Month: November 2003

Sunriver’s urban renewal project

Sunriver is a very high-end resort community here in Central Oregon. One thing you need to understand about this community is that there are two groups here. One group of folks are the laborers here — the folks that run the resturaunts, stores, the contractors, etc… . And then there are the folks that run the high-end places that cater to the high-end tourists. The latter group wants to make Sunriver as nice (and expensive and yuppy) as possible, and doesn’t want anything to bring down the image of the area. That would mean any homes that are associated with lower class living.

So when I got an instant message from Barney yesterday, asking me if I had heard about a mobile home fire in Sunriver, I was a bit confused. “I didn’t think there were any mobile homes in Sunriver.” Apparently there was (up in an area I don’t make it to very often). And it was the last one.

Until it burned to the ground.

The cause of the fire is blamed on electrical problems. The best quote of the story was from the guy that owns the stables, which are out in that area. He jokingly said that the blazes were part of an “urban improvement” project. Honestly, I don’t think he’s too far off there, as I know there are some very large homes out in that area (we’re talking upwards of million-dollar homes with airplane hangers), and there are some folks who own a good chunk of land out there. All it would take is a few phone calls and, for the right price, I’m sure that home could “disappear.” I wouldn’t be surprised if something like that did happen, but it will never come to the surface, so I’m not going to worry too much about it.

November 13, 2003

You won’t find these girls in your local Wal-Mart

I don’t know about you, but the last thing I’d want to see is the employees at my local Wal-Mart nude. But apparently, there is enough decent looking Wal-Mart employees to make a Playboy Pictorial featuring them.

November 13, 2003

That’s kind of you, Larry

Hustler’s Larry Flynt says he owns nude photos of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, but decided not to publish them. That’s kind of you, Larry, to pretend to have scruples, but my money says you don’t have the photos. If you did, you’d publish them. You’ve never backed away from this kind of stuff before, and I don’t expect you to now. Personaly, I think this is probably just a clever publicity stunt, but somebody’s welcome to send me those photos to prove me wrong (joke).

November 12, 2003

How HIPAA is burning people

I know there are reasons why we have Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but they seem to be doing more problems than good. One problem is that the law, used to protect a patient’s medical information, has been keeping law enforcement from doing their jobs. From this story:

Police have been unable to cold-call hospitals, asking if a Leslie Rivera-Hager or Sheila Smith is a patient there, because of the new law protecting patient confidentiality. This can make a missing-persons search more difficult.
Before the law was passed, (New Sewickley police Chief John) Daley said: “We’d go through the phone book and call every hospital, asking if they had a patient by that name. Right now, we can’t do that.”
Police could get a search warrant if they had reason to believe that the person was in a certain hospital. But the uncertainties surrounding Rivera-Hager make that impossible.

Al ‘s Morning Meeting, who provided this link, also has talked about how family members, coaches, 911 dispatchers and journalists, among others, are getting screwed by all of this.

November 12, 2003

I reserve the right to bill content spammers

I posted yesterday about the guy who tried to bill his comment spammer. Jack commented that he was going to throw some text on his site saying that he reserves the right to bill spammers. He’s gone ahead and implemented a change on his site, and I’ve done the same. Below the comments form on my listings, I’ve added the following text:

Note that comment spamming and commercial solicitation will not be tolerated, and by posting here I reserve the right to bill you for my wasted time of removing the comment and for the wasted bandwidth (and my standard one-hour minimum labor rate applies). If you’d like to advertise here, e-mail me, and you can pay for it.

November 12, 2003

Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, dreamed of bringing to life his favorite The Simpsons episode, one from 1999 in which Homer grows “tomacco,” a combination tomato-tobacco plant. Even though it tastes foul and has a brown, gooey center, the entire town becomes addicted to the fruit after one bite, and Homer gets rich.
Baur grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots, and voil?, he had a real, live tomacco plant. The two plants can successfully become one because they come from the same plant family, which also includes eggplant and the deadly nightshade. The tomacco even bore fruit, although Baur said he believes it’s poisonous because it likely contains a lethal amount of nicotine.

If you’ve never seen the episode referred to, you live in a hole ;-). Otherwise, check out this full run down from the Simpson’s Archive.

November 11, 2003