Kasey Schindler

• An awesome app for hand writing digital cards.
• For people who are brave enough to attempt making sushi at home.
• I updated to Jekyll 1.0 and love the addition of the drafts folder. Jekyll then allows you to "serve" the site with --drafts to see a preview of your site without having to worry about accidentally posting it.
• I recently purchased a bike and am trying to start biking to work. First day was today; it was a bit rougher than expected.
• Smoky watermelon-jalapeno margarita
• THE PLAYERS is shaping up to be a wonderful weekend of golf - lots of big names atop the leaderboard.
• Why is "the players" always capitalized when referring to this golf tournament?
• Am I the only one ready for the NFL already?
• For people who use Google Reader, it's about to be killed. I recommend switching to Feed Wrangler.
• Enjoy your weekend, folks.

I talk a lot about traveling on this blog. It's something I feel everyone should try to do as often as possible whether it is a weekend road trip or an exotic adventure across the world. Each experience is beneficial in different ways. I'm not really here to talk about why traveling is worthwhile, but that we should all consciously be doing something right now to make our next trip happen. I hear a lot of people talking about the places they want to go and sights they want to see but making excuses for why they won't ever visit those places. It is very easy to browse travel sites and pick a place to go, but what are you doing to make it happen? My dream vacation is to go to the Maldives, but to be honest, I'm wasn't doing anything to allow it to ever happen. I know where I want to go, stay, and what I want to do when I'm there but none of that is going to come to fruition if I only blog about it. Once I realized this (not some crazy revelation, I know), I immediately opened a sub-savings account labeled specifically for the trip. Each month the same amount is taken directly out of of my checking account and placed into that savings account; it's seamless. While I am saving for this trip (it will take me a while to have enough money), I have other money allotted for smaller vacations. I just recently returned from Arizona for a golf trip, then went to Milwaukee for a long weekend to watch the St. Louis Cardinals kick ass. The results could not have been any better. Now following my own demands, I am in the planning phase of going out to Seattle in June. I am saving for this trip as well as receiving price alerts for a round-trip plane ticket. I have also put in my vacation requests at work which, once approved, will provide me with extra motivation to save and make the trip happen. Like I said earlier, it doesn't matter how exotic the destination is, the experiences garnered along the way are what really matters. I highly encourage you to sit down, settle on a place and start making your next vacation happen.

My birthday has come and gone since my last post, but I wanted to take some time and reflect on some positive changes that have happened in the past year. The biggest change in my life has been my new job. It is exactly what I was looking for, and I could not be happier here. The company as well as the people are outstanding. I have met a few people here in which relationships are developing outside of work which is something that rarely happened at my previous employer. The people here are younger which is probably the main factor, but the atmosphere here also promotes interaction other than business and allows an environment where work is not always the main focus. For instance, every Friday at 3 it is recommended that everyone shuts off their computers, has a beverage of their choice and mingles while sharing their weekend plans. It sounds like one of those bull shit team building exercises, but this one works - maybe it's the alcohol?!

While looking for a new job, I had grand envisions of moving out of Minneapolis and starting over. I would still love to move away from Minneapolis either to a larger city, or some place warmer, at some point but a lot of my initial reasoning was because I was unhappy at my job and just wanted something different. What I have now is different, I am happy with my work as well as my personal life.

A lot of this post has focused on my career changing over the past year. While that is true, many other things have changed as well. Things have changed in my personal life - both relationship-wise and, as I previously noted, my soon to be living arrangement. I've always lived with roommates and have been able to rely on them for doing certain things and being available socially. Moving into my own place will force me to seek events outside of my apartment and roommates. Living near the lakes will certainly help as well as the idea of purchasing a bike. Minneapolis is one of the most biker friendly cities in the United States. I'm going to be living near miles and miles of trails one of which is a direct shot to work. Biking will save me money regarding my car plus it is a solid workout.

The past year has already provided a number of changes, but hopefully when I revisit this topic next year, just as many new and exciting changes will have occurred then.

I have always had roommates - parents, friends, girlfriends, etc. I finally signed a lease yesterday for my own place; I could not be more stoked. I'm excited to clean up my own messes and only do my dishes. I'm excited to come home late and make as much noise as I want. I'm excited to go to bed at 8:00 PM and not have to worry about being woken up by loud roommates. I'm excited to watch whatever I want on my flatscreen in my living room. I am excited to shower whenever I want. I am excited to cook dinner in a kitchen where all the dishes I need will be clean and no one else will be in my way. I am excited to not have cats roaming around. I'm excited to come back home after a vacation and have everything exactly as I left it. As you can certainly tell, I am quite excited to have a place of my own.

Regardless if it's Bali, Bora Bora, or the Maldives, a bungalow over the ocean is happening in the near future. I've been planning on this; I promise. If this photo isn't motivation then nothing is.

