chuggnutt.com

Is it just me, or does this particular ad placement on the Bend.com article pictured below seem really... I don't know, juvenile? Not to mention, wrong.

Click for full size

It just hasn't been the same since Barney left.

Okay, I freely admit I stole the title from Jake. Everyone have a good holiday? Mostly? Good.

There's no denying it, Christmas is for the kids. We had more presents under the tree than ever, I think, almost all for them. And, they're just at that age now where Christmas is a Big Deal, possibly the Biggest Deal of the Whole Year, so it was full frontal X-Mas this year. (Yeah, I chose that phrase deliberately, just to weed out the pervs. I'm watching you.)

So, here's a (mostly boring) list of what I got this year, both for my birthday and Christmas (no particular order):

• Two big fancy bottles of Rogue beer: Imperial Pilsner and Imperial IPA.
• The Confusion and The System of the World (books by Neal Stephenson).
• Clothing: a sweater, a long-sleeved flannel shirt (gotta love the flannel), pajamas.
• A Disney World shot glass mug, etched with my name.
• A new wallet, with a hundred dollar bill in it. I almost didn't find the money, I thought the wallet was nifty enough.
• The board game "Brewopoly."
• Peanuts: the Art of Charles M. Schulz
• A Barnes and Noble gift card
• Money! Some of which I've already used to buy some books and fancy beer
• The annual Christmas ornament with the picture of the kids
• DVDs: The Incredibles and Batman Begins
• The Forty-Niners, a graphic novel
• A reading lamp—a standing lamp with a gooseneck lamp addition
• The Budweiser Brewery from Department 56—a porcelain model building of the original brewery
• And oh yeah, a cat.

After the morning of opening presents and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over new toys and cleaning up and everything, we went out to my parents' house to spend the rest of the day eating and visiting in our traditional Christmas manner. This is actually my favorite part of Christmas, I think, family and friends getting together to celebrate the holiday.

This year we caught up with a family friend we hadn't seen in four years, with an interesting backstory: he's a forensic criminalist based in Ontario, Oregon. That's right, he's a CSI, although, as he put it, without the guns, the drama, or anything like that. He wants to get transferred to Portland because there's not enough homicides in Eastern Oregon... seriously. Mostly it's lab work, identifying meth and other similar drugs.

What's funny is that I was under the impression for years now that he was a forensic psychologist, which is what I'd been telling people. Doesn't that seem more exciting or interesting somehow? I don't know, but I was pretty amused by the thought of him matching wits with the Hannibal Lecters of Eastern Oregon...

Ah, such is Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year!

You may or may not have noticed that I've turned off comments on posts older than three months. I wasn't getting tons of spam comments (spamments?)—I suspect my filtering was working well enough—but I was certainly getting tired of the ones that were coming through. Since they were almost invariably on old posts, I finally bit the bullet and took care of the problem.

If you have a burning desire to write about a past blog entry, just use the contact form. Of course, that's no guarantee that you'll get anywhere. :)

Charlie Brown:

[shouting in desperation] Isn't there anyone out there who can tell me what Christmas is all about?

Linus:

Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you.
[walks out to center stage]
Lights, please.
[a spotlight shines on Linus]

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone round about them, and they were so afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the City of Bethlehem, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men'".

That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

That's probably my favorite quote about the holiday, pulled of course from the classic "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Merry Christmas, everybody!

So yeah, it's my birthday today. Just thought I'd let everyone know.

I get the day off from work, too. Score!

Happy First Day of Winter. I know I haven't been posting here much this month, I guess it's kind of been winding down as Christmas approaches and the year ends. On the other hand, I've been posting to The Brew Site every day, so that's good—I've been doing a "Beer Advent Calendar" series of posts each day, which has been a lot of fun and in keeping in good habits of posting something every day somewhere.

To give you an idea of what kinds of things I have on the plate for when I start writing here more often (which could happen tomorrow... or in a few weeks...), here's a totally non-committed list:

• Some more Scooby's at the Front Door fun (you just know I have to)
• A series of stories/anecdotes/recollections of growing up in Central Oregon. I told Simone at one point that I'd be writing these, so I guess I have to eventually :)
• Book reviews... nothing major, just notes on things I've been reading
• Thoughts about "Lost"... odds and ends that occur to me about the show, theories, whatever... I've actually considered starting a blog on one of the free services for this, as an experiment
• A third blog... I'm not gonna say much about this now, but I will say that at some point in the near future I'm launching another blog—a "real" one, not a free-hosted one.

Anyways, Happy Solstice to everyone!

You know those car commercials where the car is driving through the mountains or somesuch, and to show off its safety features, the commercial usually shows the car swerve gracefully around a fallen tree, or a boulder, or something? You know, to show how the tight steering and antilock brakes and everything make it the Safest Car Ever.

Well, I'm thinking instead of a car swerving around a fallen tree, I'd much rather see the car swerving around a chainsaw-wielding maniac running out of the forest... I figure if the car can help you avoid that, then it really is the Safest Car Ever.

Just finished up reading The Toughest Indian in the World, a volume of collected short stories by Sherman Alexie (wish he had a blog). It's quite good; I'd never read any of Alexie's work before, and I figured it was time I'd rectified that.

...by that I mean that for the four years I spent in Spokane, I was aware of Alexie as the Local Writer Becoming Well Known and more than once I had the opportunity of attending a reading and/or book signing by him. I kick myself nowadays for not taking such an opportunity (though I did attend a reading and signing by Douglas Adams... that's a different story, however).

And while it's not likely I'll read any of his poetry anytime soon (gasp! I'm more of a fiction man, myself), I can't help but respect anyone who wins something called the "World Heavyweight Poetry Bout" four years in a row.

So Simone was telling me that the design here on the blog was getting stale, "too much green," things like that. Okay, I said. Come up with a new design for me, and I'll implement it.

Her eyes got big. For like, one day? she asked.

For as long as I like it, I said (or words to that effect). I'm not a designer; I came up with something I kind of liked, but if someone wants to make me a better one, I'm all for it.

So we'll see what Simone comes up with for me.

Since Shannon desperately wants me to update the blog so she doesn't see the freaky mugshot picture right away, I thought I'd just write down some random observations and questions about the business of print-on-demand self-publishing.

Of the various on-demand, self-publishing services, the only ones I've seen that don't charge for publishing your books are Lulu and CafePress. I did a quick survey on a bunch of others, and they all require that you pay $200 or more up front to get your book published; Lulu and CafePress are true print-on-demand services that are free to setup.

I've mentioned both before. In general, Lulu seems to have cheaper prices on regular books, and they definitely have a much larger selection of books to buy.

Question: are there any print-on-demand services for comic books?

