It’s been ten years since my first (and only) fantasy football league, but the neighbors asked us to fill an opening in their league this year. We plan to set it and forget it for the most part, but here is the starting lineup (courtesy of fanball.com).

Kid one and kid two made a cake and sang happy birthday to the MINI Cooper today, which I took delivery on four years ago today. Mileage is now around 55,000 miles, but it’s been running great (knock on wood). Only one more year of payments, too.

Oh, and by the way, the answer to my most asked question: I average about 29 MPG, but could get closer to the rated 37 if I didn’t drive it so hard (but what fun is that?)…

Let’s Motor!

A few years back, we bought up a bunch of “.mn” domain names at work. That extension is the country code for Mongolia, but it also works well for Minnesota-based sites.

I have several domains in production now (golfing.mn, hockey.mn, run.mn, proam.mn), but we have a bunch that we don’t plan to use:

• bride.mn
• cabins.mn
• concerts.mn
• deals.mn
• homefinder.mn
• seats.mn
• sexy.mn
• theater.mn
• zoo.mn

If you would like to take ownership of any of these domains, drop me a line at dk@studio-4.com and we can chat. I hate domain squatters, so all we are looking for is to recoup some of our costs (.mn domains are more expensive–starting at $49.95USD per year).

Thanks to an invitation from my friend (and Tapemark Pro-Am president) Phil Callen, I had the opportunity to lead the country club lifestyle the past three days at Southview Country Club in West Saint Paul.

We played an 18-hole practice round on Thursday, followed by three 9-hole matches Friday and two more matches today. Phil and I played OK, but we got smoked in our flight. Everyone was very nice, though, and the club did an incredible job with the event. Got a nice new pair of Nike sunglasses out of the deal, too.

Thanks Phil!

I lead a pretty boring life as far as vices go. The trio pictured above are the only things keeping me from my goal of reaching my high school weight.

I talked with my friend and former co-worker Jake today for tips (see this post for why Jake is an expert in this field). His secret? CalorieKing Nutrition & Exercise Manager for Mac OS X

I downloaded the 7-day demo and entered in my items for today. Very interesting statistics and feedback on the nutrition of what I ate and drank and the effect that exercise has on weight trends. Not sure if I can keep up with the record-keeping aspect of it (I long ago stopped using Quicken for this reason), but it will be interesting to do it for one week anyway…

August means the end of summer, the Minnesota State Fair and the beginning of the school year. It’s that last one that means my workdays will be getting longer soon. Here’s a short list of things going on:

• Rebuild and upgrade the networking infrastructure in the server room and big advisory space at HSRA Minnesota (pictured above)
• Execute a new Apple lease for Minnesota and take delivery of a boatload of new equipment that needs to be configured and deployed (50+ workstations and 25+ laptops)
• Install upgraded studio and pre-production equipment in Minnesota
• Reposition security cameras and upgrade and enhance digital recording systems
• Upgrade Minnesota server operating system and re-configure
• Re-image older workstations in Minnesota
• Deploy site licenses for Final Cut Pro, Logic Studio and Aperture
• Upgrade and deploy enhanced graphics lab in Minnesota
• Plan for tech contingencies at HSRA Los Angeles and a possible late August visit

On top of all that, I’m still dealing with DNS and firewall issues in Seattle, an overall cleanup of the four Seattle servers, test installs of Elgg, Moodle, Buddypress and Drupal and a re-design of the HSRA New York website. Oh, and I’m trying to learn Ruby on Rails and subversion on the side. Fun, fun.

Got to cross item #8 off my Things to Do Before I Die list this past weekend:

Wade across the Mississippi headwaters with my kids.

We spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, staying in the wonderful Itasca Suites near Douglas Lodge. Worth every penny…

We spent some time hiking around the south end of the lake on Friday, visiting the Old Timer’s Cabin and the Clubhouse. We then went to the headwaters for the classic wade across the Mississippi before taking a trip around Wilderness Drive to visit the large white and red pines. For dinner Friday, we ate at the Douglas Lodge dining room, which serves a mean Lake Itasca walleye.

After sleeping in Saturday morning, we rented bikes and rode from the bike shop back to the headwaters area for lunch. Colleen and kid one headed back to the rental area to switch to kayaks, while kid two and I rode our tandem/trailer bike on the 16 mile loop around the lake. Way too many hills, but spectacularly beautiful scenery (on par with 17-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach).

The kids went swimming for an hour before we went back to the room, cleaned up and hit the road for Lake George, Minnesota. I love the diners in small towns in rural Minnesota–friendly staff, huge portions and low prices. Our total for dinner for four at the Lake George Cafe was under $23.

On Sunday morning, I woke up early to run, but was still too sore from the bike ride to get out the door. Everyone woke up and packed the car to beat the 11AM check-out time. After another quick visit to the Old Timer’s Cabin (and the gift shop), we hit highway 71 and headed south. We stopped in Wadena for another great, cheap lunch at Larry’s Family Pizza ($15) before dodging rain storms and hitting heavy Sunday traffic on I-94 back to the metro area.

Loved everything about this trip and hope to go back again soon. Highly recommended.

Pictures posted in both the private and travel galleries.