chuggnutt.com

Starting tomorrow (er, today... Friday), I'm gonna be offline. We're going camping for the family reunion all weekend. It'll be nice to unplug for a while.

And nice to be camping, too. It's one of those things I really like to do, but only ever do it once a year—yep, at the family reunion. Which is fine, but it always turns into such a production... it'd be nice sometime to throw a bunch of gear in the car and just go, maybe take more time than a weekend, and just... I don't know, decompress maybe.

But I'll take what I can get. We'll have a great time, we've got a really good campsite this year, it's gonna be good.

We ate at Bluefish Bistro (no website that I see; instead here's a link to The Source's dining guide entry) in Downtown Bend last Saturday (my wife and I), and yes, I'm just now getting around to writing about it. Bluefish is one of the newest restaurants in the current trend of upscale, fine dining experiences in Bend (others being Merenda, Cork, Zydeco, Ariana, for instance), and it's also one of the most expensive. More on that in a bit.

Located downtown on Franklin, on the corner of Drake Park and Franklin basically, it's kind of an unassuming place from the outside. I don't know if that bodes well or not because that location has generally seen more turnover than other places downtown; I can think of two previous establishments there in recent memory. Inside is nice, more character; I particularly like the water fountain dividing the entry area from the dining room.

One nice touch: the water had a fresh sprig of mint in it. My wife wasn't sure how well she liked that, but I thought it was refreshing—we grew up with a lot of mint growing in the gardens, and there's nothing quite like being able to pick and eat fresh mint leaves.

The bread was very good, but it was the butter that stood out. There are three kinds: a sweet butter, a honey almond butter, and a tangerine butter. They were, frankly, amazing.

A note to beer drinkers: they apparently don't have any beer on tap, it's all bottled, and at four dollars a bottle, you'd probably be better off going with a glass of wine (which is what I did).

The food was good, but expensive: all the entrees were in the mid to upper twenties, the heirloom tomato salad was $12, glasses of wine tended to run seven dollars and up. The food was excellent—I had the halibut which was tender and moist and flaky, along with well-chosen root vegetables (beets and turnips, I want to say), and the vanilla cheesecake was stunning—but I think it's the most expensive of restaurants we've been to lately. Sad to say, this will be the limiting factor as to how often we visit Bluefish, I imagine.

Overall, a very good dining experience. If you can afford it, it's worth a try at least once.

This article in the Bulletin Monday caught my eye: Dinosaur discovery. Part of a plesiosaur was unearthed over near Prineville last summer:

The self-trained paleontologists found what is believed to be the first remains of a marine reptile called the plesiosaur that has been found in the Pacific Northwest.

It is also thought to be only the third vertebrate fossil uncovered in the area so far from a rock formation that dates back to the Cretaceous period, the last of the three periods of the Dinosaur Age....

When South Dakota paleontologist James Martin excavated the site in May on behalf of the BLM, he found at least two nearly complete teeth, tooth fragments and a 3-foot-long lower jawbone of a 90 to 100 million-year-old plesiosaur. The pieces may constitute 80 percent of its lower jaw.

Martin thinks it was from a large-headed, short-necked plesiosaur that was 25 feet long from head to tail.

Pretty cool stuff—it's a long article (for the Bulletin), gets into detail about plesiosaurs. And, there's another first that I'm aware of: using Wikipedia as a source (and citing it in the article). That seems to me to be pretty clueful. Have they mentioned Wikipedia before?

I'm in Walla Walla tonight, on the road for work. My company purchased a house up here and needed to get a computer and WiFi set up. It's kind of a cool deal, the house is available to employees spending time up here—business takes a priority, but it's open to anyone who wants to take a weekend in Walla Walla also.

So, in addition to getting the stuff done I came to do, I also stopped at Three Rivers Winery and bought some wine to take home, and had dinner at the Mill Creek Brewpub (and wrote a review of it on The Brew Site).

Back home tomorrow. In case anyone's wondering, it was a five hour drive from Bend, counting a few reststops. I'll have more to write about the drive and Walla Walla tomorrow night, probably.

Spent half a day Saturday at the county fair, which was both good and bad. The bad part was that it was hot—damn hot—and expensive. The good part is that it's the Fair and we had fun—and we got there when they opened so we didn't have to deal with the crowds and lines like Chris did.

You know what I like best about the fair? The livestock and the crafts. The stuff the fair is actually supposed to be about: showing your animals, or your goods, and the competition between those things. I particularly like the poultry exhibit, probably because we raised chickens growing up. I enjoy viewing the rest of the livestock, some more than others (the sheep are just "eh"), but the birds are the best.

The canned, prepared, or grown foods are highlights, too. I particularly like the beer and wine showings; there's never many anymore, but it's still cool. I remember when I entered my homebrew in the fair some years back; I brought home several ribbons. That was cool.

The kids loved the rides, of course. I could personally do without: they're expensive and you have to wait too long in the heat. I remember liking the rides well enough when I was younger, I think; at least, the "boring" stuff I described above didn't interest me. I wonder at what point that changed...

All good fun. I even won some stuffed toys for the kids at the midway games. Know the secret to winning those games? They're easy; the secret part is how much each individual game costs! That's how they get you. If you want to win a big prize, you basically need to shell out $16-32 per game (assuming you win each "throw" you buy). That's some crazy economy of scale, right there.

All in all, a good, tiring time was had. Maybe next year I'll brew some beer to enter in the fair; my wife is convinced that if I'd entered my pumpkin ale, I would have won first prize. Possibly. But that's what next year is for.

It seems I am the number one search on Google for "Donald Trump Bend Oregon". That's awesome. I think I should win something :).

Even more amusing is reading the comments I got on that post, with the variations on the rumor people have heard.

How about this? Start a weblog called BendRumors.com (the domain is available! Grab it up quick!) and run just this sort of thing... (Actually, Shannon's boy suggested something similar, doing "BendTabloid.com." That one's available, too.)

A year ago tomorrow, I had a photo shoot with the Bulletin (along with Jake and Chris) for a big article on local blogging that ran a week later. Amazing, that was a whole year ago.

A coworker emailed me this today. It's a classified ad that appeared in the Bulletin on Sunday. Anyone looking for a career change? Want to get out of the high stress, tight deadlines and sedentary lifestyle of the technology industry?

Sheepherder with 3 months of experience. Immediate Openings Available. Attends sheep grazing on range or pasture. Herds sheep using trained dogs. Guards flock from predators and from eating poisonous plants. May examine animals for signs of illness and administer vaccines, medication and insecticides. May assist in lambing, docking and shearing. May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production. Large flocks with single/pair herder. Free food, housing, tools, supplies and equipment provided. May be on call 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. Maximum of 11 months employment. Employment for -3/4 of workdays guaranteed. Workers compensation provided. Transportation to job and subsistence provided, deducted from wages until 50% of employment contract completed, then paid to worker. Return transportation provided at end of employment contract. A reference is required. Employment is available in several Western States including: NV, AZ, CA, OR, ID, WA, CO, UT, MT, WY, Minimum salary varies according to States. From $650.00 to $1200.00....

"May perform other ranch duties incidental to goat/sheep production." The mind reels.

Lately I've been playing around a bit with Google Earth, and correspondingly Google Maps, and it's amazing the kinds of things you can do with it. Unfortunately, their source data for Central Oregon is less than impressive; try to zoom in too tightly and you just get pixelated blobs.

Well, the city of Bend website has put their GIS mapping system online, you can get to it here, and it's super-detailed (for Bend only) and largely fills that niche that's missing from Google's maps. It even has some of the same functionality with their layers option. The only drawback is that it only runs in Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater (and, I'm assuming, Windows).

Still, it's pretty sweet. I'm already thinking about how to use this data somewhere...

Now this is some kind of crazy:

The hobbit holes will hold lawn mowers instead of diminutive, barefooted halflings from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but The Shire aims to bring some Old World styling and a fantasy setting to Bend's east side.

"We call it the place of enchantment, and we are building to that (motto)," said Ron Meyers, the developer whose business card identifies him as Lord of The Shire....

The application submitted to the city for development calls for a mix of 31 cottages and townhomes on 6.2 acres off Benham Road east of the Parrell/Sisters Mobile Home Park. The project also will have 1.5 acres of common open space that will include trails, ponds, landscaping and an amphitheater, some of which are in place.

Hobbit holes already are cut into the side of the hill, and Karl Anthony, whom Meyers describes as a "spiritual artist," held a concert at the amphitheater a few weeks ago.

It will be the homes themselves, however, that give The Shire its unique look.

Cottages will evoke English country homes. Townhouses will be built to look like medieval city streetscapes.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

...actually, I'd be real curious to see what it looks like when they're done. Jeez, just when I thought the real estate market around here couldn't get any weirder...

One thing the Bulletin forgot: the web site address for "The Shire." Kind of important, there.

But that's okay, I found it: The Shire of Bend, Oregon.

Heard about this on the radio this morning, and I wanted to blog it before I forgot about it. On the front page of the Bulletin today there's a picture of three people floating the river (a popular summer activity here in Bend)—which by itself is no big deal. However, the focus of the article that accompanies it is on the excessive alcohol consumption that goes along with the river floaters.

Back to that picture. Three people floating the river with booze in hand. Here's the picture:

Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

I'm not against drinking, rafting, drinking while rafting necessarily, but damn! That's some hard drinkin' in the picture. The guy on the left is drinking some kind of hard liquor, the middle guy a beer, and there's at least two more bottles visible with them. The girl has a Jagermeister. I like Jager and all, but that's way too hardcore for me.

Besides, everyone knows the proper way to drink Jager is chilled, ideally right out of the freezer ;).

Just a quick note about Chelsea Lane, a nice little wine shop that used to be downtown but is now located at the factory outlet stores on south Highway 97: they're closing! I don't know when the last day will be, but right now they're selling their wines at 30% off, and beer for 15% off. I picked up four normally-spendy beers there the other day.

Get down there while the getting's good. It's really too bad they're closing; I don't really know of any other wine shops in Bend (dedicated/exclusive wine shops—not just wineries or places that also sell wine), except maybe for Vino Mercato.

Eh, it wasn't that bad. We had our picnic dinner in the park with Shannon and Simone, at the farmer's market. I'm rethinking this whole "blogger meetup" thing though since only Shannon, Simone, and myself ever get together... if someone else wants to organize a blogger deal, I'll come, but I'm done trying to put something together. For now, anyway.

The blogworthy part of the evening (the part Shannon didn't want to read... or maybe she did, I'm not sure) was Shannon's skirt. She's wearing a just-above-the-knee orange skirt and we're all sitting on the grass (my family's there, too), and what happens when you're wearing a short skirt and sitting on the ground? Yah, it rides up and every time you shift you have to make sure you're not flashing the person sitting across from you. Which was me.

Do you know how hard it is to not see up someone's skirt in that situation? Well, I didn't see anything—I almost did, once or twice—but at some point Shannon realized that I was studiously looking elsewhere whenever she'd start shifting around and caught herself just in time. It turned into the joke afterward, but no, I wasn't trying to see if she was going commando or not.

See what kind of fun y'all miss out on? :)

Update: No, Shannon wasn't doing anything on purpose... it was just an unfortunate arrangement. See, this is why I don't wear skirts...

I just heard about this at work today, people claiming that Donald Trump said the number one place to invest in/develop/buy/smoke real estate is Bend, Oregon. One guy—a local land engineer even—claims that Trump said this on Larry King Live. He may even be developing something here!

Folks, it just ain't true. Someone's blowing smoke up your ass. It's a rumor someone started to get people talking about Bend real estate. There's no information online alluding to this, and even the transcripts of the Larry King Live episode in question don't bear it out. Bend is not even on Trump's radar.

Let's move on now, m'kay?

You can tell I've been busy these last few days: I've got a number of things to write about but haven't had the time to until now. These next couple of things are about articles that appeared in the Bulletin.

First: 7-story hotel planned for downtown. This, of course, will be literally right next to the five-story parking garage. I'm a little ambivalent about this. I don't necessarily think it's bad for downtown Bend, but does it have to be a seven-story monstrosity? Plus, it'll turn into a cost-overrun, logistical nightmare typical of recent downtown development.

To be fair, though, the city has yet to approve the application. We all know that that's just a formality, though, right?

And the plan is to put a swimming pool on the sixth floor. Uh, okay. I know I sure wouldn't want any room directly beneath several thousand tons of water suspended 55 feet or so above the ground... but that's just me.

The other item is this: Post office will test for anthrax. Yeah, that's timely and relevant, what, three years later? Is this really news? I think bioterrorists have probably figured out by now that anthrax is kind of a no-go anymore, and are more likely to have something different cooked up. Seems to me the post office should be expanding the scope of their testing, if they're really worried about it...

Amid all the craziness of the past weekend, my wife and I were able to have a Saturday evening out (the grandparents watched the kids). We went to Ariana with Shannon and her fiancé

Ariana is located on Bend's west side, in one of the renovated old houses that make up much of the west side's character. My review, in a word: awesome! The weather was just right to sit out on the patio, the wait staff was refreshingly good, the food was excellent. Next time, though, when we're out with friends, I'll order an appetizer; Shannon wrote that I "ate off our plates" and that makes me sound like a homeless person or something. Really, I'm not.

The one nagging question I have is whether the Spaten Oktoberfest I ordered was on tap or from the bottle. Bottle is fine, I don't know of any other restaurant in town that has it, but if it's on tap, then kudos, Ariana. Kudos indeed.

Seriously, I'm not a homeless guy.

Busy busy busy weekend, that's why I haven't been posting. And I'm getting hammered at work with things, but I needed to jump on to post this bit, lest I forget again:

There's finally another Bend blogger meetup this week! Wednesday (July 27) at the Farmer's Market downtown, at six o'clock. Basically we'll have a picnic in Drake Park. (Buy your own dinner at the Farmer's Market.) We'll be meeting near the booth selling fish, though Shannon said if anyone gets there late, look for her and an orange blanket. So if you see a group of people sitting by an orange blanket in the park near the Farmer's Market, odds are it's us.

Maybe we could get a roll call in the comments here, so we know who all can make it?

Jeremy Zawodny wonders When will blogging peak? I don't think it will, anytime soon or maybe even at all. Why? Because, like I wrote last month, it ain't even mainstream yet. Plus, it's too compelling. It will likely evolve, but it isn't even close to peaking, if it ever will.

Dave Winer mostly agrees with this assessment, but then writes this:

Blogs with ads, like their print counterparts, strive to be as broad as possible, to reach as many people, and in doing so, lose their value as an ad for the author.

No, I don't think that's true at all. Blogs with ads don't automatically lose their value. I do think blogs that try to be as broad as possible and make money with ads largely won't work; it's the niche blogging that works. Blogs that do this the right way are making money. Otherwise Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc. wouldn't have just made over $2,000 in a single day with AdSense.

You'll note that I have AdSense on both of my blogs (this and The Brew Site). This blog is broad in scope, and has wildly varying ads; if I was relying on it to make money (rather than just running the ads as a nice extra), well, I'd have to keep my day job. The Brew Site, being much more focused/niched, doesn't make as much as this site but does have a higher quality of ads and click rates. If I were to get the kind of traffic there that I get here, I'd see some nice figures, I think.

