dan34lj's Xanga

Really quick.......

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 20:59:32 GMT

So I am not sure if I am quitting Xanga or merely upgrading the way in which I use Xanga. I have mixed feelings and emotions about this place. For awhile I was writing weekly posts about current happenings and things going on and thanks to this site, I can always go back and review those and see just what was going on with myself which is quite neat. Lately though I have been finding it hard to motivate myself to write and through my ever increasing nerdiness/geekiness I have moved on to the realm of the podcast to capture what would probably take me a good 30 minutes to type into about a 5-8 minute podcast. So for those of you intent on keeping up with me I think I will visit this site and post each time I place up a new podcast so that you will know, but otherwise my main goings ons will be reserved for the podcast. So to link to the podcast please visit the following:

Dan's Podcast

Xanga it's been real, but now I am just too geeky for you, really it's me it's not you...........

Dan J.

I update sometimes.........

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:44:45 GMT

So let's see here to catch up for the last month or so, the highlights of course. Went to the Lion King Broadway show and that was pretty sweet. The costumes were amazing, the characters were good. I was only disappointed with the Moufasa character, he played the part weird, but otherwise all the other characters were solid. The music was great, and yeah very very good overall. Last weekend headed up to Iowa City with Scotty and visited the newly engaged man Jacob and hung out for the weekend. That was a really good time, it was almost like taking a time warp back to high school, everything just kind of picked up from where it had left off, his mom cooked for us, and yeah good times. Much guitar heroing and Settlers of Cattaan. Played one very interesting game of settlers at about 2:00 in the morning, which I am proud to say I won by harvesting a ton of sheep. This past weekend I went down to Kansas City for Apple training (I am the Apple Campus Rep for UNO) and that was a blast. Getting to hang with 30 some people all sporting MacBooks and talking Apple is always a good time. I also finished 3rd in the first annual (I think) iLife demo challenge and won a Mighty Mouse, which is something I have always wanted to get but couldn't afford, so that was very nice. The challenge was a role playing event in which you performed a demonstration in front of everyone with some1 playing as the customer and you had 3 minutes to do a demo of a program or two to that person. The scenario was different for each person, I got an incoming freshman during an orientation and since I've done about 36 orientations it was a breeze. But yeah that was cool, really am starting to think hard about where I want to work, and realizing that if Apple has any openings I am going to go for it. Love working for apple, lots of love for it. Other notable events from the training was that the head of marketing told me that he really enjoyed my dry humour and told me to do a podcast in that sort of humor and upon telling the Iowa State rep about it, he told me he had been told the same thing from the guy at our last training. So long story short we decided to come together and create this podcast which at this point is titled "The Best Ever Podcast in the World. Ever." and our first episode will be entitled "Macintosh Vista?" and yeah I may post a link to it once we record it. So that was a really fun weekend, as far as life in general I am coming more and more to the conclusion that I am a huge nerd/geek, and I am really embracing it now, and looking to further my nerd/geek status through various inane technological, movie, video game knowledge. So if you would like to impart any knowledge that would be useful in attaining more geek/nerd status please let me know. Or on the other side of that coin if you are wondering about your own nerdiness/geekiness then drop me a line and we can discuss and if you can understand what I am talking about then we will know just how far along you are. Well that's all for now, stay inside, stay warm, and rawk on.

Dan J.

My christmas thus far........

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 06:25:48 GMT

So I have had a pretty solid december thus far. Let's see here, the first week of december was pretty amazing actually. Let me run through it real fast.....wednesday went with the Warren family out to eat and to the Christmas Carol and that was really good.......friday went with the Warren's to The Nutcracker Ballet, and that was good.............Saturday went to the Big XII Championship game which was really fun, except for the outcome, and also the fact that they hadn't scooped out all the snow and therefore we stood on blocks of ice the entire game, brrrrrrrrrrrrr, but that was with my dad and sister and was a very good time..........and then on sunday I went with the Warren's to the Michael W. Smith and Omaha Symphony christmas concert which was amazing!!!! The music was sooo good, and yeah that was a good way to kick off the Christmas season, really got into the spirit of Christmas. Let's see here school is done for this semester and that's always a good thing, finished with a two A's and two B's. Was very excited about that, best finish in quite a few semesters. I've found this semester that I really like marketing, and all that is involved with that, and so I may be checking into that as a career path come this next summer upon graduating. I will have my last full semester this spring, and will have 3 summer classes then to take to finish up, the end is near, and I can feel it.

