8 years ago today I was sleeping in my hotel room in Topeka Kansas, getting ready to wake up and drive to the Kansas Speedway to meet Dale Jr. A good friend of mine was working for DEI (Dale Earnhardt Inc.) at the time doing engineer stuff (that’s what he is) and the team was at Kansas Speedway doing testing for upcoming races.

I was in Topeka Kansas for the SCCA Solo Nationals (which are now held in Lincoln Nebraska, this week, I’m sad I am not there), and had an off day, one in which I wasn’t racing or working. So I was excited to get to the opportunity to go up to the raceway and meet Dale Earnhardt Jr. I had just left my gig at The Sporting News a few months earlier, and I was still into NASCAR at the time, I had even been writing a column with my good buddy Roger Kuznia where we went head 2 head on a Nascar topic each week (don’t judge me based on what you read!).

Unfortunately, that morning I woke up with the TV on and it ended up being September 11th, 2001. It was a rough morning for our nation, and the world. I ended up staying at the hotel for a few hours, watching all the coverage, internally thinking to myself, what if we’re at war, what is going to happen next. Eventually I got myself out of the hotel and headed off to the speedway to try to meet up with Dale Jr., but as I was just about to get on the highway I got a call from James, my buddy, saying that they were headed home, because the airlines were all shut down they packed up the semi trucks and all hit the road back to North Carolina.

So I headed down to Forbes Field in Topeka where the Solo Nationals were held, and hung out there until we were all kicked off the base for a couple of days. Gas prices in Topeka skyrocketed, above 4 dollars a gallon at some places, grocery stores were flooded, I remember I went to the liquor store that day to get some whiskey. A couple days later the Solo Nationals continued, in a much shortened version.

8 Years later, the Solo Nationals are still going on, the world is still reeling from the impact of 9/11, and I’m married to a beautiful lady living in Colorado. Things have changed!

Here's a photo of my car at Nationals in 2001

So it’s just after 1am on Monday March 9th, 2009. Pat Renner and I have wrapped up and submitted the final chapter of our DotNetNuke book. We are far from complete on the whole book writing process, but we are at least at the big milestone of being done with the majority of the writing of the book.

Now we begin the process of editing our chapters that we are getting back from the editor and technical editor. I got the first chapter back for author review before my trip to Orlando last week but had to set it aside and focus on finishing up the writing process before starting on it. Tonight (Monday) will begin the process of the author review and cleaning up the materials so that they can be sent off to the production department.

The book writing process is interesting, fun, painful, a great education experience. I’ve learned so much about DNN, but more importantly about how to communicate what I know about DNN in an easy to understand manner. At least I hope I have! I guess we will find out when people start reading the book!

I’ll post more about my trip to Orlando later this week, I wish I had stayed another night to watch the Kepler launch, but because the book wasn’t finished I had to get home.

So I’m home this weekend working on the book, our first deadline is on Monday, so Pat and I are both working on finishing up our submissions. To procrastinate a little I decided to do a quick search on Amazon, not expecting to find it, but I did! I found a listing for our book! Here it is!

DotNetNuke 5 User's Guide: Get Your Website Up and Running

 

Now, I must get back to writing.

My good buddy Chad Hobson has launched a new site, here's a blurb about it.

"The late Carole Bizzack's family have launched a new website for the Memorial Foundation they've created in her honor.  Check out a good cause here."

So last night 7 of us went out to dinner at Llywelyn's in Webster Groves. I wanted to go see Steve Ewing from The Urge playing there, and I figured I'd drag along a few guys from work so Natalie and I would have some people to talk to. It was a great time, and I must say, Steve is an amazing singer, if you get a chance to see him playing somewhere do. In person he sounds just like the recordings except with a little more crowd enticement there. Check him out at www.steviee.com I'm also proud to say I'll be using some of his music in upcoming videos for www.corvettez06.org and www.project240z.com

