Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Blog

  • Stuff

    Still continuing to settle in to the new house. This weekend we cleared out the storage unit, and it never ceases to amaze me just how much stuff we’ve managed to accumulate over the years. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve got a packrat personality and it’s actually hard for me to get rid of stuff. But—wow. How does this happen? You’re puttering around in your daily life, happily oblivious, then one day you turn around and BAM!—where did all this stuff come from? And yes, you remember getting that, and yes, those have a story, and then you realize the true culprit:

    Time.

    Time: you lose track of it for even a moment, and it will sneak up on you. Your kids will grow a few more inches and start school, everyone you know is suddenly older, the music you spent formative years of your life listening to is on oldies radio stations, and stuff accumulates.

    And yeah, that packrat personality I mentioned, I have that. But not too badly though, not apeshit crazy like you see on TV or read about, where the old hermit guy has 30 years of newspapers tied up in his living room, or the wacko lady has 8,000 unopened boxes of toothpicks, or anything like that. No, I’ve got it just enough to annoy my wife. Could it ever get more serious? I doubt it.

    But you know… time will tell.

  • Comic book references at the Post Office

    Since we’ve moved into a brand-new development, we don’t even have a mailbox yet so we have to go to the Post Office to pick up our mail. The location for this is their warehouse in the industrial part of town, and when you go in, there’s simply a tiny lobby and a doorway that leads to the rest of the warehouse.

    While waiting for the postal lady to retrieve my mail, I noticed a whiteboard leaning up against the wall inside the warehouse. It was a chart, and the heading at the top was, “DCU FLASH (PERFORMANCE)”. It seemed to mark down delivery times/speeds.

    Of course, any self-respecting comics geek would recognize that “DCU FLASH” refers, of course, to DC Comics‘ Flash, and is entirely appropriate for a chart about delivery speeds.

    Well, at least I thought it was kinda funny.

  • Spolsky on the Windows API

    Joel Spolsky on How Microsoft Lost the API War:

    Outside developers, who were never particularly happy with the complexity of Windows development, have defected from the Microsoft platform en-masse and are now developing for the web….

     

    Much as I hate to say it, a huge chunk of developers have long since moved to the web and refuse to move back.

    Good article. I recommend reading all of it, not just my highly selective snippets here.

  • The Move Reloaded

    Well, we’re all moved in and (relatively) comfortable. Still not feeling like blogging much—after 3 days of moving and cleaning and unpacking, and the ongoing process of more unpacking and arranging and tweaking (things like hanging curtains, and towel racks), I’m just beat. So, some quick thoughts on the moving process:

    • Smartest thing we did: hiring movers. Totally worth it. If/when we move again, it’s the only way to go.
    • Taking a day off from work was also smart.
    • Going back to work feels like a vacation.

    Ugh. More later.

  • The Move

    So tomorrow we get funded and close on our new house, and take possession. Then comes the Move; we’ll start hauling a load or two over tomorrow evening, and then Saturday is the big day. Fortunately, this time we’ve hired movers to do all the heavy lifting.

    I don’t expect to be online much or at all after I leave work tomorrow, at least until Sunday sometime, maybe later. If all goes according to plan, Bend Broadband should have our cable service turned on Saturday (I think), but I seriously doubt I’ll be interested in going online after spending the day moving.

    Thus marks the end of one chapter of our lives, and the beginning of a new one. It’s not the first house we’ve bought, but it will be first brand new one we’ve lived in. Should be interesting!

  • Wikipedia’s New Look

    Just a quick note here… I saw Wikipedia‘s new look this evening and I have to say, I like it.

  • Alton Brown

    My favorite show on Food Network is Good Eats—it’s entertaining, informative, and quirky, all due to its host/creator, Alton Brown. So after reading the story on Alton Brown in this month’s Wired, I figured it was high time to blog some links.

    So, in addition to his site, which I linked to above, it’s interesting to note that he has a blog.

  • Thongs

    Thongs, flipflops, whateverWhen I was growing up, thongs were the semi-sandals that you wore on your feet, pictured to the right. Nowadays, they’re called “flipflops” and if you call them “thongs” in public, you get sharp looks and people think you’re having a stroke when you try to explain what you were talking about.

    Sigh. The times, they are a-changin’.

  • Bend Brew Fest

    The Bend Brew Fest is kicking off this year at the Les Schwab Amphitheater, on Saturday, August 21. Excellent! Not quite a contender with the awesome Oregon Brewers Festival, but very cool nonetheless.

    From the Les Schwab Amphitheater Events page:

    On Saturday, August 21st over 20 Pacific Northwest brewers will present over 40 craft beers for public tasting at the Les Schwab Amphitheater for the first annual Bend Brew Fest.

     

    Event hours are Noon to 10pm. Cost of admission is $10 for an advance ticket or $15 at the gate. Included in the cost of admission are a commemorative tasting mug and two tasting tokens. One token is required for each beer sample. Token costs are $1 apiece.

  • McMenamins Finally!

    Finally! McMenamins is on track to open the Old St. Francis School here, on November 15, 2004. Seems like we’ve been hearing about this for years, but this time it’s the real deal. (I hope.)

    Bend.com has an article on the opening. This paragraph is noteworthy:

    Gathering of stories, photos and memorabilia is currently under way to supply the artists with subject matter, as well as for documenting the school’s seven decades of experiences. Anyone interested in contributing is encouraged to contact McMenamins historian Tim Hills at (503) 223-0109 or via e-mail to timh@hq.mcmenamin.com.

    If you’ve ever been to a McMenamins, you know that the art, history and memorabilia play a huge role in creating their unique atmosphere. Seems like a cool opportunity to get a little piece of the action.