So that's pretty much catches us up to the present, things with lindsey are amazing, we just took some sweet photos together and I will post one here at the conclusion of the post for those of you not on facebook. And ummmm....yeah I think tonight I am going to fulfill one of my geek fantasies. What fantasy is that, well maybe fantasy isn't quite right, more like geek checklist, yeah that's more like what it is. Well it's camping out for a system. Two of my roommates are already over at Best Buy camping for the supposed 21 Wii's that will be showing up there in the morning. I am going there merely to be a part of the line waiting and support crew. I have always wanted to do this and a number of people i know are going to be there, and so I figured this would be a good night to do it. I figured I'd write this post since I have some time to kill as I am waiting for my DS to fully charge, can't have the battery going out on it in the middle of the night!!

Merry Christmas!!

Dan J.

Fall break and a birthday, what a great combo.....

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 23:34:36 GMT

So where to begin the whole smorgus board of fun. Well firstly I will start wherever I can actually remember something beginning. We have to go back a week and go to saturday in which I spent the night with the Warren family and we went to eat and then to buy toys and various items to fill a shoe box with and send to a impoversed nation. It was quite fun and I forgot how much I use to adore action figures and planes and matchbox cars, oh those were the days. But we crammed our shoe boxes full and then wrapped them and that was quite the adventure for me as well. Then that night Lindsey and I headed out to Best Buy to purchase a Nintendo DS Lite (the black one) and a few games. It was my birthday present and I love it to death. It was the perfect anti-aging gift for me, playing the new super mario brothers is just an absolute blast, almost all the way through, almost, brings back days of playing the original super mario brothers on my first Nintendo.
Then sunday after church I went with the Warren's once again to gain some culture and we headed to the Orpheum to watch Hairspray. It was quite enjoyable, the music was good, the story was good, and the Orpheum is gorgeous!! It was my first time there and I was blown away, so crazy cool. Right so if that wasn't enough for one day we headed down to Lincoln that night (caught the matinee of Hairspray) and did some country swing dancing which is always a great time with my Ludy and it felt good to be there again it had been awhile. So monday rolls around and I slept in and it was magical, spent some time with Lindsey in the afternoon and then had a guys night at Old Chicago in which we chilled and watched the majority of the game, all except for the most exciting part the fourth quarter, whoops. So after that Scott and I headed back to my house to partake in some cigars and general chilling. Big thanks to Scott for coming down and chilling, much fun, and yeah thanks to those that came and hung out on monday night.
So tuesday was my birthday and that was a nice day of sleeping in playing video games, eating lunch with my father, and then Lindsey took me out that night to Johnny's Italian Steakhouse and it was delicious. We then proceeded to a movie, and then I prolonged my birthday by allowing my mom and Jessye to take me and Lindsey out on wednesday at Timberlodge where the food was terrific, but our server was a space cadet. Interesting meal for sure.
But yeah that was fall break and this last weekend was quite a blast too. Friday night was 8 months with my Lindsey, oh how the time has flown and how wonderful it has been!! We went with a group to the hockey game and watched UNO rip apart the Niagra something or another 10-1. Saturday I went to the Husker game with my good buddy Dave and that was amazing, amazing, yeah it was good. It was a blast, what a great game, we were oh so close to pulling that one out. Sunday I wasn't feeling so hot and Lindsey came over that night to take care of me which was wonderful and we watched Identity. And that was my last two weekends, they were quite fun, Lindsey is amazing, and yeah life is good. So that's all I've got to say, I realize it was a little long but yeah it's been awhile, so sorry.

Dan J.

**Quick Edit**

This last thursday i attended the Rascal Flatts concert, and much to my dismay I enjoyed it quite a bit. Also I got to drive Lindsey's dad's BMW 530i and it was magical. mmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmm, so many good things associated with my Ludy!!!!!

