AndrewReiter.com

I want to wish all 3? of you that visit my website a wonderful Thanksgiving!  This is probably one of the best holidays of the year.   It hasn’t been taken over by commercialism, or at least not as much as every other holiday.  It’s all about family and being thankful for what you have.  And on top of that, you get to stuff yourself full of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pie, etc. without any remorse! … Maybe.

The LAN Party was a big success.  We had 19 or 20 people in the house playing Team Fortress 2, mainly.  We even had Garrett and Justin playing from home here and there.  It was a blast.  We mixed in some WAR and the Left 4 Dead demo when we had the chance.  I’m still looking for the owner of a jacket that was left, if it is one of you 3, let me know.

I have been working on a new project lately.  It is a website for my swim team.  It is coming along quite nicely.  I’m using an open source content management system, Joomla. For someone like me, that isn’t a web developer, it makes it VERY easy to setup a website.  There is a fairly large community that creates modules and plugins for the software as well.  That is really where open source shines.  I use an older version of Joomla for one of our websites at work, so I had a little bit of background with it going in.

I’m finally getting to writing this… it has been a busy week.  The games last weekend were awesome.  I’m glad I decided to do it.  I raced in 8 events and received 7 medals, 5 silver and 2 bronze.  I have a few pictures and videos of each race here.  I borrowed an HD camera from work for the weekend, and the downsizing and encoding done by Google Video just doesn’t do it justice.  I made a DVD, which also doesn’t do it justice.

The Mizzou Student Rec Center is amazing.  They have 4 pools, several BBall courts, lounges, and other facilities I didn’t see.  The place is huge!  The pool is supposed to be the fastest in the region since it is so deep(fewer waves).  There have been several world records broken there already.  I didn’t quite break one… but a guy on my team(the reason why I didn’t win any Golds) broke 5 records this weekend.  They were Missouri records based on age group, 25-29.

I’ve finally caught up on a few things. I’ve uploaded several groups of pictures to my Picasa site. One set is from the Stephenson Family Reunion, which was this past weekend. For those not “in the know”, that is my Mom’s side of the family. We went down to Kimberling City, MO (just SW of Branson). It was great fun. I got to see some cousins from California that I don’t get to see often.. or ever. The weekend was filled with plenty of boating, fishing, and card playing.

This past Tuesday I participated in my first swim meet. It was a basic meet setup just to get your times on races. There were no awards or anything. I was happy to not come in last in any of my races. Well… the 50 freestyle I was last in my heat, but there were several slower times in other heats. I also swam the 50 backstroke, 50 breaststroke, and somehow finished the 100 butterfly. 100m isn’t that far, but the butterfly is simply a difficult stroke. I hadn’t even finished 100 fly in practice once, so I was pumped just to finish the race… and not even in last place! And of course, I was scheduled to swim in a 200 Free Relay the race after the 100 Fly. Luckily I swam the last leg, which allowed me to catch my breath a bit. So… I’ve gotten my first taste of competitive swimming. It will help the nerves quite a bit for the Show-Me Games.

Update: My Results

Katie has gotten me hooked on a new hobby. We have been swimming for 1-2 hours, 4-5 days a week after work. It really is a great workout. My competitive side has got me wrapped into competing already as well. I’ll be headed to the Show-Me Games in Columbia, MO. I’ll be swimming at the Mizzou Aquatic center, which is a world-class facility. Considering a swimmer’s prime is about my age, I’m sure I’ll get trounced there. It will still be fun. If anyone is interested in attetnding, it is the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of August. I swim each afternoon. I’ll be competing in the following races:

50 and 100 Freestyle
50 and 100 Backstroke
50 Breaststroke
50 Butterfly
100 and 200 Individual Medley

I have just over a month to finish preparing. I’m hoping to at least finish all my races with a respectable time. The only one I’m really worried about right now is the 200 IM. That will be a tough race for me.

Last weekend a bunch of us went on a float trip on the Big River in DeSoto. Matt has some pictures on his Flickr site. Don’t get confused by the size of the fish in the picture of me. We were catching lots of little ones like that, but I did catch some decent smallmouth and a couple largemouth… oh yeah, and a buzz.