Reading Material

• Setup a whole-house speaker system using existing phone lines.
• Cheap but powerful video card for HTPC use.
• The thickness of napkins in the programming world.
• SimpleFolio, a nice wordpress theme.
• 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.
• According to teenagers, sites like mine aren't cool anymore. Not that I'm losing sleep over losing the under-18 demo.
• Another high school, another overzelous administration conficating newspapers that do some real reporting.
• Always wear your seat belt.
• The anti-vaccine autism paper had catastrophic effects.
• Symbian Operating System is Now Open Source and Free -- but will it matter?
• Relatively Portal.
• Netflix 28-Day Window Would Decimate Their Top Rental List.
• Kwedit, a new completely unreliable payment network.
• Calagator, open-source project for calendar aggregation (like Portland's tech events).
• Run your own URL Shortener, and hopefully have better luck with spammers than my failed attempt (Ken is using it here).
• If you run a MovableType blog, this site might interest you.
• Licensing Delay Complicates Decision Between Open Source and Proprietary Video Players.

Time Killer For The Evening

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.

Reading Material

• 30 Commercial Games That Have Been Released for Free.
• The Apple iMaxiPad.
• Speaking of iPad, here's a GUI PSD for it so you can start making your app interfaces.
• Life below 600 pixels (or "below the fold").
• Software on the Cheap (or: Why good software is not something your cousin's nephew can do.).
• Uncovering the secrets of Mega Shark.
• OptiPNG, great command line tool to knock some weight off PNG files.
• HTML5 isn't going to save the Internet.
• Southpark Mac vs. PC.
• Man films his wife crying after movies, posts it online, everybody laughs (including the wife).
• Random picture blog for the day: Hot Chicks Plunging Their Toilets.
• Javascript experiments in Chrome.
• Speaking of impressive Javascript, Windows 3.1 Program Manager in Javascript.
• Sexting is now just for teens -- old folks are doing it, too (yikes).
• Speaking of disgusting, Miley's 9-year old sister is launching a lingerie line for kids.

Time Killer For The Night

It's Gluey, and it's simple, but quite fun.

Bandwidth Is Overrated

Time to kill some of it...

Time Killer For The Evening

It's a Werebox and you can play it after the jump...

Looking For Prize Donations for The Annual Pick 'em

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.

Reading Material For The Night

• The problem with young people today...(reminds me of this guy).
• How David Blaine held his breath for 17 minutes.
• The most statistically full of s**t professions.
• Coca Cola "Happiness Machine".
• Visualizing browser share over the years.
• Lessons from the AT&T/Facebook Switcheroo.
• SexyCycle jQuery plugin.
• How to run a meeting like Google.
• Valentines Day is coming, and it's time for some gift cards (NSFW). Featured this last year, but they've put up some new cards for the holiday.
• In case you missed all the hype, Apple deputed a new toy today, and no it has nothing to do with this old Mad TV skit, despite the name.
• Mario was never in any danger.

We Could Only Be So Lucky

Rush Limbaugh doesn't want to be alive anymore.

Bit The Bullet, Moving To Thunderbird

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.

Conan is Awesome

His 2006 Emmy's opening was the best ever...

Facebook Data Center Coming To Central Oregon

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.

Update later: It's official. Here's Facebook's blog post, story from the Oregonian, and the KTVZ story has been updated (all with pretty artist's renderings). For those hardcore datacenter geeks, Data Center Knowledge has a good article up about where Facebook's move from leasing space to building their own center (I was amazed they were co-locating their servers all these years). Techcrunch has the story as well.

Congrats to all for making this happen!

Time Killer For The Evening

1066 is a middle-ages war game that's a load of fun.

Prineville Datacenter Is Not Yahoo or Google -- So Who Is It?

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.

Bulletin Now Allowing More Commenting Options

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).

