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  • What about a local PHP user group?

    Last week I met with a local businessman who was interested in finding a local PHP expert/consultant for a project that he’s expanding. He already has a long-distance PHP guy doing work for him, but also wanted someone local. This got me to thinking; aside from myself and a few isolated individuals, and Alpine, who are the PHP people for Central Oregon? Are there any PHP-specific shops or consultants who are available for this kind of thing? If not, why not? And how would anyone find out about them?

    My next thought, invariably, was We need a local PHP user group for exactly this kind of thing. A local organization where any and all of the PHP programmers/users can get together, and perhaps build a directory of services and maybe even host events.

    Would this be of interest to anyone? I’m actually pretty ignorant about the user group thing (it’s probably been close to a decade since I’ve been anywhere near a user group type of function), so I may not actually know of which I speak. For instance, is there already a Central Oregon PHP user group that I’m totally unaware of?

    I’d be interested in getting involved one way or another. What says the community-at-large?

  • Strangely enough, it’s a real book…

    It’s amazing what they’re publishing in For Dummies books these days… I almost wish I had made this up:

    Pit Bulls for Dummies... no joke!
    Pit Bulls for Dummies

    This just makes me laugh. The fact that it’s for real just makes this that much more irrationally funny to me…

  • No clever title

    In case you were wondering why I suddenly dropped off the radar, it’s because Thursday I came home from work feeling achy and tired and running an elevated temperature of 100 degrees or so. Went to bed, skipping dinner, slept more-or-less through the night, and got up Friday feeling better—not perfect, but well enough to try going to work. I’d still been slightly elevated when I awoke—99 degrees or so—but that subsided.

    Still, felt mostly under the weather Friday, even when it came to the “mandatory” work meeting that was held at, of all places, McMenamins—with free beer. Feeling a bit out of it meant only nursing a single (free! damn it) beer for the better part of an hour.

    Friday night I went to bed early (for me), avoiding the computer. Saturday was kind of a “recovery” day (how I approached it, anyway… got a lot of reading done) and we had some friends from out of town visiting, who we met at the Deschutes Brewery for dinner. We were visiting until about 10:30, and I was tired enough to head to bed without hitting the computer. (Tell the truth, it’s kind of liberating to not feel like having to plunk down in front of it and catch up on all the news and blogs and email.)

    Today I had to replace the (same) computer’s power supply… perhaps it’s an omen of some kind?

  • PHP contest: Texas Holdem

    I thought this sounded interesting considering how popular poker is these days (you know who you are): PHP Editors is holding a PHP programming contest for a Texas Holdem game. I might try it out. It wouldn’t be anything like most commercial poker sites out there, but it would be an interesting programming project.

    …Not unlike being back in school, writing a program for whatever computer course I’d be in. Those were the days; they were still teaching Pascal at the time. I remember writing a Hangman game (it mostly sucked), and an algorithm for storing shuffling a deck of cards (which might have been a precursor for a poker program).

    Of course, handling and “shuffling” a deck of cards that only exists in a computer program is trivial. You simply need to have a structure representing the cards, and draw them randomly. (And a method for keeping track of what’s been drawn.) Each subsequent “shuffle” is simply a different random number set selecting the cards.

  • The snow started

    For anyone keeping track of these things, the snow they keep warning us about (last I heard, the advisory was from 3pm today until something like 5am tomorrow morning) has started in earnest at about 1:30pm, here in Downtown Bend.

  • Check out today’s Pearls Before Swine

    Pearls Before Swine comic strip panel for 1-29-06

    So, yeah. Go check it out. It’s funny.

  • Sucky week

    I would’ve blogged this week… but work beat it out of me. (I did manage to keep blogging over on The Brew Site, barely…)

    Not just “regular” work, I’ve also been working on a website in my spare time as well. As part of my other, semi-freelancing gig. That’s taking up a lot of my time (and still will this weekend).

    So anyway, sucky week. Kind of derailed me.

  • A new car! (In my best Price is Right voice)

    Yep, that’s what we did over the weekend: bought a new (used) car. The time had finally come to retire the pickup.

    We got a 2004 Hyundai Sonata, very good condition with low miles. It’s pretty nice. I’m now cruising around Central Oregon in style.

  • Resonate

    I think Jennifer almost always has insightful things to say about Bend (and is a fine writer to boot), but last night’s post was really remarkable, I think. She points to the Bend 2030 website (the project of which I was only really tangentially aware of until the past few days), and drops the bomb on a couple of the hard questions:

    What’s the most significant issue facing Bend?

    Well, an increase in growth threatens two of the three things I value most about living here. So Bend’s biggest issue is limiting growth or, if that’s impossible, limiting the damage.