This is so true it's scary.....

Sun, 08 Oct 2006 08:53:43 GMT

So due to an all night gaming session last night my sleep schedule is all out of whack and I can't sleep and so here I am updating for some reason, well a good reason, well mainly I just can't sleep and I am hoping this will put me to sleep. So I came across this quiz just now that determines whether you are a geek, dork, or nerd and just had to take it. Of course I have always been a self-proclaimed nerd, but at the same time I have been working my way into geek status and so I was interested to see if I had officially made it yet. So I took the quiz and here were my results:

Modern, Cool Nerd
65 % Nerd, 73% Geek, 13% Dork
For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

Nerds didn't use to be cool, but in the 90's that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn't quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and "geek is chic." The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

Congratulations!

That's freakin' hilarious. Even worse I have been using the 'geek is chic' slogan for the past few months know honestly believing it. That could be a whole post in itself, but essentially I found this quite funny and true and had to write abut it. In other news I went with Lindsey to her sorority's date party and that was a blast. Check out my facebook profile for pictures from that. It was a good time, it was a themed party and the theme was 1920's and so we rented costumes from a place, and I seriously wish I could have purchased the suit I rented, it was fantastic. Anyways thank you Lindsey for everything about that night, it was a magical evening and most of that magic came from you. Right that is all I am going to try and go to sleep now............

Dan J.

So another weekend come and gone.........

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:44:12 GMT

So yet another couple weekends have passed me by and here I am again to attempt to reember just what I did and if it is exciting enough to mention. Right so the last post ended with amanda being up here and hanging out and that was a good time and this current weekend I and my fam went up to Minnesota to help her celebrate her accolades from last year's softball season at an award's banquet sort of thing. It was pretty boring, but the weekend was very fun and I am a very proud brother. We busted through a few more episodes of House and just generally bummed, it was nice. My dad and I went and played golf on saturday in minnesota at this course that is still under construction but the nine holes they had open were pretty sweet and it was good times, unfortunately my dad beat me pretty bad, but I had the low score on the second nine and that was from the back tees (+6 42) where the real men play from. It was a wonderful trip, always good to spend time with the fam and just chillax and get out of omaha for a little while. Read a book this weekend while riding in the car, it was good (John Grisham "The Street Lawyer"), played some mancala, reversi, checkers, and other various big bang board games via my laptop against Jessye and it was a viscious matchup. Right this isn't quite as interesting as I thought it would be and I am beginning to bore myself a bit, and yeah that's not good, well bored isn't really the right term more like disinterested, or not interesting, so I apologize.

To wrap up Apple released a bunch of sweet new iPods check them out at www.apple.com, iTunes 7 is pretty looking download it, and yeah have a great rest of the week. Go huskers on saturday vs. USC, the first true test of the huskers this season and I am looking forward to get my big red on, or something to that effect........

Dan J.

Last weekend......

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 17:17:00 GMT

So last weekend was quite a good time, and I meant to write about it at some point, and some point just turned into today. Last friday I got a chance to connect once again with my good friend Eric, and he, I, and a couple of his roommates headed out on the town for the night. So we started out by starting out at the Interlude, and let's put it this way, we missed our generation by about 10-20 years. It was definitely an older generation hangout and we didn't last to long there. From there we headed to Shag which is always a good time. That place is so cool, cool look, good sound system, good music coming from the sound system, just a good time all around. We chilled there for awhile and much fun was had. After this we moved on to the Red Lounge, I have always driven past it and always thought it had looked pretty cool and boy was I................right! It was really sweet, every seat in the place is black leather, super comfortable, great speaker system, it's a place where you not only hear the bass, but feel the bass, very sweet. We spent a good chunk of time here before finally picking up some cigars and heading back. Thanks guys for the night out, it was a blast and I look forward to our next boys night.