You can do comic books on both Lulu and CafePress, but the price break definitely favors big, collected works or graphic novels. If you wanted to do "traditional" comics—folded "saddle stitch" covers—then CafePress is the better alternative (one of the few times they're cheaper than Lulu). But it's still spendier than a real comic book, hence my question on comic book print-on-demand.

Any ideas on the actual editorial quality of self-published books? Lulu has a rating system but it seems kind of rudimentary...

A neat experiment would be to take a bunch of classics from Gutenberg and package them up nicely—perhaps with custom artwork, commentary, things like that—and see how they fare on both sites. Or even how they fare at all.

Or even do a classics mashup... or crossover, a la League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the comic, not the movie). Mashing up War of the Worlds with The Scarlet Pimpernel might be fun...

I suppose fan fiction would be a big no-no on these sites... but man, if you could take the really good stuff from FanFiction.net and bookify it, you could be on to something.

I can't help it, but this is just so weirdly funny. Bend man robs liquor store: this is not the funny part. The funny part is the guy's mugshot:

This dude looks like the love child of Rodney Dangerfield and Bob Marley or something!

I haven't posted anything lately because I'm still recovering from this past weekend. You see, we threw a big party.

This is the year both of my parents are turning 60, so myself and my two brothers decided earlier in the year that we were going to invite all their oldest friends and throw a surprise party for them. Somehow, we pulled it off; even with the unexpected weather, we had a lot of the guests show up (some were coming over the mountain passes and couldn't make it), and everything went off without a hitch.

We rented the Parish House at the Old St. Francis School, and that turned out to be the perfect place for a party—not only were we able to accomodate everyone that showed up, but my parents, my brother and his wife, and two old friends were able to stay the night. McMenamins was really accomodating, too, even though we didn't have them cater the party; we used Costco for all the food and drink.

So, my brother and sister-in-law got to town Thursday afternoon (from San Diego), keeping a low profile so as not to ruin the surprise (we don't see them very often, obviously). Friday I left work at noon and we ran around getting ready for the party, and then Saturday was the big day. Getting the food, decorating the cottage, setting everything up, and then getting my parents down there without telling them what was up. (They knew something was up—we'd cryptically told them to clear the calendar for the weekend and to meet us at our house Saturday late afternoon.)

They never saw it coming.

It was awesome. Tell the truth, I'm a little surprised we were able to pull something like this off. We'd been planning for months, plenty of opportunity for it to get out, but it didn't. I'd never tried to organize a big party like that before, but all went well.

And renting the cottage at McMenamins turned out to be a great move; it was cheaper that many of the other spaces we looked at (conference/banquet rooms in hotels, for example), and it was perfect for anyone needing to spend the night—we weren't on a time schedule to get out of there. There's enough of a kitchen to be useful (no stove or microwave though), and if you wanted to get out for a smoke, or a drink, or fresh air, you can just step out the back and step into O'Kane's or stay by the outdoor fire they had going. I'd recommend it for anyone looking to do something similar.

Sunday we cleaned up and went out to my parents' house with all the leftover food and alcohol and got together with the family again before my brother and his wife had to leave Monday. By that night, winding down, I could feel it creeping up on me: this weekend kicked my ass. Yesterday I was feeling really run down and dragging at work, today is the same but not so bad.

But don't get me wrong—it was totally worth it and I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. One of the best weekends, ever.

Boing Boing reports than an Astoria, Oregon woman has been ruled to be in violation of Starbucks trademark, when she opened a coffee shop named after herself: Sambucks.

Note to Starbucks: get over it.

Anyway, this reminded me of a coffee shop we saw when we were in Vancouver, B.C. earlier this year, that was obviously copying Starbucks. It was pretty clever, yet I don't think Starbucks could do anything about it:

Today was one of those days when you wake up, blink, and there's eight inches of snow on the ground.

That's pretty rare for Bend. (Lapine and Sunriver, not so much. But for Bend and points east and north, rare.)

It's still coming down. The snow advisory is still on, through at least seven o'clock this evening... eight to 14 inches total is the latest prediction, though since we're already at eight, that seems like a lame prediction.

So, I dug out the driveway this morning, and finally left for work about nine. The office is about half-staffed right now, I imagine people will be trickling away as the day goes on. My wife tried to take our youngest to preschool (our oldest is home, schools are closed) and got stuck in the snow—the main roads are plowed and sanded, but the neighborhoods and side roads are still unattended.

Surprisingly, I had more trouble driving to work the other day when it first snowed than today; I suppose it could be because there's less traffic on the roads, or that I left later.

It'll be an interesting day. Except for work, this would've been a nice day to hole up at home and watch the snow. And play in it.

So earlier in the month Shannon floated the idea of a Bend Blogger Christmas party. Not too many people responded, but since then we at least decided on a date if we're going to do it: Saturday, December 10th.

Would there be any interest to this among our local bloggers? I'd emailed a few to test the water, and got some encouraging response (Jake, Wendy...), but I figured it's time to make the general call.

C'mon, Bend Bloggers, let's get some response! Who wants to join us for a Christmas party—gift exchange and all? The sooner we know, the better!

And hey, even if you think it's a lame idea, at least give me some pushback on it! :)

Snow! It's coming down pretty good, as I'm sure all the Bendites know by now—though I think Rhys will be especially pleased. It's coming down pretty good; I'm downtown, and looking out the window I'm seeing an inch or so, I think. Driving is pretty awful right now; normally I go home for lunch but I may be staying in the office for lunch for the next few days. (I already went home today; that's how I know it's awful.)

And I know it's technically not the first snow of the season, but to my mind, it's the first significant snow of the season, and that counts more. :)

Evan Williams has posted Ten Rules for Web Startups that's sure to generate a lot of linkage and conversation. (He's the guy that created Blogger.) Very good stuff. And laced with irony; like so:

Get a good, non-generic name. Easier said than done, granted. But the most common mistake in naming is trying to be too descriptive, which leads to lots of hard-to-distinguish names. How many blogging companies have "blog" in their name, RSS companies "feed," or podcasting companies "pod" or "cast"? Rarely are they the ones that stand out.

Uhmmm... Blogger comes to mind. :)

Combine this list with the TechCrunch wishlist that I posted about previously and things could start to get interesting.

TechCrunch lists some companies they'd like to see move into the online space, kind of a wishlist of Web 2.0 technologies. The list is making the rounds on various tech blogs like it's the Second Coming (which I can't figure out, it's not that revolutionary a list), and while overall it's a decent read, I do have one point of contention:

2. Blog/website Email Lists

People can visit my site, and get the content via RSS, but I know of no quality service to allow people to subscribe to my site via email.

...I want people to have the option of getting an email every post, every day, or every week.

I also want to know that I and I alone control these email addresses so that they will not under any circumstances be misused. If I change services, I want to have an easy export feature to take these with me (OPML would be nice).

I also want access to real time stats. The number of emails, type of subscription, how often they are opened and what things are being clicked on.

