UtterlyBoring.com is produced by Jake Ortman (e-mail, resume), a 31-year-old dad, percussionist, freelance Web designer, IT consultant and jack-of-all-trades computer geek, living in Bend, Oregon. He created this so that his expensive journalism and technology degree isn't getting totally wasted. In addition to editing this site in his free time, he is the IT Director and Ad Designer at both Sunray and Discover Sunriver. He has LinkedIn and Facebook profiles if you're trying to stalk him. He will not be posting on Twitter.
Opinions and comments on this site are the opinions of the author, not the author's employer, family, friends or pets.
This site is powered by Movable Type and is hosted by orty.com. Since December 1st, 2002, there have been 5786 entries. Visitors to this blog have posted 19213 comments.
If you're reading this, you have too much time on your hands.
If you missed the Super Bowl commercials last night, they've all been posted here (and the story behind the Leno, Oprah, Letterman ad is over here). Vote for your favorite here.
I don't have a mouse wheel on my laptop, nor do I have an extra external mouse that has one (as a mouse wheel is required), but I've heard a lot of people say this is a very nice original game. Feel free to judge for yourself.
Speaking of Flash toys, this one puts our place in the universe in a little perspective.
The NCAA March Madness pick 'em has been a tradition around these parts for quite a while, and this year will be the fifth year we do it. You can read up about last year's winner and the prizes that were awarded, and if you really want to look back further, here are the pages from 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 (look at the track backs on each page to see scoring links and pages).
We had a good bunch of prizes last year, and I'm looking for prizes to give away this year (being our fifth year, let's try to get some good stuff). Like before, you'll get text links on the tournament page, plus a banner ad in rotation with all the other prize providers like we had last year (and of course my adoration, because local business is awesome). E-mail me at utterlyboring [at] gmail [dot] com if you have something to donate (I'll be e-mailing last year's prize providers again to see if they've got something to donate).
Update on 1/31/10: We've got some great prizes being submitted, and I have a couple good ones to throw in as well -- this will EASILY be the best prize cache out of all the competitions we've had.
I'm a heavy e-mail user, and basically live out of my inbox because of all the companies I deal with an work with. I regularly check 10 accounts several times a day, a few of those several times and hour, and receive hundreds of messages per day. Prior to today, I had all this filtering into Outlook 2003, all via POP3 download, with a few add ons and filters to make my life easier in there. I have been using Outlook for years, so I have several archived PST (Outlook's storage file) files on my hard drive, but I also have one large PST that is my main working file. I also needed it recently for use with MS Exchange as well as ActiveSync connections with my phone. After all these years, and despite archiving on a regular basis, Outlook just drags more and more. Not only that, but IMAP support in Outlook always seemed like an after-thought. It also was a pain to look up messages if I didn't have them properly sorted, because Outlook didn't have built-in indexing of messages (not until 2007, which I don't have). Third-party indexing solutions seemed to only make the slow-down problem worse, and never seemed to index things properly.
I'd been looking at moving to a different email client for a while, but never did as Outlook has always Just Worked™. But I decided to make the move to Thunderbird, now that it's mature enough to handle all I could throw at it.
So it appears that the mystery company behind the datacenter that's going to be built in Prineville is going to be none other than Facebook, according to KTVZ, KBND, the Bulletin, a couple people I know, as well as a few comments on my site from yesterday. Of course, none of this is completely official yet, as the official announcement is scheduled to come later today. Considering the press this is getting this morning, I doubt that the company behind all this is anybody other than Facebook -- though it would be quite hilarious if everybody was wrong.
Update: More on this: Apparently a construction worker on-site slipped to the Bulletin about this, even though they weren't supposed to say anything. I've talked to somebody who is close to the whole thing (and under NDA and annoyed that the story got out -- honestly, I'm amazed it took this long), and they have confirmed that it is Facebook. Official announcement from the company should be coming later this morning.
A couple months ago stories broke about a datacenter that was going to be opening up in Prineville. A new article in today's Bulletin confirms it's not Google or Yahoo! and that work on the site is already under way. There is a thought that the name of the company behind Vitesse (the company that's doing all the dealings with Prineville) might be released on Thursday.
