I would just like to thank David Naylor for confirming (against my will) that I find no enjoyment in kissing another man. God damn Brits.
I think it might be the only time in my life that my tongue has touched another man’s tongue. Tastes a bit like a buffalo burger. […]

The good part about the Hilton in Chicago is that it has nice marble floors. The bad part is this place has Internet that costs $35 for 5 hours of use, and then when you buy it, it doesn’t work anyway, so in reality this hotel has “Internet” that doesn’t work for a cost […]

These are the three teams tied for the best record in the NFL (10-2). I went to the Bears/Viking game at Soldier Field in Chicago this morning, and uhm… it was COLD. Chicago in general is f’ing cold and I don’t know why anyone would willingly live here. Did […]

When you are bored in the airport on a layover on the way to Chicago, you can win $2,000 on a $5 bet.
I played a total of $20 (I played 6 total hands for $5 each, winning my first hand also) on video poker with my last $5 and hit 4 2s […]

They have free wireless Internet in their airport (so does Phoenix and Pittsburgh, and probably a ton of others that I don’t know about). San Diego’s lame airport wants to charge you like $10 to use it for a day. Stupid.

That is the route I took to get home from Pubcon in Las Vegas. It was a very odd route by the airline. Got on a plane in Vegas that was a direct flight to San Diego (and supposed to get to San Diego at 1:05 am this morning). Circled around San […]

Played some poker tonight (this morning?), and we had George, a closet anti-semitic poker dealer for his 30 minute shift. George really liked us (especially Dax)… or not… it was hard to read his true feelings about us.
Hopefully someone will post the illegal pictures we took of a “Nevada gaming device”.
UpdateI […]

Yahoo Publisher Network hosted the best party at Pubcon (at least of the ones I went to). They threw it in the Hugh Hefner Sky Villa at the Palms (it’s a 9,000 square foot, $40,000/night “room”) on Wednesday night.
Microsoft threw a party in the Kingpin Suite Thursday night, but I decided that going to […]

I got a royal flush tonight while screwing around on a video poker machine (waiting for people to get to Binions for our real game).
Not quite as interesting as the other ones I got because it was against a computer (and 2s were wild). But whatever, paid a little money anyway…

…yet I’m going there today for Pubcon. Joy. They should do shows in places like Hawaii or Tahiti IMO.
(6th time I’ve been to Vegas this year unfortunately)

I went to Vegas this weekend for UFC 64 at Mandalay Bay. I’ve never been to a UFC fight before, but man they are bloody. This is a picture of the second to last match tonight. Uhm, can I have some blood please? Thanks.
(The guy being picked up actually started with […]

Okay, we are back in San Jose now since our flight home leaves in the morning. Scott’s friend Tracy is currently staying in San Jose on a student exchange program, so we got a couple taxis over to the party.
As you can see from he picture, it was a wild and crazy time. […]

So while eating dinner, (a 14 ounce, $8 filet mignon), the volcano was erupting. So we ended up seeing lava streaming down the volcano tonight. Not sure if it was happening during the day or not, but definitely could see the lava glowing at night.
Unfortunately no one has a good enough camera to […]

Scott, Jessica and I decided to hike around the base of the Arenal volcano this afternoon. It was pouring like a mother BTW.

We hiked down to the La Fortuna waterfall this morning… a pretty cool little hideaway in the jungle. (How do you like my awesome Google Dance shirt I got from SES?)

Tabacón resort is pretty nice and we’ll be staying here for 2 nights. Lots to do and a really neat maze of hot springs fed by the Arenal volcano.
Too bad their tech guys don’t know anything about computers or the Internet. One guy actually came to my room, and looked at my laptop […]

These things are kind of weird… like a cross between a raccoon and an opossum…

Anne’s aunt is a real estate agent and lives in Playa Hermosa, so we went to check out a house she was selling. A pretty nice place with a decent (hah) view… I think it was around 4,500 square feet and rents as a vacation rental for $5,000/week. It’s currently on the market […]

In a little hotel we found down a dirt alley in Playa Hermosa today (it’s actually a really nice place right on the beach) and we went on a 3 hour snorkeling tour for $20 (gotta love how cheap Costa Rica is… our hotel worked out to $19 per night, per person… including an awesome […]

Avoid this crappy town like the plague. We drove through it on our way to Playa Hermosa, and someone came up and stabbed our tire while we were sitting in the car.
As Julien would say, “Thank you very much! We really appreciate it!” (you have to smile and wave to get the full […]

At dinner in Manuel Antonio, you could find Celeste enjoying a nice bowl of salsa.

