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...

Had a blast surfing today. Natalie and Mom came out and watched, took pics. I'll try to get the pics up tomorrow, but not likely to get them up till we get back in town. Nat and I are both roasted, hopefully we don't peel too bad! More on all we've been doing...

I finally got the 293 opening day photos posted! Here are a few of the "good" ones, though I didn't go through them all.   Me walking into Cheers Me and Auntie Carol after the...

So now that most folks know Natalie and I got engaged last weekend, it's time to tell the story of how it happened. A little bit of info on this past weekend, Natalie's mother's birthday was on the 7th of October, so we were all headed out to So Cal for the occasion. Her parents live about 17 miles from mine, but by California's roads that's about a 45 minute drive. We, Me, Natalie, her sister, brother-in-law and neice all went out to California for the weekend, to visit with her family and mine. We planned on everyone going to my parent's house on Saturday at 6:30pm, kind of a family gathering, have both sets of parents meet, and just have dinner and hang out all evening. I however had other plans and had Mom scope out locations on the beach for me a few weeks back. The requirements were a good view of the Ocean at Sunset, easy accessibility, and somewhere that 18 people could watch, without Natalie seeing those 18 people until after I asked her to marry me. Dog Beach down in Huntington beach was the perfect location, with two seperate parking areas so that Natalie and I could park, and walk ~1/4 mile to the sand below the cliffs at the second parking area. So the plan actually was for everyone to show up at my parents house at 5pm, and head down to the beach. Natalie and I got to the house around 4:30 and picked up the Triumph so we could drive down PCH with top down, sight seeing a little was the cover I used with Natalie. I had to double check on the location mom picked out, as dad early Saturday morning said the two parking locations where too far apart, after seeing they were nice and close to each other I let mom know via a cryptic phonecall we would be in the same location as planned. Natalie and I drove around Huntington Beach a bit, stopping to watchi a few kite surfers (probably the wrong term) and then headed back up to the first Dog beach parking lot. I took her down for a stroll along the beach, all along looking ahead to see if I could see anyone at the rendevous point yet. We ended up at the point I had planned probably 5-10 minutes before everyone else showed up. Not exactly on time as I had planned, but I think that worked out best as no one was around when we were walking towards where they would all be standing, I was hoping she wouldn't see anyone before I asked her. This whole time Natalie was freezing, the weather the day before had been 83 and sunny, but the weather saturday was getting overcast and windy, probably somewhere near 55-60 with a 15-20mph wind from the ocean. Though, even with the clouds and wind, we had a pretty good view of the sunset, which I had planned everything around, a 6:19pm sunset. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity, finally the family showed up, I had to wave at them behind my back to get them down to the area near the life guard stand (stand 22) that would give them the best view. Natalie actually asked me if I was waving at someone, I said no, I was just cold and shaking out my hands. :) Once everyone was in position I suggested she put her shoes down, she'd been carrying them since we got to the sand. After a few moments, and her wiping her runny nose from the cold wind on my shirt, I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. She teared up, not saying a word, in shock. I had to ask her, "well, will you?" to get her to knod yes! I rose and gave her a hug and a kiss and then the crowd cheered, she turned and saw 18 people standing up on the bluff cheering for us. It took her a bit to realize it was all of our families up there watching :). Everything turned out great, Greg (my brother) and Dad had my still camera and video camera snapping and shooting away the whole time. We walked up to the bluff and took lots of photos together, with all the family in various arrangements. Afterwards we all headed to Mom and Dad's house in Long Beach for a few hours of socializing. It was a great evening, and special thanks to Mom for getting everything together...

Photos from Topeka are posted. Thanks to James Elterman for taking most of the 5th heat photos while I was...

I had an adventure to make it to and from the game on 8/25 in KC, but managed to take a few hundred photos at the game. Please feel free to give me any comments. I'm by no means a photographer, just a guy with a camera, so any tips/suggestions appreciated.You can see the photos here http://chrishammond.com/photos/old/category1068.aspxHere's my story about the darn ride back to St. Louishttp://www.chrishammond.com/archive...08/27/1502.aspxAnd then, of course my 2004 Game 4 World Series...

Andy and I made it to Denver and back. I went 1800.8 miles since I filled up with gas on Thursday night, we left Friday at 4am. The car did well, Andy was in the lead after the first day, but slipped to 2nd on the second day. I finished in 7th both days. Not a great showing for myself, though Andy picked up $200 from Kumho's contingency $$. I took ~800 photos, I'll link those later as there are some server problems right now. I also broke the Digital Rebel, so I'm headed to Best Buy this evening to see how they are going to handle the warranty on that...

