I stumbled upon a new kind of "micro-blogging" service called Posterous. Essentially just like Tumblr but with a few tricks up its sleeve. Unlike Tumblr and blogging platforms before it, Posterous takes the maintenance out of blogging. You just type up an email and send it. It will turn attached photos into galleries, youtube links into embeded video, etc.

So, with that said, I have decided to give Posterous a try by let it autopost to my website.

Here is an example of a Youtube link that was automatically turned into an embeded video:

Attached to my post (email) are some photos.

Enjoy.

Click here to download:

invite20100225T140000.ics (1 KB)

At the beginning of August, which might still seem like summer to you, I moved to a duplex rental in NE Iowa City. It is about a 24 minute walk to downtown or about a 5 minute bike ride. So far it is nice, but little bit too small for Abby and I. Here are some photos of the place right after I moved in. There is a lot more stuff packed in the place as of today.

In September, Abby and I went up to Madison for the Ironman race to see our friend Lee compete. He ended up seconded in his age-group and 43rd overall. To sum it up, he did good and ended up qualifying for Ironman Kona (World Championship Ironman) next October. We took a lot of pictures!

At the end of September and beginning of October, I flew to Washington, DC again for work. While I was there, I got some crucial reports done, met with people in the office, saw some of my DC family, and hung out with my buddy Drew. Drew and I went to the Rocket Bar in downtown DC and had a blast! Neither one of us had ever been there before.

On October 10th, some of my buddies and I got together to have my Bachelor Party, which consisted of tailgating, watching the game at the bar, and going dancing afterwards. I had a lot of fun. Drew took some photos, and I posted them here.

On October 17th, Abby and I got married! The wedding and reception both went smoothly and turned out great. Photos have been popping up here and there, so I will post them here as they come to me. It was great to see everyone, and I hope everyone had a good time as well.

We left Iowa immediately after the wedding and went to Maui! We had a great time doing absolutely nothing. Once we got back, everyone was asking us if we did this and/or that, to which we would reply nope. What we did do was relax by soaking up the sun after months of wedding planning and the stress that came with it. We did take some photos though and I posted them here for your viewing pleasure.

Once we got back from Maui, it was time to get ready for Halloween. I had two costumes ready for this year, and had a lot of fun with them. Of course, Halloween for adults means that you dress up and go downtown to party. We did just that. Here are some photos from the weekend celebration.

Finally, as a gift, my friend Leroy took me skydiving! We went last weekend and I must say it was awesome. “Best roller coaster ride ever!” Lee and I went with his sister Annie. Abby came along to for support and to help take some photos. We took a LOT of photos. You can see the photos here. I also tinkered around with iMovie to create a video out most of the photos. You can see it below. Anyway, I am not sure if I will ever risk my life that way again, but I am so glad that I marked it off my list, not that I really have a list.

Skydiving 2009 from Joe Whitsitt on Vimeo.

So instead of paying money for MobileMe or SpanningSync, or taking the round about steps to getting something similar worked out, I entrusted Google again and setup Google Sync.

The biggest part of this whole process was to finally organize my contacts. Between my SIM card, my Address Book, and my Gmail account, I had a whole lot of duplicates, and outdated info. I figured I should clean things up before syncing.

Anyway, the Google Sync part of the process was relatively simple but somewhere along the line I lost my ‘Most Contacted’ list from my gmail account. I don’t know quite sure how it happened, but I have a feeling it was my fault and not Google’s. I needed to clean that list up anyway. Unfortunately, not having my ‘Most Contacted’ list, my Google Chat did not display the folks I normally chat with. Manually, I had to go through and invite them all again to chat. The one thing I learned is that when they say back up your contacts, you should back up ALL your contacts and not just the ones you want on your phone.

Of course, it should be interesting to see what all comes with the arrival of the iPhone OS 3.0. It could change everything again. Though for right now, just hours after adopting Google Sync, I am pretty happy.

Anyway, I told my dad my budget and he went to his account on Consumer Reports to research the best overall camera for me. I wanted it all; clear action shots, close-up lady bug shots, low light bar shots, and the occasional wide open scenery shot. Oh and it had to be compatible with both Windows and Mac based computers.

He came back with the Canon EOS Rebel XSi (aka 450D) w/ lens. The suggested retail price was just out of my range, but I then found it marked down on a trusted website and put it in my shopping cart.

I have been playing with it off and on for about 6 hours now, and still have A LOT to learn, but I am pretty pleased as of right now.

When I arrived to my office, I found out that one of my maps had been published in the Journal of Surveying Engineering. Pretty cool. For some reason, I did not receive proper credit, but it doesn’t bother since the image itself has my name on it. My name won’t be linked to the journal in library databases, but I have a copy to show anyone that cares. I took a snapshot with my iPhone. You can’t read it, but my name is there.

Of course, no visit to DC is complete without visiting with my family and friends that are out there. It was nice to see them and catch up.

Iowa Cycling - Team Time Trial Warmup

Except for waking up earlier than usual, I had a pretty good time meeting members I had not previously met and taking photos for the Iowa Cycling website. You can see all the photos here at the Flickr pool.

In the Iowa City area, the apartment hunting process starts early and is quite brutal. This is mainly due to the demand created by the student population. This year there is an increase in demand as there are still many people that have been displaced by the flood this past summer.

Anyway, long story short, this was Abby’s first apartment hunt, we were back stabbed by SouthGate Management more than once, River City Property Management wants all your financial information, it is probably to good to be true, and Craigslist are where all the real gems are as long as you are willing to wait for them to pop up.

In the end, we found a nice little duplex that had pretty much all we wanted for decent rent check. My biggest quarrel with it is that it a 24 minute walk to downtown versus the 5 minute walk I have right now. Of course, biking the nice flat route is much quicker. We are both excited to move in, but I am also going to enjoy the rest of the time I have at my apartment.

Our bus is named the Perineum Falcon and so we went with that and called ourselves the Perineum Falcons.

(n) perineum (the general region between the anus and the genital organs) (Source: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/)

To briefly explain our name, a perineum can get quite sore during a long bike ride, and the ‘Perineum Falcon’ is to make a reference to the Millenium Falcon of Star Wars. It looks and often works like a piece of junk, but as Han Solo says that it “may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.”

Anyway, one of our first projects in re-branding our team and getting ready for RAGBRAI was to launch a website bearing our new name.

You can either find it at perineumfalcons.com or pfalcons.com.

Way back on January 18th, I proposed to Abby at dinner at the Iowa River and Power Restaurant, one of the more elegant restaurants in the area.

I got down on one knee, she said yes of course, and less than 15 minutes after the proposal she was on the phone calling and texting all.

We are planning a small October 2009 wedding in the Iowa City area.