Um, What?

Please tell me I'm not the only one that can't understand a word this guy is saying.

Anybody Have Any Friends at the City of Bend Water/Sewer (or like to plumb for fun)?

I've documented my plumbing troubles in the past, and it appears things are only going to get worse.

I had another issue in early December, and called Mike at Handy Rooter who has come out to my house in the past. He snaked the line with a water blaster, found some stuff to knock loose, we flushed the toilets and ran water for a while, no problems. He gave us a 30-day warranty and we thought we were good to go.

Two weeks later, water's backing up into our drains again. He comes back out, goes out even further, nearly to the city hookup, and knocks out some more stuff. We ran more water for a while, no problems, so we thought we were good.

Two weeks later (four weeks after the original appointment, still under warranty) we get water back up again. He snakes it this time, all the way to the end of his snake (150 feet worth) and well up to city line. Wash, rinse, repeat, we appear to be OK.

This morning, my wife starts some laundry, we're backing up again -- she just called me at the office to tell me the wonderful news.

There's no way that in less than a week we'd have a full-system clog like that in our sewer line. So we're left with one of two options: There's a problem in the City sewer line (which runs through our backyard -- it's an old, weird home). Or there's a problem with our pipe, which I'm hoping it isn't, but considering when two of the problems occurred (after big rain and after big snow melt off, followed by freeze), there's a chance. To send one of those cameras up our pipe is going to be (minimum) $200 -- which is $200 I certainly don't have right now, so I'm hoping a phone call to the city will get them to come out and inspect their pipe.

But I have a feeling getting the city to come out and do it will be a pain in the rear. Anybody know anybody at the city of Bend that can poke them for me? Or does anybody know a plumber who has one of those cameras that owes you a favor? I just want to know one way or another. Then again, it's not like I can afford to replace the pipe right now, either, as that'll probably be a couple grand as I double my homeowners insurance will pay for it. But it'd be nice to know the problem, regardless.

Update on 1/5/08: Talked to the City, and they came out and looked at the flow coming out at the end, and things were flowing fine. So there's a problem with something in our yard -- frickin' awesome. I need to find somebody who can run a camera under there and see what's going on, as we have no drainage right now. Bloody frickin' lovely...

It's Stupidly Useless and Geeky

It's Wikipedia over DNS.

Are Some eBay Buyers Just That Stupid?

Apparently.

KFXO rejects BendBroadband carriage offer, will remove Fox signal

While I won't make it until midnight, as I'm tired, I do know one thing: I probably won't have KFXO on my TV tomorrow, if BendBroadband's press release is to be believed. From how I'm reading it, KFXO's highly publicized "We were only asking for a penny a day per subscriber" turned out to not be true, as BendBroadband offered that, and was rejected.

December 31, 2008 Bend, Ore. - BendBroadband announced today that NPG/KFXO has rejected BendBroadband's compromise on compensation for carriage of FOX programming on BendBroadband's channel lineup. According to Amy Tykeson, President and CEO, "BendBroadband's request for an extension of the current agreement to allow negotiations to continue has also been rebuffed by KFXO's corporate offices. BendBroadband has met the requested penny-a-day per customer carriage fee that KFXO's local management has widely touted as their requirement. Unfortunately our counteroffer has been rejected."

(Earlier story with discussion.)

Update on 1/1/09: The station is off of BendBroadband today, with this note on-screen (copied from the comments, so it may not be exactly right, but this is basically what it said, and I'm at the office where we don't have BendBroadband so I can't 100% verify):

BENDBROADBAND'S AGREEMENT TO CARRY KFXO (CH 10 SD & 610 HD) HAS EXPIRED. KFXO HAS REMOVED THEIR SIGNAL FROM OUR CHANNEL LINEUP. OUR REQUEST TO OFFER KFXO DURING NEGOTIATIONS WAS DENIED. FOR UPDATES, INCLUDING INFO ABOUT HOW TO RECIVE KFXO OVER-THE-AIR, GO TO BENDBROADBAND.COM/KFXO OR CALL 382-5551

Everything Is Better With Lightsabers

Even the Princess Bride.

