9:00 in the morning to schedule an interview). To counter-act this, I recommend setting your alarm clock each day and trying to stick to a schedule if you can do it.

Protip: Document Everything & Stay Organized

You might find that you're applying for dozens of jobs. After awhile it gets hard to keep track of everything you've applied to. If you apply for a job, and do not hear back from somebody within a week, I'd recommend emailing them to check on the status of your application. If you keep an excel spreadsheet of all the jobs you've applied for and the date, as well as the contact information, this will help you stay on schedule. I'd also would save a copy of the job posting of each job I applied for. The reason being, is many times jobs will expire and you will no longer be able to view the posting. If that company called you for an interview it'd be pretty hard to prepare for it without the posting.

In Closing...

Well hopefully this blog post was helpful. Losing a job sucks and if there's anytime you need to give it 110% it's now. Thanks for reading!

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This is my second year hunting up at our cabin in Bowler, WI. There typically aren't many deer up in Bowler, but since our cabin has a lot of sentimental value to it, I enjoy hunting there more than anywhere else.

It's sort of interesting to think that I'm the third generation (possibly fourth) to be hunting on our 80 acres in Bowler. Sometimes I have to laugh at our techniques though. For instance rather than walking to our tree stands, all four of us hopped on a 4-wheeler and road out. I'm sure my grandpa would shake his head at us if he were still alive today. Also, rather than dragging a deer a half a mile out of the woods, we drove a truck in there and picked it up.

I was talking to my Dad and apparently when my grandpa hunted up in Bowler they weren't allowed to use tree stands, but were only allowed to hunt standing next to a tree, hence the name 'tree stand'. I can imagine this would be a lot harder as you can't see as far from the ground.

Overall it was a good time and after this last week, it was some much needed R&R time for me.

The Other 'Hunt'

As I mentioned in the opening of this post, I'm also hunting for a different kind of thing now...a job. I found out Friday that our entire department was being out-sourced to a marketing firm in Milwaukee. I was quite shocked when I first heard the news, but in a strange way I'm sort of excited to be out on the market again. I've enjoyed my time at my job and I've developed myself as a web worker 100x since I started there two years ago.

I've also made a great deal of friends while working there and I will miss them immensely. On the flip side of the coin, I've a pretty personable guy and I'm sure I'll make just as many friends at my next job.

I'm quite confident in myself and my ability as a web worker. My website nealgrosskopf.com is a living testament to my abilities. I'm sure it won't be long until I can help another company's website succeed. Until then I'd like to thank everybody I've worked with at my current job, past jobs and of course my family for helping me throughout this last year. You guys rock!

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So as of late I've been diversifying my interests. One of them has been playing guitar almost non-stop lately. Another is watching "The Office" on TBS which seems to constantly be on (I've never got into that show until recently). Finally my other new interest is hunting and of course guns. And it only took me 153 words to get to the point of this blog.

For well over a year now, I've been wanting to "mod" my Mossberg 500 ASG shotgun. To do it, it wouldn't cost me a great deal of money, but over the past year it was enough that I decided I would hold off from doing it until the house got sold. I looked at it sort of like a present for finally getting it sold. After realizing that I exhibited great patience over that time period and rather then waiting 2-3 years for the house to sell, I decided to jump the gun so to speak.

Before:

Here's my gun before: a regular old hunting shotgun. My Dad and I (mostly my Dad) took this apart and turned it into a sweet home defense gun. We added what is called a top-folding stock to it. This essentially makes the gun smaller so that it can be shot from the hip. The stock is the part of the gun that is typically made of wood and is pressed against the shooter's shoulder. It also comes with a pistol grip which makes it easier to hold.

The next thing we added was a barrel shroud which wraps around the barrel of the gun. It has small holes in it that allows the barrel to breath while preventing the shooter from touching the hot barrel.

After that we swapped out the wooden forend to a black composite one. The forend is the part of the pump shotgun that you move back and forth to load a new shell. This was pretty much just a cosmetic change as it would look sort of silly with a wooden grip while the rest of the gun is black.

Finally the last change we made was to add a shell shot holder to the folding stock. This adds another 5 shells to the gun bringing it's capacity to 11 when fully loaded.

After:

Here it is after all the modifications. This photo doesn't really do it justice so I took some really sweet artistic photos with my digital camera. I added these to my Wallpapers section and also on Flickr. Pretty sweet photos, eh? Also, I added some photos to my Photo Gallery showing it being taken apart and also after I shot at some pumpkins leftover at my parents place from Halloween.

Why?

Well first of all it looks totally cool and is much more fun to shoot. Second of all I was tired of waiting. I made myself wait a year and it's true that the longer you wait for something, the more you'll enjoy it. Overally I'm very happy with the gun and look forward to shooting it some more.

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