And users need a very easy way to stop the emails.

I'm willing to pay for this. Probably as much as $20 per month. A free version should be offered too that's add supported and maybe doesn't have the analytics.

I read this and I thought, "Uh, hello? The 1990s called, and wants its listserv back."

Seriously, why the hell would anyone want to receive website updates via email these days? That just seems so backward-thinking.

On the other hand, there's a couple of the other items that I like: Portable reputations, and tailored local offers via RSS.

And Richard MacManus follows up with a similar post, and in particular I like his first idea: more Web 2.0 products for eBooks. I'm not sure specifically what he has in mind for this, but I have some ideas. None that I'm gonna share here, though. :)

This is very cool: The Brew Site is being used as a news source for Topix.net, a news aggregator site that pulls news from sources all over the web—and just added blogs recently as a source. I saw my Stone Age Beer article show up on the Topix.net Beer News page (screen grabbed below).

I don't know why, but this seems to add a feeling of legitimacy to this whole blogging thing. :)

One of the things we did over the weekend (Friday night, actually) was get new cell phones. I had but one criteria: a camera phone. So I ended up getting a Motorola V330, camera and all. Sweet!

Now I need to dust off that Flickr account and figure out how to email pictures to it, so I can start including them in my blog like the cool kids are doing.

I see today that the new WordPress.com free blog service went live. It's a hosted setup, just like Blogger. Interesting, so I decided, what the hell, I've got a few minutes before I leave for lunch, so I just set up free blogs on both WordPress and Blogger.

Why? Well, to test out the various services, and see how they work. I've always done the blogging thing from the ground up, writing and maintaining my own software, so I'm curious as to how well the free services work. And it makes me more of an expert in blogging.

Actually, I've used WordPress before, in setting up my mom's blog, so I'm already a bit familiar with it. So far the online service is very similar.

First impressions—WordPress's service is easier to use than Blogger's. Especially for non-techie types; to add links in the sidebar, Blogger requires that you edit the HTML of the site template itself, whereas WordPress gives you their easy link management interface to do so.

Every once in awhile, I duck into the world of interactive fiction (IF; also known as the world of "text adventures," for those of you who are appropriately old-school), one of my all-time favorite computer game genres, to get an idea of what's new in the field and what's been happening. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read that Wikipedia link; it gives a much better summary than I could and goes into fantastic detail.)

I love interactive fiction, going way back—we had a bunch of Infocom games when I was a kid and for my money, those were some of the best computer games around, bar none (still are, to a large extent). My two favorite Infocom games are "Planetfall" and "The Lurking Horror," though of those two I only ever finished "Planetfall"... but I digress.

Infocom games were the shizzle (who says that anymore?), but I even enjoyed simpler text adventures, and even crafted a few of my own, in Commodore 64 BASIC. I actually designed, on paper, many more text adventures than ever made it to the computer; this is the same love of creating/world building that drives my desire to write fiction for a living, among other things.

Anyway, back to the here and now. Interactive fiction exists today in a kind of unique space; here's what the Wikipedia article says about it:

...interactive fiction no longer appears to be commercially viable, but a constant stream of new works is produced by an online interactive fiction community, using freely available development systems... these systems allowed anyone with sufficient time and dedication to create a game, and caused a growth boom in the online interactive fiction community.

Today, the games created by enthusiasts of the genre regularly surpass the quality of the original Infocom games, and a number of yearly competitions and awards are given out to the best games in the field....

Yes, strange to say, there is a small but thriving community surrounding this arcane game form. None of them do it for the money—okay, maybe some who enter the competition for the cash prize ($500) do—which is what makes it truly remarkable (nearly everything about it is free—the games, the programs to play them, the authoring tools, the documentation—everything). They do it for a love of the craft.

What's weird is this week, the Wall Street Journal Online published an article on text adventures: Keeping a Genre Alive. Total coincidence; in fact, I was checking out the IF sites before I saw the article. That's kind of a freaky wavelength. At any rate, it's a bit of a look-down-the-nose take on the genre and IF community, but it's not all bad.

So, having "rediscovered" interactive fiction (and downloading and checking out the latest authoring tools), writing some will be added to my perpetual list of Things I'd Like To Do But Don't Have The Time For. This like many other interests will fall off the list at some point (probably in the near future) and then be re-added when I rediscover it again. It's a big list. I'll post it sometime.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Woe un2mnkind! The text message is trying to summarise the great poet John Milton and a respected academic thinks this may be a smart new way to teach literature.

A company offering mobile phones to students has hired Professor John Sutherland, professor emeritus of English Literature at University College London, to offer subscribers text message summaries and quotes from literary classics.

The hope is that messages in the truncated shorthand of mobile phones will help make great literature more accessible.

So butchering the classics into text-messaging shorthand that are barely understandable will make them more accessible? Oh, this is so, so wrong.

First of all, there's no "teaching" of literature going on here; you might as well be getting summaries of last night's episode of "Lost"—only reading "MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus" would not entice me to pick up Jane Eyre.

Second of all, what does a professor emeritus of English Literature even know about text-messaging shorthand? Jeez, I don't know much, but the examples they give seem contrived even to me.

Third, what self-respecting teen would subscribe to this service? Here's a hint—those of us who, as teens, were into literature and could quote from various works really, really weren't a part of that crowd. If you wanted to be part of that crowd, well, you wouldn't be getting literature on your phone, as it were.

Via Slashdot.

Update 11/17: CNN has a better article which has more on the pushback against the service.

Okay, this will permanently brand me as the geekiest dork ever (I fully expect a "geek" comment from Shannon), but perusing WinAmp's SHOUTcast Radio list today, I found the ultimate station:

...wait for it...

Commodore 64 remixes. From SLAY Radio.

Yes, you read that correctly. Commodore 64 remixes.

I've been letting it play in the background. It totally kicks ass.

This strikes me as being a real Long Tail kind of thing.

A couple of months ago I blogged a bit about Intuit Master Builder software and some of the problems that come with it. One of the things I wrote was, "It's got a low barrier-to-entry user interface that makes it easy to learn and use for non techie types."

While that statement is (for the most part) true, it's also true that the UI for Master Builder is completely ridiculous—especially for a Windows application in this day and age. Just how ridiculous it truly is struck me last week when we were at a user group meeting for Master Builder (they don't happen often), and the consultant/expert was showing off some of the newest features.

So, here are two examples of the poor UI that plagues this program. Both are from the "Equipment" screen, and are completely typical of every screen in the system. Click them for full-size images.

Pretty horrible. But my particular favorites are the totally non-standard menu bar at the top ("Exit" is the first item?) and the garish, circa-Windows 3.1 toolbar buttons, also in a totally non-standard layout and position.

