chuggnutt.com

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.