Well, I made the trip back from Salina Kansas yesterday afternoon. 410 Miles in 5 hours and 10 minutes. You do the math. Stopped at the toll booth to get my ticket, then at the next booth to pay my toll, didn't have to stop for gas or any other breaks to the whole trip home. The weekend was good, hot 95-100 all 3 days, but at least Salina gets that good Kansas wind, it kept the heat bearable. I ended up winning my first Divisional of the year, and only the second win I've had over Andy this year, the first being the Walnut Ridge National Tour. We do it again this coming weekend. We'll be headed to Peru Indiana for the National Tour out at Grissom. Looking forward to making that trip again, it's quite a bit shorter than...

I've posted some of the photos I took from the reunion. You can see them here at the Vanden High School web site I setup a while back. I'm hoping to get copies of photos other folks took at the reunion as well, and post them on the...

Microsoft has just released a beta for their pixel/vector based graphics software package called Acrylic. I'll have to download it and try it out this...

Check out the great photos that Chad got of my last run at the Midiv Solo II event this weekend. Here is a link to all of the shots he took. http://www.solo2.org/gallery/albums/57.aspx And a...

A quick (longer than planned) writeup, from a BS perspective The surface was concrete, VERY rough on tires, kinda slick but still not a bad surface over all, a little breakup after day 1, patches before day 2. The weather was pretty windy on Friday, not as much wind on Saturday, by Sunday the wind has switched and was blowing form the east. Not near as strong as Friday though. Both mornings were chilly, saturday was 36 degrees when Heat 1 started at 7:55am. By 1:30 it was ~60 degrees out, Sunny, with a light wind.The event ran very smoothly, great job by the Arkansas Region and SCCA staff. Only two event recommendation I would have, the front gate didn't appear to be staffed very well during the non-heat times (not sure during heats). The other being the choice of Saturday night dinner locations. It was a little too small for the number of folks we had at the event, just a thought for next year There were 185 drivers, I worked first heat in the trailer doing radio, which was nice because I got to stay inside where it was nice and toasty BS ran Second heat both days, there were 10 drivers (2 M3s (4 drivers) 1 RX-8, a Red 350Z, a Brickyard 350Z and my Daytona Blue 350Z with myself and Andy driving). Andy and I were trying out some Kumho 710s, some very large Kumho 710s! We managed to squeeze 275s on all four corners, including the 7.5" front wheels, I ended up installing a spacer up front just to be sure we didn't rub, I don't think it would have been an issue though even without the spacer. After first runs on Saturday I had a mid 46, with Ashir (sp?) running a 46.8 though I thought I had about a 1.5 second lead on the class. Andy, my codriver, I believe had a cone on his first run. Second runs Andy ended up with some car troubles. Just before the big sweeper (turn around) the car died. We're not sure how, or why, but it wouldn't start back up right away. The first though people had (course workers) was that it ran out of gas, which wasn't really an option as it had 1/2 tank of gas. I generally run with little to no gas in the car, but didn't plan so well for this trip and filled up before making the 240 mile drive to Walnut Ridge, which left me with over half a tank. I tried to burn off some gas driving through town, and then hoped to use up some at the practice event on Friday. Andy got the car started back up and came off after his 2nd run with a DNF due to the mechanical difficulties. We looked the car over, revved id, smelled it, looked underneath, nothing appeared out of place or missing/broken. I went out on my second run and the car ran fine, though I was a bit slower, I think due to worrying about how the car would react. Andy went out for his third run and jumped in front of my first run by about .15 seconds. I went out on my third run hoping to best his time, which I was unable to do. I knew this would happen, as I seem to have problems improving runs at big events, I almost always have my best run up front and then I guess over think everything else. Ashir ended up dropping some more time on his third run and finished behind me for the first day by .066 seconds. Sunday brought a new day. I went out on my first run and put about a second on the field, but got a late cone call in the final slolom to put me back into 2nd or 3rd I believe. Andy's first run was one of the fastest in the class, and unfortunately for him was his fastest clean time of the day due to other difficulties. 2nd run he went out and blew the course away, he knocked off 2 seconds from his time and about 1 second from mine, but yet again, a late cone call came into play. Ashir didn't quite seem to be able to get a good handle on the car on Sunday, I believe due to some changes they tried making to the sway bar the night before. My second run I went out, sped up a bit, and cleaned up my run, enough to actually take the class for the day. Andy went out for his third run intent on whiping the floor with me, and he may very well have,...

We went to the 100 Acre Wood this past weekend. Ended up driving down to Potosi to watch the 3/10ths of a mile stages (ran the same course twice), it was like watching a rally cross, just with better developed cars. I took a few photos of this stage, you can find them here. I also took a lot of video from those two stages and the final 10th stage. I hope to have those posted here in the next couple of...