Finally, in other blog news, Scoble today tries to downplay being a A-list blogger. Get this: "Forget the A-listers. They don't matter anymore. Well, they don't matter as much." Yeah, right. Sorry, but being an A-list blogger is better than ever, period. Doubt it? In the same post, Scoble mentions that he "was talking to Chris Pirillo [another A-list blogger] the other day about the 'long tail' metaphor and while we were flying over mountains in the Boeing plane...." This refers to the fact that himself and several other prominent (A-list) bloggers were invited on an exclusive test flight featuring Boeing's new in-flight WiFi service... they all got flown to Walla Walla for wine. And buzzed some mountains.

Man, don't try to tell me that the A-listers don't matter anymore. Jeez.

Hmm. Anyone else notice the irony of this post? I'm pointing to the A-listers. Must be sour grapes or something.

I've been seeing lots of referrer hits from MySpace on my site lately, so I thought it was apropos to point to this article on Kuro5hin: MySpace: A Place for Dolts. It's just too funny not to, and it's full of great soundbites.

You see, when you sign up for MySpace, you instantly have your first friend. You're immediately best buddies with the most popular person on MySpace: Tom. Now, to understand the stupidity of this, you have to understand that this is a social networking mechanism; if I'm friends with John and John is friends with Sally, then Sally is syllogistically my friend, and if I visit her profile it will tell me just that: "Sally is in your extended network". But if EVERYONE is friends with Tom, then there might as well not be an extended network feature at all, and he is defeating the purpose of his time and his website. Basically what I'm saying is, Tom is a dumbshit.

But there's a reason why none of this matters. There's a reason why he wins even though he programs in Cold Fusion (I have yet to meet someone who uses Cold Fusion and isn't a complete moron), even though he has no sense of style or ergonomics, and even though he's lazy as hell: he gets an enormous amount of money from the website. Movies, bands, dating services, clothing companies, non-profit organizations, and even the US Army advertises on MySpace.

Ah, you gotta love cynical internet rants.

See also Movable Type Rant, a pointer to another great Kuro5hin piece.

I don't care if it's poker terminology or not, the expression "bluffing into the nuts" is just so, so wrong. It's simply the gayest phrase ever.

Yep, a new Bend blogger: Rhysently. First saw this today show up linking to me in Technorati, and ORblogs has it listed as a new addition tonight. Only two entries so far, but I found them quotable:

Anybody who doesn't live in Central Oregon is a sucker. This is the most amazing, beautiful place on earth. I'm never leaving, ever. It's so unbelievable that this place and someplace like Florida—that miserable swampy armpit with the most roaches and serial killers than any other place in the world—could exist on the same planet, let alone the same country.

And:

I paused to reflect on something that deeply bothered me in the past: the NASCAR fried chicken bucket series....

What kind of white trash CEO thought this one up? And let me tell you, I'm not using that term loosely. I grew up in a town with 23 bars and no library. I lived in a trailer for part of my youth. I have relatives with more tattoos than teeth. I KNOW from white trash, okay? And still, I can't think of anyone tacky enough—not even my mulleted cousin Dwayne who's spent more than half his life in jail and gets conjugal visits from a beer-swilling hottie who can braid her own armpit hair—to actually SAVE THEIR NASTY GREASY CHICKEN BUCKET. Arggh. Seriously, do you display them on the mantel, or what?

Okay, we seriously need to have another blogger meetup and get all these new bloggers to come.

Yep, we're heading up to Portland tomorrow, for the weekend. We've got a bunch of clothes shopping to do. And appointments to keep. And friends to see, if there's time. With all the running around, I wonder when (if) we'll find time to relax...

Taking the laptop, though, so I'll still be checking in.

Get your pimp name right here. This is classic! Here's some of what it gave me:

Suede Jon Shmoove
Pimp Daddy Jon Wicked
Trick Magnet J. Ice
Stealth Maestro J. Glide
Delicious Jon Wicked

Via ongoing.

Today is Bastille Day in France, their equivalent to our Fourth of July/Independence Day. The Wikipedia article I point to there has a pretty good overview.

On 20 June [1789] the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath (named after the place where they had gathered which was a place where an ancestor of tennis, the "jeu de paume" was played), swearing not to separate until a Constitution had been established. To show their support, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a prison where people were jailed by arbitrary decision of the King (lettre de cachet). The Bastille was, in particular, known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government. Thus the Bastille was a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy.

There were only 7 inmates housed at the time of the siege. The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance. No less important in the history of France, it was not the image typically conjured up of courageous French patriots storming the Bastille and freeing hundreds of oppressed peasants. However, it did immediately inspire preparations amongst the peasants for the very real threat of retaliation.

An even more comprehensive history (you gotta love Wikipedia) is found at the Storming of the Bastille article.

Back in the summer of 1989, when I was 16, I spent three weeks in France on a high school trip. We were there for the Fête Nationale (National Holiday), in... Tournon, I believe it was. Not only was it Bastille Day, but it was the bicentennial as well. Sadly, it was half my lifetime ago and I don't remember nearly as much as I should; I remember fireworks in Tournon but the big action was in Paris (where we weren't). I did keep a journal for the time I was there—most of it, anyway—I think I'll dig that up and re-read it. Hell, I'll post it here, even.

In the meantime, happy 14 juillet.

This last weekend was the Bend Summer Festival ("SummerFest" for the rest of us, it's shorter and easier to say) and despite my expressed ambivalence in the past toward the various seasonal festivals around here, we went on Saturday and had a pretty good time.

The weather was decent while we were there, except for a brief interlude during which it downpoured rain—about five minutes worth, and then the mini-squall moved on. Typical Central Oregon weather, though sooner or later some local will trot out the old chestnut about it snowing on the Fourth of July...

There's great shopping to be found there—for adults. The kids got bored pretty quickly as we wandered among the various tents. I got bored after a while, too; there's only so many arts and crafts you can look at before they start blurring together. Ultimately we did buy two framed prints from a photographer, and my wife got a bracelet and a scarf/wrap thing.

The children's section was great. Like last year, it was sponsored by the Working Wonders Children's Museum and had a bunch of fun and educational things to do. The best part was the bird house building; Home Depot had donated crates of kid-friendly bird house kits (seven pre-cut board plus nails and screws) and kids could assemble them and take them home for free. Well, kids and adults; I ended up putting together most of the two we took. But it was still a very cool idea.

Food—good (mmmm Philly cheesesteak sandwich...); alcohol—good but some confusion reigned as to when they could start serving. OLCC rules say not until noon, but no one was allowed to start til sometime after that, not sure why... regardless, my wife finally got to taste some good wines and I had a beer (only had time for one), a tasty Ropewalk Amber from BridgePort Brewing. There was a big selection of other beers on their sheet, too, I was impressed.

We didn't catch any music—a consequence of having small kids who are impatient—but it was still a pretty good SummerFest. I like it best of the various Bend seasonal festivals.

I'll post about the Bend SummerFest tomorrow I think, but I just wanted to get something out there tonight, and I note that ORblogs is reporting another Bend weblog: under the ponderosas. Right on.

In this case, "Barcelona" refers to the restaurant in Downtown Bend, in the St. Clair building. The reason I'm wondering if they're closed is because they have a banner reading "Restaurant fire sale Monday" and the interior looks, well, disassembled.

Anyone know what the scoop is?

Shannon did a lurker day on her blog a couple of weeks ago and said I should do one, too. Okay!

Since it's nearly midnight, let's call Friday "Lurker Day" on chuggnutt.com! If you lurk on my site, make a comment! I'd love to hear from you. Even if you've made comments before :). And, I'll shamelessly steal Shannon's Lurker Day questions for myself:

1. Who are you?
2. How did you find this blog?
3. Why do you come back?

So on the spur of the moment this evening we decided to go to this year's first Munch 'n Music and have dinner. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any good website source for Munch 'n Music, so for those of you not from Bend, here's the three-second explanation:

Thursday evenings during the summer in Bend, free concerts in Drake Park are accompanied by food and craft vendors, and a beer garden. Parking is hell.

This was the first one we'd been to in years, so the beer garden was new to me. We didn't stay for the full concert—we never do, really, with young kids—but we did enjoy Pilot Butte Drive-in's cheeseburgers and fries. We hadn't had them since forever and they were utterly delicious. It's the only place you can get Pilot Butte after lunchtime these days! Score! The kids had Pizza Mondo. I was totally jonesing for some elephant ears, but the line was too long and we were on the way out.

My wife got a new toe ring and the kids got an ice cream bar and cotton candy. It was a fruitful trip.

One of these days we'll try staying for the full concert. And I will get some elephant ears!

Update: My wife found the website... it's www.munchandmusic.com. Go figure. Couldn't find it on the search engines, so that's saying something.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised when the oddball stuff happens around here anymore, but... Bend.com is reporting that during next week's Great North American RV Rally in Redmond, participants will attempt to build the world's largest s'more.

The S'more will consist of about 40,000 marshmallows, 40,000 graham crackers and 14,000 chocolate bars, and it'll be built by volunteers on Wednesday, July 13, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Construction is expected to take approximately three hours, with the final product covering 1,600 square feet. The World's Largest S'more is sponsored by Reserve America, and is expected to break the current record of 1,600 pounds, which was established in May, 2003....

People from as far away as Florida and Nova Scotia are expected be on-hand to construct, watch and maybe even eat the S'more.

The world's. Largest. S'more.

Sigh.

Okay, I admit that since I saw the trailer for it at the beginning of Star Wars, I want to see the "Fantastic Four" movie. Even though, as my brother seems to think, it will likely turn out to be desperately bad. But with today's CGI and effects technology, even the desperately bad can look good—or at least the trailers can.

The qualm I do have about the movie is one I share with my brother—the rubbery-looking costume for the Thing. I hope the final version looks a lot better, because right now it looks like, I don't know, Meat Man or something. This is supposed to be a character who's mutated into orange rock or somesuch, not latex. Couldn't they have done an all-CGI Thing?

I don't have a problem with casting Michael Chiklis in that role, though. It seems appropriate. Peter David, who's doing the novelization, made a comment about this: "If I had to guess, I'm thinking Chiklis' Ben Grimm is going to be the character everyone's talking about." So there's hope. Maybe.

Of course, when there's an article on Wired about all the hype and hooplah the studio's going through to promote the movie, that just seems to be that they're trying too hard. The movie will look good—mostly—but it'll likely be another Hulk.

And in related news: Defamer reports that a skywriter promoting the movie messed up by drawing the "4" backwards. Nice.

It started with housecleaning, since we were hosting a party at our place. We managed to finish up in time to go to the Pet Parade, which is always fun (though, as someone was telling me later, is just crazy with too many people compared to four years ago). The highlight of the Parade worth blogging about was the flying dog. Someone had harnessed up a little rat dog of some kind to a bunch of big helium balloons, and had it tethered on a leash at about four feet in the air. My thought was, if they drop the leash, the dog is gone—I hope they have a pellet gun!

For the balloons. The balloons. Yeah, I know what you thought I meant the gun was for.

Oh, we saw Shannon in the Parade, as well. And apparently Chris was in it too. A fake monkey? What?

We fought our way to Drake Park where my wife was looking for toe rings and I bought the kids each a beanbag snake. This was the "old fashioned celebration" part of the public festivities they were advertising, I guess—craft vendors and food, though we didn't make it as far as the food.

The party at our house was pretty good. We had my family, old family friends, Shannon and Simone for a little while, a friend of my wife's and even some of my coworkers. The best part of course was the fireworks, especially for the kids. I set off a lot of them, and we were treated to just as many (legal and otherwise) from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

And this was the first year we let the kids stay up until 10 to watch the Pilot Butte fireworks show (which according to the news this evening is the largest in Oregon. Who knew!). We have a nice view of Pilot Butte from our yard, so it was a treat.

The only downside was going back to work the next day (today)... unpleasant. Maybe I'll start taking July 5th off from now on...

Happy Fourth to everyone, hope you all have a good holiday. We'll be down at the Pet Parade at 10, then kids' swimming lessons and a party to prepare for. Plus it's going to be in the mid-80s today, perfect!

Check out this Flash animation. It's creepy and compelling! It's a mannequin falling through an infinite sky of spheres. Realistic. And you can drag the thing around with your mouse, too...

Via Boing Boing.

Wednesday after work (around five) I met the the family down at Bend's farmer's market in Drake Park. Strangely enough, it was the first time I'd been to it, despite living in Bend for, oh, most of my life. I liked it a lot; we ended up buying a bunch of stuff, including giant cookies, three kinds of berries, a bouquet of flowers, cherries, dried apples, and fresh vegetables (including zucchini—I've been totally wanting to make zucchini bread for ages, and I've got a nice big one now to do so). I was hoping to score some fresh honey, but I didn't see any (I'd heard honey mentioned on the radio that morning when they were promoting the farmer's market).

Next time we go back I think I might also pick up some locally-made cheese, from Juniper Grove Farm in Redmond (no website that I can find). And maybe a baguette.

What's funny is Shannon was there too—but we missed her. Next time we'll need to coordinate better :). Or how about this? Get a blogger/friends/family thing together at the farmer's market, buy a bunch of food there, and have a picnic dinner in the park.

Last weekend as a treat we picked up Burger King for lunch. To go. When we got home, inside the bag we found this incredibly poorly done "help wanted" flyer. It's so bad it's funny! So of course, I had to scan it in and post it here. Enjoy!

(Click to see larger version)

Blogging has been light lately because I've been reading The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven, and just finished it up last night. It was a decent enough novel, and a decent sequel to the original Ringworld, though I think I liked the original better.

Niven does a great job of building a complex, consistent universe and then coming up with logical, consistent solutions to the puzzles he throws at his characters. And the Ringworld—and his Known Space universe—is a compelling one to play in. This story is no different. He brings back most of the characters from the first book, 23 years later, and drops them on the Ringworld with a seemingly impossible task: save it before it crashes into the sun. (The first book merely had them explore and ultimately escape when things went wrong.) He pulls this off in a satisfying way.

One of things I thought was weak to the point of distracting was the overuse of interspecies sex. Niven contrived this practice among the Ringworld natives as a bargaining tool, to seal deals, to avoid mating within a species, and just as a general titillating contrivance. Yeah, odd, and unconvincing. It smacks of "dirty old man" syndrome, or a cheap male fantasy (a world with free no-strings-attached sex!). There's nothing explicit or pornographic—it's just annoying. There's no real point to it, it just seems gratuitous, and that makes weak writing.

In general, I like the stuff Niven and Jerry Pournelle produce together better than just Niven's work alone—although granted, I've only read these first two Ringworld novels, and he has quite a body of work that I haven't touched, so it may not be a fair comparison.

Overall, Engineers is a good summer read. Watch out for sequel-itis, though: you defintely need to read the original Ringworld to follow what's going on. (And speaking of sequel-itis, I observe that there are two more sequels in this series... good grief...)

Okay, this is damn freaky. Apparently US scientists have succeeded in reanimating dead dogs—yup, bringing them back to life by replacing their blood, cooling them down, and shocking them with electricity.

