Wishing You the Best, @VegasGeek!

I met John Hawkins 4 years ago when I arrived at his office for a job interview. At the time, he was the Director ofTechnical Services for a small startup I was pursuing a management position for. You know how most management level folks dress up to conduct interviews? Not John. From what I recall, he was wearing a polo like he often wears,jeans, and some casual footwear. Oh, and I definitely did not miss seeing the big, multi-colored "GEEK" tattoo on his arm that stretches from wrist to elbow, and the peculiar tattoos on his knuckles (I learned in time that they symbolized one of his favorite hobbies). Talk about first impressions! His appearance scared me a bit - he looked like a cross between a gangster straight outta prison and a super-nerd.

Fortunately, I landed the job, and ended up working with John for a couple of years. Lo and behold, he turned out to be a really cool guy. From a business perspective, I learned a lot from him about web development and technology. I have many fond memories of the meetings John held in his office that frequently led into different conversations that had us laughing our behinds off - sometimes nearly "piddling" in our pants.

It was a sad day when John accepted a position to oversee a different division of the company, and he moved to another building. But like with many other folks in the office, John and I built a friendship that we continue to maintain outside of work. He and his wife Chris are like family to me, and I'm glad that we get to see eachother often.

For those of you who already know him, John is an incredibly bright, talented individual, so it was no surprise that he's finally branching off to do his own work. I thought it would be fun to write a brief tribute to John, in honor of today being his last day at a conventional job. I decided instead to share one of my favorite memories of him that I captured on my blog a little over a year ago. It describes one of the many funny moments that John and I still laugh about to this day! The video, by the way, is quite entertaining, too. Enjoy!

Originally posted December 30, 2008. To check out the video John had produced as a result of this prank, click on this link.
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Today was a victory for John "Vegasgeek" Hawkins.

Upon my return from Mexico in late November, I got wind of the fact that Rick Astley himself had Rickrolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I felt motivated to continue promoting the cause. I randomly Rickrolled a few people in the past month for the sheer joy of doing so. John was the one person who fell victim to my Rickrolling schemes more than once. It was only natural that he seek revenge.

This morning I receive this IM from John:

9:04 AM John Hawkins: Hey, so, I get home last night and I'm totally stuck on the bacon website... I spent about an hour looking for themes for it. Haven't found one just yet. But, I was talking to Jason and told him about the Patron Saint of Bacon and he laughed and then showed me another bacon link... So, I had to post about them both. Go check out http://baconfan.com/ - too F'n funny!

Amused by the fact that John was so entertained by my finding the Patron Saint of Bacon, I obliged by visiting his bacon blog site. At first glance, there he was: Saint Anthony, Patron Saint of Bacon in all his pork glory. The post starts with praise for friends sending him bacon-related products, then describes my find and that of fellow blogger and friend, Jason. Jason's product was unsuspectingly presented as a link, preceded by "I tried 3 times to explain it, but this guy described it better than I ever could." John heralded it as "the weirdest bacon product EVER," so how could I not have clicked on the link?

Well, I clicked. My browser shrank into a smaller version of itself, and danced around on my desktop. When I attempted to use Task Manager to close Firefox, a pop-up appeared announcing that the fun wasn't over. Try to close the pop-up, and it encouraged me to sing along, displaying the beloved lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up." That's right...I got RickRolled.

John showed up in my office minutes later with a smile of satisfaction on his face. He turned to my colleague's desk, reached down to pull up a gadget, pointed it at me, and said "You just got RickRolled." We laughed.

It gets funnier.

His accomplice (another employee who had to stand in for my colleague who was his original partner-in-crime) planted the hidden video camera on my colleague's desk without actually pointing the camera in my direction. Instead of capturing my reaction to getting RickRolled, the video camera recorded about 30 minutes of wall. There was audio, however, and it did manage to capture over 4 minutes of my laughter and frantic clicking of the mouse while the RickRoll music played in the background.

Kudos to John for setting up this elaborate prank. You may have won this battle, my friend - but I'm still winning the war.

Let's Catch Up, Shall We?

Since I'm sure you were wondering what I had been up to the past few months, I'll backtrack a little bit and tell you some stories.

California Roadtrip 2009 *Part 1*

Earlier this summer, my favorite companion, KC, and I found ourselves discussing theme park adventures of our youth. He recalled a time back in Colorado when he and friends would get wasted then hang out at the nearby amusement park, taking on ride after ride until the park closed. My most recent memory was several years ago when my party friends and I would leave the club around 4am, decide on the way home to hit LA for a few days, and often found ourselves on the road - sleepless and drunk - by 5am en route to Magic Mountain. It was then that I learned that KC had never been to Magic Mountain, despite being in Vegas for several years. We immediately decided that a trip to Valencia for some roller coaster excitement was in order. Little did we know this getaway would turn into an extended roadtrip!

A few weeks later, we hit the road on a Sunday afternoon in July. By this time the desert heat was blazing, so it was doubly pleasant to watch the temperature drop the further west we drove. When we reached Glendale, CA just a few hours later, we were relieved to be able to spend the evening in the 70-something degree weather.

