Chuggnutt!

Month: December 2005

  • Unfortunate ad placement on Bend.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.

    Thumbnail of Bend.com's unfortunate ad placement
    Click for full size

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

  • Obligatory post-Christmas post

    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):

    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!

  • Spamments

    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. :)

  • Merry Christmas

    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!

  • My birthday is one of the "Lost" numbers…

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

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

  • Happy Solstice

    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!

  • The safest car

    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.

  • Sherman Alexie

    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.

  • Design by Simone (we’ll see what she comes up with)

    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.

  • Self-publishing thoughts

    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.