Monika's Blog

The DrillSpot.com office is fairly split between CU and CSU grads, so the Rocky Mountain Showdown is always a fun football game. In years past our CEO Paul Lin (CU grad) has made a bet with our accountant Christina (CSU grad and avid lover of CSU). Last year the loser had to dress in an outfit chosen by winner.

This was the outcome:

CU lost and Paul had to dress up in that outfit. This was the reaction of our office when he finally got into the office that day:

As part of the bet, he also had to eat lunch in public somewhere. Illegal Pete’s on Pearl Street was the perfect choice:

No word yet on what the bet will be this year, but it has to top that! Go Buffs!!

I am in desperate need for new laptop bag. A few weeks ago I purchased a Chrome messenger bag, and while it is a great bag and fit my laptop, ipad, camera, cords, everything I needed it to fit, it had one flaw – it squished my boobs.

The few weeks I had it, I tested it out by wearing it around and to and from the office. The bag gave me better posture and was surprisingly light weight considering the number of items I stuffed in it, but that one pesky problem would not go away! The strap and buckle in the front just did not sit right on me. I can’t be the only woman to experience this, but I was not able to find a solution so I decided to return it to Chrome.

So, now I am in need of a new bag before my next 2 conferences. While I have limited time, I really just want a bag that is suitable for both everyday wear and travel. I do not always take my MacBook with me, but I need a bag that will fit a 13 inch laptop and iPad along with all corresponding cords.

I am leaning towards a shoulder bag, but am open to any options. Please help me out and point me in the direction of a new laptop bag!

I am not the biggest fan of the Goo Goo Dolls music anymore, but I was intrigued with seeing Switchfoot and I also cannot pass up a concert at Red Rocks Amphitheater, so when the opportunity arose, of course I went!! Plus it was a time to reminisce with all of Goo Goo Dolls old hits…or so I thought it would be. The temperature was perfect for tailgating before the show (which is part of the package of seeing a concert at Red Rocks).

We missed Green River Ordinance, but made it to our seats in time for Switchfoot and to notice that there were MANY open seats! Sadly the Goo Goo Dolls are not as big of a draw as they once were.

Switchfoot put on a very rocking show where they remixed many of their hits to keep the audience on their feet. I have never seen them play, but if you enjoy their music just a little bit, I recommend going to see them as you will leave appreciating them as musicians much more (at least I did).

I wish I could say the same for Goo Goo Dolls. They started off the show with a lot of energy, but only when playing some brand new music. Every time Johnny Rzeznik started to play any of their hits or older songs, I felt like he had a gun to his head and was not interested into the concert whatsoever. He is also looking a bit older than his 45 years.

This light show was more entertaining than the Goo Goo Dolls were. I hope Johnny was just having an off night and he will soon regain his mojo, but considering he was so off at one of the best venues in the US, I think his career might be over.

Sunday started off much slower for me as I was exhausted from spending 3 whole days in the hot hot heat. We had a 2 day warehouse sale at DrillSpot on Thursday and Friday, so I was outside helping/selling and then on Friday went straight to Fort Collins for dinner and The Heyday and Flobots. I desperately needed to sleep in on Sunday, and after passing out at 9:30 on Saturday night my 11 hour slumber was amazing.

The first band I saw on Sunday was Shel at Old Town Square. When we got there, they were still warming up and the square was packed! I had heard of the band Shel but didn’t know what to expect from them and was surprised to see 4 girls on stage, all dressed up.

While they were good performers, they left something to be desired, so after a few songs we ventured over to the Library Park Stage to see The Northern Way play. It was hotter than hell when they played and most of their fans hide in the shade, which was hundreds of feet from the stage, but some of their hardcore fans bared the heat to move to the front of the stage.

After that we went to watch Wire Faces followed by The Photo Atlas. Both bands are always fun to watch and put on great performances. I even got a Photo Atlas CD which they put together with the Epilogues. We ended the night with Matt Morris. He has a great voice and songs, but I wanted his show to be a bit more rock/pop/upbeat. It was nice to end on a more acoustic set, but I do prefer rock.

All in all it was a great 3 days of music! It was hot, and crowded, and so definitely worth it.

This year’s line up of bands at Bohemian Nights was incredible. I started off Friday night watching Pep*Squad’s last show ever, followed by a great performance from The Heyday. I was even lucky enough to experience the Flobots set from back stage.

Saturday started off with breakfast and a bloody mary from The Silver Grille. We then went straight to the music at Linden Street Stage to see The Tumbledowns perform cover songs by Aerosmith, Weezer, Jet and more. Despite playing at 11:30 to an already overheated crowd, they put on a great show. I cut out for a bit to go check out Tyler Ward and Julia Sheer play on the acoustic stage. Tyler writes and performs all of the songs with Julia, who is still in high school! She has an incredible voice and will be someone to watch in the coming years.

After that we meandered over to the Mountain Stage and caught the last song by Good Gravy! before watching Snake Rattle Rattle Snake. They are very impressive and definitely deserved to win the Denver Underground Music Showcase earlier this year.

The Don’ts and Be Carefuls were the next band on our list. They performed at the Old Town Square Stage and I overheard someone compare them the the Arcade Fire (I do not listen to AF very much, so I won’t comment on that).

After standing in the sun for about 45 minutes, we needed some shade! We walked back to the Mountain stage and paid admission into the New Belgium area next to the Melting Pot so we both rest our feet from standing all day and our skin from the cloudless sky.

From here we watched Kinetix who put on a good show and Grieves and Budo, who didn’t live up to the hype. I had heard so much about Grieves and was excited to get his sunglasses and hear him rap. His sunglasses left the following stains on my face, and his music left me wanting more. Don’t get me wrong, his rapping is impressive, but after he was done I was not able to distinguish one song from the next. I just want a little more variety in a show.