They claim the zombie dogs are "perfectly normal, with no brain damage." Riiiiiight.

There is no way I would trust a dog—or any animal really—to be normal again that died and was brought back to life like Frankenstein's monster. I've seen Pet Sematary (just the movie; ironically it's one of the few Stephen King novels I haven't read), that just ain't happenin'.

On the other hand, when I clicked through to the article I just about wet myself laughing so hard at the totally inappropriate stock photo they used...

Via Slashdot.

My wife fielded a call this afternoon from a telemarketer looking to speak with the owner of chuggnutt.com (which is what I use as the registrant for my domain names), and was confused to find out it wasn't a business he was calling. This wouldn't be noteworthy except for the fact that the guy identified himself as working for Yahoo! and was trying to sell their Pay Per Click ad service.

Since when does Yahoo—or any of the big internet players, for that matter—resort to telemarketing? Cold calling no less? I would have thought that Yahoo especially would know better. I may or may not have looked into their ads in the future, but I'm pretty sure I won't at all now. Here's a hint: I don't like telemarketing. I used to work for a telemarketing company in Spokane, so while I can totally sympathize with the individuals who have to actually make the day-to-day calls and deal with people that basically hate them, I really, really don't like the companies/corporations behind telemarketing, especially the ones trying to sell something. It's a sleazy business.

In the interests of transparency, here's the info from call: the number was 888-254-2716 (toll free, which was kind of odd), and the person my wife spoke to was Walter. He specifically identified himself as working for Yahoo. I Googled the number (heh), but didn't find much, just enough to indicate that it points to Yahoo/Overture.

I don't get out to many of the local festivals, but we did hit the Bite of Bend last Saturday, so here's my mini-review. Actually, the one thing I really wanted to see at the Bite of Bend was the Iron Chef competition among six local chefs, and I got to see a bit of that—so this review will probably focus more on that than anything else :).

They had closed off most of the Old Mill District—the main drag between the parking lots at the movie theater and the smokestack building—and even so, we were able to find parking in the theater lot fairly easily. At the time we got there (around 11:30), most of the upper lot (above the theater) was empty, too. That's pretty good for an event like this, particularly in Bend.

Decent selection of food, too, and just okay on the beer. When you see a sign saying, "Beer garden" I guess you expect more than four beers on tap. Although, in addition to the one wine vendor, the Bendistillery was there serving up hard alcohol. Nice!

Actually, the food selection was more than decent; to me it seemed like a lot and a good variety. There could have been more—Pilot Butte Burgers would have been nice, for instance—but c'est la vie.

Didn't pay any real attention to the music. That's about all I can say about that.

Ah, but the Iron Chef competition was fun. I actually only got to wander over to it three times (everyone else thought I was weird to get excited about it), but I managed to see the start of the first contest—secret ingredient (tombo tuna) and all—and come back later to watch the matches in action. I don't know who won any of the match-ups, though. And I don't think they had to make more than one dish (unlike the TV show, which requires four or five), but it was still a lot of fun to watch. Interestingly, Standard TV and Appliance had set up a big screen HDTV off to the side and had two camera guys filming the competition up close—so you could watch the details on the TV. I was hoping they were recording it all and would broadcast it on the local cable channel, but I haven't seen anything about that.

It would have been cool to have someone doing an intelligent (i.e., knowledgeable about food and cooking) running commentary, but I guess not everyone's as into the Iron Chef thing as I am. Regardless, I hope they do this again. Maybe they could do it at some of the other festivals and not just Bite of Bend...?

Any other Bendites have reviews they'd like to post here?

Seemed long because we had so much going on. Friday night my wife and I stayed at the Pine Ridge Inn here in town for an early anniversary trip (my mother stayed with the kids). While having dinner at Cork Friday night, I happened to see an old friend walk by the window, and this was about as unlikely an encounter as it gets: this is someone I knew and worked with in Spokane, back in the mid-90s, whom I haven't seen in nearly five years, and currently lives near Seattle. So when I first saw him (and his wife and son) walk by the window of a restaurant in downtown Bend, at first I thought I'd had too much wine.

Turns out they came down for the weekend, pretty much spur-of-the-moment, and hadn't had a chance to call us yet.

Saturday we checked out the Saturday Market (pretty small around here), then hit the Bite of Bend. We hooked up with our friends again there, and made plans to have Father's Day dinner at our place with my family. Of course, we had to go shopping to get everything we needed, so we picked up the kids, hit Costco and Safeway, and had a quick dinner at Subway.

As to the Bite of Bend, I'll write up a mini-review after this.

Sunday, Father's Day. Nice, leisurely day, except for all the house cleaning in preparation for having everyone over. Everyone had a good time, even when the massive storm hit (we were barbecuing, wouldn't you know). Rain, hail and thunder—it hailed so much that there were still drifts in the backyard hours later. And actually the rain pretty much stopped by the time I was out cooking on the grill, so it was no big deal.

So yeah, it definitely felt like we had a long weekend. After leaving work on Friday, I didn't get on the computer at all (except to shut it down) the entire weekend, til work on Monday... that was kind of nice. Kind of a mini-vacation from it all.

But, back to it.

So who's going to the Bite of Bend this Saturday? We were thinking of it but likely won't go if the weather's rainy like they're predicting.

Although I really want to see the first annual Iron Chef Competition they're having—six local chefs in three one hour matches, just like the TV show. The Source has a good listing of the chefs and judges involved. Sounds cool! We'll see, we'll see.

And someone really should buy up the domain name biteofbend.com and give them a proper site...

Just for grins, and to flex my PHP chops, I decided to write a simple wiki system. The catch, though, is to see how short I can make the actual program; I was inspired by this Shortest Wiki Contest, though I can't profess to be quite as fanatic as those guys (I prefer readable code—squishing it all into a minimal number of obfuscated lines just seems like cheating), I think I did pretty well so far. Read through if you're interested; it's pretty technical and I include the PHP source.

More...

Forgot to mention this when I saw it the other day, but there appears to be another blogger here in Bend: e n | x | e n d u b. Did anyone else catch this?

Either way, welcome!

I went and saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith yesterday, and... wow. It was by far the best of the three prequel films, and the first one of the three that actually felt, I don't know, epic in the sense that it's carrying the weight of Star Wars history that fleshed out the first three movies. It was good, I'd go see it again, if I get the chance.

This is going to turn into a larger review, and some general observations on Star Wars in general, and there will be spoilers, so only click through if you've already seen it (or don't mind reading spoilers).

More...

Checking out Wikipedia's excellent (as always) article on fan fiction today, I ran across the site FanFiction.net, which I hadn't seen before. It's a comprehensive directory of fan fiction, organized by TV shows, movies, cartoon, games, books, and much more.

The amount of fan fiction out there is truly astounding; I've known this, of course, but I just never guessed at the sheer depth and breadth it covers. Let's take a little stroll through the site for some examples.

• The combined number of Star Trek stories: 9240. Wow. They actually split the Star Trek stories up by each TV show, but that doesn't really matter.
• X-Files: 5393 stories.
• Lost (the TV series that debuted just this season): 1462 stories.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 26,567. Holy shit!
• Law and Order: 2037. Like Star Trek, they split out by the different subseries.
• Star Wars: 11,828.
• Lord of the Rings: 37,136. Good grief.
• Harry Potter: 190,077! If I'd been drinking something when I read this one, I would have done a spit-take. This is beyond comprehensible!

Those are kind of the usual suspects in fan fiction, what you'd expect... but there are seriously hundreds more different topics people are writing about. Here's a sample of some of the oddball ones:

• All in the Family: 4 stories.
• Bill Nye the Science Guy: 6 stories.
• Lazytown (a kids show, our kids watch it): 16 stories.
• Diff'rent Strokes: 2 stories.
• Saved by the Bell: 13 stories.
• Moulin Rouge (the movie musical): 1466(!)

You get the idea.

The latest book I'm immersed in (one of them, anyway) is A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge. So far I'm hooked (I'm about a quarter of the way into it), it's totally compelling science fiction. And it's a refreshing reminder that there's really no limit to what you can do, story-wise, with well-done sci-fi.

Ah, it's always nice to have the "summer vacation" from TV and have time to catch up on my reading :).

monkeyinabox: "Are blogs really as mainstream, as some of us thought?"

No. No they're not. That's easy to forget for those of us "on the inside," but blogs really are still a fringe phenomenon.

They're getting there, though. The Journal of Accountancy just ran an article called "Would You, Could You, Should You Blog?" which is a decent introduction to blogs for accountants. Now that's getting mainstream.

The PHP programming language is 10 years old today. A large part of what I do these days is PHP development—I've got it running web sites, parsing web server log files, running command-line batch processes, and more. Thanks to Rasmus and the PHP community for making it all possible!

For a good roundup of the 10 year coverage, go here and here.

But I'm really not. If I'm burning out on anything, it's work and the daily routine of it. As a consequence, blogging takes a backseat and even though I have things I want to write about, when I'm finally at the computer at a point where I can, I just don't have the energy or ambition to do it. Which is ironic, since what I'd really rather be doing is blogging/writing full time instead. But alas, I haven't yet (figured out how to) (gotten to the point where I can) make enough money doing that...

So I dunno, I've been thinking about this whole podcasting thing lately... and while it sounds like it might be fun to do (and people used to tell me all the time that I have a perfect voice for radio... but not so much anymore... I wonder why that is?), I really just don't have the time or energy for it. Besides, what would I talk about? I already have my blog for incoherent rambling, there's no reason to clutter up bandwidth with large audio file of that...

That's the other worry: bandwidth issues. Last thing I really want to deal with is hosting large media files and getting hammered.

Any Oregonians podcasting? I know Jack Bogdanski was experimenting a bit with it. Anyone else?

Now that the TV season is mostly over I thought I'd post one of my self-indulgent rants on the various television shows I watched and how I'm still a slave to the tube. So, even though everything is over and everyone who was going to watch has watched, there will be spoilers. Click through to read on.

More...

...Jake of UtterlyBoring that is. He posted an item today about our local Wal-Mart being open 24 hours, mentioned it to Barney, and a story showed up on the Z21 news NewsChannel 21 this evening. Barney confirms it in the comments.

That's hot.

June already? Geez, where'd the time go? It's not like May wasn't a full month... some highlights:

• Put together a monster swingset
• Dental cleaning... with novocaine. I had two back teeth that needed periodontal work and scaling. Nasty stuff. My mouth was sore for days afterward.
• The end of the TV season (I have another post on this sometime)
• Beautiful, 80-plus degree weather... dampened (no pun intended) by massive flash flood inducing thunderstorms
• We were more socially active than normal... we went to at least three barbecues, which is a lot for us

Hmm, that's all I can think of right now. June promises to be a busy month, too. There's a potluck at work tomorrow, a neighborhood BBQ on Friday, a kids birthday party on Sunday, our anniversary, a friend's college graduation, and more I'm sure.

Perhaps we should do a blogger get together this month?

...I've been tasked with putting together this monstrosity of a swingset. I've had help, my father-in-law yesterday and today, and tomorrow my dad pitches in. We may finish tomorrow.

Happy Memorial Day to everyone else. I'll likely be cursing before the day is out.

This is astrologically interesting, if you're into that sort of thing: What Does Your Birth Date Mean? Here's what came up when I plugged in mine:

Seems mostly accurate, except for the "very sociable" part—I can make friends easily enough but out of the gate I'm much more introverted and shy.

Found via Doc Searls.

Okay, that's not exactly true: we got our internet service back at work around 3:30pm or so. But that still means we spent the better part of a day without.

The problem, as it turned out, was a dead SAS unit. (I have no idea what "SAS" actually stands for; it's basically like a cable modem for the wireless broadband nonsense.) Not the cranes at all. What's truly irritating is that it took OneEighty two days to figure this out, and most of today for the tech to "prep" the new unit. What, are they stored in a vault under guard somewhere? Seems to me techs should have spare SAS units in their trucks, ready to swap out at a moment's notice.

So I spent the better part of the day in a bad mood at work, continuously fielding the inevitable "Is it fixed yet?" and "Why aren't we up yet?" questions and basically spinning my wheels. Ridiculous. Now we've lost two days of productivity and I just know I'm gonna be in a bad mood at work for the rest of the week.

Needless to say, I plan on switching us over to a hard line as soon as possible; I've already got some paperwork in motion. What a pain in the ass.

At work, that is. Our internet connection was down the entire day. And there wasn't a thing I could do about it except wait for the tech from OneEighty Networks (née HighSpeed Communications née EmpireNet) to try to fix it. With no luck.

The problem? Well, for starters we have OneEighty's goofy LMDS "wireless broadband" service, which, instead of an actual T1 or DSL or other hard line, employs a line of sight microwave relay system to connect to the internet. "Line of sight" means that anything getting between the roof antenna and the transmitter on Awbrey Butte will block the signal and put you out of commission. Oh, and really foggy/rainy/snowy/etc. days can interfere with the signal too.

(This was all set up well before I started with the company; I just inherited the problems.)

So today it was offline, and the tech can't figure out why, but his favorite theory is that one of the new giant metal construction cranes that went up last week is blocking the signal. Sounds reasonable, except the crane went up last week and we didn't start experiencing any problem until today (or possibly yesterday but no one was in the office to tell for sure).

So work sucks when there's no internet, because it really drives home just how much we rely on having a live connection. Probably 90% of what I do requires internet access. Stupid crappy "wireless broadband." I think I'm calling around tomorrow for quotes for a real connection.

He turns 27 today.

It was inevitable, I guess: Bend has its local Star Wars superfans who dressed up in costumes and lined up outside the theater for the premier of "Revenge of the Sith" last night. I know this not because I was there, but because Z21's Christian Boris (one of the weather guys) did a live broadcast from the theater to cover the event. However, Christian did more than just cover the event...

He was dressed up as Darth Vader.

Thus began the funniest, most surreal Z21 broadcast I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. And it was such a short clip! First there was the shock and awe of the Darth Vader costume... on the guy reporting the news... whose helmet looked too small... I honestly couldn't tell if he was dressed up because he was doing a piece for the news, or if he's really into Star Wars. Either way, it was gutsy, but just seemed so, so wrong.

And, when you think it really couldn't get any better—aside from just showing some of the various costumes people put together for the big night—Christian wisely decided not to interview any particular people and opted instead to just let the camera do the talking.

To my utter amazement, these two guys dressed up as Jedi start lightsaber dueling in the parking lot. I mean, full-on theatrics, and the taller guy with the more elaborate costume was really, really into it—leaping in the air, spinning around, the works. It was a bonafide jaw-dropping moment... followed by laughing uncontrollably and utter disbelief.

Back in the studio, both Nina Mehlhaf and Jason Carr were laughing, too... I got the sense that Nina was this close from losing it and descending into maniacal laughter, but she reigned it in in time.

You know what's even better? When the moment was selected for the Bulletin's photo of the day:

Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

Before


After

I was in first grade, attending Alfalfa School. The main thing I remember from that time was the ash—it didn't drift quite as far south as us, but it did make it to Redmond. My teacher was from Redmond (Alfalfa was—and still is—in the Redmond school district), and her car had a fine layer of ash all over it. That doesn't seem like much—the cities and towns closer to the eruption had day turn into night from all the ash, so much that it looked like deep snowdrifts and blizzard conditions, people had to wear masks and cars actually stalled out and had their engines ruined from intaking the stuff—but to a seven-year-old even that light dusting really drove home the reality of having a live, active volcano in the relative neighborhood.

