Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

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  • Online Bend maps

    Lately I’ve been playing around a bit with Google Earth, and correspondingly Google Maps, and it’s amazing the kinds of things you can do with it. Unfortunately, their source data for Central Oregon is less than impressive; try to zoom in too tightly and you just get pixelated blobs.

    Well, the city of Bend website has put their GIS mapping system online, you can get to it here, and it’s super-detailed (for Bend only) and largely fills that niche that’s missing from Google’s maps. It even has some of the same functionality with their layers option. The only drawback is that it only runs in Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater (and, I’m assuming, Windows).

    Still, it’s pretty sweet. I’m already thinking about how to use this data somewhere…

  • Hobbit holes in Bend?

    Now this is some kind of crazy:

    The hobbit holes will hold lawn mowers instead of diminutive, barefooted halflings from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, but The Shire aims to bring some Old World styling and a fantasy setting to Bend’s east side.

    “We call it the place of enchantment, and we are building to that (motto),” said Ron Meyers, the developer whose business card identifies him as Lord of The Shire….

    The application submitted to the city for development calls for a mix of 31 cottages and townhomes on 6.2 acres off Benham Road east of the Parrell/Sisters Mobile Home Park. The project also will have 1.5 acres of common open space that will include trails, ponds, landscaping and an amphitheater, some of which are in place.

    Hobbit holes already are cut into the side of the hill, and Karl Anthony, whom Meyers describes as a “spiritual artist,” held a concert at the amphitheater a few weeks ago.

    It will be the homes themselves, however, that give The Shire its unique look.

    Cottages will evoke English country homes. Townhouses will be built to look like medieval city streetscapes.

    Yeah. Good luck with that.

    …actually, I’d be real curious to see what it looks like when they’re done. Jeez, just when I thought the real estate market around here couldn’t get any weirder…

    One thing the Bulletin forgot: the web site address for “The Shire.” Kind of important, there.

    But that’s okay, I found it: The Shire of Bend, Oregon.

  • Hard drinkin’

    Heard about this on the radio this morning, and I wanted to blog it before I forgot about it. On the front page of the Bulletin today there’s a picture of three people floating the river (a popular summer activity here in Bend)—which by itself is no big deal. However, the focus of the article that accompanies it is on the excessive alcohol consumption that goes along with the river floaters.

    Back to that picture. Three people floating the river with booze in hand. Here’s the picture:

    People floating the Deschutes River with drinks in hand
    Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

    I’m not against drinking, rafting, drinking while rafting necessarily, but damn! That’s some hard drinkin’ in the picture. The guy on the left is drinking some kind of hard liquor, the middle guy a beer, and there’s at least two more bottles visible with them. The girl has a Jagermeister. I like Jager and all, but that’s way too hardcore for me.

    Besides, everyone knows the proper way to drink Jager is chilled, ideally right out of the freezer ;).

  • Chelsea Lane is closing

    Just a quick note about Chelsea Lane, a nice little wine shop that used to be downtown but is now located at the factory outlet stores on south Highway 97: they’re closing! I don’t know when the last day will be, but right now they’re selling their wines at 30% off, and beer for 15% off. I picked up four normally-spendy beers there the other day.

    Get down there while the getting’s good. It’s really too bad they’re closing; I don’t really know of any other wine shops in Bend (dedicated/exclusive wine shops—not just wineries or places that also sell wine), except maybe for Vino Mercato.

  • The one Shannon didn’t want to read…

    Eh, it wasn’t that bad. We had our picnic dinner in the park with Shannon and Simone, at the farmer’s market. I’m rethinking this whole “blogger meetup” thing though since only Shannon, Simone, and myself ever get together… if someone else wants to organize a blogger deal, I’ll come, but I’m done trying to put something together. For now, anyway.

    The blogworthy part of the evening (the part Shannon didn’t want to read… or maybe she did, I’m not sure) was Shannon’s skirt. She’s wearing a just-above-the-knee orange skirt and we’re all sitting on the grass (my family’s there, too), and what happens when you’re wearing a short skirt and sitting on the ground? Yah, it rides up and every time you shift you have to make sure you’re not flashing the person sitting across from you. Which was me.

    Do you know how hard it is to not see up someone’s skirt in that situation? Well, I didn’t see anything—I almost did, once or twice—but at some point Shannon realized that I was studiously looking elsewhere whenever she’d start shifting around and caught herself just in time. It turned into the joke afterward, but no, I wasn’t trying to see if she was going commando or not.

    See what kind of fun y’all miss out on? :)

    Update: No, Shannon wasn’t doing anything on purpose… it was just an unfortunate arrangement. See, this is why I don’t wear skirts…

  • The Donald Trump/Bend urban legend

    Note: This post was originally written way back in 2005, when most of the world still considered Trump to be (at best) an orange-skinned clown with questionable tastes and shady dealings. Of course now it’s 2022 as I update this and we all know he’s even more of a racist shitbag who absolutely destroyed our democracy, so there’s really nothing more to see here.

    I just heard about this at work today, people claiming that Donald Trump said the number one place to invest in/develop/buy/smoke real estate is Bend, Oregon. One guy—a local land engineer even—claims that Trump said this on Larry King Live. He may even be developing something here!

