Here is a black bookshelf that I originally made for my office but my wife claimed it. It was my first time making a finished shelf but I was happy with how it turned out.

Below are pictures of a desk that I built for myself about three years ago. I was just moving it back into my office (from another room in the house) and thought I’d snap some pictures of it while it was cleaned off.

I built it out of a 4′x8′ sheet of Birch plywood and 8 metal legs that I ordered online from IKEA. I made it by cutting out my pieces, routing the edges (made them curved) and then I put on three coats of clear coat polyurethane. I’ve taken it apart and moved it at least four times and it’s held up really well. My total investment in the desk was way below what I would have had to pay at a store and I really like how it turned out.

A few years ago, I built a carpetball table for the family. Carpetball is a pretty simple game. You basically set up your pool balls in whatever configuration you want and you try to knock your opponents balls in to the pocket (at each end) by rolling a cue ball at them. If the cue ball goes in (scratch), you have to pull the balls back out. The first person to knock all the balls in, wins.

I built the table for the family because even my little kids can play and it’s a lot of fun. The paint has been nicked up a bit but it fits perfectly in a hallway in our basement.

This pictures shows the pocket at each end of the table.

I love WordPress. It’s true. If you’re unfamiliar, WordPress is a powerful and highly popular open-source (free) content management system. WordPress powers 14.7% of the top million websites in the world and 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the US are running WordPress.

I use it to power this website and I recommend it to anyone looking for an easy way to manage a website without being an HTML expert.

Here are the 5 reasons why I love WordPress:

1. It’s an awesome content management system (CMS). A CMS allows a website owner to make updates to a website without knowing any HTML. WordPress is one of the best out there. It’s extremely easy-to-use and can be customized to serve just about any website’s CMS needs.

2. It’s non-proprietary. WordPress is open-source, meaning that anyone can use it without having to pay annual/monthly licensing fees. It’s free to use and can be used for unlimited websites. You do still have to pay for a domain (i.e. www.acmecompany.com), website hosting and a programmer (if you want a customized WordPress site).

I despise proprietary CMS systems, mainly because there is typically a web development company attached to it that has locked a unknowing client into some kind of ridiculous long-term/expensive commitment. Most of the time, if you walk away from a proprietary system, you have to start all over with a new website because you can’t take it with you. Not with WordPress. There are countless developers out there that can pick up the site for you without major headache.

3. It’s relatively easy for DIYers to learn. Want to build your own WordPress site? You don’t even have to know how to install it. Hosting companies like GoDaddy have WordPress hosting accounts where everything is set up for you. All you have to do is log in using the username/password they gave you and you’re up and running. There are so many great resources out there (see below). All you really need is a desire to learn, time and your friend Google.

4. There are tons of great free resources available. Anything and everything you could need from free themes to awesome plugins are out there. There are countless developers out there building free tools for WordPress. Even the paid themes and plugins are very reasonable.

Below are some of my all-time favorite plugins (all used on this website). I’m currently using Thesis as my theme and it’s well worth the money.

• All in One SEO Pack
• Contact Form 7
• Google XML Sitemap Generator
• NextGEN Gallery
• WordPress Database Backup
• Thesis OpenHook

5. It’s SEO-friendly. SEO stands for search engine optimization. Google loves WordPress sites. It’s true. I can’t necessarily explain all the technical aspects here but WordPress is built in a way that makes your site easy for the search engines to index. I’m sure it has to do with the fact that WordPress started off as a blogging engine and that search engines absolutely love blogs because of their rich and highly-relevant content.

I’ve been using WordPress for my own personal sites for the past five years and I love it. I typically recommend it to anyone that wants a highly customizable and easy-to-use CMS.

Why do you love WordPress? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Velocity Weekly interviewed me (above) in 2004 for a video gaming story about Madden Football 2005.

I’ve enjoyed playing video games for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I’ve owned just about every system imaginable: Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, PlayStation, Playstation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

Back in 2003, I tried to parlay my love for video gaming into a business. You can read about my adventures below.