And in the days and weeks that followed, the news would show that time-lapse footage of the entire north face of St. Helens exploding and disappearing, followed by the unimaginable image of acre after acre of mud and felled trees and grey wasteland. Even to this day it's mind-boggling at just how violent that event was.

Jack over at The Grumpy Forester has an amazing recollection of the eruption, and Wikipedia, as usual, has a terrific article on it.

There's a new Bend blog in town: Bend Reality Check, but I don't know how long it will last. I say this because the tagline is, "Mission: to maintain some sort of reality for those who think they are the most important people in Bend, Oregon" and it appears to have been launched primarily to get back at Shannon and Simone for blogging their bad experience at Kanpai. As such it's full of snarky comments about the two of them.

That's too bad, because this sounds like it could be a good insider's blog about the restaurants in Bend:

I am an culinary hermit that lives in the shadows of Bend, Oregon. In a former life I was a culinary mercinary in this town, with 14 years of food slinging under my belt. Titles were bestowed upon me, such as: restaurant manager, production chef, lead saute chef, kitchen manger, etc, but I renouced my titles to walk the earth, like Caine in Kung Fu, only unsheathing my food mojo for special people and occasions.

Should it bother me that the National Security Agency has a website? Or even stranger, that it has a special website just for kids?

I mean, we're talking about a government agency that was once so secretive that "NSA" was supposed to stand for "No Such Agency." Weird.

Hmmmm... even weirder, I just noticed that the NSA website is running—of all things—Cold Fusion, and according to Netcraft, it's actually sitting on Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6.0. What the hell? One of the premier spook agencies of the United States and they're running Cold Fusion on Windows???

To further enhance the cognitive dissonance experience, check out question number 16 from the FAQ:

I've seen NSA/CSS in movies and on TV. Do you assassinate people? Do you secretly perform experiments on us?

Because we work with highly sensitive information, we are frequently the subject of speculation – and highly imaginative and creative fictitious pieces in the media. However, it is important to distinguish fact from fiction. The fact is that the Executive Order 12333 (EO 12333) strictly prohibits any intelligence agency from conducting these unethical activities, and we strictly abide by that Order.

Over the weekend I finished reading The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Fantastic book, albeit one that defied my expectations, and I thought I'd write a short review.

I picked this book up because I loved the concept: an alternate history novel that explores the question, what if the Black Death of the 14th century wiped out 99% of Europe? The world becomes dominated by Islam and Buddhism, the Chinese discover America, Christianity is a footnote in history.

It's divided into ten Books (basically chapters), each of which covers a later time and place as the alternate history unfolds. The breadth and scope of this project is surprising and mind-boggling; Robinson has gone to an obsessive level of thought and detail in constructing this history, and it's entirely believable. The amount of research must have been enormous.

It surprised me on several levels; the main one was the storytelling technique Robinson used in tying each story in the ten Books together to provide a sense of continuity while keeping each distinct. I won't go into detail here—the Amazon reviews do, and I think that spoils it a bit—and while I had my doubts, it ultimately works.

This isn't science fiction in the die-hard sense, though (insomuch as alternate history tends to get classified as science fiction because nobody really knows how else to classify it). It's much more a meditation on sociology, religion, history, politics, etc., on a world-wide scale. Very different than what I thought it would be. Yet very good. I totally recommend it.

In the science fiction world, "technobabble" refers to the use of technical or scientific jargon strung together so that to listeners unfamiliar with the language, it sounds like made-up nonsense. When relating to Star Trek, a derivative and more derogatory concept shows up: "treknobabble," which, in the words of Wikipedia, "is used humorously by fans of the various Star Trek television series, and disparagingly by its critics, to describe the infamous amount of pseudoscientific gibberish inserted seemingly at random into many episodes of these television series."

Well, on Slashdot tonight this article contains the most ridiculous real-world treknobabble I've ever seen:

A one-dimensional [Bose-Einstein condensation] in an optical lattice is rapidly rotated, causing a quantized vortex to form. The bosonic part of the superstring consists of this vortex line. Inside the vortex, they would trap an ultracold cloud of fermionic atoms. Hopefully this will allow observation of the supersymmetry between bosons and fermions, thus providing the first experimental evidence to support superstring theory.

That makes no sense to me whatsoever, and yet it's the funniest thing I've read all day.

You gotta love superstition. It's widely considered to be the unluckiest day of the year today, but does anyone really know why? Wikipedia has a good article, and Snopes debunks most of the myths. The conclusions? Nobody knows for sure.

I've always rather liked Friday the 13th. I don't believe there's anything inherently lucky about it—good or bad—any more than any other day. Although today I walked downtown to get my haircut and got caught in the rain walking back—without a jacket. Bad luck? You decide. :)

I guess this post spins out of watching the TV show "Lost" and a post by Isaac Laquedem a while back. The question is, what three books would you take with you if you were stranded on a desert isle? (Isaac's post considers five books; do that if you can't keep yourself to three.)

My tentative picks would be:

• Les Miserables. No, not in the original French; I like my massive English paperback edition. I haven't even finished this book, so it would occupy me for a while.
• Either The Stand or Cryptonomicon.
• Probably an anthology of some sort. Something like The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, or maybe The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces.

Of course, if I were practical, I'd choose an all-purpose survival guide, a book on identifying plants (edible and poisonous), that sort of thing.

Or, better yet, go with this book:

So, continuing in my "Things I X about Bend" series:

I don't like...

• ...the traffic; the disproportionate amount of congestion and the bad drivers.
• ...not having a mass transit system.
• ...how the north end of town is a stripmall/boxstore eyesore.
• ...skyrocketing real estate prices.
• ...the roundabouts. Actually, I'm kind of on the fence about them; they're not inherently bad but do we really need so many of them?
• ...overpriced "public" art. Like the "gateway to Bend" thing on the parkway made from rusty scrap metal.

What else?

See also: Things about Bend that I miss, Things about Bend that I like.

Okay, so I must be easily impressed. From this post on Boing Boing I found the 20Q.net site and began trying to stump the system. I can't do it. No wonder; the guy that created the neural net (a type of artifical intelligence software) started it back in 1988, and it's been "learning" ever since, entirely by people playing 20 questions with it. Crazy.

I remember having a 20 questions "A.I." game that came with the Logo programming language for the Commodore 64 (way back in the day). Same deal, it was preprogrammed with maybe three items, but as you played it, it remembered every new item you fed it and got "smarter" each time it played. The only drawback was that on a Commodore, you couldn't really save the state of the program, so it would "forget" everything each time you started it up.

Funny part is, I remember the first time I played it, I figured I'd stump it with "osterich." I just about fell out of the chair when, after about five questions, it says, "Are you thinking of an osterich?" I was hooked, but ultimately didn't fully capitalize on that for another few years... at the time, I simply considered it to be an exotic toy. Now I write software for a living. Go figure.

My friend Kerry at work had a bunch of people take the Jung Typology Test to determine personality types and see how well they applied to the real world. I'm not really sure why, perhaps as a group-building exercise. Whatever the reason, they've been good for a laugh, but the best part is the analysis of each profile, with lists of famous people—real and fictional, amusingly enough—that match that personality.

My own score came up INTJ, which is "Introverted Intuitive Thinking Judging." It's more or less accurate, in broad strokes. You can read the full profile here, but here's some of the fictional INTJ's—characters I share personality types with:

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Hamlet.
• Gandalf the Grey (every geek's dream come true, I'm sure)
• Professor Moriarty... Sherlock Holmes' arch-nemesis. I can see that, I guess.
• Hannibal Lecter... what the—?

The best (worst?) part was that someone else, after finding out I shared a personality profile with Hannibal Lecter, looked at me with an appraising eye and said, "Yeah. I can see that."

Wired News has a followup article about the time traveler convention that I blogged about the other day. Apparently no one from the future showed up.

But when attendees gathered outside for a raucous countdown at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, nothing appeared on the makeshift landing pad at the coordinates Dorai set for the time travelers....

It's actually a blessing that no one from the future showed up on Saturday night, said David Batchelor, the NASA physicist who wrote "The Science of Star Trek."

Speaking on his own behalf and not for NASA in a phone interview, Batchelor noted the same potential risks mentioned by speakers at the convention, such as the displacement of matter in a finite universe caused by the introduction of someone from another time. He also touched on the paradoxes arising from such acts as going back in time and killing one's own ancestors.

"We should breathe a sigh of relief," said Batchelor, who considered his decision not to go to the convention a safe bet. "It means we were protected from the chaos that would result if someone came back and changed something."

The thought that struck me as I read this was, if time travelers came from the future to attend the convention "after the fact"—wouldn't our memories change to match the altered timeline? In other words, we wouldn't know that no one from the future appeared, because they in fact did and time was changed.

Alternatively, travelers from the future did attend the convention, only that spun off into an alternate timeline and our own timeline is undisturbed.

Holy cow... you must go read Jack Bogdanski's blog entry titled The short hairs!

I thought this was funny: Morse code trumps SMS in head-to-head speed texting combat.

93-year-old telegraph operator Gordon Hill delivered a resounding ass-whoopin' to his rival, 13-year-old Brittany Devlin, using Morse Code.

Man, there's retro, and there's retro.

This is crazy; a 15 pound hamburger is being offered free to any two people who can eat the entire thing in one three-hour sitting.

the "Beer Barrel Belly Buster" weighs in with 10 pounds of meat molded into a 20-inch patty on a specially baked, 17-inch bun.

The balance of the weight comes from 25 slices of cheese, a head of lettuce, three tomatoes, two onions, plus copious quantities of mayo, ketchup, relish, mustard, and peppers....

The 15-pound burger can feed a family of 10, according to Liegey. He has sold two so far to teams of two people, and neither team did much more than put a dent in it.

Wow. Just wow.

Not only is today Cinco de Mayo, but it's also the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the millenium. 05-05-05. I'm sure people are imagining correlations. I touched on this two years ago in 03/03/03.

Isn't numerology grand?

Just when you thought you'd heard the last of it, Mellencamp the cougar is back in the news. There's an article in today's Bulletin, more or less reiterating the cougar report on Z21 News last night. It was spotted near Newport Avenue and Fourth, but officials had no luck tracking it.

Last week the Bulletin also ran an interesting article on Jack Spencer, the wildlife specialist for Deschutes County heading up the cougar search. It's a good read, and shows just how crazy that kind of job is: he's been bitten by a rattlesnake, caught bubonic plague (!), even tranked himself while trying to get a bear out of a cougar trap. You gotta love that kind of stuff.

I don't know whether to file this under "weird" or "science" or "brilliant": MIT is hosting a time traveler convention on May 7.

What is it?

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Why do you need my help?

We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

Great idea, I'd love to help! What should I do?

Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

I wish I'd thought of that. :)

That is, these are things that are new in Bend, or are a result of progress, that I like. It's a balance to my Things about Bend that I miss post the other day.

I like...

• ...the Bend Public Library building. I have fond memories of the old building they used to be in, but their newer building is far better.
• ...McMenamins' Old St. Francis School. Can't ever have enough microbreweries, and they've really done excellent work on the site. Plus, they brought back a movie theater to downtown Bend—a theater pub no less (which is what I always thought the Tower Theater should have been turned into)!
• ...The Old Mill District. For the most part. They've developed the area much better than I would have thought.
• ...newer restaurants like Zydeco, Mercury Diner, Merenda's.
• ...Barnes & Noble.
• ...the Les Schwab Amphitheater.

More as I think of these, too.

I miss...

• ...the statue of the of the homeless guy checking his wallet on the corner of Franklin and Wall. People used to decorate it for the Christmas season.
• ...when the Tower Theatre was an actual movie theater.
• ...when J.C. Penney used to be downtown. This is old school, it used to be on the corner of Wall Street and Oregon Avenue, the location of the (not-coincidentally-named) Old Penney's Galleria. We used to buy our shoes there, and it was the only place in town I knew of that had a bomb shelter.
• ...The Juniper Café. Okay, I didn't eat there that often, but it's been in Bend my entire life.
• ...Book & Game. Before Barnes and Noble moved in, it was the coolest bookstore we had in town, out at the Mountain View Mall... I even have some bookmarks from there, still.
• ...hell, the Mountain View Mall itself, during its heydey, when the cinemas was there, and K-Mart, and the Emporium, and the arcade...
• ...Café Paradiso. The original coffee shop, with couches, lounge chairs, chess, a small stage... It was big, too, much bigger and more comfortable than the other places in town currently. Soba Noodles is there now.
• ...the Mexicali Rose. It was the lava rock building on the corner of Franklin and 3rd, where Bella Cucina is now. It was a neat little restaurant (when it was Mexican), even if parking was a little tight and weird. Now, with the awkward signage (like the banner hanging where the actual sign used to be), it just looks... wrong somehow.

More as I think of them.

This story from Bend.com last week reminded me of the Stumps posting I made a year ago.

An Oregon State University oceanographer has discovered remnants of an ancient forest in a seaside cliff near Yachats, with exposed tree sections that have been dated at older than 55,000 years.

Those trees, which apparently were flattened during an ancient landslide and preserved in sediment, are now being exposed - and may help shed light on the tumultuous historical natural conditions along the Oregon coast, researchers said.

Of course, those trees at 55,000 (or greater) years old trumps the "merely" 2,000 year-old trees at Neskowin, but it's amazing to me the kinds of things that are washing up on the Oregon Coast recently.

You can win a café in Eastern Oregon by entering Ma & Pa's Café Essay Contest. Really! It's a diner located in Imbler, Oregon, about 12 miles northeast of La Grande. All you have to do is submit a 500-word essay and $150 entry fee by August 1st, and you have a chance to win the café and $50,000 in start-up cash.

It's a prototypical old-school diner in a tiny agricultural town (Imbler only has about 380 people); check out their pictures. Not only would you have to have a burning desire to run such a place, but you'd also have to commit to living in rural northeast Oregon (largest cities are Pendleten and La Grande, at about 16,000 and 13,000, repsectively). It's certainly an intruiging notion, I'd be tempted to enter just to see, though I think that'd be a tough sell to my family :).

Still, I notice that there's no obligation or limit to what the winner can do with the place, and there also appears to be a scarcity of microbreweries in eastern Oregon... that would be an interesting thought.

Bend.com has a write-up on this, too, with a detailed interview of the couple "selling" the café.

The cougar problem will continue, according to the Bulletin. There's just not enough manpower to devote to it, and in fact there's only one agent for the "Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services Program" for all of Deschutes County... and he's tied up with every other wildlife issue that arises.

And this strikes me as funny:

"It is so hard trying to run through back yards and jump fences with these dogs," Spencer said. "And then you have all these domestic animals so you have to be careful because, as far as dogs are concerned, a cat is a cat."

Just the image of a guy with a bunch of baying hound dogs running through suburban Awbrey Butte makes me smile.

Meanwhile, Hillside Park is still closed. Near as I can tell, anyway.

