Today There Was No News

What the newscast would be like if there was nothing to report:

Similar video on Flickr.

Stupid Lawsuit For The Day

Monster Cable -- the company that makes those horrendously overpriced audio and video cables -- is suing Monster Mini Golf because it claims the mini golf course are ""are likely to cause confusion" with it's brand.

This is the same company that sued Disney for Monsters, Inc. (the movie) and the Boston Red Sox for "Monster Seats" on the big green monster.

Full Story.

Darth Vader Plays Blues Harmonica

The video starts off a bit slow, but give it a minute for a good laugh.

BendBroadBand Changes Mind, Still Caps 'net Usage, But Raises The Cap

(If you haven't been following the BendBroadband bandwidth cap update, read up here first which links to the few entries that follow this whole mess. Most of the discussion has happened here.)

BendBroadband announced today that they've dropped their tiered-bandwidth-cap for the upcoming service change in July, in favor of an across-the-board residential 100GB cap. The pricing differences will now be because of the speed differences and the Platinum Plan that was created during this whole discussion has been dropped.

Just the same, Comcast still gives you a higher cap.

The press release (full text after the jump) also mentions their business plans that are coming soon. It was originally thought and mentioned that these would be uncapped, but it appears that the cap will be set at 150GB for all but the high-end plan (no details on pricing has been released -- which I'm still a bit miffed about and have been all along). As was mentioned before, the cap on business plans might hurt Bend as a destination for new technology entrepreneurs. Experimentation with technology can sometimes be an expensive and stressful endeavor if you have to worry about caps.

And there is still is my problem with the overnight downloads/uploads that I do (for backup/security purposes). Again, they shouldn't count against me, but they're going to, even though they're going to hurt nobody. While I'm not over the 100GB limit, there are times where I easily could be. And I can't consider a business plan as they still haven't released them.

So an improvement? Yes. Completely fixed? Nope. Are people still going to complain? You bet. Will the usage graph be fixed? As of May 7th, it say it is on the site, but who knows if it'll break again.

I just don't think people will realize the impact this could potentially have on their bill. While the cap is much higher than before, with Summer coming and the kids being at home and discovering torrents and iTunes video and such, I just have a feeling there will be more outrage to come.

Full press release after the jump, feel free to comment below.

Update: FixBBB is all over it as well.

Coming To Your Wii...

...a stripper pole.

I Love The Muppet Show

But I'm not sure if I like the Muppets doing Rick Astley...

Does Your Penis Have A Name?

UtterlyBoring.com at Wrigley Field

Finally

Spent the weekend (and lost far too much sleep) getting my new laptop all setup to do what I need and want it to do so I (hopefully) won't have to be carrying two laptops around anymore (I need to find a new laptop bag for this one -- any suggestions on a good, well-padded bag for a 17" laptop?). It's been really annoying having a nice new toy to play with, but never being able to really use it.

I still need to do a few more system-level tweaks, and clean up my Start menu a bit, but we're mostly there. I really need to redo my applications list to include some other utilities I installed during all this and remove ones I didn't need any more (as there were a bunch of redundant ones on there) Then maybe (after I catch up on some sleep) I get back to blogging on a more regular basis.

Happy Mother's Day everybody!

Headline Of The Day

"Great tits cope well with warming."

Thanks Fark.

Eastern Oregon: the 51st state?

Some Hood River residents are getting fed up on how the Oregon legislature is treating rural communities, sothey're seriously wanting to create a 51st state (More from KVAL in Eugene). While their division for east versus west is the Cascade mountains, Bend and Deschutes County (which are both east of the Cascades) are apparently not included in the running for the new state's capital or even included in the new state at all:

Koch said the booming tourist town simply isn't rural enough anymore.

"The Bend area doesn't fit as a rural community," said Koch.

The border would run right down the Cascades but go around Deschutes County. One thing Koch is sure of is that the new state would have fewer regulations.

