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 5829 entries. Visitors to this blog have posted 19391 comments.
If you're reading this, you have too much time on your hands.
We have our largest pool of folks ever in the pick 'em this year, even after thining off some of the folks who didn't fill out their brackets. Through the 13th game of the day, "Randal D" had picked all 13 games correct -- evenalltheupsets. But after incorrectly picking the last three games of the day, he's in second place behind our Canadian Invader "Andrew" who picked 14 of the day's games properly. I managed to somehow pick 12 of them right (how, I have no idea), and sit in third place right now, ahead of my boss and co-workers (which is all that matters to me, really). Dren is still bringing up the rear, just barely behind Kyle, who is trying to upend Dren from his perpetual loser spot. Thanks to today's lower-seeds winning, they both actually put points on the board.
We're now up to 43 competitors in the free bracket pick 'em. I emphasized "free" because people think you have to pay for it. You don't. It's free and for fun. I don't make a dime of this. However, a lot of local businesses (and some not-so-local) businesses have thrown in some great prizes (I just added one today). These businesses deserve your support, and I'd encourage you to click on their ads that are appearing over to the right of this post or the list below, visit their sites, buy their stuff/services, but most of all thank them for participating in this bit of fun.
Entries and brackets have to be filled in by the crack of dawn tomorrow morning. We already have a record prize haul, and record number of competitors (we had 30 last year), I'd like to see us get up over 50 people before game time tomorrow. So if you haven't signed up, or your friends haven't signed up, tell everybody you know and potentially win some great prizes.
It's silly and stupid, but it's addicting as heck for some reason. It's Break The Wall. I've yet to actually break through all the walls -- anybody else make it?
While it was impressive that the Oregon women won the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships (and the men placed second), the most impressive performance of the weekend was Mountain View HS graduate Ashton Eaton breaking the world record in the heptathlon, with a score that would have won him the world championships (which also occurred this weekend). If he would've competed just by himself as an individual, he would've scored in a bunch of events as well, and probably would have won a few indoor meets this year single-handedly.
The field has been set, and it's time to fill our your brackets in the UtterlyBoring.com annual pick 'em. You have until early Thursday morning to get things filled out, so get crackin'!
HackBend, BendTech and this site all posted stories about KOHD ceasing their news broadcasts. Well, apparently they're not ceasing them entirely, just making them much shorter with little blips through the day in between and during other shows. They're no longer doing a full newscasts, from what I can see. Over at KOHD they've updated their news schedule for the various times they'll be on TV with news updates.
I still stand by my original point that I'm not a TV news watcher (I'm rarely in front of my TV, and if I am I'm hardly ever on KOHD/ABC). I also agree a lot with Jeff over at BendTech that the problem isn't with KTVZ or KOHD, but with Nielsen. Having been a Nielsen family on a couple of occasions, I can see how easily the system could be ripe with fraud, skewed or useless data.
This interesting new feature adds "By Bike" to the car, walking, and transit option already available for finding directions on Google Maps. Testing it around Bend a bit, it seems to do a decent job of avoiding the hills and many of the busy roads around my house (I live near Pilot Butte) and finding alternative routes, but I'd be interested in what some of the bike commuters (Monkey Boy?) in the area think about what it's telling you. If I were to bike the commute from here to my office in Sunriver it'd be an interesting ride, especially considering I don't think those roads that Google Maps recommends riding are even there or ridable this time of year.
Taberinos is a fairly simple game -- hit the lines to get rid of them, but it's still quite fun (and has decent music, which is a rarity for a Flash game).
Why is Oprah replacing David Attenborough as narrator of Life? Personally, I think it's stupid, too, as I'd much rather listen to David Attenborough than Orpah (yes, I spelled that right -- look it up). But one redditer has a theory: "I'm sure Oprah loves nature. She's certainly eaten her fair share of it."
This news broke last week on Oregon Media Central, but KOHD made it official: KTVZ will be the only game in town for local TV news broadcasts, as KOHD is going to be rebroadcasting KEZI news out of Eugene, with a few packages created by a few Bend-based reporters. KOHD will still exist as a station, but they won't have a local news broadcast. This comment sums it all up nicely.