We were unsure where to go next, but were told by Adam of Fierce Bad Rabbit that we should go check out Nathanial Rateliff at the Old Town Square Stage. So glad we went! He is an impressive artist that I keep seeing all over the Denver area music scene (but you know how that goes). After that was Fierce Bad Rabbit who were amazing, as always. I have seen them many times, but they never fail to impress me.

After Fierce Bad I just had to go and see Meese perform their last show of all time. I have watched them since they first formed and opened for The Fray years ago at the Gothic Theatre and am a little sad to see them go, but excited to see what their new band does. For those interested, here is Meese performing “The Start Of It” at Bohemian Nights as their last song ever as a band:

What a great concept for a video! It combines 2 of my loves: music and the internet. I am not a huge fan of the song (maybe it will grow on me) but this video is so much fun! I love that it was done in one shot and it looks like it would be a ton of fun to film:

I always love when bands put together behind the scenes that give you a bit more of a glimpse into their personalities.

What do you think?

Recently I have taken over the task of helping out my brother’s band, Tickle Me Pink, with the huge task of opening their own online marketplace to sell their merchandise to fans all over the US. Despite the fact that I work for an e-commerce website (DrillSpot.com), starting a new store from scratch is a ton of work!

While I have been researching different platforms over the past few weeks that offer easy back-end systems that allow you to sell products online, it was not until this weekend that I decided on which one we were going to use, BigCartel.com.

Originally I wanted to use Bandzoogle.com, but after signing up for their free trial and testing it out I decided that they offered many more features than what we required (website design, hosting, email campaigns, sms, fan club etc). Their backend was a bit clunky, not very user friendly and the themes they feature on their examples section are not available for all to use (the available ones were a lot more like old-school, bad Myspace themes). I decided to stick with using Tumblr for TickleMePink’s blog/main website and combine it with BigCartel’s store as opposed to throwing it all into Bandzoogle. (Note: these are my personal opinions and not reflective of the band).

When we started uploading products we were using the the free version of BigCartel but as we were sorting through all of Tickle Me Pink’s merchandise it became clear that we would need to upgrade to the $10 a month plan in order to display the 10 t-shirts, 1 hoodie and 1 cd that TMP currently sells:

As I said, the backend of BigCartel is simple, clean and makes it very easy to upload many products and images to your store:

Honestly the most time consuming parts of creating the store were:

1) setting up a BigCartel account (requires a PayPal business account – had to upgrade our original PayPal)

2) creating a sub-domain for TickleMePinkRock.com (this was probably just due to my own ignorance in the matter, but figuring out how to make GoDaddy, Tumblr and BigCartel work nicely took me a little while)

3) counting and organizing all of the merchandise (12 different shirts over 4 different sizes, mixed between 5 containers, oh my!)

4) photographing every item for their website:

It took me all weekend, but it was worth it! The official Tickle Me Pink store is up and running at store.TickleMePinkRock.com/products and we have even had our first sale! While creating this store was a bit of work, I highly encourage any band, or artist, who wants to sell their products online to take a look at BigCartel.com.

A few weeks ago I decided that I would make a point to get up early and head over to Atlas Purveyors for Boulder Open Coffee Club. I decided to go for a few reasons, the biggest being that I wanted to do something new that allowed me to meet other local people. BOCC was a good outing as many of the people I follow on Twitter regularly attend and over the past few months I had grown curious as to what exactly this BOCC event was.

Truthfully when I got to Atlas that morning I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Boulder Open Coffee Club (or really what the name even meant at all). I can be a fairly shy person and not one to want attention, but I felt more comfortable after running into some of my friends, Chris, Joni and Joel.

BOCC started off similar to a BDNT, but after the usual job offerings and introductions (which yes, I skipped…and yes I will introduce myself tomorrow, I promise) is when it got interesting. From there it turned into a discussion over the recent tech news which that particular week included: a debate on reasons to jailbreak your iphone, an introduction to flipboard, hulu+ and who received invitations and much more.

Gathering among others who are as interested in tech news as myself, over coffee nonetheless, was a great way to start off my Tuesday morning, which is why I plan on continuing to attend BOCC (and why you should consider going as well).

I haven’t been to Baltimore since I was in 8th grade and on a school trip to Washington DC with about 150 other 8th and 9th graders. My memory of Baltimore from that trip were that there was a huge indoor mall, right off the harbor and close to the aquarium. Today I returned for the eTail East Conference and Baltimore is nothing like I remember!

Paul and I arrived a day early, so we figured we would take the day to explore the city. The front desk at the Hilton Hotel recommended that we walk to Power Plant Live! which is just off the harbor.

After a short walk we realized that we had walked all the way through the harbor and passed by the Power Plant thinking there was more. The Power Plant consists of a Hard Rock Cafe, ESPNZone, Dicks Last Resort, Barnes and Noble, Potbelly’s and a few other smaller fast food restaurants.

While Paul would have loved to go to Potbelly’s, I preferred going somewhere that was unique to Baltimore. I turned to Yelp, and found Pickles Pub which was conveniently located next to the Hilton. While Paul’s heaven is pictured above, I was in heaven at Pickles (I love pickles). We started with an order of fried pickles. And by we, I really mean me because Paul doesn’t like pickles (though he always orders them to share with me). Then my sandwich (which was absolutely incredible) came with a pickle. I don’t think that I can overdose on pickles, but I came close tonight.

While my first adult impression of Baltimore was not that great, I am hoping that the next few days, coupled with my experience at Pickles, will change my mind of Baltimore.

Let me know if there is anything in Baltimore that I need to see/do! And yes I do plan on visiting the aquarium on Wednesday night.