Month: March 2013

03/08/2013

It’s kind of a sad day. For years, my profile picture on places like Facebook has been some dude with a sweet afro:

But now, because I’m trying to be all professional and stuff, I have to change it to a far more boring one:

After all, potential new hires are looking at this as they decide whether Zing is the place they want to work…

03/08/2013

What’s that old saying: the cobbler always has the worst shoes? It’s so true. At Zing we do web development all day for clients, but we never seem to find time to make our own site nice.

Well, after six months of work by Brent (our marketing director) and design/programming as we had time, it’s finally up and running:

zingstudios.com

It’s way better than our old site, and we’ll continue improving it. Hopefully prospective clients and potential new hires will be impressed.

03/07/2013

Background: on Tuesday I played ultimate on a slushy snow-covered field in 30-degree weather, and I was panting and wheezing. After the games– in which my team was trounced twice– I felt completely spent. Normally winter is kind of a slow time for me in terms of exercise, so I get a little flabby and out of shape. By mid-summer I rebound a bit because I’m back to ultimate four days a week, biking, and the occasional hike. Still, on Tuesday I felt like I was probably in the worst shape of my adult life. It was awful.

I vowed that it was time to get in shape. Seriously.

So yesterday I dusted off my bike and headed to work, even though it was about 25 degrees in the morning. I could tell it’s been a while since I was on the bike, because even my short 2.5-mile commute was kind of painstaking. It was a start, but I need to be better about exercising more regularly. Being out of shape sucks.

Today was a beautiful sunny 60-degree day. So yesterday, in anticipation of the unseasonably warm weather, I wrote to our pickup ultimate group:

Just in case you haven’t been paying attention to the weather forecast, tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and 60 degrees. Yowza! Let’s play.

I’m writing today so all of the slackers who don’t like “winter ultimate” can dig their cleats out of the back of the closet and bring them to work tomorrow. You won’t want to miss it.

See you there.

To which Tall Paul responded with:

I’m in. First time playing since a torn meniscus at the spring league tournament, so I’d like to request all time guarding Jeff.

Michael followed up with:

I have you beat: torn meniscus, ACL replacement, and shoulder labral tear– thus, dibs on Jeff.

And then Keffeler:

I have a pair of torn meniscus (both knees), two teenage daughters, and a 9-week-old baby… I get to cover Jeff.

Finally Brad jumped in:

I’m not going to even be there, but I think I’ll still be able to stop Jeff from scoring so I claim mental dibs.

You can just feel the love from the guys.

Indeed, today was a gorgeous day and we had a pair of really close games. I still have an uphill battle to be “in shape” again, but I did manage to score the winning point in the first game (7-6). In the second game I did a down-the-line sprint to the endzone to block the other team’s game-ending point (although we still lost 2-3). Take that, hecklers!

Not me.

03/05/2013

Zack has some gift cards for Barnes and Noble that he received for Christmas from Aunt Kari. He wanted to use them, so tonight he and I sat down at the computer to buy some books. We went to the B&N web site and he selected three books. During the checkout process he was filling out the address information and so forth, and came across the “first name” field. He paused for a moment and asked me if he could put “Popo” in that field. I said sure. So he did.

Popo

Then there was the “last name” field, and it was obvious that even though he’d already planned to use Popo as his first name, he hadn’t thought about a last name. After a moment, he added:

Twinkie

So in about a week we should be receiving a package addressed to Popo Twinkie.

Laralee says she just doesn’t understand Zack. I, on the other hand, think he’s hilarious.

03/02/2013

I just got a call from an old friend who used to live in our neighborhood. She lives in Minnesota now, and was attending some home and garden show in Minneapolis. She called because while she was there, she was talking to another woman and realized they both knew Laralee. This other woman was Laralee’s roommate when she first moved to Denver, now lives in Kansas City, and for whatever reason was at the same home and garden show. I have no idea how they stumbled across the topic of “who do you know in Denver” and ended up with “Well, there’s Laralee…” So I talked to both of them for a few minutes and we all had a good laugh.

It’s a small world… and apparently even smaller when you know Laralee.