This topic on ORblogs prompted this post. What the hell is up with that creepy Burger King mask? All I know is, if I see that thing anywhere near my house, burger or no burger, I'm going for a gun.

So I've helped my mom to set up and start a weblog, to be found at DianeAbernathy.com. She's a real estate agent, herbalist, teacher and more, it should make for interesting reading. Go check it out, I'm making the case that a weblog is much better tool for building an online presence and influence than a typical real estate agent's website (for instance).

Incidentally, I set the blog up using WordPress, which I mostly find to be pretty good software. I'd recommend it for anyone who has their own server, it was about the quickest and easiest software to set up that I've ever seen. And so far it works pretty well, too.

Following up my Cougar! coverage from last night... today on The Peak 104.1 radio morning show, they were having people call in to name the cougar. I missed it, but that's classic. From the clips they were playing later it sounded like somebody suggested "Mellencamp." That's just so wrong it's funny.

And from the So which is it? department, all the local news reports are saying if you encounter the cougar, to not make eye contact, back away slowly, never run, etc. However, in the Wikipedia Puma article (cougars are technically pumas), the advice for an encounter is to stand and face the animal and make eye contact (among other things). Huh.

Just a quick note, today is the three year anniversary of when I started this blog (April 22, 2002). It's also Earth Day, but this is more important :).

Kind of crazy to think it's already been three whole years... I guess I'll have to celebrate, somehow.

When mountain lions attack! Apparently there's a young cougar attempting to establish territory in Bend, primarily on Awbrey Butte and possibly Shevlin Park. This is not unusual for Central Oregon, but the way the local news outlets have been covering this story you'd think the world is ending. I actually find all the hooplah amusing.

Here's the online rundown:

• Bend.com: Tethered dog killed by cougar on Saginaw
• Bend.com: Cougar Kills Again (sensationalistic, but my favorite is the subtitle: "Jack Rabbit found dead")
• Bend Bulletin: Cougar hunt closes park on northwest side
• Bend Bulletin: Cougar eludes capture

The Bulletin actually has the better coverage; makes me long for the days of Barney at Bend.com.

Speaking of Barney, KTVZ has been covering the cougar nightly, too. I get a chuckle and shake my head every time I hear them talking about it; something about their delivery, maybe, but when one of the items reported is about a sighting that turned out to be a house cat, well, you just have to laugh.

Look, I've lived here most of my life, so to me it's just not shocking, freaky or worriesome when this type of thing happens, it just gets dealt with. Face it, this isn't just cougar country, it's also bear, coyote and rattlesnake country, and that's not changing anytime soon; this Chicken Little syndrome is getting old.

So one of the shows we watch on Food Network is $40 a Day, where Rachael Ray has a budget of "only" 40 dollars and traipses around the city du jour looking for the meal deals. The tourist-y part of the show is interesting, but the fake-suspense-building (will she go over her budget? Will she??) annoys the hell out of me.

So far I know of three Oregon towns they've filmed episodes in: Portland, Salem and Ashland. I think they should do an episode right here in Bend.

The question is, then, where could you go to get three meals and an afternoon snack or drink with a 40 dollar budget, and still capture the essence of Bend? Without consulting the budget (so I may be off), my own choices would be:

• Breakfast: either the Original Pantry or the Victorian Cafe.
• Lunch: hmmm. Pilot Butte Drive-In.
• Afternoon whatever: another hmmm. Perhaps a brewery tour at the Deschutes Brewery?
• Dinner: The Pine Tavern.

Other suggestions?

I got a copy of Wednesday's Bulletin today (the Community Life section) that mentions my blog (see The Bulletin quoting my site?). The article is about both Reynolds Pond and Mayfield Pond, both east of Bend, as little-known oases in the desert. I wasn't quoted directly, but I got a paragraph:

Go to www.chuggnutt.com and you'll find a wistful description of Reynolds Pond written by a person who spent a lot of time out there as a child. On a return visit 12 years later, the author noted that several barren islands in the pond were now covered with vegetation.

That sounds about right. I don't know about spending "a lot of time out there" but I did write that I frequented the pond growing up, so that's fair, I guess.

Jim Witty, the Bulletin's travel writer (I think), wrote the article. When we used to get the paper, I enjoyed the accounts of Oregon and beyond he would write for the weekend travel section. Thanks, Jim!

A follow-up to my Scrapple post the other day: that post was inspired by a catalog for the Vermont Country Store ("Purveyors of the Practical & Hard-To-Find") that inexplicably appeared on the desk of a co-worker last week. It's a neat store, and I like the website; they sell all sorts of quality, unusual, nostalgic, and/or useful things like this Uncle Sam Bank (I had one of those!) or this Vacuum Coffee Maker or, yes, a Can of Scrapple.

We don't get the Bend Bulletin anymore, so I missed this, but apparently yesterday the Bulletin ran an article in their Community section (which they don't post online) wherein they quoted my blog on the subject of Reynolds Pond (with attribution—to my blog, but not to me by name). I found out today when my mom told me about it, and then someone at work told me they saw it, also.

I'll get a copy, and I'll definitely comment on it when I do, but in the meantime, has anyone else seen this?

What's scrapple? According to Wikipedia, it's

a cornmeal pudding in which the cornmeal, perhaps with the addition of buckwheat, is simmered with pork scraps and trimmings, then cooled and hardened into a loaf.

Scrapple is one of those farm foods invented to use those parts of slaughtered food animals which were not suitable to be served on their own, in the same manner as sausages, or Jewish kishkes. Scrapple typically contains the meaty parts of hog heads, hearts, some liver, and other scraps. The proportion and spicing is very much a matter of the region, family, and the cook's taste.

Commercial scrapple will often contain these traditional ingredients, with a distinctive flavor to each brand, though homemade recipes often specify more genteel ingredients, and consequently a blander taste.

Scrapple is typically cut into thin slices, fried until the outsides form a crust, and eaten at breakfast in a similar manner to bacon or sausage. It may be eaten as is, or served with maple syrup, apple butter, ketchup, mustard, and/or butter.

I just loves me some pork scraps!

The Bend Bulletin (our local newspaper) has an interesting article online today: Tech Town, a profile of the local computer/tech industry and how it's pulling "young, technically savvy people" to the area.

The conventional wisdom is that Bend is a great place to retire, but increasingly it is a great place for young, technically savvy people to live and work, too.

Bend officials envision an industrial park and university campus at the north end of town. The so-called Juniper Ridge project could become the cornerstone of an invigorated regional economy based on science, engineering and innovation.

If those companies materialize as planned, they will bring even more skilled workers to the region, workers like Marshall Simmonds, Morgan O'Neal and [Chris] Reese.

All three pointed to the character of Bend and outdoor recreation as drawing and keeping them here. That foundation, they said, makes the region ripe for new technology companies that will need to attract talented young workers.

The three people they profile are Chris Reese, technical director for Sony Bend (whom I've blogged about before); Morgan O'Neal ("a throwback to some of the early entrepreneurs of computing and the Internet. He has little formal training in technology"—is the Bulletin trying to be complimentary here? jeez), web developer with my old employer, Alpine Internet; and Marshall Simmonds, vice president of Enterprise Search Marketing for The New York Times Company by way of About.com. That's a pretty diverse group, considering.

Still, it's not entirely news that Bend is a high-tech region; technology is one of the industries that's been growing like a weed for at least a decade (along with tourism) since the older industries like logging have been waning. Even so, this part is intriguing:

City officials and local business leaders for the last few years talked about bringing more high-tech companies to the community. Most recently, the city has been eyeing the Juniper Ridge project as a potential home for such businesses.

The first phase of Juniper Ridge development is already in the works, the city having annexed 500 acres it owns on the northeast edge of town. The city will select a master developer for the project, but the council is working with the region's legislative delegation in Salem to site a four-year university there that can complement a contemplated high-tech industrial park.

Almost sounds like the play Klamath Falls made for high tech ("Silicon Basin," anyone?)—the difference being, of course, that Bend is already supporting a viable tech industry. But what's this about a university? Ah, I see from this Bend.com press release that it appears to be for OSU-Cascades and possibly Cascades Academy of Central Oregon. Interesting.

Don't have much to write about. Okay, that's not totally true; I've got some things I want to write about, but they'll run long and that's not really what I feel like doing at nearly 11:30 at night. The topics? You'll see why I'd run long:

• Evolution
• Ebooks
• Reviews of some regular books I'm reading

So instead, tonight, I'll stick with the mundane things that tend to bore the hell out of people...

We steam cleaned the carpet this last weekend. It's amazing how much dirt and pet hair had accumulated in the ten months we've been living here. Amazing and gross. Makes me want to get rid of all the pets.

This next weekend we need to dethatch the lawn and try to restore parts of it. I hate lawn maintenance. Makes me want to get rid of all the grass.

The week before last, when I was sick, it turned out I had a bronchial sinus infection. I ended up getting antibiotics to get rid of it, which is something I almost never have to do.

I've been teaching my five year old to play checkers. She's got a good grasp of the rules, though needs to learn strategy and how to see the big picture. I'm pretty impressed by how quickly she picked it up, though. I have a feeling the strategy part will come to her pretty fast and then I'll be frustrated at how I get beat every time :)

This is classic: Sesame Street: 25 Of My Favorite Memories. I kept reading it and nodding. And you've gotta give props to someone for coming up with possibly the funniest line I've read in a long time:

Oh yeah, & if there's one thing I hate more than those stickers of Calvin peeing on something, it's the jokes about Bert & Ernie being gay, or Bert being evil, or whatever. Next time you mention it, I'm going to unearth a skyscraper with my bare hands, wear it like a brass knuckle, & punch you in the face.

Yeah, I'm funny that way.

Via Boing Boing.

This may possibly be the dumbest idea ever: Congress may extend daylight-saving time. Come on, are you kidding me? What a monumental waste of... well, everything. Jesus Christ, if you really need that "extra" hour of daylight, just get up an hour earlier.

And that whole "The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use" line is a crock of shit, too. Think about it.

Yeah, strong feelings against it. I've ranted about daylight savings before. I just think the whole concept is retarded.

Wikipedia, as usual, has an excellent article on daylight savings, worth reading.

Today at work my friend Kerry and I were talking about geography and globes, which was prompted by the Yahooligans Where in the World is? game (where you see if you know your world geography), and came up with what I think would be the perfect globe: an interactive one whose outer surface is a touch-sensitive LCD screen that has all the details projected onto it from the inside. Think about it: it's basically a spherical computer screen, so it could always be up-to-date with new political country borders—download new data to it via a USB connection to your computer—and facts about each country; a touch-sensitive surface means you could simply poke a country to get information about it, or play games on it (find the country); it could be custom color-coded; it could be animated; you could even load other planets onto it, say Mars, Jupiter, or even a fictional one. It would have to be programmable, of course, so hackers could customize the hell out of it.

A cursory search online reveals this: The Explorer Globe from LeapFrog. It's similar to what I'm thinking:

Touch the interactive pen any place on this interactive, talking atlas and learn thousands of amazing facts. Compare population and land area between say Dundee, Scotland and Oaxaca, Mexico. Find out flying times between Lubbock, Texas and Kyoto, Japan. Learn fascinating facts about continents, countries, capitals, music, currency, highest points and so much more.

There is also a "Eureka" game mode that prompts players to find geographic points of interest (giving hints along the way) before time runs out. Up to four players can play six multi-level games with this very chatty, very challenging atlas. And it isn't just for kids either. Everyone will have fun testing their knowledge of geography and exploring the world.

Sounds cool. Sadly, I'm pretty sure technology isn't advanced enough yet to come up with my perfect globe. When it is, though, I want royalties.

I got this really nice comment on my restaurant post last month, where I reviewed Zydeco, Anthony's and Mercury Diner here in Bend:

We just wanted to say Thank You! to Jon & Andrew. Thanks for your great reviews of our restaurant. We're glad to hear you've enjoyed your experiences with us and that you're excited about passing on some input to future guests. We look forward to seeing you at ZYDECO kitchen & cocktails again soon.

Sincerely, Christy & Robert Kabakoff and Steve Helt

That is one of the reasons why Zydeco is a great restaurant, and it shows that the owners are smart and web-savvy to Google themselves and aren't afraid to join the conversation. Contrast that to Shannon and Simone's poor experience with Kanpai.

Not hard to figure out why I'll go back to Zydeco in a heartbeat but won't bother trying Kanpai.

Shannon had a bad experience at a new sushi restaurant in town, Kanpai. Now she wants to be the number one result on Google for Kanpai Bend, so I thought I'd oblige and try to help her out. Although at this moment, she's already the number two result, so it shouldn't take much.

Appropriate humor for April Fool's, but it's a real site: Superman is a Dick. Yes, those are actual covers from various Superman comics; the comments below each are the best part.

Maybe some have noticed this, but I finally got around to making my weblog archives by category publically viewable; you can view the summary list here. Yes, that's a lot of categories; I model my system after The Open Directory Project's. And no, I don't have all my weblog entries there; there's a bunch that I made before I started categorizing. The list will grow as I assign the old stuff.

And you're not seeing the true hierarchy like ODP does, for simplicity's sake I'm just showing the final category each entry sits in. And I tend to multi-categorize, too, so posts may show up under several. Anyway, it's a whole new way to datamine my site. Enjoy.

I've been sick all week. Starting last Thursday, in fact. The weird thing is I never get sick like this. It's very odd. Started out like I was coming down with the flu or something, joints and muscles all achy, pressure in the head building up intolerably. That was last Thursday, so Friday I spent about an hour and a half at work and then came home and slept (also something I never do).

Over the weekend it moved into a head/lung cold. Like a sinus infection, so while my nose didn't run much like a headcold would, the pressure in my sinuses was such that rolling my eyes too much in their sockets would hurt. And I had a deep cough, so that my lungs hurt when I coughed but not much of anything would come up—not a wet cough, though occasionally I'd cough up some phlegm.

This week it's lessened, but I'm still low on energy and fighting it. The pressure in my head is pretty much gone but I still have a cough, wetter now and I cough junk up.

Sleeping fine for the most part; I've been taking aspirin before bed (tried some fake Sudafed Sunday night, but totally didn't like the way it messed up my sleep and dreams). I've seriously considered seeing the doctor several times, and then I start to feel better enough to drop the notion.

So that's what's going on with me.

Sorry for the light posting lately. I've just been swamped at work and busy with sick kids at home and not really feeling like writing anything. I'm still swamped at work but of course I'm taking a minute to blog this :).

In my previous post, a fellow named Kirk wrote in the comments:

Hi Jon my wife and I will be relocating to the Klamath Falls area soon from the Spokane,Wa area. I have become quite fond of talking with bloggers in the Spokane area and found that there is much information to be learned from them. Not knowing the area very well I was wondering what you could tell us about Klamath Falls and surrounding area.

Seemed like a good idea for an entry all its own, except for one thing... I don't really know all that much about Klamath Falls! :)

Here's what I do know: It's a nice area, located in beautiful southern Oregon, though economically worse off than much of the rest of the state. The population is just over 19,000. It's about 60 miles or so from Ashland (which is my favorite southern Oregon town) and about 20 miles from California. I know that, some time back, they were pushing to make the area a high-tech mecca, even coining the name "Silicon Basin" for this purpose—though I don't know how it turned out. (Not entirely well, I'd guess.)