This is one of those over-the-top, for-the-person-who-has-everything, I-have-too-much-disposable-income type of things: The Ultimate Star Trek Collection on Amazon. It's insane:

• 212 discs
• All 5 TV series
• All 10 movies
• Commentary, interviews, documentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes, trailers, and more
• All for the whopping-low price of $2,499.99!

What a deal! Especially since you save $1,409.

This panel from my daily Peanuts calendar struck me as being pretty philosophically deep for Charlie Brown.

I had to link to this video just because it's so cool. ("Cool" in a geeky way.) Not because of the dancing part, but just the transforming effects are so good that if I didn't know better, I'd swear it was for real. If ever there's a live action Transformers movie, I'd hope it's this good.

Via Gadgetopia.

The Kansas Board of Education has approved new school standards that promote and teach so-called "intelligent design." Wow; I don't even have the words, so I'll quote the article...

"This is a sad day. We're becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that," said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

You got that right, sister.

Via Slashdot.

Today Shannon writes:

i'm surprised that other bend bloggers haven't commented on this but apparently the fox station is going to start a 10 p.m. local newscast at the first of the year according to our local paper who doesn't have the story online. yea, two news stations! maybe i can stop watching portland and eugene news.

We don't get the paper, and if it's not online, then I wouldn't otherwise see it. Anyway, what I'm wondering is, will the local Foxcast be bringing in new talent, or are they going to poach it away from Z21?

I just realized this; I haven't used PHP 5 at all since it came out, so I'm terribly illiterate about this latest version of PHP. I still use PHP 4. That means I'm no longer cutting edge on PHP! Or maybe that just means I'm no longer bleeding edge, since PHP 5 adoption has been terribly slow.

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month. Write a 50,000-word (or more) novel in 30 days. I like the concept on this. And I'm tempted to take a crack at it, if for no other reason than cachet-factor. I'd post the efforts to the blog, of course, otherwise, where's the love?

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Halloween blogging #5

Here we go, courtesy of Simone, a picture of me dressed up as a vampire for the Halloween party Saturday night. If only I could look so good in real life!

Halloween blogging #4

Being a computer geek, I wish I'd thought of this when carving pumpkins this year: carving an emoticon face instead of a traditional jack o'lantern. That's just cool. The only question would be, which emoticon?

The "mean" face, befitting the holiday: >:-(. Or, perhaps, the squiggly face: :-S. Or, just the good old standard: :).

Something to remember for next year...

Halloween blogging #3

I've really been liking what Rhys is doing over on The Screamstress blog. The Top 13 Worst Halloween Costumes posts are funny as hell, and the Top 13 Scariest Horror Movie Moments are—well, I don't know what exactly, but I'll just say that wow, this is a girl that knows horror movies like I know... beer, I guess. That's kind of scary in itself. :)

Halloween blogging #2

Shamelessly lifted this link from Boing Boing, but it was too cool not to: Worth1000's monsters/classic artwork photoshopping mashup contest. I've done some basic graphics munging here, producing such altered classics as Bayer Heroin, Jedi Master Kermit and the Nebraska State Quarter, but my image manipulation powers pale in comparison to what these guys have pulled off. There's some serious image kung fu here. It's brilliant and topical! They're all really good, but I particularly like the "Scream" painting (which I excerpted) and "The Ring" riff.

Halloween blogging #1

The Fall 2005 issue of Bend Living (no link love, their site sucks and the "current" links point to other articles) has an article titled "Ghost Stories" that explores some of the supposedly haunted places in Bend and Central Oregon. And on the radio last week, they were asking for people to call in to name the haunted places we have around here, so I thought it'd be fun to blog it a bit.

The Bend Living article mentions the Deschutes County Historical Society building, the old Reid School in downtown Bend. Supposedly the ghost of George Brosterhous, who died there in 1914, haunts the place.

The Shadowlands Haunted Place Index for Oregon (which I can thank Rhys for mentioning, if I remember correctly) mentions five for Bend:

The Congress House: This was mentioned on the radio, and is the subject of the only ghost story for Bend found in Ghosts and Strange Critters of Washington and Oregon. According to the Shadowlands site, "there have been a few families that have lived there that have either died or something tragic has happened to them due to living in the cursed house," which is identified in the ghosts book as the McCann House. I don't know about cursed; the book simply mentions that sometimes figures are seen in the upper story windows, and gives a short history of it.

The O'Kane Building: Mentioned in the Bend Living article, too. There's "ghostly smoke, weird lights, footsteps, and voices," and occasionally a voice that calls out orders in the restaurant.

Old Mt. View Hospital: I'm not sure where this is, the site says it's now an apartment building next to Drake Park. Floor creaks have been reporting, like someone's walking around.

The Old Smoke Stacks: They must mean in the Old Mill District, which isn't relevant anymore since they're building it out... But it sounds like teenagers would sneak in there at night to see if the place was haunted.

The Pilot Butte Cemetary: Also mentioned in Bend Living. Reports of ghostly blue orbs floating around.

Independently of these sources, I've also heard the Lara House Bed and Breakfast is haunted. Ironically enough, it's located on Congress Avenue... just like the Congress House mentioned above! (Cue cheesy horror music.)

Other places mentioned in the Bend Living article include the Downing Hotel building in downtown Bend, current site of The Grove restaurant, Bronco Billy's in Sisters (the old Hotel Sisters building), Sunriver Resort's Great Hall, and the New Redmond Hotel in (you guessed it) Redmond.

Shadowlands mentions Redmond, too. In addition to footsteps, there "have been pictures taken and in the pictures there are clearly orbs in the lobby hall. Feelings of a strange presence in the rooms in the middle of the night. Apparitions of a woman have been reported."

So, what else have we got around here? Anyone know of any haunted places I didn't mention?

Shannon blogged it first, I'm still waiting to see if Simone writes it up (or at least puts up the pictures)... I'm talking about the Halloween party we were all at last night. I hadn't been to a Halloween party in I-don't-remember-when, and it's been even longer since I dressed up. I was a vampire, a classic one (not a goth one) with the black pants, white shirt, black cape, etc.

Everyone dressed up, too, which was very cool—you always have these doubts, "will anyone else be dressed up? Am I gonna be the only one?"—but no, everyone who came was in costume. (Well, except for one guy, near the end.) The best costumes, in my opinion, can be seen here—the freakiest, too. Why the best/freakiest? The one on the right is a woman(!).

I'll say this—the hosts, Lance and Katherine, go all out for Halloween. Smoke machine, spooky sounds CD, spider candles, dry ice in the drinks, even cool touches that I wouldn't have thought of like filling gutted pumpkins with dips (and a couple of large ones for the punch—alcoholic and non—with the dry ice dropped into them).

And, of course, a giant, inflatable Scooby Doo at the front door, who kept trying to get in. So that's gonna be the new tagline, I'm thinking. T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, viral in a "All your base" kind of way. You're gonna see it everywhere.

