derekville.net

Because I’m pretty much custom designing my new condo, it’s been pretty crazy trying to piece together everything I need, and want. So far though I’ve managed to get quite a few of the essentials purchased over the last week.

First up… my new baby, a Philips 42pf9431d, translated a 42″ Plamsa TV. I’ve been glued to my couch over the last day since getting it watching movies and sports in HD, this thing is gorgeous.

Next up… my new bedroom set that I got a great deal on during the thanksgiving sales.

And my most recent purchase was my refrigerator

Comforter set

Can’t wait to move in!

written by Derek \\ tags: 134

So I’ve been hearing these ads on 96.5 The Buzz recently for these new condominiums in downtown Kansas City, just a few blocks from where I currently live. I’ve been looking at condos recently, but not seriously considering buying one as I love my current loft, however, after checking out this new condo development, The Manhattan - Kansas City, I fell in love with them immediately. upon walking out, I asked my parents to give me a reason not to buy one, and the only answer they had was… “We can’t, and we think you should.”

The Manhattan has great prices (much cheaper than The Metropolitan, which is just next door), the amenities are outstanding, and best of all, the lifestyle that it’s developer, Matt Abbott, is trying to create appears to be one of a kind with amenities like these:

• Granite counter-tops are standard in both the
• kitchen and bath areas
• 5 ¼ inch crown molding and baseboards are standard
• Italian travertine tile is standard in all the wet areas
• All new stainless steel appliances
• Stainless gas range cook-top
• All new custom cabinetry
• Updated plumbing and electrical in every unit
• Built in wine rack in every unit
• 24/7 Concierge
• On site property management
• Limousine service for all residents
• Secured building access
• Penthouse pool and lounge
• Full fitness facility
• Secured parking
• 25yr. Tax Abatement

I’m looking at moving in either late-December or January. It just depends on how much I want to customize my layout & design.

written by Derek \\ tags: 134

Well, it’s been a few months since my last post, but that’s for a good reason. Let’s take a look back at the last few months for me…

April
- Enter 96.5 The Buzz’s 2nd Chance Prom Prom King contest
- Go to Vegas for a bachelor Party
- Return from Vegas, win prom king, and have an awesome time at prom

May
- Spend a week in Cancun
- See Depeche Mode, one of my favorite bands ever
- Spend 10 days in Europe (Barcelona, Paris, & London)

June
- Finally return to work, only to be recruited by an advertising agency a few blocks away from where I live (Downtown Kansas City) and am offered a great opportunity that I’d be crazy to pass on. I took the job.

Coming up

June
- Float trip with a bunch of friends this coming weekend

July
- Start my new job
- Go to one of my old roommates weddings in Omaha

August - October
- Come up with something creative to do

November
- Go see the Jayhawks play likely #1 Florida in Vegas

December
- Birthday & Christmas

Soooo….. I haven’t really been bored enough to write about anything lately as the last few months have probably been the craziest, most exciting months of my life. A lot of times people say you come back from vacations re-energized and motivated. No, really, I started the month of May pretty motivated with work, and at the end of the month, had nothing left. Now all I want to do is travel, hah. I was really getting used to the whole work 10 days a month & travel to other countries the rest of the time thing. Oh well.

But here is the point of this post… The one thing I have learned from the last few months is that while you need luck for things to go your way sometimes, luck isn’t completely out of your control. If you continually put yourself in new situations, try new things, and make good decisions about the things you can control, the things out of your control will start to fall your way.

There has been one specific quote that has really stayed with me through this process… “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative” - Oscar Wilde

Nothing could be more true, so go experience something new.

written by Derek \\ tags: 134

I couldn’t let Vin Deisel and Chuck Norris have all the fun nowdays with their own made up fact sites, so over the weekend I registered jackbauerfacts.com to commemorate the ultimate badass… Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland’s character from Fox’s “24″). In 3 days, it has already proven to be way more popular than I thought it would be. Oddly enough, right after I registered the domain and started coding the site, I was getting hits before I had even told anyone about it! People were just guessing the domain name apparently.