Since Kirk sounds like he's looking for bloggers, I did a quick search online for some in K Falls. Not many; ORblogs doesn't have a page for them, and a Google search turned up nothing. Then I figured I'd browse Blogger's regional blogs, with some luck: Klamath Falls Bloggers, 30 of them. I can't speak to how current they are, though. What's up with that? Where are the Klamath bloggers?

Anyway, Kirk, welcome to Oregon!

My daughter, who's five, has been learning addition of late. She knows a lot of the single-digit addition, like one plus two, three plus three, like that, but what's funny is that instead of saying, "One plus two equals three," she tends to say, "Plus one plus two equals three." It's that extra "plus" that prefaces the statement that totally makes me think she's doing math via Polish notation.

I know, only a computer geek would get that.

While researching something about Pacific City, Oregon, I came across the Pacific City Oregon Visitor's Guide which has some links to a bunch of extremely neat historical photographs. I like Pacific City quite a lot, not just because of the Pelican Pub & Brewery, but also because it's the quintessential small Oregon coast town (like Bandon, another town I really like). And the Dory boats are cool.

Links to Pacific City history, historic photos, more photos, and historic Dory photos.

My brother finds the best links. Check out artist Brandon Bird, who produces unique and totally random (in a wacked-out way) art work; I particularly like his paintings page. You have to click through and view them. That's an order.

I rather like the painting of Christopher Walken building Optimus Prime in the garage, I mean that's just weird. Or the one named "Two Warriors Come Out of the Sky", that one has to be seen to be believed.

Jeff Sandquist has a pointer to a video interview with two programmers that are writing a PHP compiler for Microsoft's .NET Framework. The name of their project is Phalanger.

That's cool, I guess, if you don't mind working in .NET. I've been thinking for awhile that I wouldn't mind a PHP compiler that would create standalone executables (though cross-platform, not just tied to Windows), so this is kind of a step in that direction.

Of course, there's already PHP-GTK which is cross-platform. And hmmm, I notice in their February news, there's a pointer to a project called bcompiler which lets you create an exe file from a PHP-GTK app... very interesting.

Oops, and I notice the Roadsend PHP compiler does just what I was rhapsodizing about. It appears I'm behind the times. Though the "Professional" edition (compiles to Windows, Linux and FreeBSD) costs $399 ("Personal"—Windows only—is $89).

Wow. I just did a quick check and found that, counting this post, I've made 552 entries here on this blog. I had no idea I'd written that much... that's kind of scary.

My dad made this joke up. It's a groaner, but I thought it was funny.

Q: Did you know Darth Vader has a sister?

A: Her name is Ella.

My dad clued me in to this: Fireball sighted over Pacific Northwest.

A fireball streaked through the night sky across the western half of the Pacific Northwest on Saturday, startling people all the way from southern Oregon to the Seattle area.

Scientists said the fireball was probably a meteor, and that it likely disintegrated just before any fragments fell into the Pacific Ocean.

That would have been cool to see; my dad told me a coworker of his saw the fireball Saturday night on the way to work.

It would have been cooler to have seen this news show up on Bend.com or the Bulletin; the AP story was in the paper version of the Bulletin, but not anywhere that I could find online. Seems like this is something that Bend.com should excel in; did I see a comment on their new design that they were trying to get an AP feed, or am I thinking of something else?

A bit of Oregon esoterica for everyone this Friday morning, and it's a ghost story to boot: The Bandage Man of Cannon Beach.

The Bandage Man is a phantom of a man completely wrapped in bandages that haunts this small community. The bloody figure, who smells of rotting flesh, jumps into vehicles passing on a road outside of town, notably pickup trucks or open-topped cars, but also sedans, station wagons, and even sports cars. Sometimes the mummy breaks windows or leaves behind bits of bloody or foul-smelling bandages. One legend has it that he is the ghost of a dead logger cut to pieces in a sawmill accident.

The Bandage Man is sometimes said to eat dogs and may have murdered several people. He appears on the short approach road connecting US Highway 101 to Cannon Beach, between the town and where Highway 26 intersects with 101. The phantom always vanishes just before reaching town.

I first came across the story of Bandage Man in the book Ghosts, Critters & Sacred Places of Washington and Oregon, and it stood out because it's not the typical "sounds and thumps in the night" type of ghost story that fills books like these.

Not surprisingly, there's not much on the web about Bandage Man; digging around only reveals a handful of sites, with pretty much the same one or two paragraph description. However, I did find this post on the MysteryPlanet MSN Group that sheds light on the origin of the legend:

I was googling on the chance that I might find some mention somewhere of the Bandage Man. I have been aware of this story for over forty years. For I was a child in the community where it got it's start. I knew some of the family of the kid that first encountered the Bandage Man. There is an old road, that for all the years I was growing up was known as "Bandage Man Road". It was just an old section of Highway 101 that had been bypassed when a new section put in place, but it was still accessible and wasn't very long-just a short loop off of the highway-the whole thing from end to end could be driven in maybe five minutes or so.

This loop of road was a popular place for local kids to go park and makeout.

That is where the story started. One night, two of the local kids were up there doing just what teenaged boys and girls do when they are parked on dark lonely roads. The boy had an old chevy pickup and his girl and he were sitting in the cab. All off a sudden they felt the truck sort of lean, like something was moving around in the bed of the truck. They turned to look out the rear window and there looking back was a bandaged face, with only some wierd looking eyes showing through eyeholes in the bandages. The bandaged figure started beating on the glass, and the top of the cab. The kid started his engine, got it gear and tore out of there-his girlfriend screaming in terror as the man in the back continued his pounding. Any of you who've been to Bandage Man road, or Cannon Beach, know how curvey the roads are and to drive them at highspeed is dangerous. On they went-after what seemed an eternity they made it to downtown Cannon Beach, where the boy's family owned a service station that they lived next door to in green house. Once they got there, they looked in the back and the Bandaged figure was no where to be seen.

I first heard this story back in 1960-61. And it's the original version. Some of the family of the kid still lives around here too, I know two of his brothers.

I have never heard of a repeat appearance by the Bandage Man.

I guess you'd better watch out if you're driving around Cannon Beach, if you believe that sort of thing...

I heard this on the radio this morning, and then caught this article in the Bend Bulletin: Jake's Diner is moving to the eastside. The spot? The Royal Thai Cafe building, behind Bedmart and Scrap-a-Doodle... which, if anyone keeps track, seems to be a death knell for restaurants. I can remember Sully's (Italian) was there, and KC's (Kasey's?) BBQ, something else, and the afore-mentioned Royal Thai Cafe.

Jake's is a Bend institution, seems like it should get better than that. But you know what's ironic? I've never eaten there.

Yep, there's going to be a Dukes of Hazzard movie this year, it even has its own IMDB entry already. I'd heard of this awhile back, rumors of it anyway, and it sure seems especially apropos with my Boss Hogg entry a week or so back. Get a load of the cast:

• Seann William Scott (Stiffler) as Bo Duke.
• Johnny Knoxville (Jackass) as Luke Duke.
• Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke.
• Willie Nelson (will he also sing the theme song?) as Uncle Jesse.
• Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg.

A movie based on the Dukes is either going to be the best movie of the summer (in a tongue-in-cheek way) or the worst movie of the summer... I have a feeling there'll be no in-between.

It's set to open June 24. You know you'll be there.

Jake clued me in to the fact that anyone trying to add comments here was getting big, ugly PHP error message. D'oh! I figure it's been down for three days, when I was last futzing around with blocking comment spam. Go figure. But on the bright side, I haven't gotten any comment spam for three days.

I've noticed over the past few days that Bend.com finally has that new design Barney was talking about back around the end of the year. Overall, I think it looks 1000% better than before, albeit not quite perfect (the RSS feed appears to be broken, no user comments at the bottom of the articles...).

However. Since Barney left, I think they are in serious need of an editor; I did a screen grab of the Press Release headlines, because something went horribly awry:

There is just so much wrong with that headline, it's not even funny.

Well, it's a little funny. :)

And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he said "God, make it a dream!"
as he rode his last ride down.
And he sideswiped nineteen neat parked cars,
clipped off thirteen telephone poles,
hit two houses, bruised eight trees,
and Blue-Crossed seven people.
It was then he lost his head,
not to mention an arm or two before he stopped.
And he slid for four hundred yards
along the hill that leads into Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Ten points if you recognize. C'mon, I made it easy.

Two weekends ago, the in-laws were in town from Chicago, and as always happens, we went out to dinner (and lunch) every day they were here. Ordinarily this wouldn't be much to write about, but while they were here ate out at three of the newer restaurants here in Bend: Zydeco, Mercury Diner and Anthony's HomePort. I thought I'd post a mini-review of each.

Zydeco

I've only eaten here twice, my wife a handful of times, and already we agree it's one of the best places to eat in Bend. (If not the best.) Everyone I've spoken to who has eaten there agrees. Great food, great service, great ambience. Surprisingly, they even turned out to be kid-friendly (our three and five year olds didn't complain), even though you wouldn't necessarily know it.

The two times I've been there, I had fish. The steelhead was great, the redfish was excellent. Everything on the menu looks good! Full range of cocktails, too; their signature drink is a blueberry martini. I had that the first time, it was good and a little different; they make their own blueberry syrup mix and after it sets for a few minutes it tends to settle to the bottle of the glass, so you need to stir it up. Fortunately that doesn't really interfere with the enjoyment.

And dessert! The only one we've had their is the almond wet cake, probably the best (and most unique) dessert in Bend. It's hard to describe; it's like a pound cake that has been soaked in something like four different kinds of milk (they told us something similar to this the first time we had it), so it literally is wet. Yet fantastic. Try it.

The only drawback I could find for Zydeco is their location: they're in the south part of Bend, on Third Street in the old Skippers building between Carrera Motors and Burger King. If you know that area of town (and that location specifically), you know that it's not real convenient to get to and is not the place you'd expect for an upscale restaurant to be. Their traffic seems to be doing well so far, but if anything's going to work against them I'd say it's the location.

Mercury Diner

Speaking of unexpected locations, you'll find the Mercury Diner in one at the intersection of College Way and Newport Avenue, nearly sharing a lot with a gas station. I like Mercury Diner quite a bit; my wife does not. It's upscale dining in an almost '50s diner atmosphere—much of the seating is in fact booths and for larger parties (six or more) they drag tables together to make room.

Still, they have good food (I haven't had a bad meal there yet) and reasonable service. A good beer selection, too (I haven't run into many places around here that have Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap). Much of the fare is southern in origin; the owners are originally from Texas, so you'll tend to find spicier food and big portions.

I like the atmosphere, but it's not really for big parties. We've always been there with six or more, and it gets crowded really quick like that. Even so, it's worth it.

Just be sure to ask how spicy a dish is before you order it.

Anthony's HomePort

Literally brand new and located in the Old Mill District, this is probably one of the flashiest restaurants around (if the TVs above the urinals in the men's room—among other things—are any indication). They are in a great location, on the river with great westerly views of the mountains (or they would have been great views, if it wasn't winter and overcast), and the decor is extremely fancy. We had dinner upstairs, but a word of warning: it was very drafty. The entire area is open (it's kind of like a loft), and the table we were at was directly in the airflow of the vents. I suspect sitting upstairs during the summer would be more enjoyable.

The food was very good, though. I had halibut with a sour cream sauce of some kind baked on top of it, very different and tasty. Everyone else's meals looked good too. And, the menu is nearly entirely seafood, with only three or four steak dishes (rumor has it that there was a chicken special once), so if you don't eat seafood (like my wife), you may want to avoid it.

Our waitress was a little daffy, I don't know if she was having a rough night or we were just too big a group (eight of us) with some unusual food requests, or if it was just her. Maybe she was a little overwhelmed? Whatever, we've definitely had better service at other places, but it wasn't bad enough to be a dealbreaker for me. Of course, I'm more tolerant than most people with restaurant service...

As I said, the decor is amazing and flashy. I found myself pausing on the stairs on my way to and from the restroom just to look around, particularly at the entirely open kitchen. I think this will definitely be a popular place because of this, their prime location in the Old Mill District and the views they'll boast. On the other hand, being in the Old Mill means there's extremely limited parking; be prepared to walk a few blocks to get there.

Overall, I'd try it again when the weather is nicer.

As promised, I've changed this site's copyright to a Creative Commons license; specifically, an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license. What this means is, anyone is free to make derivative works of my stuff, or to copy, distribute, display, and perform it, so long as they give me credit, distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one (if they alter, transform, or build upon this stuff), and not use the work for commercial purposes.

Basically, in English, this clears up any copyright legal issues that might arise with things like aggregators or the Google Toolbar that reuses/remixes my content. I may try out different CC licenses from time to time, but for the most part I think it's covered.

David Sklar, a PHP programmer/author I respect, has a post on his blog on the Google Toolbar controversy. Sklar joins the voices of reason on this, few and far between though we may be. It's a good post, worth the read, but I think his opening and closing sentences are the kickers:

Why do folks who want the freedom to remix content as they see fit get their digital dander up when other people remix their own content? ...

The most important issue is recognizing that we all have to give up the control over our content that many of us demand of Big Media Corporations.

That's the key, I think; of all those crying foul over the Toolbar, almost every single one that I've read is entirely hypocritical in that they don't want the Toolbar to change their content even though they themselves engage in exactly this same thing with other people's content.

Updated, see below.

A while back, Jake posted about a public restroom in Switzerland that was made out of one-way glass. Well, apparently there's one in Houston now; my friend Kerry sent me the pictures in email this morning.

Here's what it looks like from the outside:

And, here's the view from the inside:

Man, that's just wrong. I just couldn't use it, no way.

Update: These are the photos from the original Switzerland toilet; looks like they're being recycled again. So, take this all with a grain of salt. What's funny is that I first heard of this (and then got the email) from people at work, and it's making the rounds on other sites as well (a quick search on Google pulls them up), so there may be an actual Houston toilet; who knows.

Random fun fact for the day: Sorrell Booke, the actor who played Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard television show, was fluent in five(!) languages and served in the Korean War as a counterintelligence officer. Who would've guessed? All I could dig up for what languages he was fluent in were English (obviously) and Japanese; I'm curious as to what the others are.

Sources: IMDB, Wikipedia.

Lots of invective and rhetoric being written about Google's new Toolbar functionality, AutoLink. Originally I probably wasn't going to write anything about it, it's really such a non-issue, but I'm growing irritated by the number of bloggers—mostly A-listers—who are speaking out against it. I'm not irritated as a knee-jerk reaction in defense of Google, but because most of what I'm reading is just plain wrong.

Quick background: Google's new Toolbar (which is in beta, only runs on Internet Explorer for Windows and which you have to knowingly install to use) has a new function called "AutoLink" which, when manually invoked, searches for certain types of text on a web page and will automagically turn them into links, if there weren't any links there already. The type of text it search for seems to be:

• Addresses. These will create links to Google Maps.
• ISBN numbers. These will create links to the product-specific page on Amazon.
• Shipping tracking numbers.
• Vehicle ID numbers (VINs).