While this will probably never, even, happen, it is an interesting conversation topic: How would the state be funded (especially if Bend weren't part of it)? Where would the capital be? How about we just create a state with rural Eastern Washington, which pretty much is in the same boat as us with east-versus-west?

This also isn't the first time that a 51st state discussion has happened around here, as I remember some groups back in the day discussing making a state out of Southern Oregon and Northern California.

Having Trouble Dialing With Your Cell Phone Today?

That's probably because you need to dial the area code today. I remember reading somewhere (don't remember where -- will see if I can find it when I get some free time) that US Cellular is requiring 10-digit dialing for local calls starting today (Unicel already does). Since our company has 15 lines with US Cellular, people are having a bit of issues adjusting.

So if you're having trouble dialing a 7-digit (non area-code) local number here in Bend, try it with the 541 area code on the front. If it works, then you know you're having the issue. You should probably just get in the habit of dialing 10 digits all the time anyway.

Even Comcast Gives More Bandwidth Than BendBroadband

(If you haven't been following the BendBroadband bandwidth cap news, read up here.)

Comcast, the nationwide cable company everybody loves to hate, is mulling over putting caps on their monthly bandwidth -- at a level 25x higher than BendBroadband's base plan (and still 2.5x higher than their high-end plan).

My biggest gripe about this whole mess: Their usage graphs still don't work and probably their biggest PR blunder in all this (in my opinion): they still haven't released their new uncapped Business plans, which would be an option for some folks. Then if folks still wanted uncapped access, they could then point to the business plans.

My sources at BendBroadband say they're working on it, as they are with fine-tuning the details of the residential plans (they are listening, folks), so expect an annoucement from them at some point, but I couldn't tell you when.

Time Killer For The Day

Still slammed, but slowly catching up. Just need another 12 hours in the day, and a super power that allows me to function without sleep. And it'd be nice to have an evening off, but I still have one more concert tonight (hope to see some of you there).

Anywho, when I was able to take a breather today, this game killed off what time I had: How fast can you type in this little time-killer? I was averaging about 55 words-per-minute, though I could probably do better as I'm tired as heck. How'd you do?

Bend Bulletin Debuts New Site (and New Print Features)

And I have to say, upon first glance, it looks much nicer than before and actually works on a widescreen setup. It has much larger photos, comments on the articles (only for subscribers, however, which is silly), There are still a few broken links here and there, and the stupid paywall is still in place, despite research that shows open archives get about 50% more traffic from Google than those with paid archives. And traffic generally equals revenue.

I haven't had a chance to look through the entire site quite yet to see how or if other things have changed, but it's far easier on the eyes than what was there before.

Quick glancing at the print edition this morning, it appears that they've introduced some new design elements to the print edition as well which URL references for specific sections (not all of which work quite yet). But kudos to the online staff over there for putting out a much better design than before -- now if you could just convince management to get rid of the damn paywall and allow non-subscribers to comment, than it'd be nicer.

Busy Week

Blogging will be light this week (as it has been the last several days) because of a variety of time crunches. I'm still trying to find time to get my new toy all setup so I can start using it full time (sucks having a new toy that you can't even find time to play with). I'm also trying to redesign our church's Web site since Wordpress decided to puke on it (and I don't have time to babysit it as much). I'm trying out Typo3 with the Web-Empowered Church extensions and there are a lot of cool things there, I'm just not familiar with Typo3 at all, so fumbling my way around it has been slow, to say the least. I'm also playing with the Central Oregon Symphony this weekend and have several rehearsals this week to get ready for that. And I have a bunch of little projects at home that I'm still playing catch-up on.

Needless to say, I won't be making it to last-minute the local blogger meetup on Wednesday (could somebody plan these things more than 48 hours in advance folks? Fer cryin' out loud...) as not only do I not get off work until it starts (and still have a 30-40 minute commute where I then have to go immediately to COCC), I have rehearsal that night (like I did at the last meetup). So everybody go enjoy yourself.