While it is one of the more useless sites on the internet (but then again… useless sites is mostly what the internet is about), I have some plans for it rather soon, ajax scripting, rating systems, and some other things as well. Should be a nice playground for me to try out some new things with web application coding. So anyways, check it out if you are in the mood for a few laughs.

written by Derek \\ tags: 107, 134, 15, 164, 40, 61, 70, 88, 98

Was able to get some pictures of my new place while I was downtown today (which I wrote about a few weeks ago). Unfortunately, all I had was my camera phone on me, so the quality isn’t that great. The layout of the place might be a bit difficult to determine from the images, but basically it is a living room with an attached kitchen and a bedroom & bath on each side, totaling about 900 sq. ft.

You can find all the images here.

View from living room into kitchen

View from kitchen. 18 foot ceilings!

View out my window to the 909 Walnut building

View down to 9th & Walnut

written by Derek \\ tags: 10, 134

Last week I put up some of my old coding projects, now I bring you my animation portfolio. I hadn’t looked at this stuff for at least 4-5 years. The timestamps on the files were from ‘97 & ‘98. Ah… good ol’ 3D Studio Max R2. I think I actually may have done some of these on 3d Studio R4 which wasn’t even a windows program (it ran in DOS). Sorry about the crappy quality, I rendered these on a P3-333mhz system with probably 64 megs of ram, and they took all night long. If I bumped up the quality, that would have tacked on another week of rendering time.

earthrse.avi
Ever wonder what it would be like to watch the earth rise while on the moon? Well this doesn’t do a very good job of depicting it. Hah!

barn.avi
I have no idea what inspired this

rainstorm.mpg
Unfortunately I never really finished this one. I intended for it to be much longer.

duck.avi
This was a fun one to do.

mercuryg.avi
Another space one. Why I thought Venus was blue… I don’t know.

clacker.avi
Never did spend the time to get the physics right on this one.

I also used to do animations in high school for the video yearbook and the morning announcements. Damn I was cool.
banner.avi
evsbvnw.avi
evson.avi
hawk_watch_blend.avi

Steve Stone, eat your heart out.

written by Derek \\ tags: 10, 134, 97

Gearing up to start posting my own videos, so figured I’d spend some time checking out all the vlogs out there.

Here was a good one about “The worlds youngest vlogger”

Turns out there is a new kid in town, here is Jordan vlogging his day at the petting zoo. Pretty good stuff.

Also, go check out Phil Hamilton’s blog as it has some pretty good stuff in it. This one cracked me up.

Why am I going to start a video blog? Because I have an existing collection of everything from quality Spring Break clips, to burying a roomates car in snow, to beer tours, to goofy white guys singing Ice, Ice, Baby. So, this should be fun.

written by Derek \\ tags: 134, 173

Threw down the deposit today for my new pad in downtown Kansas City and can’t wait to move in. It’s the Waltower building at 9th & Walnut. Had the choices between a mid-level 1 bedroom, or a 2 bedroom/2 bath penthouse for $80 more, too good to pass up.

Two blocks away from the new library (which is awesome) and 2 1/2 away from the main building which has all my amenities, pool, fitness center, jacuzzi, sauna, tanning bed, clubhouse, pool table, putting green. Kinda pissed they don’t have a masseuse =).

So I’m on the top level and the closest 3 of 5 sections are mine.

Unfortunately, Penthouse-polooza doesn’t begin until July 22nd. Gonna be tough to have to wait two months.

written by Derek \\ tags: 134

It’s amazing how you can waste hours of your day playing around on Google’s sattelite maps. Here are a few interesting locations I’ve come across…

White Sands Missle range, where the first atomic bomb exploded. It was in the middle of that circle

I have no idea what this is. It looks like it has a road and a building leading up to it.

Mars (No, actually northern Wyoming)

Gotta be some sort of military missle testing range

UFO?

Flock of birds

The Manicouagan Impact Crater

Elmendorf Air Force Base. Almost looks like an optical illusion

Bermuda. Took a while to figure out what this island was. Had no clue it was so far north

Forest fire

written by Derek \\ tags: 134

I know it’s been a while since posting. Came across these files earlier today and have decided to throw them up here. This is basically what you do with your time living in a college town during the summer, unemployed. I don’t even think at this point 6 years ago I had any idea what mysql or PHP was, because if I did, it would have made everything a whole lot easier. For my MLS simulator, I was using a java array containing about 10,000 items. Something tells me that isn’t the most efficient way to move data. Also this was back in the day when I used Word and Excel to make webpages, how embarassing!

The Java Soccer Page

written by Derek \\ tags: 134, 97