Right. So saturday I just chilled at home, worked on some stuff, and then that night Lindsey and I attended a toga party which was alright. It was a frat party and so I can now cross off attend frat/sorority party from my list of things to do while in college. Now the upsides of the night were a) Lindsey's toga was very cool b) mine was pretty fun c) dancing with lindsey is always a good time d) interesting theme party. Now the downsides were the location was this dive bar at about 29th and farnam, the dance floor was carpeted and un-air conditioned so it was really, really, really hot, and the overall feel of the party was just kind of meh. It was fun, but at the same time it's not like Lindsey and I are counting down the days to the next party. But overall we had a good time together as usual and made our own fun with what we had. But yeah good times.

Sunday............took it easy most of the day and then Lindsey and I headed off to the state fair. This is quite the entertaining story, so for those of you still reading, here's a little treat for ya. So our main focus in coming was to see Blake Shelton perform, as Lindsey had heard him before, at the open air pavillion. So we arrive amidst a slight drizzle and begin walking towards the gate. We are just walking down this road that is leading in and I see an opening and I haven't been to the state fair since I was like 10 or so, and so I am not really sure where to enter at. Well there is an opening in the fence with about 3 security people standing around it so I figure that's probably a pretty good place to enter. So we amble over and I start getting this feeling like maybe it isn't the right place to enter from, but we just keep walking slowly and walk right in, smiled at the guards and about 15 feet later I realize we just snuck into the State Fair. So we felt bad and spent a considerable amount of money at the fair via food, mmmmmmhmmmmmm food. But the concert was good, Lindsey serenaded me on a few of the songs and for a country concert it was alright. It was kind of funny though, I was all punked out (faux hawk and all) and there I was in the middle of about 6,000 rednecks, needless to say I stuck out a little. The entire time there I was thinking about Jeff Foxworthy and his comedy hi-jinks about rednecks and was looking around and realizing that he really isn't making that stuff up, it is pretty much observational humour, but yeah good good times. Thanks for going with me Lindsey and withstanding the rain, it was mucho fun.

But yeah, I am glad I finally got around to this and yeah go huskers today, and one quick note, me and my sister watched 12 episodes of House last night, it was wonderful, all the way to 4:30 a.m. fun times and I am glad she is back for the weekend. Right that is all....

Dan J.

KC is the place to be......

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 04:12:22 GMT

So sunday marked a wonderful day in the history of Dan and Lindsey. It marked 6 months in our relationship together and what a wonderful six months they have been. So full of fun, excitement, events, things, and yeah all sorts of good stuff. And what better way to encompass all of this but to take a day trip to Kansas City that really brought it all together.

So we left around 8:50 sunday morning and drove to Rock Port where we stopped for some breakfast. After that we continued on and arrived at the Kauffman Stadium to watch the KC Royals take on Lindsey's Oakland A's. We had great seats under the overhang and so we weren't stuck out in the sun all day. Unfortunately we had to move once during the game due to a man having more than his limit, not pretty, but definitely one of those memory makers. Those types of memories that no matter how badly you want to forget you can't, but it will always be looked back on with laughter. But yeah KC made it a game for awhile but ultimately the A's won. Another high point was getting to see Frank Thomas play, that's just one of those really cool things, I got to see the Big Hurt play. He just missed a homerun by a couple of feet, and one just foul, so it was quite sweet. The game was good, and it was made even better by the company. She was sooo cute, and yeah good times.

So the game ended pretty early and so we decided to kill some more time in KC and what better way to do so than to go down to the Plaza and do some shopping. We checked out various stores including the Apple store (oh yeah), J. Crew, Brighton's, Guess (more on this one later), Lucky's, and my new favorite Urban Outfitters. That store was amazing, so many great clothes, one day a shopping spree will ensue there. Now on to the Guess store.......another store I could definitely find myself spending some money in some day and this particular day I was thrilled to have picked out an amazing watch that was most thoughtfully purchased for me by my Lindsey. It's so sweet, it's called the Black Bandit, oh yeah. It was really fun walking around down there and checking out all the latest fashions with LIndsey, it was fun dreaming of a day when through hard work we will have the ability to purchase at will from these stores. Ah yes one of these days.....