Louisville Video Gaming Association (LVGA)

After attending a huge (what I thought was poorly organized) video game tournament (Halo) in April 2003 with some of my friends, I thought it would be fun start hosting my own tournaments. It seemed like a pretty simple idea. At the time, I was working at a local newspaper and started running ads looking for local video gamers. After hearing from a lot of people, I decided to create the Louisville Video Gaming Association (LVGA).

We held tournaments and get-togethers at various venues. I even had the opportunity to write some video gaming-related columns for Louisville Eccentric Observer, a local weekly newspaper. Over the first year of its existence, the LVGA grew by leaps and bounds. We went from one tournament with around 30 participants to a tournament of nearly 150 participants. Our web site message boards had several hundred members posting messages on a regular basis and traffic to the site was around 40,000 pageviews a month. We even received some local press for our activities. I was even interviewed by Velocity about video gaming (see above).

We were doing so well in fact that I started having thoughts of opening a video gaming center. I surveyed hundreds of local gamers on the LVGA website and determined there was a demand for such a business.

Louisville Gaming Center

Me and a partner opened the Louisville Gaming Center, Louisville’s FIRST console-only gaming center, in December 2003. The plan was to host tournaments, leagues, b-day parties, and corporate events. Since video gaming had become so popular, I thought it would be a great place for friends to get together and play video games. The LGC got great press from LEO, Velocity, and Fox 41 (Fox in the Morning and Fox News at 10).

Unfortunately, the business didn’t do as well as we had hoped. We decided to close shop after four months. Looking back, we just didn’t have a good plan and were a little ahead of our time. The idea didn’t catch on. Plus, it was difficult to run a retail business with a family at home.

It was a great experience for me and I’m proud to say that I tried it.

Click on the thumbnails below to view some pictures of the gaming center.

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I had a great experience with the LVGA and Louisville Gaming Center. I met a lot of great people and formed some wonderful friendships. Now that those days have passed, I’m content sitting at home playing video games with my kids.

In 2006, I wrote New Father’s Guide: How to Survive 42 Days Without Sex as gift for one of my friends expecting the birth of his first daughter. I wanted to give him something fun and unique (and clean) that poked fun at the six week sexual drought that would immediately follow the birth of his daughter. It has 42 days (6 weeks) of suggested activities to help the new father make it through.

Here’s a sample activity (Day #21) from the book.

You can get the book at NewFathersGuide.com.

As a co-leader of my son’s Tiger Scout den, I had the opportunity to create a car for a Mini Pinewood Derby. The rules required that the car be a smaller size than typical Pinewood Derby cars. I got the idea for the Happy Meal after seeing a scout eating Chicken McNuggets in one of our pack meetings. It was slow as heck on the track but it sure looked good.

Recently I unsubscribed from a Groupon daily alerts mailing list (I think my wife subscribed me) and I was taken to an unsubscribe page with this funny video. There isn’t any audio but I thought it was one of the most creative pages I’ve ever seen.

Just in case you can’t read the copy it says the following:

“Well, we want to introduce you to Derrick – he’s the guy that thought you’d enjoy receiving the Daily Groupon email.”

This almost makes me want to re-subscribe…Almost.

When I left full-time employment with New West back in September 2009 to start my own company, I went on a COBRA insurance plan. This allowed me to have full insurance coverage for my family. A couple of months ago, New West hired Ceridian to administer its COBRA insurance program.

Once I accepted my new position at Power Creative, I called Ceridian to cancel my COBRA insurance policy. They told me that they couldn’t cancel my coverage because I had an outstanding balance of $.03 (I later found out that they had sent me two invoices. The second one was for $.03 more than the first.). Guess which one I paid?

I was told that I couldn’t cancel my policy until I paid the $.03.

Seriously? Let’s think about this for a second. I had to attach a $0.44 stamp to my payment, postal workers had to sort and deliver the envelope and then Ceridian had to pay someone to sort through all the mail and put my payment in the correct box.

After I got over the silliness of the whole situation, I mailed in my payment…

Update: I canceled my policy today. I guess they accepted my payment.

The Midwest Poker Series hired me to build eight custom poker tabletops featuring a padded rail, custom printed cloth, dealer cutout and chip tray for use in their poker tournaments at local bars and other establishments.