I gotta say…I’m still in love with Denver and still completely happy/content with my decision to move here. Things haven’t gone perfectly as I’d foolishly built up in my mind that they would, but apart from a few setbacks I honestly cannot complain. And, I can say without a doubt, I’ve never been as happy as I have been since moving here.

The only real downsides to the city I’ve found are ones I’ve already mentioned: parking and, well, vehicles in general. Luckily, I found a lot on 20th & Arapahoe that only costs $4 for all-day parking and is 3 blocks from where I work now (yeah, I got a job!)…but I feel like a tool driving a mile to/from work everyday.

But $4/day is certainly better than $25/day. Stupid parking rules. I still haven’t received the replacement registration slip I requested over 2 weeks ago from the WI DMV. That’s partially my fault as I lost my wallet and had to cancel my checking account along with a couple other credit card accounts, requiring me to send another check from my new account. But still. It’s been over a week since that happened and they haven’t even cashed the check yet. I don’t get it.

And yes…losing my wallet proved to be an even BIGGER headache than I could’ve ever possibly imagined. Since I no longer have a driver’s license, I’ve been carrying around my passport (which scares the shit out of me). I went to the CO DMV last week Wednesday to get my CO license and finally get back on track with becoming a resident here.

Except I need my WI license to get my CO license. Unless I’m going to retake both the written and road tests to get my CO license from the ground up. Which I’m not going to do because I’m not effing 16 years old.

So I filled out that form and mailed it along with a check for $14 to the WI DMV on Friday (Priority Mail with a self-addressed & stamped Priority Mail envelope inside for them to mail back my replacement driver’s license ASAP) and hopefully I’ll have that by the end of this week. If not, I’m going to be EXTREMELY angry. I can’t help shake the feeling that I’m going to end up being required to fly back to WI for a day trip so I can hang out at the DMV and take care of all this shit once and for all.

Other than that nonsense (and finding out it’ll be like $400 for my CO license plates when I finally do register as a resident here), Denver has been absolutely incredible. The people I’ve met and continue to meet are amazing; they’re so open, inviting and friendly and most have been in the same situation as me. Those that haven’t are just as nice and inviting. I’ve got an incredible group of friends here and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of them.

My job not only has a lax dress code, lax swearing policy, drinking-on-Friday’s policy and have fun policy but it’s downtown on the 21st floor with an AWESOME view of the mountains. I’ve always wanted to work in a high-rise building and I finally do in an awesome work environment with a killer view. I couldn’t ask for more (other than more money but whatever—money isn’t everything).

It’s been 5 weeks and I’m happier than ever. I can’t wait to see what the next 5 weeks brings!

I guess this is more a rescinding of one of the last ones I mentioned: parking.

It sucks. SUCKS.

I’ve gotten 4 tickets. I swear to God, the parking dude knows where I live now and scopes out my block looking for the black truck with WI plates becuase HE KNOWS I don’t have a permit and am a guaranteed $25. I’m up to 4 tickets now. :(

Other than that, though, this is still pretty much the best city in America as far as I’m concerned. The people are still ridiculously nice, everyone is outgoing and looking to have fun and the city LET’S US have fun.

Last Sunday a group of us went to Wash Park (I’ve even got the lingo down now ;)) to hang out and play bags, volleyball, shoot the shit and drink in the park.

I’m pretty sure it’s not legal to drink in the parks in Milwaukee. And this coming weekend is a HUGE party at Wash park where they apparently fill the kiddie pool with beer and everyone is supposed to hang out in swim trunks/bikinis and just drink all day while having a good time.

How frickin’ awesome is that? I can’t believe this place exists AND that I live here. I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy in my life. :D

I assume this is going to be an ongoing series of posts here (that’s what I tell myself anyway) where I just list off things I’ve discovered that brought a smile to my face, made me laugh or WTF hard.

• Traffic girl on channel 9 is named Amelia Earhart
• Female morning news anchor on channel 9 is named Kyle
• Dogs are everywhere…even restaurants and bars
• People on bikes seems to have no regard for human life
• People on the 16th Street Mall also seem to have no regard for human life
• People in this city are ridiculously nice…to the point of making me question if this is real or not
• Comcast sucks (more on this in a future post) but their phone support is surprisingly decent
• Parking downtown/near downtown is an exercise in frustration but…
• Parking enforcement is so lax I wonder if anyone actually does it

I’ve been consistently impressed with Sphinx and the Thinking_Sphinx plugin for Rails since I started using it way back in late 2009 when I was working on the Drink Special Database and now that I’m running Ubuntu and can easily have it installed and working on my dev machine to actually test it in use, it’s been incredible.

I just implemented it in the production version of the Bootleg Database tonight and, after a little wrangling, got it working damn-near perfectly.

Some important things to note:

• when running the rake tasks in production, make sure to put RAILS_ENV=production at the end of every command
• pay attention to how the sphinx.yml file is being setup because
• running rake ts:config RAILS_ENV=production can get royally screwed up if one is careless

More on this later…gonna pass out for now, but I plan on updating this tomorrow with full code breakdowns of what I did with my sphinx.yml file as well as the steps I took to ensure it was working on my Dreamhost PS.

UPDATE: various bits necessary to get everything working as it one would expect.

For starters, the following code was needed for the index action of Performances:

@performances = Performance.search(params[:search], :page => params[:page], :per_page => 25)

And for the sphinx.yml file, rather than using what the Thinking Sphinx people recommend, I had to modify the attributes being defined (thanks to looking at the sphinx.yml and production.sphinx.conf files from The Drink Special Database for guidance) to be:

production:
  bin_path: '/usr/local/bin'
  searchd_file_path: '/path/to/app/db/sphinx'

And then, finally , when running rake ts:config RAILS_ENV=production, the config file was correctly written, the search daemon was able to start and I’m able to search the site. :D

Now, to setup a cron job to reindex every night. I think I need to get my crap together and start using Capistrano ASAP, too…

So after the last attempt at using Google Navigation, I was a bit gunshy about trying it on my way to Madison this last weekend but I figured I owed it to myself and the application to suffer through it again as long as possible to ensure it really is a problem with the software/phone/OS or to see if it was just a fluke that first time I used it.

Well, after the trip there and back, I feel pretty safe saying it was a fluke.

No longer was I 1000 feet or so ahead of where the GPS was…I was maybe 10 feet ahead of it but for the most part, it was spot-on to my location.

SWEET RELIEF.

I had no problems with it losing me while changing lanes or constantly needing to reroute me (except for the one time I took a wrong turn and it was totally my fault. Yes. I took a wrong turn while having a GPS yell at me which way I was supposed to go. Sue me.)

It was an incredibly slick experience and one that I’m quite grateful for having now that it’s actually working. I’m looking forward to using the crap out of this in Colorado in just under a week now… :D