Halloween rocks.

Last night we got a sneak preview dinner (along with about a zillion other people) at the new Johnny Carino's at the north end of town. It was kind of their shakedown cruise to train and assess the staff and work out any glitches ahead of time; my wife had gotten an invite, so we went. (Everything except drinks was half off, too.)

It was actually very, very good, except for the amount of time everything took—and this we attribute simply to being a preview, testing night—we were there for an hour and a half or so, most of that time waiting on the food. Otherwise, the drinks, the service, and the food were all excellent. I'd definitely go back again, but after a few weeks have passed to give them time to work out all the kinks.

A new local weblog has popped up: Bend Oregon Restaurants. Found it when "BrENDa" (its author) left a couple comments here. Finally! A good restaurant review/guide blog for Bend, by someone who knows what they're talking about.

And you gotta love the honesty in her reviews: read the O'Kane's review or the Bon Bien review to see what I mean. My favorite line: "Bon Bien is Non Bien."

The Bulletin today has a piece on the DeWolf sexual harrassment case, with much more detail. It's rather appalling. Touching on some points:

• Apparently "Deschutes County policy requires employees to report sexual harassment.... Violating the policy can draw penalties that range from a warning to dismissal, according to the policy." While I think sexual harrassment is a pretty serious offense, this policy seems awfully harsh for the victim—I mean, not only could you be subjected to the harrassment to begin with, you could lose your job for being too embarrassed or scared to report it? Wow. Sounds like a great way to breed a culture of fear and avoidance.
  
  (The article does mention that none of the employees—there are at least three—who knew about it have been disciplined specifically under this policy, though one of them has been suspended pending the ongoing investigation of the juvenile department that pulled the trigger on this whole mess.)
  
  
• When he was first interviewed for the juvenile department investigation, "DeWolf said the investigation would have never been authorized had he not taken a month off over the summer to attend a public policy school at Harvard University." Hmmmm. Is he admitting that he would have hindered this investigation, given the chance? Sounds criminal.
• The article covers the incident in question in detail. It illustrates some pretty blatant behavior on DeWolf's part—this is the stuff in particular that I found appalling. In particular I have a hard time reconciling that with DeWolf's resignation statement where he declares: "I stand by my statement of August 9 that the incident from two years ago was resolved the day after it occurred. Valid county policy was followed in that resolution"—except for the county policy that requires sexual harrassment to be reported. Or, when he says this:
  

  People have asked what purpose was served by the Lane County Deputy District Attorney holding a press conference in the county office building. They've asked what purpose was served by bringing up an incident from twelve years ago. They've asked what purpose was served when he used such salacious and sensational language in declaring his intention not to file charges. They've asked what purpose was served by the media quoting that salacious and sensational language. I have no answer for these questions.

  Talk about avoidance—trying to lay the blame for all this coming out into the open on the Lane County DA(!). Seems to me the answer to those questions is pretty obvious; it prompted a much-needed housecleaning.

Okay, if that isn't an obscure title I don't know what is. Basically, I'm a little stunned and disappointed with myself for not remembering that Fort Lauderdale is the home of Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald's beach bum "salvage consultant" who lived on a houseboat, until after we got back home. I don't know what I would have done if I'd remembered; perhaps visited Bahia Mar marina or something.

I love those books. Time to bust them out again.

We're back from Florida none the worse for wear; we actually got back Saturday late, missing hurricane Wilma by two days. As my friend Kerry said, ironic that the one time we should pick to visit Florida, the biggest storm ever tracked starts building up nearby.

Florida was... flat and humid. No, really.

Well, it was. Anyway, we had a good time. My wife's grandparents have a swimming pool (of course) so we spent a lot of time in it. And of course we drove up to Disney World for a few days (three and a half hours each way), that was a trip; it's utterly mind-boggling just how big Disney World is. We only had time to visit the Magic Kingdom (which is basically all of Disney Land), and part of Epcot.

Some general Florida observations, from an outsider: what's up with drivers there? Nobody uses turn signals! And apparently they'll hit-and-run other cars in parking lots (which seemed to happen to us— borrowing the grandparents' car— on our mini-trip to Disney) all the time, we're told. Also, everywhere you go— and I mean everywhere— there's air conditioning. All the time. Many times we were in restaurants and it was too cold— people were wearing sweaters or jackets. Not what you expect to see in Florida, of all places.

Didn't see any gators (in the wild, anyway). I was kind of hoping.

Meanwhile, it's interesting to note some of the local goings-on while we were away:

• There was an E. coli outbreak at McGrath's; Bulletin story here, Bend.com here. Damn, I knew there was a reason I'm always resisting going to eat there... What really worries me though is the Bulletin's article states, "No changes in McGrath's operating procedure were suggested"— say what? Yeah, I'm done.
• More information has come to light regarding Deschutes County Commissioner Tom DeWolf's sex abuse scandal: details from the investigation reveal that he allegedly put his hand down two separate women's pants and groped their genitals. Bulletin story here, Bend.com story here. Not surprisingly, DeWolf is resigning. His statement is here. Not really much more to say, other than I'm not really surprised. That's some seriously stupid shit to do, Tom.

Anything exciting anybody wants to tell me about?

Ah, we're quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we're flying out to Florida for a week. We'll be visiting my wife's grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be online much, or at all. We're taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I'm not too devastated by this.

See y'all on the other side.

So these days the one show during the week I have to watch is Lost. Any other show I could miss and catch in reruns and it's no big deal. What can I say—I'm hooked. I'm along for the ride, and despite my best intentions to simply sit back and enjoy the story as it unfolds, I find myself getting caught up in rampant speculation about—well, everything. So, it's spilling over into a long blog post that will contain spoilers and that has no central thesis, just random musings and speculation about the show.

More...

Mom delivers 16th child, thinking of more: I'm sorry, but this is just messed up. That's pretty much all I can say about it. Except for a few quotes which demonstrate how truly creepy this is.

Michelle Duggar had her first child at age 21, four years after the couple married.

Which of course means they got married... at age 17...

Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar's children include two sets of twins. Each child's name begins with the letter "J"... [includes list of names, including some zingers]

I'm just speechless.

Sunday my dad and I took the kids to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Hands down, the best movie I've seen this year. The story is funny and quirky, and the claymation is simply a delight to watch. And it's genuinely funny, which is rare in a movie these days; like my dad said, I haven't laughed so hard at a movie in a long time.

Amazon has a good deal on the first three Wallace and Gromit films on DVD. I've got a couple of them on videotape around here somewhere, but it sure would be nice to get a hold of this...

In other related news, a fire wiped out Aardman Animations over the weekend... destroyed nearly everything, including the props and sets from those first Wallace and Gromit films. That's rough.

