I keep seeing references to a new Oregon-related group blog called “BlueOregon,” purporting to reside at the domain name www.blueoregon.com. However, every time I try this domain, I get a “Future home of a domain” page—i.e., the domain name has been registered, but it’s parked on a generic landing page. (Even ORBlogs is showing content from it.) Is this a joke? Really bad DNS/proxy/caching/something configuration on BendBroadband’s part? What’s the deal?
Blog
-
Bend Blogger Get-together
Public service announcement: The Bend/Central Oregon bloggers are getting together tomorrow (Wednesday, July 21) at six o’clock at the Bend Brewing Company. I’ll be there, and I know a few more of us will be, too. See you there!
-
Spending the weekend with noxious chemicals
Since moving into the new house, it seems like there’s a never-ending list of things to do. This weekend it was staining the new fence. That took a big chunk of time.
The way to go when doing something like staining a fence (or a deck) is to get a compression sprayer—a plastic tank that you pour the liquid into, seal airtight and pump air into. This creates pressure that forces the liquid out of the spray nozzle when triggered. Pretty handy, but here’s some things you might want to consider doing if you’re doing this (all of which I, of course, didn’t do):
- Wear goggles. The sealant/stain spray has an amazing tendency to blow back into your eyes when it’s windy.
- Wear a mask to avoid inhaling too many fumes.
- Wear a hat, like a painter’s cap. Especially during those blowback situtations.
-
Iron Chef
Every now and again I catch the beginning of Iron Chef on Food Network, and man, that is one weird show. The original Japanese version, anyway; I haven’t seen Iron Chef America.
-
Sheriff Money
Isn’t it interesting that after the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office pushed so hard to get a levy passed for more money, with all the hand-wringing and guilt trips about people losing jobs and criminals being let out of jail, now all of a sudden they have extra cash?
Aware of the likely criticism, Stiles insisted the rosier situation wasn’t clear before May’s vote to approve a 3-year levy, and that the funds come from non-levy sources.
Stiles and Jim Ross, the department’s business manager, explained that the agency’s 2003-04 ending fund balance, which they had conservatively estimated at $200,000, has turned out to be $874,000 instead.
And not small change, either. No, to the tune of two-thirds of a million dollars. And it might even be more:
And some said Stiles still may be under-shooting the amount of revenues he’ll have for the new budget year. “It’s going to get to $1.2 million,” said Commissioner Tom DeWolf; Maier said at least $1 million beginning balance is likely.
The best part? They insist it’s not levy money, and there will still be jail releases. Hello? Shouldn’t keeping criminals in jail be a priority here? Or is it just me?
-
Spider-Man 2
Saw Spider-Man 2 on Friday night. Very good. Better in many ways than the first one, and the first one was very good, too. Herewith some additional thoughts, but they might be spoilerish, so only read on if you’ve seen the movie (or are willing to risk it).
-
Farking Irritating
Going through the chuggnutt.com logfiles for the 6th, I noticed that there were suddenly a bunch of hits to the Oobi image I’d posted here a while back from TotalFark. Basically, someone’s linked directly to the image on this server from a high-traffic site.
Now on the one hand, that’s kind of cool—but on the other hand, I’m a little irritated because TotalFark is a paid subscription site that I can’t access without registering first, which means I can’t just go and see what they’re doing with the Oobi image they’re pulling from me. Does that seem fair? Their site is saving money by sucking an image down over my bandwidth, and on top of that I’d have to pay them additional money to find out why.
And before someone points out to me that it’s only like 5 bucks to register and I’m therefore a cheap bastard, well, consider this: FARK‘s Terms of Service at the bottom of every page reads:
Text comments, audioedit submissions, and photoshopped images posted on Fark by registered users may not be reposted or broadcast without the express written permission or license from Fark.com and must attribute Fark.com as the source.
So if they won’t let people use their images without their permission, then why should I? It’s the principal of the thing.
Grumble… It might be time to brush up on some Apache rewrite rules…
-
Amazing accident
My wife found this somewhere: the most amazing car accident ever. Damn. I’m just speechless.
-
4th of July Recap
We had a good 4th of July here, the weather was beautiful, the fireworks were grand and it was fun in general. I took the kids to the Pet Parade, while my wife and mother visited the gem show in Sisters. Afterwards we drank beer, barbecued hamburgers and set off fireworks for the kids in the cul-de-sac.
We got invited to a neighbor’s party down the street, which my wife and I visited for about a half hour after the kids went to bed. (Interesting illustration to me of one of the benefits of living in a “real” neighborhood community.) We came back home and watched the Pilot Butte fireworks from our new backyard for the first time in 5 or more years—that was pretty cool.
All in all, a good Fourth. Hope everyone else’s was good, too.
-
This 4th
I kind of doubt I’ll be online posting much tomorrow, so a pre-emptive note for everyone to have a fun, safe July 4th. We’ll be shooting from the hip as far as plans go tomorrow; I’m taking the kids to the Pet Parade downtown at 10 for sure. Should be a good day.
And we can see Pilot Butte from our new house! It’s the first time in something like five years we’ll be able to see the fireworks. That’s cool.
