Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Category: Online

  • Yahoo is cold calling me

    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.

  • Fan fiction

    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.

  • Going mainstream

    National Security AgencyShould 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.

  • Morse code wins!

    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.

  • Vermont Country Store

    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.

  • Bend Bulletin article: Tech Town

    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.

  • Historic photos of Pacific City

    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.

  • Brandon Bird Paintings

    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.

  • New Bend.com

    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:

    Innapropriate press release headline found on Bend.com

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

    Well, it’s a little funny. :)

  • Sklar on Google Toolbar

    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.