Once again I have a window in my office area, a very nice change after 5 years of sharing a small office with 4 people and no windows. We are located on the second floor of a 5-story bank building on the west side of Madison, WI. From what I have been told, the building is pretty new.

I used Photoshop express to edit the image, seems to be a good program and I recommend it to anyone that needs an online image editing option.

It’s official; I have started a new job. For a little over 8 years I worked at Virchow, Krause & Co. LLP, at the home office in Madison, Wisconsin. I am sad to leave, but feel it’s the best time to do so to further my career.

My progression through the company was starting as an e-business consultant working with external clients developing sites that allowed them to expand business onto the web. I next was moved as an internal resource with the title of Programmer/Analyst. I developed internal applications specifically within financial reporting, practice management, risk mitigation and customer satisfaction. About a year ago I was moved into the position of Senior Programmer\Analyst, which was basically the same job, just more of it. I had some projects that I was working on that I really wanted to be a part of, but this opportunity came up and I couldn’t refuse it.

My new position means many changes for me, most notably a longer commute, twice the miles! This doesn’t mean much since it’s about 16 miles each way. With traffic this takes me 30-60 minutes. The company I am working for is smaller, about 40 people, but does have a larger development team I am a part of, which mean more opportunities.

That’s about it for now…

Well, maybe not the coffee inside, but there has always been talk about the effects of the chemicals in Styrofoam cups. HERE is an article about some of the concerns. Past that, the environmental concerns are also there since Styrofoam does break down when sent the a landfill.

To tell the truth I don’t really drink that much coffee, but I drink water at work and put it in a Styrofoam cup. I noticed that after a few days, the cups get weak and I have to get a new one and started to wonder if the chemicals are getting into my body. After reading this article I have started using a ceramic cup. This is at least till the next report comes out saying that is also unhealthy.

We finally did it and finished our CD. It took a little over 8 months to record, mix, master, and duplicate 5 songs and we are glad to be done. We have CD’s and tshirts coming in later this week for the show, keeping my fingers crossed so there aren’t any shipping issues.

We have an earlier version of the CD available on our site: Dragdown’s website

All of you that are fans of the “fix your house” shows on TV should get a kick out of my last upgrade to my house.

This last winter was very hard on my side stairs of my house, all the salt I used to get rid of the ice chewed away at the cement stairs. Early spring, one of my friends was nice enough to put his foot through them. Long story short, my insurance company said I had only a few weeks to replace them. New building codes didn’t give me enough time to get the project rolling, so a repair was in order. I hope to have a new deck built soon, until then…

Behold in all its’ glory, my side stairs

Last night I went to an Accelerate Madison meeting to listen to a few local entrepreneurs speak. One of them started a joke website that has an interesting business model and great potential as they are different from any player in the market. Think dial-a-joke meets Web2.0.

Here in all of it’s glory, Comic Wonder Audio Jokes

When I was younger my dad and I restored a 1966 Ford Mustang, color silver blue metallic. He has been talking about selling the mustang and getting either a new mustang/corvette, or a classic 1969 Mustang Mach 1.

I was looking over YouTube for clips of exhaust options for late model mustangs and came across this interesting clip. Behold in all its’ glory!