Right off, I have to say I agree 100% with what Cory Doctorow wrote about this on Boing Boing:

It's not a service I'd use, but I believe that it's the kind of service that is vital to the Web's health. The ability of end-users to avail themselves of tools that decomopose and reassemble web-pages to their tastes is an issue like inlining, framing, and linking: it's a matter of letting users innovate at the edge.

I think I should be able to use a proxy that reformats my browsing sessions for viewing on a mobile phone; I think I should be able to use a proxy that finds every ISBN and links it to a comparison-shopping-engine's best price for that book across ten vendors. I think I should be able to use a proxy that auto-links every proper noun to the corresponding Wikipedia entry.

And so on — it's my screen, and I should be able to control it; companies like Google and individuals should be able to provide tools and services to let me control it.

Of all the sites I read, I think this was the lone voice of reason on the topic. Instead, you have people like Robert Scoble and Dave Winer calling this "evil" and a "slippery slope" that will lead to the end of the web as we know it and mass censorship by Google.

I'm not kidding. This is what Winer wrote:

And if links are changeable, is text subject to change as well? Might Google correct our spelling? Or might they correct our thinking? Where is the line?...

What's next? Could they link it to Gmail, and where ever the name of a Gmail user appears in a page, change it to a mailto link so you can send them mail? If you're in the widget business, might they change the links to your widgets to links to your competitors' widgets? (Aren't they already doing that to Barnes and Noble?) Would they add discussion software so that any Internet user can mark up your page with their comments, no matter how inane or immature?...

The AutoLink feature is the first step down a treacherous slope, that could spell the end of the Web as a publishing environment with integrity, and an environment where commerce can take place.

What's funny is that email programs already autolink email addresses and web addresses—often wrong, I might add—in messages I get. And—get this—on any blog with comment functionality on it (like mine), users can already mark up that page with their comments.

(A note on the Barnes and Noble reference, though—yes, AutoLink does link a plain ISBN on Barnes and Noble's site to Amazon. I confirmed it myself. Personally, I find it rather amusing; I know B&N will successfully lobby to get this fixed, so I'm not worried about it.)

And here's some of what Scoble's written:

I believe that anything that changes the linking behavior of the Web is evil. Anything that changes my content is evil. Particularly anything that messes with the integrity of the link system. And I do see this as a slippery slope....

The fundamental building block of the Web is linking. Linking is MY EDITORIAL CONTENT....

My editorial is sacrosanct. Linking is editorial.

Ironically, Scoble runs a linkblog where he reposts other authors' blog entries, with his name highlighted, and adds a "Related" and "Comments" link to other people's writing even as he writes the above.

It's even more ironic that people like these guys who are all about innovation and are outspoken user advocates would come off like this. I see a "slippery slope" all right, but it's going the other way.

How? Well, AutoLink is basically simplifying this process:

1. Highlighting a piece of text on a web page (like an address).
2. Opening a new browser window, going to Google (or MapQuest or Amazon, etc.).
3. Pasting that copied text into the search box, and clicking the search button.
4. Done.

No one should object to doing this, right? Well, the way I'm reading many of these arguments, pretty soon they will be. There's the slippery slope, pretty soon the "content producers" are going to object because you might be using their text to search somewhere else on the web. So, let's ban copying text from the browser. But wait, someone could just retype the text in without copying-and-pasting. Better take away the users' keyboards so they don't infringe on your content.

See? It's a fun game.

The arguments almost all object to a third-party tool changing the content of their web pages by adding links. Okay, but what about the many pre-existing toolbars, plugins, extensions, and browsers themselves that already do this? Hell, the ability to do this is even built into the browser—you can turn off images, JavaScript, and stylesheets, and I guarantee doing that will alter the content of many, many sites—I've developed sites myself that depend on JavaScript and/or images, so I'm not exaggerating. This is a ridiculous argument.

In fact, the only good argument I've seen comes from Rogers Cadenhead: the copyright issue. By essentially altering a work (a web page, in this case) that is copyrighted for public consumption, the AutoLink feature may be in fact violating the copyright of that page. That's a reasonable, intelligent argument and is something that should be addressed.

Until then, jeez. C'mon people, like Cory said, it's healthy for the web. It's innovation. Instead of whining about it, why not be productive? I've seen suggestions for an opt-out feature on web pages, that's a good start; make it a META tag.

Or what about this? Make the toolbar smart enough to not change copyrighted pages, only those that are using an appropriate Creative Commons license, or are public domain. How would it know? META tags, again; Creative Commons licenses already embed RDF inside the content, so it's not a stretch.

In fact, this is a good incentive to do something I've been meaning to do for awhile: convert my blogs over to Creative Commons copyrights. I personally have no qualms about toolbars or other software altering my content for a particular user's display, so I'll make it totally legal for them to do so. Within the week.

In the meantime, everyone complaining—take a breath and get over yourselves.

Weight loss update: as of yesterday and today, I've lost 25 pounds since the beginning of the year. That puts me at 203 pounds. Last weekend I finally broke down (under strong convincing from my wife) and bought a new pair of jeans and khaki pants, both a size smaller than I was wearing previously. Gettin' there.

I'm amazed every week at how much growth ORblogs keeps showing; as of right now, there are 605 blogs in the directory, and 18 were added over the past seven days alone. (Check the ORblogs Recent Additions page to keep up to date on new ones.) Oregon bloggers, we're a growing bunch. And kudos to Paul, who developed and runs the site. Excellent work!

This is one of those links that's too wacked-out not to post... Back in the late '60s, Leonard Nimoy—riding high on his Star Trek fame, I'm sure—released an album of music called "The Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy." My friend Justin in Portland found the album at a thrift store or something, I've heard part of it. It's pretty awful, but the craziest song on it is "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."

Yes, you read that right.

What possessed him to sing such a song, we'll probably never know... but what further possessed him to make a video from it—well, it's really too messed up to think about much.

Oh yeah. Not only do you get to hear the song, you get to watch the video too: The video for "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" (QuickTime).

It's crazy how much development is going on around here these days. Downtown, they're just about to tear down the old post office and start erecting a new parking structure. The "Firehall" is ongoing, with a giant plastic bag over the top of it (it's truly surreal). The new building on the corner of Wall and Franklin looks mostly finished. Something's going up on the old Eagle Lodge location, on the corner of Greenwood and Hill. The Old Mill District continues to grow and change. Up north, there's of course talk about the Super Wal-Mart, but good grief, Bed Bath and Beyond is already open, Best Buy can't be far behind, CostPlus and PetSmart are going up. Target is expanding, I hear.

And everywhere you go, residential development is gangbusters. You can't swing a dead cat in this town any more without hitting construction. (Ironically, I work for a builder that's contributing to all this mess. And live in one of their homes.) I know growth and change has kind of been the theme for Bend and Central Oregon this past decade, but right now it seems like there's more going on than ever before. Or is it just me?

And of course the one thing Bend really needs—a mass transit system—is nowhere in sight.

One of my new favorite Wikipedia pages is the Unusual articles list. You gotta love that. Where else could you learn about such things as Heribert Illig, a German historian crank who claims the Dark Ages didn't exist and the years 614 to 911 AD are invented? Or that some guy legally changed his name to Optimus Prime, after the Transformers character? Or that the smallest park in the world is in Portland, Oregon?

I first spotted the news a few days ago on Metroblogging Portland: Google in The Dalles. Then my wife read about it online this morning, and now it's on Slashdot. Sounds interesting, but it seems like kind of a random place to plunk down a data center (if that's what they intend to build). Well, it's better than Medford or Umatilla, I guess.

I wonder if this means The Dalles will be the next technology nexus in Oregon?

...yeah, right.

This article from the Wall Street Journal online is actually rather remarkable. It compares and fits blogging with mainstream journalism, and is maybe the fairest take on it I've seen.

6. It is not true that there are no controls. It is not true that the blogosphere is the Wild West. What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of the MSM [main stream media], and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if you put forward as fact information that is incorrect, specious or cooked. You lose status and respect if your take on a story that is patently stupid. You lose status and respect if you are unprofessional or deliberately misleading. And once you've lost a sufficient amount of status and respect, none of the other bloggers link to you anymore or raise your name in their arguments. And you're over. The great correcting mechanism for people on the Web is people on the Web. [emphasis mine]

There are blogs that carry political and ideological agendas. But everyone is on to them and it's mostly not obnoxious because their agendas are mostly declared.

7. I don't know if the blogosphere is rougher in the ferocity of its personal attacks than, say, Drew Pearson. Or the rough boys and girls of the great American editorial pages of the 1930s and '40s. Bloggers are certainly not as rough as the splenetic pamphleteers of the 18th and 19th centuries, who amused themselves accusing Thomas Jefferson of sexual perfidy and Andrew Jackson of having married a whore. I don't know how Walter Lippmann or Scotty Reston would have seen the blogosphere; it might have frightened them if they'd lived to see it. They might have been impressed by the sheer digging that goes on there. I have seen friends savaged by blogs and winced for them—but, well, too bad. I've been attacked. Too bad. If you can't take it, you shouldn't be thinking aloud for a living. The blogosphere is tough. But are personal attacks worth it if what we get in return is a whole new media form that can add to the true-information flow while correcting the biases and lapses of the mainstream media? Yes. Of course.

Astute readers will notice that I now have Amazon related links (books, actually) on some entries (spun out of my Amazon's Web Services post). Hopefully they're not too intrusive; I have them limited to a max of three results right now, and they'll only show up on blog entries that I specifically keyword.

All done with Amazon's web services. It's not completely automatic, since I have to keyword the entry, but it beats looking up items by hand. Using the web service interface is extremely easy; simply build a URL and send the request to Amazon, and you'll get XML results. I'm using the excellent Snoopy PHP class for the communication piece, and PHP's built in XML parsing (using expat) to extract the information I want from the XML.

Some tips, after trial-and-error: Use a "Power" search in the Amazon request, especially if you have multiple keyword sets. An example might look like:

Power=keywords:(web services) or (xml) or (http programming)

The regular "Keyword" search turns useless after four or five words, it seems, and the "TextStream" search returned totally random results.

I played around with have the results sorted by rating ("reviewrank"), but dropped this because I was finding that older editions of the same book (hardcover vs. paperback, for example) might have a higher rating, but not actually be available. By dropping the sorting entirely, Amazon returns surprisingly relevant results.

The results can include images, all hosted on Amazon's servers. Use them! They come in three sizes.

And finally, pick your keywords carefully. Or you'll get some weird, totally unrelated items.

The February issue of Discover Magazine has an interesting article about Project Orion: a project that was developed during the '50s and '60s to build a spaceship that was as big as a skyscraper, weighed eight million pounds, and was propelled by—get this—nuclear bombs.

While Discover's article was good, focusing more on the people and policies involved, Wikipedia's Project Orion page is excellent, and delves much more into the hard science. It sounds on the one hand totally insane and on the other hand perfectly logical and obvious. But you gotta wonder at the audacity of a design that would have required 800 (or more) nuclear explosions just to lift the ship into Earth orbit 300 miles up...

Interestingly, an Orion ship is a major plot point in one of my all-time favorite science fiction books, Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. A great book, probably the best alien invasion story out there, period—Niven and Pournelle simply rock. What else can I say? I totally recommend it. It would make a perfect movie, done right, but if nothing else, read the book.

One huge spelling mistake that's been driving me crazy lately—and I'm seeing it everywhere, literally everywhere, even this article in the Bulletin today—is spelling the word "lose" as "loose." How can people continually misspell such a simple word? Worse, why didn't the editor of the newspaper catch this?

lose: verb. Inflected forms: lost, losing. Meanings: to bring to destruction — used chiefly in passive construction; to miss from one's possession or from a customary or supposed place; to suffer deprivation of; part with especially in an unforeseen or accidental manner; etc.

loose: adjective. Inflected forms: looser, loosest. Meanings: not rigidly fastened or securely attached; having worked partly free from attachments; having relative freedom of movement; not tight-fitting; etc. As a verb: Inflected Form: loosed, loosing. Meanings: to let loose; to make loose; to cast loose; etc.

Hey, I almost forgot: in addition to Valentine's Day, today is also Oregon's birthday: it was admitted into the Union on February 14, 1859, the 33rd state. Just random facts. Move along.

Maybe Mark Jen was the tipping point: even CNN has picked up on the "fired for blogging" meme. Read their article here. Kind of a puff piece, but does delve into some First Amendment issues.

But employee and non-employee bloggers don't have the same legal protections.

Workers who rant or rave about bosses online — whether it's done on the company clock or at home — generally don't have a strong defense.

In most states, employees who don't have a contract are considered "at-will," which means they can quit at any time and for any reason. Conversely, employers have the right to fire them at any time and for any reason, except for well-known exceptions like race, age or gender.

So whether a supervisor discovers an underling ridiculing his thinning hair at the company elevator bank, at a local bar after work, or on the worker's personal blog doesn't matter. In either instance, the boss can turn around and say, " 'We don't need you. Why don't you go work for someone else?' " said Margaret Edwards, a partner with Littler Mendelson, a national law firm that represents employers.

Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer, says there's a false sense that employers can't punish their workers for voicing personal opinions — on their blogs or anywhere else. "People mistakenly believe that the First Amendment protects them in the workplace, which is generally not the case," he said.

...has to be this one: Letourneau to wed former pupil. This is just one of those things I have a hard time understanding; this woman should have been kept in jail. For the rest of her life.

Happy Valentine's to everyone. So far this morning it's looking to be a nice day (yet here I am stuck at work...), so here's hoping it's nice for everybody.

And if you're looking for something a little bit different today, I wrote up some Beer Valentines ideas over on The Brew Site blog. Enjoy!

I've been playing around with Amazon's web services because in my quest to make money off my blogs (quixotic? I don't know yet), I thought it would be interesting to implement book recommendations based on keywords pulled from individual blog entries.

What got me thinking about this is that my Amazon associate links have already generated three orders from books I've linked to (two from The Brew Site and one from here), which kind of surprised me since I haven't had the Amazon affiliation for very long. But I don't really want to spend all my time writing about books just to generate clickthroughs—seems to go too far on the "shill" side of things—so I figured I go more the route of the Google AdSense ads: automatically generating results from content.

The web services are pretty straightforward, though I have to wonder why the PDF documention you can download is over 400 pages long. Holy crap! Instead, I did a quick read through the HTML version they have and picked up enough in a half hour to get started.

So, you might start seeing Amazon recommendations appearing on the individual entry pages. It'll be an experiment; if I don't like how they work, I'll pull them.

It's kind of hard to imagine what Elektro, the Oldest U.S. Robot looks like until you actually see it. What's crazy is that it was created sometime during the '30s...

Back in 1939, Elektro was able to walk, talk, raise and lower his arms, turn his head and move his mouth as he spoke. It used a 78-rpm record player to simulate conversation and had a vocabulary of more than 700 words.Thousands of people enjoyed Elektro at the New York World's Fair in 1939.

I don't know, but it kind of reminds me of the robot from "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Weird.