Okay, this is getting crazy: my Burger King mask post is up to 236 comments, and there's currently active discussion on where to find a Burger King mask online, and a guy named "John" is even making his own masks and selling them on eBay! In fact, I grabbed a couple of his pictures of the homemade mask—click through to see...

More...

Among other things, Bandon, Oregon is known for two things: cranberries and cheese. Whenever we've been to Bandon we'd stop at the Bandon Cheese store and indulge in a bit of tasting and shopping. Not long ago, though, someone told me that the Tillamook Creamery had bought and made Bandon Cheese, though still sold it under the Bandon label.

Now I see that Tillamook has closed the Bandon cheese store completely. So, now you can't even buy Bandon cheese in Bandon? That's just dumb. What's worse, the cheese is now being made in Wisconsin—Tillamook can't even be bothered to make their own cheese?

They're even goofier than that, according to the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project article I linked to above:

Another aspect of the sordid Tale of Tillamook and Bandon encompasses Tillamook's misguided pursuit of its newly acquired "Bandon" trademark. Tillamook threatened the city of Bandon, Oregon with a lawsuit for violating its intellectual property by using the name "Bandon."

Threatened the city itself for violating the trademark? Uh, hello?

Lee on RoguePundit has more on the closure and goofy Tillamook practices, too. Of course, he has a good point:

At one time, the purpose of the store wasn't just sales, but promoting the brand. Since the brand looks rather hollow when the cheese has to be imported for sale, maybe it's better to not remind folks that the Bandon Cheeses are just flavors that can be made anywhere. The attractive label with the Coquille River Lighthouse is just marketing.

Although the flavors can't necessarily be "made" anywhere; cheese acquires some of its characteristics from the types of food the cows (or goats, or whatever milk-producing animal) eats, and that can certainly be regional.

Anyway, I just thought it sucked. That's one less neat thing about Bandon, and that much more unemployment for Oregon.

Check this out: BendSearch.com. Alpine, the company I used to work for, has finally resurrected it and updated it. Good for them.

I was responsible for a lot of the work that went into that site back in the day (this would be in 2000-2001). Oh, I'm not bragging; that was, of course, early in my career as a PHP developer, so there was a lot of ugly, bad code floating around in there, courtesy of yours truly.

Hopefully they'll be able to get somebody to give it the attention it deserves; it's looking a little sparse right now but I rather like what I'm seeing.

By now the geeky part of the blogosphere and, er, web-o-sphere has been rocked by the announcement of Ning two days ago. Check it out. Their one-line description reads "Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications."

What this means is they're hosting a service/platform that allows people to build their own social software applications... things like online voting/polls, dating services, bookmarks, review sites. In theory the level of complexity in creating these ranges from point-and-click Clone-N-Theme all the way up to Advanced PHP Developer.

Yup, PHP. It looks like they're opening the doors to the system and letting you code the apps directly. "Uh-oh," I thought. "I hope they have PHP sandboxed." And sure enough, it says in the FAQ that they do. Sounds iffy to me (let's just say I'm glad I'm not responsible for running this service!), though I'll give them points for innovation and guts here.

Looks like they offer up an API for their developer environment, all running under PHP 5. And from what I've been seeing, they've assembled a team of some of the top PHP people out there to put this together, so that's impressive.

It's all very Web 2.0, especially with tags (and the annoying/clever convention of showing the relative popularity of various tags with different font sizes). I don't know, it looks interesting, and it'll be hot for awhile, but I gotta wonder just how valuable it is to have hundreds of crappy variations of "Which is cuter," most of which were created as throwaway examples and abandoned by idly curious people (like me)...

The Burger King mask post I made back in April is insanely out of control; right now, it has 59 75 comments on it, mostly from people who want one of those masks (and one or several guys who claim to be making it, or have it for sale)! It's such great entertainment to watch the comments roll in.

I'm getting so many hits on this because of great search engine placement for "burger king mask." On Google, I'm number 5 and on Yahoo, number 3(!). Man, I wish I could plan posts like that one...

I noticed the other day that a couple of the RSS feeds I follow had advertising items in them. Not ads attached to items in the feed, like many sites are doing these days, but ads that were the entire item. The title looked something like "(Advertisement) Web Hosting" and the text was a blurb for the service they were advertising; I assume if you clicked through, it would be the same effect as clicking an ad (go to the advertiser's site). That's the first time I remember seeing RSS used for ads this way.

So here's the question: would this work more effectively than ads attached to the items themselves? Because in general, ads attached to RSS items can be intrusive and annoying (like any web ads), and I've seen more scorn than praise heaped upon RSS ads. Besides, inserting ads into items seems kludgy and inelegant; in the past I've thought that inserting the ad as a standalone item in the feed would be a better method, but this is the first time I've seen it implemented.

Would people subscribe to an all-advertising RSS feed? Suppose I ran an advertising feed along with my normal site feed. Initially I could populate it with Amazon affiliate links, for instance, and then sell advertising to third parties. (There'd have to be some stipulations as to how often I update the feed, and how often I run ads, of course.) But would people subscribe? And, more importantly, would they click through on items? (You'd have to have some click-tracking at work, definitely.)

I'm tempted to run an Amazon ad feed, as an experiment. Populate it with short reviews of books with my affiliate code and see if anyone clicks through on the "ads." This is an easy experiment to do; Amazon's affiliate site tracks clicks already, so I don't have to worry about creating a tracking script. Hmmm.

Comments? Feedback?

Ah, yesterday was a good day: Shannon and Brian ("the boy") got married. Weddings are fun. This one was perfect: the ceremony was short and the party was long :).

I actually got carded when getting a beer. Me! I've got gray in my beard and everything. I had to smile. "I just need to make sure you're over the mark," said the woman. "I'm well over the mark," I replied.

Nahh, it's all good. Congrats to the newly hitched.

Barely has the smoke cleared from my last blogging for money post and there's already another new blog network launching: Instablogs (tagline: "A News Organization based on Blogging"). Apparently this one is based in India, and their aim is to launch 50(!) blogs on October 5th. Seems like a lofty goal. Of the first seven blog teasers they list, the astronomy blog sounds the most interesting.

Being a construction company, we use Intuit Master Builder pretty extensively at work. It's basically an all-in-one accounting/construction management package and while it does the job reasonably well—for the average user—I thought I'd relay some of the problems with it from an IT/computer programming standpoint. (Kind of an anti-review.) Which is sure to be amusing (or frightening) for other people in my position.

First of all, it's a database-driven application, which is fine, but the underlying database format is Visual FoxPro—and not a new version of FoxPro. I'm not even positive it is FoxPro for that matter: the tables are all in DBF format, and the indexes are CDX files. That's one problem—I mean, it's 2005, and we're still having to deal with DBF files? Even worse: each table name and field name inside the tables is constrained to exactly six characters long. No exceptions. So you either have ridiculously-abbreviated field names (like "invttl" for "Invoice total" or "lstupd" for "Last updated") or short names that are padded out with underscores ("state_"). Uhm, hello? DOS called, and it wants its lame database back.