    Also: this town has a severe divide between rich and poor with almost no middle class. That gives my kids a wacky sense of how the world works. First, it’s not a reflection of most of the United States; and second, they don’t see a model for success — except, of course, in real estate. People grow up here and disappear for awhile, then come back as doctors and lawyers. Or they grow up wealthy and never work for keeps. Unless Bend changes, my kids won’t have much opportunity to watch someone start out on a low rung and work their way up.

    So, to answer question four:

    What is your personal vision for the future of Bend?

    I want growth in Bend to slow way, way down, so that we can get a psychic grasp on what’s happening here. And then I would like Bend to work toward becoming not a resort town or a retirement mecca but a normal city, where people work and go to school — and just happen to climb mountains or ski or run rivers whenever they get a chance.

    Dead on. I really couldn’t have said it better myself, and I find myself nodding in nearly perfect agreement with this.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about Bend and its growth and what it’s been turning into lately. In light of my rant yesterday, I think it’s safe to expect more rants and thoughts on this topic from me. In the meantime, keep watching Jennifer. She’s going to be a force to be reckoned with.

  • NYTimes on Bend (late review)

    I don’t know how I missed this the first time around (December 23rd, probably because I don’t read the New York Times): Where Timber Was King, the Golf Club Replaces the Ax.

    I don’t really know what to think about this article. I certainly can’t relate to it, it’s aiming for the affluent and reeks of elitism. A little fisking, anyone?

    WHEN you own a home in the sixth-fastest-growing region in the country, you worry about letting the cat out at night because of the coyotes howling in the forest. You scribe fresh powder turns down 9,000-foot-high bowls and muscle bicycles through high-desert hills. At some point, perhaps on a fairway between Holes 4 and 5, you wonder whether those lonely volcanoes lingering on the skyline will ever blow. The thing you rarely do is call your town rural.

    Dammit, I do call my town rural; I grew up rural, that’s how we are. We actually did lose a cat to coyotes, growing up. I don’t ski, I’m sorry to say, nor do I golf. So far, it’s failing to hook me.

    Albert Angelo Jr., an owner of a family-run development company, bought in Bend for its 300 annual days of sunshine and the 4.3 million acres of public land just beyond his floor-to-ceiling windows. He plans to divide his time between his houses in Vancouver, Wash., and Palm Desert, Calif., and his new $3 million, 5,100-square-foot single-story house in Pronghorn, a resort on the outskirts of town.

    “When I look out my Pronghorn house facing north, I see a covered patio with a 10-foot-diameter barbecue pit, a pop-up plasma TV and a view of the golf course – but of a putting green, so my house won’t get hit by golf balls,” Mr. Angelo, 59, said. “You have a good lifestyle down there.”

    Okay, I totally cannot relate. I’d say this guy’s idea of “a good lifestyle down there” is completely out-of-sync with the reality of Bend.

    About 300 people are on a waiting list to purchase another dozen town houses at the Bluffs at the Old Mill, a neighborhood with views of the Mount Bachelor, Broken Top, and Three Sisters volcanoes.

    Again with the volcanoes. In my day we just called them “the mountains.” And for everybody wondering about the high real estate prices, look no more… the 288 people on that waiting list who won’t get a choice home want to go somewhere…

    Bend’s proximity to trails for hiking and cross-country skiing, coupled with a bustling vibe, appealed to Stephen Johnson, 29, a salesman from Medford, Ore. In November, he bought a new 1,933-square-foot, two-story weekend house for $215,000 in southeast Bend. “It still feels like a small town but with more amenities that make it a fun place to visit,” he said.

    Holy shit, there was a two-story, 1,933-square foot house for sale in town for only $215,000 as recently as November? Who did he have to kill to get the place for that cheap??

    When Benders aren’t bouncing through the 370 inches of annual snowfall at Mount Bachelor, about 30 minutes west, much of the après action centers on Wall and Bond Streets, downtown’s two main arteries. Today, you’ll find no hardware store off the brick sidewalks, but should you seek information on a $2.75 million resort home or wish to make a donation to pierced buskers outside Bellatazza coffee shop, you need walk only a few blocks.

    First of all, that should be “Bendites,” not “Benders”—we’re neither (mostly) drunks nor a certain sarcastic cartoon robot. Second of all, don’t remind me that there’s no hardware store downtown—it was a sad day when Masterson St. Clair finally closed down. But it’s good to know I can find that info on that $2.75-mil home, that’s important. Otherwise, this whole paragraph? Pretty much reeks of narcissistic self-importance. “Après action” and “pierced buskers” my ass.

    Bend is 94 percent white. The joke among locals is that diversity means Subarus of different colors.

    I’ve never heard that joke. I’ve lived here most of my life.

    Okay, that’s enough. Go read the article, even if it bothers you as much as it seems to have me. I can’t help but wonder if they’re writing about the same town that I live in…