This may actually be the best picture of the trip. hah

Can I take a nap please? Thanks…

This thing was trying to eat us while we were sleeping (they are all over the place)…

Went on a zipline tour today… it wasn’t half as fun as the one I went on a couple years ago, but whatever… it was still a blast.

We are staying in Manuel Antonio (at the Costa Verde hotel) for 2 nights (last night was our first night), and we woke up, and check out what was outside our hotel window (this a picture from our room)… A three-toed sloth. Cool.

BTW, my head still has a knot in it.

If anyone wants to know an easy way to bust your head open in a split second, just slip off the road into a concrete and stone wall. Your head doesn’t stand much of a chance, and it will bleed right away so you can look cool.
Another pretty awesome thing about it is that […]

We made it to our first (real) destination in Costa Rica!!! We found a hotel (Costa Verde) and headed to the beach. 2 for 1 beers and mixed drinks! Yay!

Somewhere between David Hasslehoff’s favorite cafe and Manuel Antonio, we came across a bridge that had all sorts of crocodiles under it. Thankfully, there was a little shop that sold ice cream Trits (BTW, these things are f’ing good), so we could eat them while we stare at the crocodiles.

On the first (real) day of our Costa Rica trip, we stopped at a cafe on the way to Manuel Antonio… and guess who was here? None other than David Hasselhoff himself!

There was also some crazy spider at this cafe that Scott got an amazing picture of…

We made it to Costa Rica, and we are staying in the “historic” Gran Hotel in San Jose. It was supposed to be 1.5 miles from the airport, but it’s more like 15 miles. Kind of screws up our rental car situation on the last day, but whatever… They have free Internet […]

Okay, so there was that terrorist thing going on today, so the airports were all whacked out… or at least they were supposed to be. Everyone at SES was like, “Dude, you only have 4 hours before your flight, and the airport is an hour away, you better leave now… Actually, you probably aren’t […]

Okay, I got some pictures of the fires from the surrounding areas of BabbFest from Alison… It started in Glacier National Park by a group of boy scouts. Hopefully they take away their fire safety badges.

In case any of my friends were wondering if I dropped off the face of the planet this weekend, I was in Montana in the Glacier National Park area for a mini-vacation and a hippie music festival (Babbfest). The music wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I had something to do with marketing […]

This is what my slave does while in Estonia (I wish I could have gone)…

I guess they were supposed to play with grenades and rocket launchers too, but they were too late to do that. Sucks!

I’m going to Montana in 2 weeks for a little mini-weekend vacation, and someone mentioned to me that I should get some “bear spray” if I’m going to be hiking around. So I Google [bear spray] just to see what it is (not that I really was going to get any).
The #1 site that […]

I booked a hotel near the San Jose airport for the first and last night we are in Costa Rica. But I just realized I booked it for San Jose, California, not San Jose, Costa Rica. Hmmm… I wonder if that’s going to make a difference or not.
UpdateOkay, I got […]

I was in Vegas yesterday (as I still am today), and I decided that since I was terribly bored with nothing to do, I would go see if I could bang out some clothes shopping (hey, I hate it, so why not do it when I have nothing else to do?)… So I walked down […]

We are going to Costa Rica this August, so I bought 6 plane tickets today. Here’s something interesting… if you book 1-4 tickets, they were $439 (plus tax/fees), but if you book 5 or more at once, all the tickets were $702 (plus tax/fees).
So the tip of the day is… just buy two different […]

This is an interesting plane if Boeing actually decides to build it…
A 1,000 passenger plane that is faster than existing commercial jets (mach .88), and also more efficient because of the wing design.
.There are several big advantages to the blended wing design, the most important being the lift to drag ratio which is expected to […]

Sometimes it’s great fun (heh, okay…) to publish blog entries in the future. For example when this entry appears on the blog, I’ll be at Dane Cook’s show at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Weeeeee…. great fun!

