Living in the midwest teaches you a lot of different things. One of those lessons, Mother Nature always wins. She can be awesome with warm springs and falls that make the trees turn all sorts of wonderful colors. But she can also be pretty mean. A tornado can devastate mile wide tracks across the midwest. Floods can wipe out farms, homes and everything it reaches.

Winter in the midwest gives you the opportunity to experience freezing cold temps that would make a fish stick shiver. Add on the occasional deluge of snow (in the 1-2 ft range) and you really get the pleasure of knowing Mother Nature. I have a few wonderful words to say to her right now and I haven’t even gone out to shovel yet.

Green Bay Packers, Super Bowl Champions! Not gonna lie, its kind of fun to say.

Damn proud of this Iowan!

As a programmer, I have had the joy of seeing a lot of my code ship with various projects in my career. One thing that I have found is, no matter how much I have tested, no matter how solid I feel about the code, there is always that moment of anxiety right before it ships. Its a natural feeling as a programmer to have these. You constantly strive for perfection but in the back of your mind you know that you’re a human who makes mistakes.

”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here