I'm sorry family, friends, wanderers. I've been completely delinquent to jumphook.com.

Sadly, I think my days of blog pioneering are coming to an end. I'm going to switch some some other set of services. I will probably relaunch the same content here on a new site of some sort.

I will keep the NCAA basketball pool on jumphook.com for the immediate future :)

I still love the idea of having a .com to house all of my content in one place, however the maintenance to keep a bunch of disjoint apps working together is just too much for me to spend time worrying about. my new approach will be to host the content on a bunch of different sites specialized in hosting that content --> likely flickr, delicious, wordpress, technorati, etc. I will tie the RSS feeds from these sites into one page -- probably editable like a wiki. and that will be it. Only one app to maintain (the wiki, probably via Joomla or something) and one integration technology (RSS) to worry about. I think this is the right appraoch.

Also, with my recent ENGAGEMENT to Claudia, I want a system that works for both of us. that means the days of complex SW integrations are probably over and we will do something more simplified.

Anyway, just an update :)

Check out this rather stupid, high-altitude giddiness sponsored extreme sport: Dirt Skiing, by Darin Gillis.

On the descent from 19,340 ft. Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, there is a considerable amount of loose gravel that makes for an interesting extreme sport: dirt skiing. With just hiking boots, you can glide down the slope while using snow skiing style moves to avoid the embedded rocks.

Thanks Dustin, for filming this

I haven't posted in far too long --> I just had this email forwarded to me from Eastern Europe, where someone has bumbled across an incriminating picture of yours truly :)

Go ahead, try and find it (halfway down the page) -> http://phottle.com/blog/funny-wedding-photography?commented=1

Source: Alex A.

Come on all click this link and enter to play. Read the rules and make your picks. Click Here

$10 to get in ; more players --> more to win Just fill out the bracket online & kindly give Darin your money to play. Something new this year for my buds out of state, I'll accept PayPal! (I'm no longer accepting credit cards via PayPal, sorry...)

So much to report. I didn't live up to my promise to start blogging more often. Why may you ask? Well a sequence of tragedies have befallen yours truly.

First, I managed to catch pneumonia and had to go the ER to get diagnosed. I felt absolutely terrible. Forced me to cancel a plane ticket to Colorado for a weekend visit. I was and am seriously bummed about all of that. My lungs are still not feeling great, and I'm not supposed to do any aerobic exercise for another couple of weeks. what a mess!

Second, our house got robbed just after I got better and started back to work. Thief broke the window by our front door, and unlocked the door to make him/herself at home. They took an empty suitcase and went shopping. Took my iMac, Powerbook, 2 iPods, digital camera, some jewlery, and some other material goods. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had my IRS refund check sitting out and they nabbed it as well. Also, for good measure, claudia's checkbook, my passport and social security card, and a debit & credit card. That's right, armed w/ my identity they ended up with a $3015 spending spree all around Ausitn. what a mess!

So that's what's new. Just a heads up. Trying to keep a good attitude here, looking for some good karma and hoping bad things don't come in threes...

Haven't written much in awhile on the old blog... why you may ask? Well I've been venting all of my free energy into both my new job and my new workout program at Gold's gym. I've been wiped out by the time I get home and felt like doing nothing else except for playing Wii.... sweet sweet Wii.

This is probably a good time to state that, hey -- I'm taking a many vacation. Heading up to Utah to Alta/Snowbird to see what Utah skiing is all about. Should have 3.5 days of skiing ahead of me. I'm dropping in on my folks for a few hours in Denver on the way (via airplane). Claudia will meet me out there for a couple days of the skiing. It should be pretty sweet.

Thanks for continuing to check the page -- I promise to make a better blogging effort in the near future...

This is a little late, but I wanted to put a quick note up about my trip with Cosmin and his fiance Paula to visit his familiy in Brasov and to see the infamous castle Dracula in Bran.

In short, it kicked ass. Here I am next to the freaky vampire sign at the entrance:

The castle Bran was inhabited by 'Vlad the Impaler' in the 1500's who was known for skewering his enemies on wooden stakes on the nearby hill. He was a cold-hearted leader, but he was loved by the folks here. He was somehow attached to the Dracula fiction, mostly by the fact that his last name was also Dracula.

The inside of the castle was remade into a home by some Queen in the 1700's, and looks quite nice.

Of the things I saw here, the creepiest was this old cross with some ancient lettering that looks straight out of an Anne Rice novel or something. Though it was really touristy, it was totally worth the visit to dispel the last of the vampire myths of Romania...

I think the website is fixed now... Not sure what went wrong, something to do w/ changing servers and me not getting to use the cgi-bin folder anymore; and ipower.com has been terribly unhelpful in the matter. Hopefully it is all fixed now -- blog on!

In case you didn't see who introduced the CU players on ABC on Friday, here it is! Apparently Nebraska's defense wasn't the only joke in Boulder!

Offense http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9kp6l6bWNc&feature=related

Defense http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69nIToQ24i4&feature=related

Thanks Ryan!