So you might have seen all the DotNetNuke posts lately, but what about just a Chris and Natalie post? Well here it goes! (you can follow along with some of the photos here on Flickr) Natalie and I had a blast in Las Vegas this past week. We went on the 3rd, a day before her Birthday. Her parents came out on the 3rd as well so we got to spend time with them for a few days before the DNN conference started up. During those few days we went and saw "KA" at the MGM, took a trip out to the Hoover Dam. After the Hoover Dam we took a quick jaunt North of Las Vegas looking for Red Rock, only to figure out an hour north that Red Rock was actually West of Las Vegas, so we turned around and headed back towards LV. It turned out perfect though, our little detour had delayed us enough to see the most brilliant sunset I've ever seen from Red Rock. Monday I had a DNN Core Team lunch, and then came back to the hotel to go with Natalie and meet Rich and Henry (two owners of Engage Software) and their wives for dinner and drinks. We repeated that process on Tuesday evening after the conference as well. Wednesday evening Natalie and I went to a gathering of people at Mix In Las Vegas, the restaurant on the 64th floor of "THEHotel" which is attached to the Mandalay Bay. The dinner was great and I must once again thank Tracy from www.t-worx.com for the most excellent evening. Thursday evening a large group of us, 17, got together for dinner. We met up in the bar at the Mandalay Bay and then decided to take Taxis down to the Venetian. Somehow we all actually made it to the same place and got to eat dinner together at one restaurant. It was a great time and I got to talk to Erik quite a bit, hopefully talking him into trying to get me to speak at SDC in the Netherlands next September! One can only hope :) Friday Natalie and I took off by ourselves for once. We went to Grand Canyon West, with the main goal of getting out onto the SkyWalk (www.grandcanyonskywalk.com). It was roughly 120 miles from the hotel, though took 2.5 hours as there was 14 miles of dirt/gravel road. The funny thing (well one of them) about the road, this 14 mile stretch was County maintained, as soon as we got to the Indian reservation grounds the road became paved... We were in Minivan for the trip, it was what you might call dirty at the end of the day. Lucky for the Minivan it didn't have a handbrake, just a footbrake/e-brake, otherwise I would have had an easier time getting the tail end of the car to swing out around the corners. We had a good time at Grand Canyon West, even though I have a little beef with the operation they have running there. The SkyWalk is very cool, and you essentially have to pay $79/person to get out on the SkyWalk. They don't allow you to take any personal items out there, for fear of you dropping them on the glass, or worse over the edge into the Canyon below. So you can't take a camera out there with you, they of course will gladly take your photo for you and sell it to you for $25/each. We ended up buying 2 photos, so we got the third one free. But they can only print them, not give them to you on CD, or even email them to you. The prints weren't what I would acll the highest of quality. I'm hoping I can email the staff there and try to get better quality photos from them. Friday evening we returned back to Vegas and went to see "O" at the Bellagio. It was another great show, definitely worth the investment to go see if you're in Vegas anytime soon. Saturday morning we headed back to the airport and flew back to St. Louis. We got home around 7pm and pretty much crashed. Sunday I headed out with Nick and went hunting. It might be deer season here in Missouri but I was hunting bugs, one particular blue one that I hear rumored to still be around Alton Illinois. Our hunt was not fruitful, we didn't find my old Super Beetle, but I will keep hunting. Sunday evening we joined Dominique and Colby for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory to...

My good buddy Chad Hobson has created his first meaningful technical blog post to help the masses. He had some issues when upgrading to Asp.Net Ajax Beta 2 for his AutoCompleteExtender controls and took the time to create a helpful post on how to make those controls work. Be sure to drop Chad a comment on his blog as well, tell him how cool he is in that mean looking photo. Posted from...

Well, my 2003 350Z Enthusiast model is officially paid off. It is also no longer my car!My buddy Jasyn "Dozzle" Randazzo took a train from Kansas City to St. Louis last night and drove the car home today. I talked to Dozzle this afternoon, he made it back to KC and was out and about showing the car off to friends.Have fun with her Dozzle! She's a good ride! Now that the 350Z is gone I hope to spend more time on the 240Z to get that going soon. posted from...

Well, I decided to check out Chad's website again. And, not to my surprise, he hasn't done anything with it! I am still a...

I know I've been slow to post here lately! I'm finally processing the photos from opening day at Fenway. What else have I been up to? Looking at Harleys, though I've decided that REALLY isn't a good option right now. Though, unfortunately tonight I may have been talked into an interesting project. More on that later this...

Just a quick blog post for a friend. Don't ever buy an ABS Laptop! Their notebooks suck. He's had it for 2 months, now, well, let's say he's owned it for 2 months, and had it for all of about 2 weeks. He just got it back today, and guess what? It still doesn't work! So this is a warning, ABS Laptops suck! The real irony is ABS stands for Always Better Service!...

Tickets for The Phantom Of The Opera went on sale for it's St. Louis stay this morning. The show will once again be at the Fabulous Fox theatre here in St. Louis. I've purchased two pairs of tickets for a show on the 18th of June. Should be a good time! Though I'm not sure how many times I've actually seen the Phantom of the Opera? I think this will be the fourth time, and second time at the...