I haven't updated this site in a month and now that I choose to, it's to report bad news.

Our little puppy Fonzie, which we've had for just over 6 weeks, was killed this evening. Unfortunately, it appears that our other dog, Dude, is the one that killed him. Dude loves to play with other dogs, but sometimes gets a little too aggressive, which is probably what happened this evening. I appears Dude bit Fonzie and it didn't take much...

Fonzie was like another child for my wife and she's pretty devastated right now. Two of our kids saw Fonzie shortly after it happened and from what I understand it wasn't a very clean site. Of course all the kids are very upset as well.

I'm very bummed too, I thought Fonzie was a great little dog, he was fun to have around.  

My wife gets the dog, I get this: a 2008 Kawasaki Versys. A fair trade off I think.

This replaces my Triumph Speedmaster which was totaled by the insurance company last month. I had actually had my eye on this bike before the accident and it was one of the first bikes I went to look at when I knew I would be buying something new.

I did consider a demo model 2007 Triumph Tiger at Erico Motorsports, but I couldn't make the numbers work. But honestly, I liked this bike a little better even though it has less power and one less cylinder. 

So far I've only been able to ride it a total of 35 miles. The damn snow is keeping it garaged for now and probably most of the week. Hopefully I'll be able to start riding it to work shorly. 

No, I didn't get these for Christmas, they're just another item that I wanted to share on this website. I've been needing new business cards for some time now. I was shown these "mini cards" from a website called Moo.com a while ago and thought they would make cool business card. At $19.99 for 100 cards, you can't beat the price.

One of the cool things about these company that prints these is that they allow you to do different designs on the front of the card. I choose five different designs and have 20 of each printed, but I could have done 100 different designs if I wanted. I believe you can order cards directly from you Flikr account as well, so that makes it even easier to order multipul prints.

One of the downsides is that they are a very unusual shape, 1" by 2.76", which makes it hard to frame a standard photo in the print area. For the back side, they only offer basic font and color options, so getting something really cool is out of the question. The printing is excellent and this price is great, so it's easy to forgive these minor things.

The cards are printed in the U.K. and it took less than two weeks for them to arrive at my door. These are a great item to have and I would recommend them to anyone. Moo.com also does greeting cards, post cards and other items at very resonable prices.

Much to my amazement, the insurance company has decided to consider my bike a total loss. While the estimated cost to repair is below the amount where they automatically total it, they insurance company was concerned that there would be additional damage found after the repairs began. It wouldn't take much to put it over the "total" amount. Personally think it's repairable, but after considering my options, I've agreed to let them total it.

On the positive side, I'll be coming out a little ahead finacially when I receive their check and they also allowed me to remove the aftermarket items that where on the bike, which I should be able to resell.

So now I'll start searching for a new bike and hopefully will have one in a month or two. Not sure what I'll get, probably another Triumph, but most likely a different model.  

This news is over a week old, but I purposely held back so my parents wouldn't freekout too much if they read it. On Monday, Nov. 26 I was rear-ended on my motorcycle while on my way to work (I was only a block from work). Luckily, the impact wasn't too severe and I managed to keep the bike upright. With the exception of a little soreness, I wasn't hurt at all. Turns out the guy who hit me works for the same company I do, so I know where to find him if needed. Don't know what his reason was for hitting me. 

I had the bike towed to Foothills BMW Triumph in Lakewood, Co. Their current estimate for the damage is approximately $2500. It's been over a week now and as of this writing, we're still waiting for the claims agent from American Family Insurance to come look at it. Apparently they're backed up from the snow storms we had a week or two ago...

I'm hopeful everything goes smoothly and the insurance company approves the estimate from Foothills. With luck I hope to have the bike back on the road by Christmas.

Of course, now that I don't have a bike to ride, the weather has really warmed up - it was 70 degrees yesterday in the Denver area.