This trip started off with a little more intensity than normally goes into one of my trips; of course I normally travel alone this time, however, I had 16 travel companions. We started our journey at Nick and Tricia’s place in Mesa, AZ. The group was a little slow to get moving as the night before we decided to consume an obscene amount of alcohol while playing tippy cup/flip cup. Things got a little “weird” that night, turns out that would be the theme of the entire extended weekend. Three vehicles were enough to get the majority of the part loaded up and on the road. We took off with: Bart, Blake, Sarah, Samantha (Sam), Nick, Tricia, Artie, John, Haley, Ashley, Josh, Brandon, Nicole, and me (Derek). Chris would be added before we made it out ... read more

Runtur on Saturday is like Runtur on Friday dialed up. Glasses being thrown from balconies, security kicking in doors of restrooms because two chicks were in there for about 15 minutes together doing God only knows what, an old dude getting punched in the face while moshing to Rage Against the Machine, an 18 year old girl revealing that she has slept with 30 guys at that point in her life. Runtur is crazy folks. It reminds me of New Orleans with a younger age demographic and involving people from all over the world who have a Vegas, what happens in Reykjavik, stays in Reykjavik attitude. I had decided to hang out with the group of Americans that I had met the night before. Aaron and Lindsay were going to watch a few metal bands and ... read more

Today I toured the Golden Circle and went snowmobiling on the second largest glacier in Europe. The Golden Circle is made up of three very unique sights. Pingvellir, (pronounces Thingvellir), Gullfoss and Geysir. Danni , my guide for the day, picked me up about 8:30 this morning. Considering I got home at 2:00am the night before and get up about 7:30 this morning I did not wake easily. Anyhow, I made it to the shower, which smells a bit of sulfur by the way, read rotten eggs, went down to breakfast, suited up and was on my way. I climbed into the closest truly functional thing to a monster truck. I’ll tell you more about the functional part later. Once in the two of us headed to another hotel to pick up five fairly hung over ... read more

I flew into Denver Thursday about 1:30 and made the two, or so hour drive through the mountains to meet my family in Breckenridge. Mom, Dad, Maleka and Maleka’s little friend Natalie. It was a beautiful day driving up through the mountains, and it got me excited to get on my board. By the time I had gotten to the condo the girls and Dad were in the pool. I decided to join them there after dropping my board off to get edged and waxed. We met Ryan from California and Emily from Minnesota in the pool. They were throwing snowballs up over a 20 foot wall where three hot tubs were located. I could not resist so I joined in on the fun, jumping out of the pool, grabbing handfuls of snow, and then launching ... read more

I was out in San Francisco for DreamForce by SalesForce.com. There were about 20,000 attendees this year to be part of the discussion on technology. A big topic this year was cloud-computing, as SFDC is pretty much the go to source for cloud trends. The big announcement was SalesForce Chatter that will launch next year. Marc Benioff, SalesForce.com CEO, kicked off the conference with a very long winded speech where he tried to solidify his own importance. Rivers of people left before the keynote was finished; I was swept up as well. Gen. Colin Powell was another story. I was amazed with how engaging the General was. He talked about the low marks that he received in college and his affinity for technology. He spoke about his years with the Regan administration and how he ... read more