So the stores closed at five and so we ambled on over to the Cheesecake Factory where we enjoyed an amazing meal. I had a four cheese pasta that was scrumptious and Lindsey had orange chicken (chinese food). This place has such a diverse menu hamburgers, pizza, chinese, mexican, italian, and everything in between. And the cheesecake, forget about it. Lindsey and I made a pact that when the new one comes in here at Omaha we will make it our mission to try every flavor of cheesecake they offer, which is like 30, so it will be a drawn out plan, ut ultimately a good time. But yes it was quite the time.

Thank you Lindsey for an amazing six months, and for such an amazing day. That was the perfect way to spend the last day before school started. The only time I ever made it outside of Omaha all summer (minus a few trips to fremont) and yeah it was wonderful. Just what the doctor ordered. I eagerly look forward to our next daytrip to KC, this time for World's Of Fun :).........

Dan J.

So blessed.....

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:07:27 GMT

So these last few weeks have been filled with incredible blessings, incredible, i must reiterate incredible. So it began a few thursdays ago when my mom took me shopping for some black pants for my cousin's wedding (which I will be leaving for here in a half hour). I mentioned that none of my khaki pants really fit anymore (sad but true), and so I thought I might get a couple of pairs of pants and that would be it, but no, I walked out with like 6 or 7 nice professional dress type shirts, 2 pairs of pants and a 3 ties. Thanks mom, she said it was the last time she would get to take me back to school shopping so she'd better take advantage since she missed the last couple of years :). And on top of that she used her network of friends to hook me up with a new bedding set that is very nice, so thank you mom. So here I sit with all these new clothes feeling on cloud nine, and another blessing comes my way and propels me even higher. Lindsey's parents had gone to Hawaii and I had helped out around the house doing very minor things, and well I guess minor things add up and they brought me back a slew of sweet surfing shirts (viacom etc.) and a bunch of cool hawaiian necklaces. Amazing, amazing, amazing!!! And probably the biggest blessing of all is a girl I know named Lindsey. As of tomorrow we will have been together for 6 months and they have been 6 wonderful months. To cap our 6 month we are going to go to Kansas City and watch the Royals play the Oakland A's and so that will be a really good time. But yeah she has been such a blessing in my life, helping me through some times and just always being there, thanks babe for everyting you do. And yeah that has been the numerous blessing of which I am very thankful for. One last thought, I can't believe school starts on monday and that this is actually my fifth year of college and hopefully the last. Crazy times........and sorry one last thing again, my dad also paid the brunt of the load for my ac to get fixed in my car. So now I have working ac in my car and it is wonderful, there that is all.

Dan J.

This post is about video games, you have been warned.....

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 00:01:16 GMT

So I have been telling myself that I need to do a post on my latest expenditure of mass amounts of my remaining summer moments. So what have I been doing with this time, well I have been doing some worthwhile things (i.e. spending time with lindsey, dog sitting, and getting my insurance license), but in the unworthwhile time I have been playing God of War for the PS2. Now many of you know that I am not the biggest proponent of the PS2, and that's putting it kindly to say the least. I have more honestly loathed everything about the PS2 until now. God of War forced me into using the ghastliest of all controllers and found that while still not a huge fan of the controller it is decent. It was the first game for the PS2 that I have enjoyed using the analog sticks. But anywho, I was very impressed with this game. It combined intense action with intuitive control schemes, and a manageable combo system where after a little practice you are dissecting enemies in a very impressive manner. Most games you would just settle for this alone, action fighting that makes sense, but no GoW (God of War) goes to the next level by throwing in a puzzle element to the game. Now by puzzle i don't mean put these blocks together to make a door open, now put these blocks together, no I mean use a crane to drop through a flooring and then move it onto a button to allow a door to be open. And just various other multi-faceted puzzles that aren't hard to figure out but cause you to think about how to approach the task at hand. Not only the gameplay but the graphics on this game were very smooth and flowing which really impressed me being that it was on a PS2 and the visuals were beautiful, the atmosphere was very indepth and the backgrounds really added well to the overall game. In other words I greatly enjoyed the 5-8 hours of game time I spent in this game and sadly enough must admit that I am looking forward to the 2nd which will also come out for the PS2. By no means am I converting to a Playstation guy, but I will gladly give them props for a game well done.

Dan J.