I just released my second iPhone application - Pick For Me. It is very simple in concept, but it has proven to be extremely useful. I cannot begin to count how many times I could not decide on a place to eat, or even what type of cuisine I was hungry for. This app takes all the hard work out of the equation; type in your options, tap the middle, select button and one of your options is randomly chosen for you and nicely, animated in a bright color on the screen. The options are all deleted after one is selected so there are no "redo's" involved.

Head over to my Projects page to visit the website or hit this link to be taken directly to the app on the App Store. I'd love if you left a quick review too. Hopefully the app is just as useful for you as it has been for me. Enjoy.

• If you won a free roundtrip airline ticket to anywhere in the world, where would you go?
• The reason I asked that above is that I will soon have about 100,000 Delta SkyMiles which should get me a roundtrip just about anywhere so I am debating this.
• Glad that golf is back, and it's good to see Tiger get off to a good start.
• Speaking of golf, I'm stoked to get out to Arizona to play a few rounds in April.
• How many friends do you need?
• I love this site. If you couldn't tell, traveling is on my mind. This -10 degree weather might have something to do with it.
• What do you think of the new site design anyway?
• I like how I ask questions and don't have comments on here so there's no way for you to even answer them - lol. Oops. Get at me on Twitter if you have anything to say.
• Why don't more guys wear cardigans?
• 49ers 24, Ravens 20
• Enjoy, folks.

I had my first run in with the police recently. Well, not really, but that's way more interesting than just saying I got my first parking ticket, but there's more to it. I got my first parking ticket at the beginning of last August and promptly paid it; no big deal, it happens to everyone. Surprisingly, I received a phone call from collections saying I didn't pay a parking ticket and would suffer "consequences" if I didn't pay by Friday. I promptly paid thinking, wtf?! I probably should have called the local government building to ask some questions, but I didn't know how long it'd take to deal with them so, like I said, I paid the collections and figured I'd deal with the government later. Well, later was today surprisingly. I called the Hennepin County courthouse to see what the mix up was. I found out that I was given identical tickets by different officers two hours apart. "Ahhh," I said. That's fucked up in the first place but made no sense considering I only received one ticket. I was then told that one must have been blown away or "mis-placed". Did the cop "mis-place" it or did I? Who in the hell knows what he meant with that one. I was told I also received multiple late notices regarding this unpaid ticket even though I haven't received a single one and have lived at the same address since the time of the ticket. I told the guy on the phone that was unlikely and was curious why only one showed up online when I went to pay. He didn't have an answer for that one, but back on hold I went and good news, he would cancel the second ticket since I paid the first one immediately, and it was odd I wouldn't have also paid for the second one. Sweet, I thought, but here's the kicker - since I had already paid the collections agency there was now nothing they could do other than suggest I file a motion. I quickly searched what that consisted of: go downtown to the courthouse, fill out some paperwork, schedule a court date which had to be between certain hours on Tuesday through Thursday, and blah blah blah. I stopped reading at that point and determined it wasn't worth my time to get worked up over a measly parking ticket.

Update: Now that I think about it, I'm assuming they sent the late notice to the address on my driver's license which is incorrect. I suppose it's about time I get that updated...

In the end I may be the one that was the idiot - lol. Oh well.

I saw a tweet the other day that said something similar to the following, it's crazy that the only way to experience the inauguration in the past was via the newspaper unlike today where it had its own hashtag on Twitter. All I could think was, is it really any different? I don't believe reading something as it is happening makes me feel any closer to actually being there. In my eyes, it is the opposite. I read tweets "live" as an event is happening, and I feel as if I am actually missing the event since others are there sharing their emotions live with me. Putting yourself in the mindset that you're not going to an event and will have to wait until the following day to experience it makes you process all the details at once. Twitter gives you bits and pieces at a time whereas print gives it to you all in one big dose. Those are two completely different emotional experiences - "damn, I cannot believe I am missing this; I wish I was there" vs. "I'm not going to be there, but I cannot wait to hear what it was like".

Last year I finally decided to buy the domain kaseyschindler.com and also purchased some cheap hosting from one of the many cheap options there are. I didn't really have a clue what I was doing so I did some reading and settled on going about it this way. Most tutorials also suggested installing Wordpress to manage all of my content. So yes, I also did that. I logged in, chose a theme, and proceeded to write. I never thought twice about it all. But then, I wanted to tinker. I realize this is possible using Wordpress, but it's so overwhelming. I didn't even know where to begin. I know some HTML and CSS but zero PHP. To be honest, I don't even know where to begin when looking back at it. Then I stumbled upon Jekyll and GitHub Pages. A super simple way to setup a blog, customize the look and feel, and just write. Everything I wanted to do in a single place.