Anybody have any new theories or information?
Update: From the Oregonian, all will be revealed tomorrow, but if anybody wants to blow their NDA (which, from what I hear expires tomorrow at noon), feel free to comment below.
While KTVZ has provided commenting features on their new stories for quite a while, the Bulletin only started allowing them recently, and only to subscribers. (KOHD allows comments on their site, too, but KOHD just doesn't have the up-to-date and depth of content online that KTVZ and The Bulletin have, so there is very little discussion.) The Bulletin has now opened up commenting to non-subscribers as well. KTVZ's comment system is powered by JS-Kit/Echo and it appears the Bulletin's is powered by Disqus. Both sites allow you to use your Facebook, Twitter or Yahoo! accounts (among others) to sign in, but you still need to either register somewhere to post on the Bulletin's site (you can post anonymous, but moderated, comments on KTVZ's site, which doesn't appear to be an option on The Bulletin's site).
I don't know the relative benefits or advantages of either commenting platform (there is a lot of discussion here), but it's good to see the options for discussion in the community (since I've long shuttered Bend Forums).
Personally, I've always like Conan and his show far better than Leno, but this whole fiasco is just hilarious and shows how much pull Leno still has at NBC (and how little respect they have for Conan).
I mentioned a few months ago that we were going to be required to go to 10-digit dialing here shortly, and today was the day. The problem? It doesn't appear to be working right, as I'm having trouble making calls to some local prefixes, whether it's going through our digital PBX, my cell phone, or an analog line. Naturally, I try to call my local rep for support on this stuff, and I can't get through with or without the area code or adding a "1" in front of the number -- get getting 10-digit dialing errors. The homes we rent are having trouble making calls, too, which means it's probably a Qwest problem. Calling Qwest is all but useless as it's impossible to get ahold of a local tech -- you're forced to go through their national office in Denver. And since our phone service is with somebody else anyway, they wouldn't talk to me.
Anybody else having issues?
Update: On a completely unrelated side note, our T1 line for our phones goes through RIO Networks. They used to be available at RIO.com, but their site doesn't look the same any more as it used to. Looks like RIO Networks still owns the domain, so maybe they cashed in with the Olympics in Rio in 2016. Can't say that I blame them on that one. They can still be found at RIONetworks.com, it appears.
Update 2: Just got off the phone with RIO's after-hours tech, and they said they've gotten a few calls from the area today, and had heard that Deschutes County government offices were having issues with making calls today too (he had mentioned the Sheriff's office, but this is all obviously hearsay). He got another phone call from the area while he was on the phone with me, said he'd call me back. I'll update if I know or find out anything.
Update 3 (an hour later): Still waiting to hear back from RIO, but I forgot to mention: We've been using 10-digit-dialing here at the office for quite a while, trying to get people into the practice of doing it. Our fax machine has had the 10-digit numbers programmed into it for weeks, so it's been working fine prior to today.
Update 4: Apparently, at the very least, call forwarding in the area has been buggered up pretty good by Qwest, at least according to RIO, and now that I think about it, that may be the source for many of the problems I've been having. When we moved into this new office, we got a fancy new Mitel IP phone system, and basically had our old analog call-in phone numbers forwarded to our T1 line here at the office (basically having the analogs setup on started POPs and then directed to our T1). It was done seamlessly, so we had no idea it was happening. Since this is the weekend, many of the offices I've been trying to call today have been after-hours forwarded numbers, and the numbers either haven't been forwarded properly, or folks forgot to reset their forward so it was using 10-digit dialing and not just seven-digit. The folks I've talked to at RIO and our PBX provider said that there have been issues all over the area with this, including the Camp Sherman Fire folks, and that folks from the various PBX providers around the area are on-site in several locations. All-in-all, a nice little mess for a Sunday afternoon.
Update 5 (the next day): Talked to our PBX and line providers today, there are still problems all over central Oregon with this changeover. We're not having nearly as many issues today as we did yesterday, but we still are having issues on occasion.
If your intention is to get press attention -- good, bad, or otherwise -- calling your event a testicle festival is a good way to do it. Full press release after the jump.