Reading Material

• Zero Punctuation reviews Torchlight (a game I just got for $5 on Steams holiday sale).
• Why is the news media comfortable lying about science?
• iPhone and iPod CSS detection using PHP.
• How to kill your business: 30 Day Payment Terms.
• What's the official name of Pac Man's shape?
• Introduction to Website split testing.
• Letters of Note: Correspondence deserving of a wider audience.
• First China tried to kill us with lead in our toys, now it's cadmium.
• Your passwords aren't as secure as you think.
• Indoor HDTV Antenna review round up.
• If you're a Dr. Horrible fan, you'll love this.
• Obfuscate Javascript with PHP.
• Make desktop widgets out of any site with Snippage.
• Play a truck load of old-school NES, Sega, and Gameboy games online.
• Amy Spano's around the world project.
• Freeware WYSIWYG web page editor.
• Somebody has far too much time on their hands.

I Need A Wii

And if I ever get one, I'm totally getting this game.

If you can read the Japanese, the game's site is here with a Japanese trailer (which is quite entertaining) here.

Woot Tears Apart Twilight

Daily deal site Woot's product descriptions have alway been hilarious, but today's take on Twilight is one of its best.

Time Killer For The Day

Nothing to kill off a Friday like a game where you're taking on heavy fire -- but you have no weapon.

Want To Secure Your Checked Airline Baggage?

Just fly with a gun.

Late Night TV Chaos

The blog world is all in a dither about NBC's late-night shake-up. First, NBC outlined a plan to move "The Jay Leno Show" from it's 10PM time slot to an 11:35 time slot, moving Conan O'Brien's "Tonights Show" to 12:05. The reasoning, apparently, was because NBC affiliates were complaining that their 11PM newscasts were seeing lower ratings. The topic was brought up on pretty much every late night show. Conan came out and said he won't do the show if it's moved to a different time slot. The Web has come to the support of Conan, or "Coco" as he's known, calling Leno all sorts of names. The Consumerist is encouraging people to email NBC before he decides to bail and go to Fox.

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).

Freak Of The Day

I'll just quote the story on this, but be sure to check out the picture:

Great grandmother Annette Edwards, 57, has spent £10,000 to make her look like cartoon character Jessica Rabbit. Has it been money well spent? No.

Makes Sense To Me

Printers were sent from hell to make us miserable.

Educational Lesson For The Day

Facts about your farts.

Anybody Else Having Trouble With Ten-Digit Dialing Today?

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.

Time Killer For The Weekend

Simple premise: Shoot the targets with your cursor. Though you can't see your cursor, which makes it quite a bit more difficult.

Reading Material

• I always saw Nicholas Cage is a one-note actor, but one man believes that everything is better with a little more Nic Cage.
• Danny DeVito agrees to do a third season of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia"... on one condition.
• A pictorial guide to avoiding camera loss.
• Speaking of cameras, this man likes to run from his.
• Vintage Ad Browser is full of all sorts of old racist, sexist, but entertaining ads.
• Fun tech support stories.
• Create an easy to use God Mode master control panel in Windows 7 using canonical names of control panels (Windows 7 has lots of GodModes).
• Showcase of modern navigation design trends.
• Avatar is just like a 3D Pocahontas.
• What kind of soda drink should I have?
• Best Buy's "pre-optimizeing" service is a big stupid waste of money.
• Hacker Music, so all the geeks get a vote on what song is played next.
• Performance/Price comparison for CPUs.
• Need to speed up your computer? Just download some more RAM!
• Handy Nexus One vs Droid vs iPhone comparison chart.
• The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs.

Yet Another Thing For Bend To Be Famous For

We're home of the first-ever National Beard and Moustache Championships (mostly because we have a lot of breweries in the area). Be sure to read the Bulletin story for the photo, as it's priceless.

Local Clinic Puts on A Testicle Festival

What Do You Do With An Art Degree?

You become a janitor and leave cool art on the classroom blackboards.