On a sidenote, there are two things that I absolutely do not miss about California: First, the traffic; Secondly, the fact that many businesses close early in the evening puts limitations on how much fun you can have on a Sunday night. Living in Las Vegas has spoiled us with its 24-hour nature. When we arrived in Cali that Sunday, we found that most restaurants were closed, and we had to settle on eating at some chain restaurant we were less than thrilled about. Despite the lackluster meal, KC brought the fun to dinner by turning on his redneck alter-ego (later to be named "Gilbert") by talking to our waitress in his best backwoods accent, then later turning off the drawl in hopes of catching her confusion. She didn't seem to catch on from what we witnessed, but she might have been puzzled about the experience after we left.

On Monday, we got up and headed out toward Magic Mountain about 30 minutes north of where we were staying. The temperature was an uncomfortable 95 degrees when we reached the park, but we knew the heat would dissipate as the day wore on. Determined to satisfy the adrenaline junkie in us both, we mapped out the day to ensure that we hit all of the big thrill rides, with our first stop being the X2 near the entrance of the park. Sadly, the ride was shut down indefinitely, and subsequently was one of only two rides we didn't get to experience. One of the best new additions to Six Flags was Tatsu, coined as the tallest, fastest, and longest flying coaster on Earth. We literally flew on this ride - after boarding the ride in a seated position and buckling in, the platform disappeared beneath us and the seats were repositioned so that we were parallel to the ground. It was an incredible sensation flying like Superman, zooming high above. My personal favorite was Déjà Vu, a coaster that pulls you back in a ski-lift like chair at a 90 degree vertical angle then, without warning, drops you. You seem to be free-falling straight for the ground until you speed into a loop then through a butterfly. You climb into another 90 degree vertical tower, and dangle for several seconds staring up at the sky. Just when you think you've completely caught your breath, you're once again free-falling backwards into the butterfly and loop all over again. I described this coaster as the ride of my nightmares, and cursed, "Holy muther fuckin' shit, that was awesome!" as I disembarked. "Gilbert" shouted out, "Hot damn! That was hotter than a bull in the summertime!"

The fact that there were practically no lines was an advantage of touring the park on a Monday. The longest wait was for Superman The Escape, which cost us maybe 45 minutes in line. The worst part was that the ride itself is a total of 15 seconds, which came with a risk of serious whiplash if you didn't know what to expect. As we exited the ride, people laughed as "Gilbert" exclaimed, "That's it?!? I can go faster than that in mah corvette!"

One of the craziest things about KC playing this character Gilbert most of the time we were at the park is how odd of a social experiment it became. During and between rides he would throw out some of the most inappropriate remarks just to see if he could get a rise out of certain people. Surprisingly, people just laughed or were completely oblivious. There was something either very comical or retarded about a redneck who makes ignorant comments. We were really just glad that we didn't offend or get in trouble with anyone out there.

Anyway, with just a couple of breaks, we rode everything with the exception of the aforementioned X2 and Goliath - like X2, Goliath was closed indefinitely for "testing." For our last thrill, we rode Scream 4 or 5 times in a row until the dizziness took hold of me, and I had to finally had to call it quits. By then, the park was about to shut down for the night, and we were tired. It turned out to be an awesome day at Magic Mountain, and we decided that we would return for more action someday soon.

For our last scheduled day in California, I had planned to take KC around LA to check out some of the major attractions nearby before heading back to Vegas. In addition to never having been to Magic Mountain, he had only been to Los Angeles twice in the past few years - and both times he worked gigs downtown that kept him from seeing anything with the exception of Santa Monica pier. I thought that Venice Beach might be a good spot for people watching, but I completely neglected the fact that we were there on a Tuesday. It turned out to be ok anyway, since there were still a few crazy people there, and we got to walk the length of the shore through uncrowded beach. The weather was fantastic, too.

Prior to reaching Venice Beach, while stuck in traffic, I had made a quick comment how one day I would love to just drive the length of Highway 1, The Pacific Coast Highway, up the coast from Southern California all the way to San Francisco. KC turned to me and said, "Let's do it. I don't have to be at work until Friday afternoon..." I hesitated for a moment as I thought about the clothes I packed for the weekend, concerned that I wouldn't have anything appropriate for the chilliness of Northern Cali weather. After a minute, I replied, "Oh, why not! How often do we get a chance to do something like that?" Fortunately, KC overpacked a bit for this trip too, and we agreed that we could easily pick up anything else we would need on the way north.

Our last stop in the Los Angeles area was the Los Feliz neighborhood for the best carnitas tacos in SoCal, then up into Griffith Park to check out the Griffith Observatory. The observatory itself is familiar to many for its appearance in films, those of which I cannot name. It is a great place to visit for learning scientific tidbits and enjoying some interactive fun. It also provides an amazing panoramic view of Los Angeles, from the downtown area to the Hollywood Hills and the famous Hollywood sign. As the evening began to settle in over Hollywood, we left Griffith Park with a course set for the PCH, specifically Malibu. I thought a great way to close out our time in SoCal would be to drive through Malibu on PCH at sunset. It was indeed beautiful, and it was an awesome sight to peer out into the Pacific Ocean for hours from the edge of the west coast and watch the colors of the sky fade into the darkness. We made a dinner stop in Santa Barbara late in the evening, and decided to call it a night when we reached Morro Bay, a tiny coastal town approximately 120 miles south of Monterey. I distinctly remember the smell of the sea air when we reached the hotel, and the sound of sea lions in the distance just before I laid my head down to sleep at 1am in the morning.

Don't worry, there's more! Give me a couple of days, will ya?!?