UtterlyBoring.com is produced by Jake Ortman (e-mail, resume), a 32-year-old dad, percussionist, sysadmin, Web developer, IT consultant and jack-of-all-trades 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 graphic 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 6030 entries. Visitors to this blog have posted 19920 comments.
If you're reading this, you have too much time on your hands.
While this is a few months old, this interactive map is a really fun toy to play with. Click on a county in the US, and it will show (based on 2008 IRS data) where people are coming from that are moving to that county, and where they're going if they're leaving, and more stats about the type of people that are moving. Deschutes County has by far the most activity in Oregon east of the Cascades, but it's fun the click on the massive population areas like Los Angeles and New York to see the country light up. It's also interesting to see the large amount of folks leaving areas like Detroit and the huge amounts of folks moving to areas like Portland.
Yes, it may be on a kid's site, but Whizzball is a fun puzzler that unfortunately has the stupidest username signup (you're best off just mashing the keyboard to find an available username).
It's August, and it's frickin' snowing outside. It was over 100°F last week, and this morning, it's cold, nasty, and snowing in many places. Here's what Mt. Bachelor's Web Cam looks like right now:
The office web cam is giving me fits (and isn't very good quality), otherwise I'd take an image from there, but we're getting a mix of snow and rain right now in Sunriver.
You are a T-Rex running on a treadmill avoiding lasers and saw blades during which the Wheel of Awesome relentlessly spins and doles delights such as +1 Confetti or dishes determents such as +1 Obstacle. There's also unlockable top hats.
One of the coolest sites I've seen in a while, this BBC project puts a dimension onto current events that makes the news much more interesting. For example, here's how big Burning Man would be if it were held in Bend.
You may or may not know, but when I first started blogging, I blogged on the jake.orty.com domain. I started this blog back in '02 during a brief time of unemployment. Once I found work, I neglected the blog for several months, until I finally got around to posting again (was still at jake.orty.com back then -- hadn't moved to utterlyboring.com yet). When I got back to posting again, I had bulldozed the previous archives from the brief blip in May that I was posting here.
I finally got around to getting on the Web archive and getting my old archives, and now have May 2002 back in my archives. Most of the links in those old entries are long dead, but at least they're back in the database.
Now I just need to get my dozens of old dailyemerald.com columns into this database, since they're not accessible on the Web anywhere. I was an online columnist back before "blogging" was all the rage. I've been writing online since the 90s, you young whipper-snappers (get off my lawn) and it'd be nice to have that all in one place. But I figured I should probably ask the Emerald's permission first. so that's coming next.
It took me 22 throws (and a good majority of my lunch break) to save the peasants by catapulting one of them 50,000 feet. How long did it take you in Catapult Madness?
Update: So I played it again today on endless mode, and got up to 86465 feet. Somehow. No idea how, the fat king just kept bouncing.
I love Top Gear. Offended by a fan having written in to complain that Top Gear doesn't do proper car reviews anymore, Jeremy Clarkson takes the new Ford Fiesta on a 'serious' road test.
If you're buying a phone of eBay for Sprint, Boost, or Virgin Mobile, you might want to check the ESN/MEI to make sure it's clean, otherwise it won't activate.
You have to love the lack of tech and Web knowledge shown in the modern day judicial system (I honestly don't have a clue as to why some of these questions needed to be asked).
Q: And the term “rickroll” you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going to be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: He was some kind of singer?
A: Yes.
Q: It’s a joke?
A: Yes.
The Source's "Best Of Central Oregon" is out, and congratulations go out to Jon at Hack Bend for winning (again) and my ol' buddy Josh at Central Oregon Athlete for taking the honorable mention prize.
Congrats to both of you, and as soon as I can find the mention online, I'll link to it (I just checked this in this morning's print edition). Their "Best Of" URL still goes to the 2009 edition.
Update: Looking through the "Best Of", there was mention of the "Best Bend Stereotyping" and I honestly had not seen this:
A group of influential conservative members of the behemoth social media site Digg.com have just been caught red-handed in a widespread campaign of censorship, having multiple accounts, upvote padding, and deliberately trying to ban progressives.
Want to be notified when a web site is sending data to Google? Here's a nice obnoxious alarm for you (please note: many sites out there, including this one, will trip the alarm, because they use either Google Adsense for ads or Google Analytics for web stats).