Wow, What A Boring Football Game

While I'm glad the Beavers won, a football game (and a bowl game at that) that ends with the final score of 3-0 never makes good television.

Good Thing I Locked My Doors

Last night I noticed a huge pile of police cars in my neighborhood. I immediately locked the doors, and it's a good thing I did, otherwise this guy might have paid a visit (he was arrested just a couple houses down from mine).

Warning: Contents May Be Flammable

The news is full of all sorts of morons today...

Five people died in Oregon traffic crashes over the Christmas holiday period, and while none was in Central Oregon, a drunk-driving citation was given to a Redmond woman who had a startling .469 blood-alcohol level, State Police reported.

That's nearly six times the legal limit of .08 and close to the highest levels ever recorded for a living person; a Rhode Island man arrested earlier this year tested at .491, officials said.

You Think He Would've Learned His Lesson

But apparently not.

Bend Police K-9 Bosco followed a Christmas Eve burglar's trail, aided by footprints in the snow, for nearly two hours before officers found the suspect hiding in bushes at a home several miles away, police said.

And when they caught their man, he may have been familiar to them -- last January, after a northeast Bend restaurant was broken into, footprints in the snow led to his arrest, also on burglary charges.

Time Killers For The Evening

From this great list, we have a couple games that should kill off quite a bit of time.

NEED: Cell Phone Plan/Phone Recommendations

My cell phone contract is up for renewal, and while I like my Blackberry 8703e and like US Cellular's phone coverage, I've found myself using the data plan quite a bit, and US Cellular's data network in Central Oregon is slower than dial-up. I've already talked to the business folks there, and have flat out been told that they have no plans in the immediate future to upgrade their network to EVDO or anything faster than they have now, so I'm exploring moving to other options.

I'm also looking getting a Windows Mobile-based phone so I can install WMWiFiRouter and a variety of other available applications (VNC Client, SSH client, Citrix Client, blogging client, etc...). My boss has given me permission to transfer away from the company's account with US Cellular to somewhere else and to get a new phone. Since times are tight, I'd like to try to get a deal to save my bosses some money, but I'd still like to get a phone and plan that will do everything I need and want to do.

While I'd like input on all this, here's my thinking. AT&T is out of the question because I can't port my number there because they're not local (though they do have good roaming coverage using Unicel's soon-to-be-defunct GSM towers), so the iPhone is out of the question -- though I don't think I'd want a phone that can only officially do what Apple says it can do via the app store. T-Mobile is out of the question (even though I already have an account there for my in-laws) because their 3G network network isn't going to be up and going for a while here (though their G1 is a pretty cool phone). Verizon also has a tendency to cripple their phones and over price the same models compared to other companies.

So that leaves me with Sprint, and I'm leaning towards one of their Everything Plus plans and their HTC Touch Pro (with a few hacks to disable the fancy TouchFlo interface as I don't need frilly crap). It has everything I need, and has a full Qwerty keyboard (as I can't stand touch-screen keyboards). It's also smaller than my Blackberry, and shorter and narrower (though thicker) than an iPhone 3g.

Anybody have any input either way, good or bad? Is my thinking flawed? Anybody have any contacts or hookups at any of these companies or on these phones that can get me a great deal (Sprint or otherwise)?

Update: And by the way: If anybody has a Sprint SERO plan they want to get rid of, contact me, as I'd be interested in taking it over.

Quick Post Christmas Wrap-Up

My kids were spoiled. My wife was spoiled. I was spoiled. That's pretty much it. We all got far more than we deserved, gave away more than we could afford, but a good time was had by all. Off the top of my head, I got a few Nintendo DS Game (Final Fantasy IV, N+, and Professor Layton and the Curious Village), a cordless drill and bits, a four-drawer tool box, much-needed clothes (including this t-shirt), the Garfield Minus Garfield book, a couple other books whose titles I can't remember off the top of my head. My wife got a bunch of goodies, too, and my kids have toys coming out their ears (we're going to collect up some of their older, gently-used, toys, and they can pick which charity they go to).

Hopefully everybody had a great holiday, and will be back to regular blogging tomorrow-ish.