I'm not sure if people are stupid, ignorant, lacking in a proper education or some combination of those, but the following example should illustrate my point. At work today I was talking with a co-worker about education (her son is in second grade and learning history) and the name Susan B. Anthony came up. I asked, "You know who she was, right?"

"Uh, someone famous—I know she was on a coin," was the reply.

Pretty bad. I'm always highly disappointed when I run into this type of thing at work... I should know better by now.

What's worse, though, is when I asked another (female) co-worker the same question:

"I know she's on a coin."

Ug.

Gee, it sure seems like the way to quickly get famous online these days is to get fired for blogging.

Well, I posted too soon. Tonight's blogger get-together has been cancelled, too many people had something come up. Hopefully we can convene next week or something.

Unless plans changed when I wasn't looking, the Bend/Central Oregon bloggers are getting together again tomorrow, Tuesday the 8th. It's at the Cascade Lakes Brewery Lodge (upstairs!) on Bend's westside, starting at 7pm. I don't know yet if I'll make it, but I know a bunch of the others will. Cheers!

A bit over a year ago I blogged about the PHP Cruise. Well, this year there's another PHP conference organized by the folks at php|architect, though it's not a cruise this time: php|tropics!

It's in Cancun, Mexico, from May 11 through 15. Now, if I only had a few grand lying around and could convince work that it's a business trip...

According to this article in the Bulletin, a woman in Prineville gave birth to a 14 pound, 1 ounce baby. Holy c-section, Batman! Still, as big as that is, it doesn't quite beat the 16.7 pound baby born last month. And then for some bogglers check out these Guinness World Record entries for heaviest births.

Watching the various debate about Google's nofollow initiative has been enlightening. Ostensibly, it was supposed to be a way to fight comment spam on weblogs, but predictably it took no time at all for people to figure out how to game the system. Also predictably, anti-nofollow support launched equally quickly.

I won't use it. At all. Why? Mostly because it's such a non-issue (it won't do a thing to comment spam), but a large part of the reasoning is that I won't be held hostage to what I can write and link to by any one search engine or technology. Nor am I going to let the ranking alorithm of one search engine make me do its work for it, especially if PageRank is broken like some people believe.

It's a misnamed attribute, actually. Google says links with it "won't get any credit when we rank websites in our search results," but the "nofollow" label makes it appear that Google won't actually follow the link itself. Not so. Google will follow the link, it just will not confer ranking.

More bothersome is the fact that other search engines (Yahoo and MSN, notably) have signed on to this. Why bothersome? Well, because Google's PageRank algorithm is supposed to be a Trade Secret, and theoretically other search engines' technologies are Trade Secrets also, so who knows how the others will actually implement processing of this attribute? Will they choose to actually not follow such links, allowing sites to potentially drop out of their indices? There's no guarantees. But if they're all similar to PageRank, and PageRank is broken, then they may all be broken and this won't fix things.

Oh well. My various megalomaniacal rantings won't change things in the world at large, so I'll stick to what I can do on my own site. :)

So there's supposed to be a new Wal-Mart Supercenter coming to Bend. The Bend.com story is here. It'll be located at the northwest corner of the intersection of Highway 97 and Cooley Road, and is supposed to be a gargantuan 200,000 square feet in size.

I can't say I'm thrilled. Why?

• Bend and Central Oregon already has more than enough box stores, including two Wal-Marts.
• Likewise, Bend already has plenty of grocery stores (for those who didn't know, Wal-Mart Supercenters include groceries). Buying groceries from Wal-Mart seems way too sketchy to me.
• It will make a bad traffic situation at the north end of town 1000 times worse.
• It will always be crowded, making it too inconvenient for quick stops. Combined with traffic, this will make it far more trouble than it's worth.
• It will be ugly. Remember the hooplah that surrounded the building of the driving range at the north end of town?
• That north end of 97 is already a stripmall, boxstore eyesore. I don't even like going there (well, except for Food 4 Less, but even that's not totally convenient).
• It will drive smaller local companies out of business. This will happen.
• While it will supposedly create 400 new jobs (according to what I heard on Z21 news), these will be barely minimum wage jobs (according to the Bend.com article). That can't be good for people who need living wage jobs (especially in this area) or the local economy.

Now, I used to go to the Wal-Mart at the south end of town. It did the job, but I don't get down there anymore. It served its purpose. But I really see no reason for a Supercenter to be built. None at all.

Woke up this morning to find 116 notices of trackback spam littering my inbox. Out of the blue, and I notice that a whole bunch of other weblogs got hit today, too. It appears some spammer finally wrote a script to exploit trackback. Ah, well. It was easy enough to fix; do a quick mod to my add_trackback.php file, redirecting bad traffic, and a quick SQL query on the database to clear out the offending spam, less than 10 minutes. Gotta love having absolute control over my system.

Well, it's that time of year again: In one of the strangest (yet surprisingly most effective) promotions ever to grace marketing, it's Free Beef Month at Les Schwab!

I'm really digging Food Network's new Iron Chef America series. It's just a lot of fun to watch, and at a more accessible time than the original Iron Chef (9pm versus 11pm).

Yeah, I know, but I just haven't felt the need to blog much of anything lately. My ambition to post has waned, and the empty stretches between entries grow larger... It won't last forever, though. I know this much.

Meanwhile, Central Oregon has been experiencing unseasonably warm weather, and they're saying it's going to be a drought year because there's been no snow. Not that I mind the springlike weather overly much, but could we at least wait until it's spring? I like having seasons, and it seems vaguely ridiculous to be washing the car by hand in January (which I did last weekend).

Damn global warming. :)

(Thanks, Jake!)

Since about the first of the year I've been dieting (with much prodding from my wife). It's nothing formal, mostly I've just been cutting way back on portions, avoiding junk food entirely and balancing what I eat much better. Even with going to Portland last weekend, I've somehow managed to lose 11 pounds already(!). To put it in perspective, I started at an unhealthy 228 pounds (six feet tall), so either I'm doing something right, or I have cancer.

Kidding!

The other day I picked up the book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating from the library to go along with this change in eating habits. It's quite a good book, I'd highly recommend it to, well, everyone. It lays out a scientific, common-sense approach to healthy eating that I think lacks from most "formal" and fad diets I've seen. Check it out.

In the meantime, I'll post occasional weight loss updates. I'm curious to see if the rate I'm losing weight will maintain, or if it will slow down. And in case anyone worries that I'm on the bleach and fiberglass diet, rest assured that my daily intake looks something like: 2-3 starches, 2-3 fruits, 2 protein, 4+ vegetables. Some dairy, too. So it's all good.

Found on ORBlogs: The Grumpy Forester, a new Bend blog. Well, Lapine, I guess, but that's okay. And "new" is relative, the archive go back to January 22 of last year. But it's new to me! Welcome!

Speaking of the ice storm, what's up with this story out of Portland? Woman dies after jumping out of taxi:

And a taxi passenger died Saturday after she jumped from the vehicle as it approached her home on Mount Scott.

The victim, Nancy Johnson, 61, was returning to her home on Southeast Johns Court from Portland International Airport when the Green Transportation Co. cab started sliding down the steep street.

She was pinned beneath the cab's rear axle as it slid more than 100 feet. The cab driver called 9-1-1 to report the incident at 10:34 p.m.

Johnson "just flat panicked. I think she was worried that (the vehicle) would go out of control," said Capt. Jamie Karn, Clackamas County Fire District 1 spokesman. "This was just a freak accident."

I mean, who the hell jumps out of a moving car at all? Especially when it's sliding out of control and you don't know where it's going? I'm sorry, but people need more common sense. I wouldn't be surprised to see this show up as a Darwin Award.

Our little trip to Portland over the weekend went well, except for the ice storm that hit Saturday. We stayed indoors the whole day with our friends (who we were staying with, fortunately, otherwise we'd have really worn out our welcome), and pretty much any other plans we'd had were shot.

On the other hand, our friends introduced me to the BBC comedy The Office, which is insane but entirely plausible—I've known people (and offices) that are exactly the same way. It's hilarious, check it out. Amazon has it for about 42 bucks.

Our drive back Sunday was uneventful; the ice was already breaking up in Portland and the farther out of town we went, the better it got—even over the mountains. Back in Bend, you wouldn't even know anything had happened. All's well that ends well, they say.

Seems like we just can't get enough of Portland; we're heading there tomorrow (Friday). It's part follow-up to our son's eye surgery, part vacation-y trip. Always fun. I'd like to get in a trip to Powell's Bookstore, but I don't think we'll have the time unfortunately.

Via Boing Boing this evening comes the mildy disturbing story that Shakespeare may have been afflicted with one or more venereal diseases.

Mentions of the "pox," the "malady of France," the "infinite malady," and the "hoar leprosy" in his writings seem to indicate that the Bard knew—perhaps from personal experience—how torturous venereal disease could be. "Shakespeare's knowledge of syphilis is clinically precise," said John Ross, MD, author of the study. A line in Sonnet 154, "Love's fire heats water," apparently refers to an STD causing burning urination.

In Shakespeare's time, one of the treatments for syphilis, inhalation of mercury vapor, was worse than the disease. Dr. Ross suggests that Shakespeare's tremulous signature on his will, his social withdrawal in later years, and even his baldness might all be due to a mild degree of mercury vapor poisoning.

Well, they do say to write what you know.

Gah, there's nothing worse than sitting here trying to think of something to write, and getting nothing. I have some ideas for things, but nothing that seems particularly illuminating while I'm sitting here tonight. I just got tired of seeing too many days going by on that calendar there on the right and felt like I should write something down.

Interesting; look at my post from January 9th of last year. It's very nearly the same.

I stopped in at The Book Barn in downtown Bend today, looking for a particular book or two, and I have to say, I was a little disappointed. They have a nice space (formerly occupied by the Chelsea Lane wine shop), but it just seemed, I don't know, sparse. I can't really quantify it more than that, but it's not the Book Barn I remember of yesteryear, when they were across the street (Minnesota street), occupying two stories, and were about three times as big.

At least they're one of the "old time" businesses that are hanging on downtown, though.

This is interesting: Sims 2 hacks spread like viruses, where hacks that people have made to their Sims 2 game has unintentionally spread among unsuspecting users. In-game virus?

Entire neighborhoods of Sims are being mysteriously graced with eternal youth, while some characters are finding all their needs fulfilled by a single shot of magic espresso. Others no longer need to empty the toilet after potty training their toddler. Some Sims are being abducted by aliens when they glance through their telescope — every time, instead of just occasionally, which is normal.

All this mayhem is the work of a community of experimenters wielding hex editors, custom programs and reverse-engineering skills who began mastering their own Sims 2 worlds immediately after the game's release last September. The hackers share their weird science with one another through public websites and forums.

The article also goes on about how the hackers have created a type of antivirus software to scan for and remove the hacks. That's cool.

An odd thought struck me as I was reading about this: it must seem to people getting these hacks that their games (their Sims more specifically) are starting to exhibit emergent behavior. (You know, emergence. New patterns or behaviors from complex systems...) How spooky would that be? Just wait til the first hacked Sims figure out they're merely simulations in someone's computer...

Jury duty was interesting—I skirted being on a DUI trial by that much. How it works is about 30 people show up for the jury summons. Of those, 12 are randomly selected and interviewed. I was one of the 12. Several potential jurors were excused, and after an hour of jury interviews they finally selected the final six.

Two things stand out. First, the courtroom was cold, like air conditioning was on or something. (Hello, it's like 20 degrees outside!) Second, the defense attorney was just a kid, a young guy who looked like he'd just graduated from law school. He spent a good 45 minutes interviewing us, and asking the randomest, strangest questions. Total newbie.

I don't have to go tomorrow, and I don't know yet about Friday. After that, I'm done for whenever I get summoned again. Mark off another milestone in life.

Yup, that's what I got tomorrow. Never been summoned for jury duty before, so I'm anxious to see what it's like, but I hope I don't end up on some big trial or a sequestered jury or anything like that.

Happy birthday to Bend! Today is the 100th anniversary of Bend, Oregon, marking the beginning of the year-long Bend Centennial celebration. Just a quick post while I'm thinking about it; I might have more to say later.

Also, check out Bend.com's article from November.

A couple of things related to ebooks. First, Palm Digital Media—the main ebookstore for the Palm Reader format ebooks, and the one that offers (offered?) up the tool for making your own ebooks for free—is now apparently eReader.com. What's the difference? Well, eReader.com is entirely commercial, it seems; they offer their "eBook Studio" for a nominal price; also, I don't know if these ebooks are compatible with the Palm Reader software.

The Palm Digital Media site is still up albeit sporadically. I can't tell if the software and pages for making ebooks is still there, and if it's free; what a shame if it isn't. If that's the case, I may offer the appropriate software to download here.

Also, I wanted to thank everyone who filled out the request form on my free Palm ebooks page over the past year. I got a lot of hits, and I didn't respond to most of them just because I didn't have the time to get to each one. Rest assured, I put all requested books that I can convert on my list. And, to everyone who requests current books (like Harry Potter books, Dan Brown's books, Tolkien, etc. etc.), sorry, but I can't legally get them for you. Anything that was published in or after 1923, unless released by the author, is still under copyright and only available via legal means (read: commercial means). Yes, I have to cover my ass.

Basically, I'm converting books from Project Gutenberg, and looking for current books that authors like Cory Doctorow have released online for free. So, a good bet if you're requesting something is to check and see if it's on Gutenberg first, and let me know.

And, I've just tonight released James Fenimore Cooper's The Deerslayer in ebook format. Go to my ebooks page and check it out!

In the spirit of the Google Zeitgeist, I've pulled together some interesting stats from chuggnutt.com for the year 2004. On to it!

• Number of blog entries: 306
• Approximate total number of words: 45,537
• Average words per blog entry: 148.8
• Total visitors: 242,433 (includes bots, spiders, aggregators, all that junk)
• Average visitors per day: 687
• April was the most active month, as LiveJournalers found my Matrix Name page; April 1 alone showed 6,122 visitors
• Most popular phrases people searched this site for:
  • matrix name
  • matrix
  • mysql
  • html2text
  • ebooks
  • php
  • amazon
  • kermit
  • netoffice
  • black butte porter
  • sony
  • spokane
  • beer
• Most popular phrases people entered on search engines to get here:
  • free palm ebooks (and tons of variants on this and "palm reader," "pdb reader," "palm ebooks," etc.)
  • boba fett
  • matrix name
  • scary picture
  • darth maul
  • kermit the frog
  • what's in a name
  • name generator
  • html to text conversion
  • a-team movie
  • zach braff blog
• Internet Explorer accounts for about 62% of all traffic. Mozilla/Netscape, about 14%. Blog- and RSS-related "browsers" are running at about 17-20%.
• People made 566 comments on this site (not counting comment spam I deleted).

Interesting year! Can't wait to see how 2005 will shape up.

Happy New Year everyone. So far 2005 is turning out uneventful: we cleaned the office, watched some movies. What to expect for this new year? I don't know, maybe for it not to go by so quickly. My grandma was right, the older you get, the quicker time passes.

At any rate, I'm not making any 2005 predictions, it seems like everybody else on the internet is and I'm pretty sure anything I could come up with is already covered somewhere.

I will do some stats, though. Those are always fun. :)