I found my new favorite “secret powder spot” at Bear Mountain today (it’s off the Silver Mountain lift). The only bad part about it is you need to take 2 different lifts to get to it if you ride through it.
Julien wrecked himself snowboarding today in what was quite possibly the funniest snowboarding crash […]

Me and some friends decided to go to Las Vegas next weekend to go see Dane Cook on Saturday. Whew hew!
Too bad Julien, Scott and all the other sorry suckers that have to work can’t go!

Julien, Anne and myself made it back from the Baja 250 without spending a single day in Mexican jail.
You can get pretty close to the race action (as you can see here)…

On the way there… What the hell is this? 50 miles worth of snow at 4:00 am? Lame!!!!

We made it… this is […]

I *could* be in a Mexican jail right now, but if all goes well I’m in San Felipe watching the start of the Baja 250 race.

Hopefully this whole “write now, publish later” thing in WordPress works… I’m even more hopeful that by the time you read this, that I actually made it to San Felipe, […]

I’m back from visiting Trent and Jamie in Michigan. We had a couple awesome snowboarding days with pretty much perfect conditions. Even drug Jamie into the back-country where she was blazing new trails.
Collin is a cute little bastard (he is 11 months old now).
I know *some* people missed me… because […]

Was at Mammoth mountain the last few days and the day we left (this morning) it was snowing pretty good. Got a half day in before driving home. The mountain got about a foot of powder overnight and was snowing hard enough all morning that when you went back up the lift, your […]

Black Russian squirrels are bad asses.
A “big” stray dog started barking at the squirrels so they attacked and killed the dog. Then ran off with pieces of its flesh. The lesson? Don’t mess with squirrels.
Check it out over here.

A wax museum in Moscow, Russia is currently running an exhibition that highlights dangers of drug use.
This is what happens if you sniff glue, so don’t do it.

Drug addicts commonly get gangrene apparently… haha It seems that drug addicts also have crappy shoes. He probably got gangrene from walking around […]

I finally (only a month or so later) got around to putting up pictures from our Costa Rica trip in December.
So, if you are really bored, you can check out the jungle, monkeys, beach and all the other groovy stuff in Costa Rica.
http://www.shawnhogan.com/gallery/costa-rica-2004

Russia was pretty much as I expected except for one thing. People’s apartments are tiny and their appliances are miniature. The refrigerator and stove look exactly the same, just scaled down 30%. Apartments are more like studios (you basically have one room plus a small kitchen, with that one room being an […]

The economy in Russia is out of whack (you hear about it in the news, but you don’t really know until you visit). Here’s some examples…

A Hummer costs $120,000

A Kia costs $38,000

Gasoline costs $1.50 per gallon (for 95 octane no less). Maybe someone there should start selling gas mail order. heh

A normal […]

The metro in Moscow is neat. It takes you anywhere you want to go within the city for a quarter. It’s crowded and old, but that’s part of the fun. Oh, it’s pretty fast too.
It’s sort of like a roller coaster… you know you probably are safe, but your body tells you […]

Almost two years ago, I went to Hawaii to laze around. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Kauai (which by the way is the nicest hotel I’ve ever seen).
Anyway, they had a specialty drink there called the Poipu Passion (I probably had like 80 of them during our stay). Guess what? […]

I knew about this some years ago, but I forgot until today (Yelena is going to Russia today). Right now, she is on her first flight, traveling at 550 mph at an altitude of 37,000 feet just past Phoenix, Arizona.
If you happen to see this today, you can watch her flights…
First flight […]

Just a little note to let everyone know how super stoked I am (Yelena too) that Chechen terrorists are hitting Russia 2 weeks before we go there. In the last week they blew up two planes, suicide bombed a subway station and now they took a school hostage and are killing kids.
Can’t wait to […]

After 6 weeks of jumping through hoops, I’m going to Russia next month for 5 days.
Russia is not a particularly easy country to travel to (most countries don’t require an American citizen to even get a Visa), but I got it all taken care of.

Got a US Passport

Got “sponsored” so I could apply for a […]