chuggnutt.com

Halloween blogging #5

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

Halloween blogging #4

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

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

Something to remember for next year...

Halloween blogging #3

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

Halloween blogging #2

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

Halloween blogging #1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Halloween rocks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anything exciting anybody wants to tell me about?

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

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

See y'all on the other side.

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

More...

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

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

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

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

I'm just speechless.

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

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

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

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

More...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comments? Feedback?

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

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

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