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  • 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…

  • The Dark Side of geocaching

    Spotted this article on CNN today: Geocaching puts authorities on edge. It’s about what happens when police find geocaches and think they might be bombs and such.

    Rounding a corner on his motorcycle to finish rigging his cache, he was greeted by a barricade of police cars and a bomb squad. He struggled to explain the misunderstanding.

    “I got off my bike and three officers approached me very cautiously, hands on their holsters,” he said. “I was trying to turn off my MP3 player and I think they were worried I was going for a detonator.”

    (Find out more about geocaching at the official site.)

    I’ve got a GPS, but haven’t actually gotten around to trying geocaching, even though I want to. Maybe this year. But the article also makes me think of what a friend asked me, once: What if someone actually does put a bomb or something in a geocache? And ruins it for everybody?

    Something I don’t really have an answer to; I’m not that cynical, I suppose. The good thing is, it hasn’t happened yet that I know of, and hopefully it won’t ever happen.

  • Open astronomy book

    An idea, and a question (or the other way around). I’ve always liked astronomy; growing up I had several astronomy books and a small telescope, I eagerly consumed news and information about space (I had a newspaper photo clipping of Saturn as taken from Voyager taped to my wall), and I took Astronomy for my physics elective in college, and one thing that always struck me was how outdated the various books I had were, even though they were relatively new (at the time I got them). You would read some theoretical composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere even as data was coming in updating and contradicting the old information.

    So I was thinking the other day of the planet Pluto and how it has three moons now (I don’t remember the context), and how this information could potentially change some fundamental conception of the solar system, and yet it would probably take a year, maybe 18 months before this would make it into the latest and greatest book on astronomy. And I thought, wouldn’t it be neat if there was an open (as in open source) astronomy book online somewhere, maybe like a wiki, that was textbook-quality and was kept up-to-date with the latest discoveries? People could freely access it, print it out, download a copy, whatever, and it would always be relevant.

    The question: Does such a thing exist already? Now, I’m familiar with Wikibooks, the self-described “open-content textbooks collection,” but their Astronomy book is paltry at best. (It might make a good starting point, though.) So does anyone know of something like this?

    If not, I might start it myself. It would make a neat hobby, at the very least.

    (And if it worked, this would make a good model for other books that could be open and possibly wiki-fied. I’ve got a few ideas.)

  • High Desert Sun

    Something I hadn’t blogged yet but thought I should “break”: I’ve been approached by the new publisher of the High Desert Sun newsletter to write for them. I said yes, of course, and the first article I’m turning in (by tomorrow) is based on my Reynolds Pond blog entry from about a year and a half ago.

    I hadn’t heard of the High Desert Sun before, but it’s a newspaper-format newsletter that covers most of Central Oregon: Bend, Redmond, Prineville, Alfalfa, Powell Butte, Terrebonne, Madras and Crooked River Ranch. (I culled those from the “Locations” page on the website, it’s possible they also cover Lapine, Sunriver, and Sisters as well.) The publisher found my little corner of the web here and liked my writing well enough to invite me to write for the paper.

    Cool! It’s not huge, granted, but it’s a start. Of course, if I become a regular writer for the newsletter, then I’ll need to start thinking things up to write about—I’d hate to have to recycle stuff from my blog all the time. :)

  • First a mouse, now a puppy…

    So first a mouse set a man’s house on fire, now a puppy has done the same thing here in Bend:

    A frisky puppy left in a laundry room apparently sparked a northeast Bend house fire that almost claimed his life. Investigators said Friday the dog caused an aerosol can to discharge vapors that a water heater pilot light ignited, setting the room ablaze.

    It’s like When Animals Attack, but weirder. Awesome.

    As an aside, I really like the new NewsChannel 21 site. Barney done good!

  • I am Snarky Bend!

    Chris started it; I’m just jumping on the bandwagon!

  • Mouse fire!

    Okay, this is kind of an awful story…

    No, scratch that. It’s a story that seems like it should be awful, but I just can’t take it seriously. It just makes me laugh. I can’t help it: Mouse takes down house.