    Folks, it just ain’t true. Someone’s blowing smoke up your ass. It’s a rumor someone started to get people talking about Bend real estate. There’s no information online alluding to this, and even the transcripts of the Larry King Live episode in question don’t bear it out. Bend is not even on Trump’s radar.

    Let’s move on now, m’kay?

  • Comments on some of the Bulletin’s news

    You can tell I’ve been busy these last few days: I’ve got a number of things to write about but haven’t had the time to until now. These next couple of things are about articles that appeared in the Bulletin.

    First: 7-story hotel planned for downtown. This, of course, will be literally right next to the five-story parking garage. I’m a little ambivalent about this. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad for downtown Bend, but does it have to be a seven-story monstrosity? Plus, it’ll turn into a cost-overrun, logistical nightmare typical of recent downtown development.

    To be fair, though, the city has yet to approve the application. We all know that that’s just a formality, though, right?

    And the plan is to put a swimming pool on the sixth floor. Uh, okay. I know I sure wouldn’t want any room directly beneath several thousand tons of water suspended 55 feet or so above the ground… but that’s just me.

    The other item is this: Post office will test for anthrax. Yeah, that’s timely and relevant, what, three years later? Is this really news? I think bioterrorists have probably figured out by now that anthrax is kind of a no-go anymore, and are more likely to have something different cooked up. Seems to me the post office should be expanding the scope of their testing, if they’re really worried about it…

  • Ariana

    Amid all the craziness of the past weekend, my wife and I were able to have a Saturday evening out (the grandparents watched the kids). We went to Ariana with Shannon and her fiancé

    Ariana is located on Bend’s west side, in one of the renovated old houses that make up much of the west side’s character. My review, in a word: awesome! The weather was just right to sit out on the patio, the wait staff was refreshingly good, the food was excellent. Next time, though, when we’re out with friends, I’ll order an appetizer; Shannon wrote that I “ate off our plates” and that makes me sound like a homeless person or something. Really, I’m not.

    The one nagging question I have is whether the Spaten Oktoberfest I ordered was on tap or from the bottle. Bottle is fine, I don’t know of any other restaurant in town that has it, but if it’s on tap, then kudos, Ariana. Kudos indeed.

    Seriously, I’m not a homeless guy.

  • Da bloggers

    Busy busy busy weekend, that’s why I haven’t been posting. And I’m getting hammered at work with things, but I needed to jump on to post this bit, lest I forget again:

    There’s finally another Bend blogger meetup this week! Wednesday (July 27) at the Farmer’s Market downtown, at six o’clock. Basically we’ll have a picnic in Drake Park. (Buy your own dinner at the Farmer’s Market.) We’ll be meeting near the booth selling fish, though Shannon said if anyone gets there late, look for her and an orange blanket. So if you see a group of people sitting by an orange blanket in the park near the Farmer’s Market, odds are it’s us.

    Maybe we could get a roll call in the comments here, so we know who all can make it?

  • blogknocking

    Jeremy Zawodny wonders When will blogging peak? I don’t think it will, anytime soon or maybe even at all. Why? Because, like I wrote last month, it ain’t even mainstream yet. Plus, it’s too compelling. It will likely evolve, but it isn’t even close to peaking, if it ever will.

    Dave Winer mostly agrees with this assessment, but then writes this:

    Blogs with ads, like their print counterparts, strive to be as broad as possible, to reach as many people, and in doing so, lose their value as an ad for the author.

    No, I don’t think that’s true at all. Blogs with ads don’t automatically lose their value. I do think blogs that try to be as broad as possible and make money with ads largely won’t work; it’s the niche blogging that works. Blogs that do this the right way are making money. Otherwise Jason Calacanis‘ Weblogs, Inc. wouldn’t have just made over $2,000 in a single day with AdSense.

    You’ll note that I have AdSense on both of my blogs (this and The Brew Site). This blog is broad in scope, and has wildly varying ads; if I was relying on it to make money (rather than just running the ads as a nice extra), well, I’d have to keep my day job. The Brew Site, being much more focused/niched, doesn’t make as much as this site but does have a higher quality of ads and click rates. If I were to get the kind of traffic there that I get here, I’d see some nice figures, I think.

    Finally, in other blog news, Scoble today tries to downplay being a A-list blogger. Get this: “Forget the A-listers. They don’t matter anymore. Well, they don’t matter as much.” Yeah, right. Sorry, but being an A-list blogger is better than ever, period. Doubt it? In the same post, Scoble mentions that he “was talking to Chris Pirillo [another A-list blogger] the other day about the ‘long tail’ metaphor and while we were flying over mountains in the Boeing plane….” This refers to the fact that himself and several other prominent (A-list) bloggers were invited on an exclusive test flight featuring Boeing’s new in-flight WiFi service… they all got flown to Walla Walla for wine. And buzzed some mountains.

    Man, don’t try to tell me that the A-listers don’t matter anymore. Jeez.

    Hmm. Anyone else notice the irony of this post? I’m pointing to the A-listers. Must be sour grapes or something.