Second, the relational qualities of such a database are a joke. Sure, there are key fields that build relationships to other tables (foreign keys), but there's no consistency between them—primary key field names are duplicated, fields in different tables linking to the same foreign key field are named differently, etc. But—and here's the dealbreaker—you can only have one "company" per database; in other words, if you have multiple companies (or projects), then each one requires its own database in a separate directory. And there's no inherent way to combine these separate databases to share data among them (like a master list of vendors or cost codes) or to build consolidated reports of any kind. This is probably the single biggest flaw in Master Builder.

So one of my tasks is to build/maintain consolidated reports and software to manage the data among the databases. This, of course, is a huge pain, but I have a variety of tools that I use to do this (which illustrate how hackish this all really is):

• Crystal Reports. Great application, it'll hook into just about any data source and build just about any report you can think up, so I've built a number of consolidated reports in Crystal. Here's the problem: I'm stuck using CR version 8 because that was the last version which allowed you to compile the reports into standalone executable files that people can run without needing Crystal Reports installed on their computers. I have to do this because at least half the PCs here are still running Windows 98 and we don't have a server capable of publishing Crystal's distributed reports.
• Microsoft Access. This is like, the hacked method of managing the databases. I connect to a Master Builder database via ODBC, and I can directly access (no pun intended) the data. The drawback is because of ODBC, I can't connect to more than one database at a time—if I want to copy-and-paste data from the Master Company (the source) to any of the others, I have to close Access completely after each database to sever and then renew the ODBC connection.
• PHP. Yep, PHP. I've built some web form interfaces to the databases (running on the server intranet in-house), one of which is a utility to copy vendors out of the Master Company and paste the new or updated data into each subsequent database. I've also done a bunch of consolidated reports via PHP, accessible through a browser—I find it's much quicker and easier to write the reports in PHP than in Crystal Reports. The drawback? You have to have a web server and PHP running on the intranet. And, have ODBC connections set up for each database on the server as well. And, you have to know PHP.

What really sucks is when a new company/project is added, and I need to go through the existing consolidated reports and update them to include the new database. In the PHP reports, this is pretty much a cinch. In the Crystal reports, though, the pain level ranges from moderate to severe, depending on which report I'm modifying. All of them make extensive use of formulas, so I always have to weed through and update all of those. The worst report is one that uses subreports to break down data from each company, and global variables and formulas to consolidate all this data into the master report; each subreport has to be formatted exactly the same (which is anal retentive beyond words) and I've got this daisy chained house of cards of formulas in various sections of the master report relying on an EvaluateAfter cascade to properly calculate certain values... the anxiety levels creep higher and higher just thinking about that damn thing...

The end result is I've got a lot of scripts, reports and techniques for handling Master Builder that are only known to me, and would be very hard to explain to someone else. Some might say this is "job security," but I was talking with someone about this today and we decided it's much more of a "lock-in" (and not in a good way).

Now, compared to much of the competition out there, Master Builder is a good program. It does accounting voodoo that is a total mystery to me, and seems to do it well. It's got a low barrier-to-entry user interface that makes it easy to learn and use for non techie types. It's an open system to the extent that the database schema is available and there's an API that allows the development of independent software that ties into it (a lot of third party developers have developed PDA modules for it, for instance).

But good god, I pity the poor fool who has to administer the system...

Yep, finally did it: I turned off trackback on this blog and The Brew Site. 99.9% of all traffic I received via trackback was spam, so in the end I decided it's just not worth it. So, just over one year since I turned trackback on, it's gone. It was an interesting experiment, though.

Well, the "Blogging for Money" meme is rearing its head again. Wired just ran this story which is kind of an overview:

Whether you are Calacanis, Denton or Hauslaib, to create a profitable blog requires much more than a keyboard, an internet connection and too much caffeine. You need a talented writer entertaining enough to hold an audience, a consistent publishing schedule, content worth linking to by other bloggers and worthy of press coverage, marketing savvy to sell advertising or enlist third-party networks and, as a culmination of all of this, plenty of traffic.

Says Hauslaib: "If a blog debuted with virtually zero startup costs, then it takes little to earn a profit. One ad will do it. But at the bare minimum, a lone blogger will likely need to attract high four- to five-figure daily visitor figures to even attempt a blog-based livable wage."

And, there's a new blog network that just launched: b5 media, with 13 or so blogs in the network. Their blogs range from the predictable, well-worn ground of Microsoft, movies and sports, to some more promising, interesting ones, like Literally Blogging (about literature), Unplugged Living (how to live off the grid, which seems ironic to blog about), and She Knows Best (terrible name, IMHO, but "lifestyle tips for guys" which could work).

So, when am I launching my own blog network? Riiiight. :)

Bend is yet again on another top ten list: we're the sixth fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country (via the Bulletin). This list is according to the U.S. Census, though, so probably has a bit more weight than whichever flavor-of-the-month magazine's top "whatever" list of cities... although, they're considering all of Deschutes County to be the metropolitan growth area, so your mileage may vary.

Is this a good thing? Depends. Read through the comments on my Trump Bend post, you'll see varying degrees of opinion. Really, go read them, the good ones start about halfway down, past all the "rumors" about Trump. It's some good stuff in there; maybe I'll re-post some of those comments on the front page here...

According to Metroblogging Portland, Corno's Food Market is going to be torn down. Wow.

I say "wow" because there's a more personal connection for me: my grandfather is one of the Cornos that used to run the place. Granted, it's been closed for something like 10 or more years, and my grandfather hadn't worked there for longer than that, but it's still kind of a shock. (In fact, I think my dad may have mentioned to me that Corno's was going to be destroyed.)

During the holidays, we'd always get the gift box from my grandparents full of (among other things) fresh fruit and nuts and such from the Market. One of the perks. And before that—well before that, before I was even born (or at least too young to remember)—we'd get the hookup from my grandfather when he ran the meat department. Yep, cheap meat.

I ran across this last night, and it's the funniest thing, hands down, than I've read in awhile: Top 10 Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time. Picked it up via Boing Boing, and it's totally, utterly random. Vulgar as hell, too, but that's part of what makes it so funny.

Disclaimer: I don't understand so-called "black metal," never listen to it, don't believe I'd care for it if I did. I mean, really, it just looks like those whiny, narcissistic goth kids from high school haven't grown up yet.

This is indescribably cool if you're an old-time geek who cut his/her teeth on the Commodore 64: Quantum Link Reloaded. Basically, someone has reverse-engineered the original Quantum Link online system that was for the Commodore 64, and made it available online (for free), and you can actually connect to it via a Commodore 64 computer—or an emulator.