    On Saturday, a Fort Sumner man’s home fell victim to a mouse fire.

    Homeowner Luciano Mares said he caught a mouse inside his residence and discarded the creature in a pile of garden refuse he was burning on his property near the home.

    “I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he said.

    The. Mouse. Was. On. Fire.

    Update: Snopes debunks it. It almost happened, but the mouse was already dead.

    Update #2: According to CNN, the story may be true after all:

    Is that plausible? Fort Sumner Fire Chief Juan Chavez said Tuesday he thinks so.

    “There’s no reason for him to lie about what he told us,” Chavez said. “I don’t doubt it at all.”

    There’s hope!

  • Two for the price of one

    Just pointers to a couple of blog posts I enjoyed.

    First, Chris reviews Burger King in a fun sort of anti-Bend Restaurants way. Plus, you gotta love it when someone puts so much effort into writing a review like this…

    “Parked in lot?”, you ask, and yes I did because there are critical steps in eating your Whopper, and the first is, eat it when it’s hot and fresh. Yes, “Eat your Whopper while it’s hot and fresh,” is what momma always told me. Also the fact that the window view from the restaurant isn’t really much different helps too. The next tip I have to offer you is to put a few onion rings and some of the zesty onion ring sauce on your Whopper and then get ready for Whopper-Bliss.

    The other pointer is to Jake and to his post about the PHP easter egg. I wasn’t aware of this particular quirk, either, but apparently PHP will output an image of a dog if you append a string to the URL appropriately. I do know of the phpinfo() “easter egg” that only appears on April 1—the PHP logo image is replaced with something goofy. But this other one is new to me.

  • PlayStation 2

    So I had a bunch of Christmas and birthday money this year and decided to go crazy and do something I normally wouldn’t do: I bought a PlayStation 2 game system. I know, I know, new XBox, yadda yadda, but frankly there’s a larger library of PS2 games out there and most of the ones I really want to play are on PlayStation only anyway.

    It was the Costco bundle; comes with the console (which includes one controller), an extra controller, memory card, and two games. The one game we played around with this evening (kid friendly) is ATV Offroad Fury 3. It’s pretty fun so far. We get a kick out of watching/causing some truly spectacular crashes. :)

    Also I’m intrigued by the possibility of plugging it into the internet and doing some network gaming, since it has that capability. We’ll see.

  • ’05 retrospective (personal)

    So, now I’m looking back over 2005 from my own standpoint. It was a busy, eventful year.

    Last January I buckled down and began eating healthy in order to lose weight. That was enormously successful—and satisfying—as I lost 40 pounds. So far I’ve kept it off, and plan to keep it off. My next goal in this vein should be to get into shape; yes, I’ve lost the weight, but I definitely need to start exercising. Realistic? Knowing me, it could go either way.

    Also last January I narrowly missed being selected for a jury. Of the one week I was on call for jury duty, I only got called in that first day, and ultimately wasn’t selected. It was the first time I’d ever had jury duty.

    I wrote about it, but I didn’t get fired for blogging.

    Memorial Day weekend, I put together a playground. Almost. I find it notable because I think it’s the largest thing I’ve ever built.

    It was a year for travel. We made it to Portland a few times, but our big trips were the Alaskan cruise and our week in Florida.

    The cruise vacation marked not only the first time I’d been on a cruise, but also the first time in Canada and Alaska. That was quite a trip: we drove to Vancouver, B.C., stopping to visit friends in the Seattle area each way. And Alaska was amazing… I’d definitely go back.

    Florida was flat and humid. The trip was worth it, though, and we made it out ahead of Hurricane Wilma.

    I also did an overnight trip to Walla Walla, Washington, for work. First time there, too; I rather liked it, except for going during the hottest part of the summer.

    I lost my cat. That was one of the hardest, worst things to happen in many years.

    And, we got a new cat. A kitten, actually. That’s fine, I don’t really have an opinion on it one way or another, it is what it is. Better a cat than a dog, though. I’m so not a dog person.