Merry Christmas

While South Park is mostly unwatchable, this video is always good for a laugh:

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Old-School Games

Here are 95 Old School Games you can play online to kill off your day.

Personally, I have enough to kill of my day, as we're celebrating with the in-laws today, then with my family tomorrow, so blogging will probably be light (or even non-existent) over the next few days. Have a happy holiday everybody!

KFXO vs. BendBroadband

If you have BendBroadband for TV service you may lose your ability to watch Fox on the first of the year because of a dispute the local Fox affiliate and BendBroadband are having. I don't have an opinion one way or another right now, as I haven't really researched it all that much (though I do have a digital over-the-air box somewhere in case this does get messy) For everybody's reference, KFXO's side of things is here, BendBroadband's side of things is here, The Bulletin story here, there is a ton of discussion here and a one-post blog has been created here.

You're welcome to comment, discuss and share your opinion here, as well, but since I haven't really had a chance to research this at all, I probably won't comment at all. That, and the holidays are here and when you have kids, your mind is on the holidays, not this kind of thing.

Merry Christmas -- From Your Microwave

Be sure to have the sound on for this (high res version here):

It's A Young Girl, Talking About Herself

This pretty much sums up all those video diaries you see on youtube:

The Far Side In Real Life

These recreations of The Far Side comics in real life are hilarious.

(For those of you that don't know what The Far Side is, read up.)

And Speaking Of Crazy Commenters...

I just talked about BOR's crazy comments, and it made me think of all the commenters who have been posting over the years here. It's been over a year since I've done this, but here are the 30 most commented on entries for this site from over the years:

709 comments: Have a small penis?
563 comments: We All Hate Work
535 comments: Do Not Call List -- Red Hot, Big Loopholes
398 comments: Extreme Dodgeball
364 comments: Do You Have Bright Green Poop?
360 comments: Panties Just For Men
340 comments: Another Great Gmail Hack
295 comments: Only a band geek will appreciate this
255 comments: How to cancel an AOL account in 3 minutes
207 comments: Help pay for a girl's boob job
196 comments: Yet another reason to hate PETA
146 comments: Are hyphenated Yahoo names that rare?
142 comments: BendBroadband is Giving You More Speed...
118 comments: Sciatic nerve pinches hurt like hell
115 comments: Kurt Kobain a better guitarist than Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana? Not bloody likely!
100 comments: Learn to throw cards like a ninja
100 comments: That's One Killer Christmas Light Display
98 comments: Smack the Penguin
92 comments: Sick and Politically Incorrect Jokes
90 comments: Michael Jackson has never had plastic surgery
88 comments: What comes after trillion?
86 comments: Dateline to focus on Michael Jackson's face
83 comments: Another Reason to Hate AOL
68 comments: Man doubts his "World's Smartest Person" title
65 comments: A 2,200 Acre Mushroom in Eastern Oregon
65 comments: Anybody Actually Using Clearwire?
61 comments: Man gets jail for licking woman's feet in grocery store
60 comments: Fun "Monkey Kick Off" Flash Game
55 comments: DHTML Lemmings
53 comments: A virtual drum kit

Many of the same entries are there from before, with a few newcomers, but generally higher numbers all around.

I Thought This Blog Got Some Crazy Commenters

While this site has its fair share of oddball comments, I still always get a chuckle out of the crazy people that comment on the Bend Restaurants blog, and this time, BOR is fighting back.

Why ESPN Radio 940 (KICE) Is Hard To Hear In The Evening Locally

I work in Sunriver, and on the drive out from Bend, after listening to the news on KBND (which celebrates 75 years tomorrow), I generally will listen to ESPN Radio 940 KICE. I like getting a bit of sports news and commentary before I go to the office. Generally, I can hear it fine all the way to Sunriver.

In the evening when I drive home, however, it's a totally different story. The station is impossible to understand, getting blown over by a Spanish-language station, even when I get back into Bend. I finally e-mailed the folks at the Bend Radio Group, who manage KICE, as it was driving me nuts. Like many stations, KICE goes into lower power mode at night. In this case, they run 10,000 watts during the day, but only 60-100 watts at night, according to the FCC database. Which would be fine if there wasn't something else interfering (KPOV runs on just two watts and I can hear them fine nearly all the way to Sunriver -- and yes, I know FM and AM signals travel and bounce around differently, so we won't go into that discussion as it's all voodoo magic to me anyway).