Why I Don't Use Twitter

Because it's full of crap like this.

Why DRM Sucks, Reason #52

This is why you never really own the music you purchase when you purchase them with DRM:

Customers who have purchased music from Microsoft's now-defunct MSN Music store are now facing a decision they never anticipated making: commit to which computers (and OS) they want to authorize forever, or give up access to the music they paid for. Why? Because Microsoft has decided that it's done supporting the service and will be turning off the MSN Music license servers by the end of this summer.

Geekdom Link Dump

As per my usual every-couple-of-weeks routine, here are a bunch of geek links that are mostly for my reference but might be handy for somebody else.

• Western Digital debuts a 300gb 10,000 SATA hard drive that's stupidly fast.
• So when do we get folders in Gmail?.
• How to build a $188M submarine cable system.
• Mount flickr storage space as a hard drive.
• Fun little Physics toy.
• How to make a sawed-off USB key.
• Placing forced ads on your customers' sites with .htaccess (for folks who are considering hosting sites for free).
• What file system should I use?
• Torrents of traffic and the Internet backbone (good article considering what's been going on lately).
• Downloading YouTube videos as MP4 files.
• The WiFi Predator, a "modified wireless router connected to a high-powered antenna and running custom firmware to actively seek out open wireless connections. Once they are found, it will test them for internet connectivity and then join and repeat the one with the strongest signal to secured wireless connection that YOU control." Totally illegal, but totally cool.
• Dealing with Windows Vista Explorer screwing up auto-detection of folder types.
• Move email to Gmail with Google Email Uploader.
• What if Futurama was real?
• Dropclock motion clock screensaver.
• Linux remains unbeaten in pwn2own Hacking Contest.
• Best Firewall Software of 2008.
• Open Source classroom management with iTalc.
• Push the Freakin' Button (and Pro version).
• Left Behind: A fond farewell to 209 once-common things that are either obsolete or well on the way.
• Make your Windows XP start up screen look like Vista.
• Comparison of how 10 popular web sites have (and have not) changed.
• Where do email to "donotreply.com" go? They go to this guy.
• 10 Handy Numbers to Save In Your Cell Phone.
• Speed up Network File Copying While Playing Audiot in Vista SP1.
• ClamWin anti-virus for Windows.
• Embed your to-do list on your desktop.
• Run a management WiFi hotspot with a PayPal Payment gateway.
• UltraDefrag is much better than the built-in defrag in Windows.
• 10 JavaScript/Ajax effects to boost your website's fanciness factor.
• 101 Five-minute fixes to incrementally improve your Web site.
• CSS media selections for various browser types.
• 85% of all spam comes from six botnets, with 40% of all spam coming from just one botnet. Good luck shutting that down.
• How to find out where an exploit is running on cPanel.
• A bunch of Single-serving-sites, web sites comprised of a single page with a dedicated domain name and do only one thing.
• 21 Awesome (but lesser known) open source applications for Windows.
• 50 ways your Web site is discouraging conversions -- and how to fix it (Editor's Note: Step 1: Find more time....).
• Using CSS to do anything. 50+ creative examples.

My New Toy

I mentioned a couple years ago the new laptop I got. It's a great little system, and I like the size and power in it. However, it came time to get some more laptops here at the office, and instead of getting a new one for the lady at the office who's not really going to use it much, she's going to get the old one, and I got myself a new one (along with another co-worker, who will be taking over some of my marketing and graphics duties here so I can hopefully focus on bigger-picture and more complicated projects for the companies I work for).

Once again, I went with Sager because of my reseller arrangement with them. I loved the 1920x1200 pixel resolution of my old laptop, but didn't necessarily like it on such a small screen (it was fine most of the time, but sometimes when I was tired it was really hard to focus on things because they were so small). Since portability isn't as much of a concern as power, I decided to go up to a 17" screen with the same resolution, and got myself (and my co-worker) Sager NP5793s (I guess they're not ours, they are the company's, but we'll be using them exclusively).