Honestly, I liked the look/feel of the KOHD broadcast, and felt they did have some good people, but their Web site absolutely sucked. While KTVZ's is full of ads (they have to pay the bills), at least there is useful content and conversation there. For those of us who aren't able to be in front of a TV when the news actually is broadcast on TV, online local news is important to me. Thanks to Barney's inability to ever stop working (I don't think that dude sleeps), KTVZ has the best online local news content. (The Bulletin's might be good, too, but it's mostly hidden behind a paywall.) KOHDs site was usually riddled with typos, layout errors, and ugly grammatical errors, and I never considered it a useful place for online news.
That being said, competition in a market is always good. But it appears KTVZ doesn't have any now, since KOHD and KBNZ are both just broadcasting sister-station content (and KTVZ-parent company NPG also owns the local Fox affiliate, so that eliminates the other major network).
Update: Forgot to even check, but Jon at HackBend is all over this, too. I knew about the news a few days ago as well, but with Band concerts and other family functions and work projects, this is the first I've been able to post anything.
Some Oregon DMV offices are killing their Muzak subscription, as the elevator-music versions of Celine Dion and Aerosmith are driving the workers nuts.
A couple months ago, folks with iPhones in the area were starting to see 3G coverage, and now you can officially get an iPhone in Bend, starting April 1 (hopefully not some sort of April fools joke).
I still have nearly another year on my contract with Sprint and with my phone, but my plan is quite a bit cheaper than the plans offered by AT&T. I'm probably going to go Android on renewal rather than an iPhone, but we'll have to see.
Update on 3/2/10: Apparently US Cellular is now offering 3G in the area, which might convince me to go back to them as their phone coverage is probably the best around here in the areas I work, but their data speeds sucked. Their coverage out here in Sunriver was far better than what I get from Sprint. When I force my phone to roam on the USCC network, it actually performs better. I noticed a "EV" icon showing up on my wife's phone last week (she on US Cellular), and was wondering if they had turned on an EVDO service here, just didn't have a chance to contact them. So I guess that answers that question.
In an exclusive interview with In Touch, 25-year-old stripper Stefani Talbott claims that she slept with Lost star Matthew Fox twice in the past year. While Matthew’s rep says “These accusations are false,” Stefani says she first met the 43-year-old last July, soon after she started working at Stars Cabaret in Bend, Oregon. “I was dancing onstage, and I made eye contact with him immediately. I got so excited,” Stefani tells In Touch. Since she was a big Party of Five fan, she recognized him right away — but she soon found out he was much different from the clean-cut characters he plays.
Thankfully Bend isn't the major point of the story here, but you know the local strip club (not safe for work, obviously) is probably getting some phone calls.
Selection Sunday is coming up on March 14here and then it's time for offices all over the country to create office pools for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship (and for workplace productivity to grind to a halt). And it's time for the readers of this site to compete for bragging rights (and some great prizes) in the fifth-annual UtterlyBoring.com Tournament Pick 'Em. Last years contest info was here with final scoring here. My brother is looking to defend his title.
It's free to play, so read on for the sign up information, prizes, and more!
I'm in the process of getting everything setup on Yahoo! and getting my prize list all compiled (it's going to be a great one this year -- best list of prizes we've ever had, by far). If you participated last year, you should have already gotten your invite to join the group. If not, I'll be posting sign up information, official rules, and the full detailed prize list sometime over the weekend. Stay tuned!
Sushi Cat a cute little game where you need to fatten up a cat. While this didn't happen to me, some folks are saying that on higher levels the cat gets too fat to make it into the baskets, or gets stuck bouncing around, but eventually makes it through (like up to 30 minutes later), so just a heads up about that bug.
Cleaning out the links that have collected over the last few days before I head to the concert tonight (there are still plenty of tickets available at the door, all free, so I'd encourage you to come!):
Axecop, a comic written by a five-year-old, but illustrated by a 29-year-old pro.
Greenpeace Tells Facebook: Kick coal in Prineville (Greenpeace release is here). In related news: Central Oregon Tells Greenpeace: STFU. They'll already be using a loads less power than most datacenters, and the only way GreenPeace would be happy would be if Facebook ran the entire datacenter on Solar or Wind power -- which is obviously totally impractical. Meanwhile, GreenPeace's site is powered by Akamai, who has several datacenters, probably killing all sorts of trees and whales and small children and what not.</rant> (I could go on for a while here, but I won't.)
Speaking of lowering power consumption, the Leech plug is a pretty slick little device that needs to become more common.
Don't know if I buy this: Almost a third of the U.S. does not use Internet. 75% of those third probably have AOL and don't realize they're on the Internet -- "they're on AOL" or "The Google" or something.