So I asked them if they knew what the station was that was interfering, and they told me it was some Spanish-language station out of Fresno. After checking into Fresno Radio on Wikipedia, I found that it was KWRU, which runs Radio Vida Abundanta content (which is apparently Spanish language Christian programming) at 50,000 watts day and night. So despite Fresno being over 600 miles from Bend, we're still getting interference from that station because it runs so strongly (I've been able to listen to other Northern California AM stations at night before, but only from as far south as Sacramento -- never from Fresno).

Personally, I wish KICE would simulcast on an FM frequency that's less susceptible to the interference (like KBNW is), but 940's been an AM station here as long as I can remember (along with 1110), so I don't envision them changing frequencies anytime soon. It'd be nice to hear Beavers Sports without interference.

I also wish they'd get rid of Jim "I'm a heck of a guy" Rome as he (and his fans) drives me nuts. Cowherd's far more entertaining and less of an arrogant jerk.

Things I've Learned In This Nasty Weather

In case you haven't heard, the weather all over Oregon has been a cold, nasty mess this week, with the temps earlier this week dropping below zero (with high temps in the single digits -- Fahrenheit degrees, not Celsius). There are some things I've learned throughout this:

• My car battery -- which is about the size of a go-cart battery and equally as powerful -- doesn't seem to like the temps below 10°F. I had to jump my car or pop the clutch on both Monday and Tuesday when the temps were in single digits. Get above 10°F, and it starts fine. It struggles, but it starts. I actually had an old, fully functional, basically new car battery in my garage (long story) that I just put in my trunk and kept it in there with my cables in case I couldn't find somebody to jump me or I didn't park on a hill so I could pop the clutch (which is a pain in the cold, but still possible).
• People in the Willamette Valley totally freak out when there's ice and snow. If you read some of the Portland-area blogs or even the newspapers from the area, it's like the end of the world over there. Granted, I know that Portland is not built for that kind of thing, nor are its residents, but I had a great laugh, watching folks try to drive in it. Portland, Eugene, and Salem are ripe with mass transit options -- why people aren't using them up there when it gets like this is beyond me.
• People become retarded when driving in the crap. I drive to work down Hwy 97 to Sunriver from Bend -- one of the ugliest stretches of highway this time of year -- and am constantly seeing people a) Driving way too fast for the conditions (it's a frickin' skating rink, folks) and b) driving with out their headlights on blizzards (like it was on the highway today). I nearly rear-ended a few people today because I couldn't see them until I nearly clobbered them. They're in white cars, in white-out weather, with no lights on. And they think because they're in a big ol' SUV or pickup that they can still drive the speed limit (or over it). Frickin' idiots.
• My headlights need cleaning. They're pretty heavily oxidized, and when I drive home at night, I need all the help I can get. Any recommendations, other than the various solutions suggested on Google? Anything particular work for anybody?

Best Video Game Review Ever

I used to think that this was the Best Game Review Ever, but this one easily takes the cake (crude language warning):

Wait, what?

Never thought I'd read this headline: "Lesbian Teens More Likely to get Pregnant than Straight Teens."

Beards Are Awesome

Not only are there a ton of different types, but there are very good reasons to grow a giant beard.

Photography Is For Jerkoffs

I'm good friends with several pro photogs, but even the pros should think this anti-photographer, expletive-laden rant is quite hysterical.

Looking For A New Source Of Income?

When times are tight, sometimes people have to be creative on how they make money. Like this guy, who got in trouble selling a home that he didn't own

Looking For Something For That Special Someone This Holiday Season?

How about a hood thong?

Thanks Jen for the link.

My Plan For World Domination Is In Process

Step 1: Get my name into Google Books.
Step 2: Get a Wikipedia page in my name or for this blog. Still don't have that one, but one step at a time (though there is a link to this blog on this article).