Our configurations are slightly different (I have the higher res on mine, plus a larger hard drive), but here are the basic specs:

• 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) LCD.
• Intel Core2 Duo Mobile Processor T8100 (2.1ghz with 800mhz bus and 3MB L2 cache). The thing will upgrade up to a Core 2 Extreme X9000 processor down the road, which I was looking at for future upgrades (I've maxed out my current laptop).
• nVidia GeForce Go 8700M GT Video Card w/512mb of DDR3 RAM.
• 2GBs of dual channel DDR2 667
• 160GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
• Windows XP Pro (will be setting up Vista Business edition, which I have a copy here, as a dual boot so I can start learning the OS, but can't use it full time because of hardware and software issues here at the office).
• DVD±R/RW Combo drive.
• Intel 4965AGN 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi
• Bluetooth 2.0 (which will help with my Blackberry -- one less cable to carry around).
• Gigabit ethernet, fingerprint scanner, media reader, 2MP video camera, serial port (yes, I still need one of these), firewire, USB 2.0, etc... .
• I'll also be moving my internal mini-PCI TV Tuner from my old laptop over to the new one, as it'll work with Windows XP while the one that Sager sells now only works with Vista.

It's going to take me a while to get it all setup to my liking, getting all the various apps I use (won't need all of them this time around) installed, and I'm tied up in other projects right now to really tackle it, but I'm looking forward to getting this thing fired up.

Damn You Spamming Robots

Since 11:30PM last night and this morning, I've gotten over 420 540 620 "Undelivered Mail Returned To Sender" (and the like) messages in my inbox. Apparently some automated spamming robot decided to spam a crapload of people faking the reply-to address to bounce back to me, basically using my server as their trash can. Usually these things just get sent to /dev/null, as they'll use invalid reply-to addresses, but this time they used the one I actually use. Looking at the headers of the messages that were bounced back...

Return-Path: <jake@mydomain.com>
Received: from green.shirasaki.co.jp (green.shirasaki.co.jp [202.238.50.147])
by green.shirasaki.co.jp (Switch-3.1.6/Switch-3.1.2) with SMTP id 03MF0M61F00001658
for <takahashi@ecosup.com>; Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:22:47 +0900
Received: from 59.12.13.99 ([59.12.13.99])
by green.shirasaki.co.jp (SMSSMTP 4.1.0.19) with SMTP id M2008042300224602851
for <takahashi@ecosup.com>; Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:22:47 +0900
Message-ID: <000801c8a48c$0321b897$914eb19a@nubfw>
From: "Leivtra Cylais" <jake@mydomain.com>
To: <takahashi@ecosup.com>
Subject: Free Viagar Pilsl. takahashi's discount Coupon #GYJTN.
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:35:18 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0005_01C8A48C.031BAD84"
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3138
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3198

Anybody know a bulk way to search through these in Outlook 2003?

Global Warming My Ass

Whoever said that this world is warming up obviously hasn't been driving to work the last week in snowy weather and having to scrape ice off his or her windshield in the morning, which I have done the last several mornings.

They obviously never looked outside their window in late April and seen in snow during the day.

This is Spring, right? Wasn't the first day of Spring last month? I'm not supposed to be chopping wood still (I apologize to all my neighbors who are probably sick of me chopping wood after doing it all winter). I'm not supposed to be having to order more wood (like I had to a few weeks ago).

And there's a 70% chance of more of the same tomorrow.

Anybody else sick of this?

There's Going To Be An 'Arrested Development' Movie?

Apparently so, and here are eight things that really should be in it (though I'd say there's a ninth: we need Anyong or whatever that Korean kid's name was).

I've Never Seen "Juno"...

...nor have I really cared to, but if this rewrite was made into a movie, I'd watch it.