Read this Wikipedia article on Quantum Link. What many people don't know is that it became... America Online.

Via Slashdot.

With summer nearly gone and school started, it seemed appropriate to have one of those "what I did" posts, but I'm not ambitious enough to talk about much beyond the weekend. :)

And even then, Saturday was the only day really worth writing about, Sunday was a lazy day. So let's see, on Saturday we had kindergarten soccer—made all the more exciting by the fact that most of the kindergarteners have no real idea of competition. But they have a lot of fun, so that's good. The weather this weekend was much better than the weekend before, but with fall nearly here, who knows how long that will last.

Saturday night I went to a bachelor party for Shannon's soon-to-be husband. Nothing unusual to report, it was a night of drinking at Stars and I kept my alcohol intake down and left earlier than the rest of the guys (all four of them). A later night than I'm normally used to.

No hangover or anything, either. I doubt I could say the same about the groom, though.

And that about wraps it up.

Scanning through my Bloglines Clippings list, found a few items that I'd probably been meaning to point to but hadn't gotten to yet.

• Builder has plans for trap club site - from the Bulletin. Yep, that's the company I work for, promoting one of their next projects. I expect the homes to be very expensive, unfortunately.
• Pictures of the Thunderbird Motel in Bend from Stumptown Confidential. That's normally a site that shows historic Portland, but I thought the '70s Bend photos were interesting.
• I'm really enjoying the new Slashfood site. I'd been thinking recently that there's a need for a good food blog.
• Via Jake, the Bulletin is previewing their new site. Executive summary? There's still no RSS.

This looks interesting: The Bend, Oregon Celebrity Weblog.

According to this list from MSNBC/Forbes, seven of the 10 safest places to live in this country are in the Pacific Northwest. Central Oregon didn't make the list, presumably because of the Sisters bulge and our general proximity to volcanoes.

I'm a little surprised to see Medford/Ashland make the list, though; part of the selection criteria was taking account of extreme weather, which they define as "abundant rain or snowfall or days that are below freezing or above 90 degrees Fahrenheit," and Medford is routinely hotter than most parts of the state during the summer—easily over the "extreme" 90 degree mark.

Even more surprising though is Honolulu, Hawaii, as the nation's safest place to live. Who'd'a thunk it?

Via LifeHacker.

Change, indeed. Today was our eldest's first day of kindergarten. Huge transition! She'll be riding a bus and everything. She attends in the afternoon; our youngest is in a new preschool, attends in the mornings, five days a week (at the old preschool it was only three). The schedule change is still taking some getting used to, I think.

The whole household dynamic is different since our cat died. It feels that way to me, at least; things seems shifted, somehow, at angles to the way they were before.

We painted the kids' rooms this past weekend, changing from the rather bland "toasted almond" that came with the house to more vibrant blues, purples and pinks. The difference is striking.

And of course it's that time of year again—the weather's changing; you can feel the autumn coming in the air. The days are getting shorter. It's definitely feeling like fall to me.

So this seems to be the month of change. What's next?

Two interesting factoids from ADTmag's 2005 Salary Survey:

[Application Programmers] Programmers in mainframe and Unix shops make the most, topping $59,000 a year in base salary. By development language environment, programmers in CICS and COBOL shops fare best, drawing average salaries of almost $62,000 for CICS-based development and $59,000 for COBOL.

[System Programmers] Mainframe skills continue to be a strong suit for systems programmers, who earn an average of $71,100, outpacing their Unix counterparts by about $2,000. By development language environment, systems programmers in CICS and COBOL shops fare best, drawing average salaries of $72,100 and $70,200, respectively.

$59K to $70K per year for being a COBOL programmer? Whoa.

Oddly, it ties into my COBOL note from almost exactly a year ago.

I may not be posting much this weekend. Today we had to have our oldest cat, Bob, put to sleep. He had a cancerous intenstinal tumor that was inoperable. He was also 12 years old, he lived a long good life; we'd raised him from a kitten so this is especially hard.

...it's like losing a member of the family. He really was the best cat you could ask for. Thankfully I got to be there with him in the end, and bury him.

I'm not functioning all that well right now, good thing it's a long weekend.

My brother sent me this video the other day, and it's the funniest thing I've seen in awhile (you have to be nerdy to really appreciate it though): Leeroy Jenkins (Windows Media File, 5MB). I've been laughing over it for days. It's a clip from the World of WarCraft multiplayer online game, of a group of players talking (over headsets) about a strategy for fighting a bunch of dragons—typical nerd game stuff—when suddenly one of the players jumps up, screams "Leeroy Jenkins!" and takes off, getting them all killed.

Repeated watchings and listening to the comments make it funnier. I imagine drinking some beer while watching it would be even better :). As a bonus, check out LeeroyJenkins.net.

I've got a copy of the file, but I'm afraid to serve it because of bandwidth issues; but if the one I link to above has problems, I'll consider uploading mine.

Today's hint that blogging is gradually getting mainstream comes from an article in this month's Realtor Magazine titled, "Blogging for profit". It was pointed out to me here at work (since I work for a builder, with real estate agents coming and going). There's nothing new here, it's just another introductory article, though there's an interesting statistic in the print version of the article that doesn't show up online: only 26% of Americans are familiar with blogs. Which means that 74% of Americans haven't heard of blogs (or are unfamiliar with them; I guess this depends on what your definition of "familiar" is). I'd guess that sounds about right.

Pril is wondering what the deal is with shoe trees. I've been curious about that myself, since seeing one on my Walla Walla trip. I know of two (that I've seen personally): the one I just mentioned, on highway 97 south of Grass Valley, I believe, and north of Shaniko, and another one on highway 26, between Prineville and John Day (which may even be this one, but I can't say for sure).

Very strange.

Some Googling turns up a number of shoe tree sites. Here's one. Here's another.

Yep, home again, home again. Actually we got home yesterday (Sunday), but it's taken me two days just to get started catching up on email and stuff. Anyway, it was one hell of a vacation! Internet access was spotty to none for most of the trip (you could pay 50 cents a minute for access from the ship that was little better than dial-up when it worked), so it turned into an offline sabbatical.

I imagine I'll post some pictures and stories in the coming days. Right now though I'm still catching up, and decompressing. It was back to work today, which always sucks after a long vacation.

Wednesday (today, even though it's only 12:30 am) is the start of our big vacation: 12 days worth. It's the longest vacation we've had in... ever, maybe. So my offline status may extend a bit, even though we're taking the laptop with us. Though with internet access, who knows...

What are we doing? Well, prepare to be jealous: We're going on an Alaskan cruise. Yep! It's my in-laws 35th wedding anniversary, so they're taking the family on a cruise. Nice, huh?

Told you you'd be jealous :).