chuggnutt.com

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

Click for full size

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie Brown:

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

Linus:

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas, everybody!

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

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

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

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

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

Anyways, Happy Solstice to everyone!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They never saw it coming.

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

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

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

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

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

Note to Starbucks: get over it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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