BendBroadband Bandwidth Cap Update

If you haven't been following the drama and the outcry surrounding BendBroadband's latest pricing changes, let me sum up what's been going on the last few weeks:

• BendBroadband announced they were going give you more speed, but they were going to cap the bandwidth. Needless to say, this caused quite the outrage, and that post now has 100 comments (and counting), many from BendBroadband representatives. Their response to the outcry was to create a new platinum plan with lower speed, but a higher cap. A calculation spreadsheet was also posted so folks could really see how expensive this could get. BendTel was also featured in the local paper, and made a few subtle jabs at BendBroadband.
• A couple weeks later, the story made national news with it hitting Gizmodo where it then hit the digg front page, as well as a bunch of other sites (you can digg my original post here).

One of my original gripes (one that was putting my bandwidth consumption over the edge of some of the tiers) was that middle-of-the-night consumption shouldn't count the same. But something that was pointed out to me privately was a point I didn't think of that makes a bit of sense: The Net Neutrality advocates say that it's basically an all-or-nothing thing when it comes to bandwidth counting -- you can't consider nighttime data from daytime data (even though that's what the power company does). So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

A couple protest sites have been created since this all started brewing. One is FixBBB.com, which has been trying to organize a public protest and get more media attention to this cap. They also make a suggestion as to who you can switch to, but I'd recommend avoiding Clearwire and use somebody like Yellowknife or Webformix instead if you're looking for wireless rural Internet. BendTel also provides DSL, but primarily to Business customers.

Another protest site has hit the wire, being run off a BendBroadband home connection (which is bound to push usage up a bit, considering the site's received a few diggs). According to the site, the guy had 214GB of data transfer last month and 15GB between April 10 and 15. Even if he was on the platinum plan, he'd owe nearly $240 last month.

Since I don't have the foggiest idea if BendBroadband will shut his site down for terms-of-service violations, here's the screenshot off his site:

So it all comes down to this: Knowing what you know, if you're using a BendBroadband connection, what are your plans? Are you moving or are you staying? If you're moving, where to? I'm still exploring my options, and will reveal my decision at a later date, but I wanted to see what everybody else was doing as well.

Update on 4/17: Welcome Bulletin readers. All the relevant posts with all the discussions are linked above. I haven't had time to read the article yet, but will comment here when I have a chance to do so.

Buy Your Own Pimpmobile

A man on Bend's westside is selling his pimpmobile on Craigslist.

Yo. Bring in 70% of your whores take with this styling 2004 Chrysler Concord. You could be the pimp of a whole string of ho's and ride around in comfort doing drug deals and dropping off mommas to their dates. Got a big trunk for carring a baseball bat or taking stolen property to the pawn shop. Leather seats and CD player. Aluminum mags. Tinted windows: flip off the cops or smoke weed in front of them and they won't see.
Momma got to go to the DR so I have to sell it. Won't last at this price.

Thanks Redmond-ite for the link.

Finally, Somebody Who Shares My Pet Peeve

Quotation marks are not to be used for emphasis. Over the years, I've found a multitude of documents and signs around the office that have used quotation marks for emphasis, and it really drives me nuts. Which is why I laughed quite heartily at this:

The Most Useful Public Service Of All

Porn for the blind.

Flickr Hosts Videos, Everybody Panics

So Flickr Pro users now have the ability to upload video. There are a lot of folks who are pissed about that and want it to be a photo-only site. In sarcastic response to the whiners, folks now want photos taken off Flickr.

50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

From the likes of Kids In the Hall, SNL, Carol Burnett, In Living Color, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Abbott and Costello and much more are some of the greatest comedy sketches of all time. I've seen a good chunk of these, but some of these were new to me.

What's their #1? One of my personal favorites (and I've been catching up on Michael Palin's "Around The World in 80 Days" on Netflix, so this is even more entertaining to me as he makes a subtle reference to this sketch during the show):