Imagine that, they were all made up.
Link via Fark.
Month: February 2007
Cheryl Howard Link Dump
OK, we all know that Cheryl Howard has contributed more than a few links for this site. Hell, she was sending me so many links for a while there that I even set her up with account to post here herself (she never did). I’ve been so stupidly busy lately that I haven’t posted as much as I used to, so I haven’t been posting much in general, let alone her links.
As I’ve mentioned before, she also sends many of her links to Dave Barry, which has now made her (semi) famous. So before she thinks I haven’t forgotten about her, here are all the links I have sitting in my “to-blog” folder from her that need to get posted (and the offer still stands, Cheryl, if you want an account here):
- Men is dumb
- Does this have anything to do with this?
- This doesn’t sound like a good idea.
- Twelve-year-old fined for not recycling.
- Eye gunk in the news.
- People look at me and make this mistake all the time.
- Because it’s already made her famous, I won’t even link to this Prineville moron. Wait, I just did…
She’s sent me far more, but these are the ones that still worked. So yes, I’m a bit behind.
But again, thanks Cheryl for all your contributions and keep them coming (that goes to everybody — everything worthy/timely gets posted, eventually).
It’s A Slow News Day…
…when it’s news that somebody has decided not to make fun of Britney Spears.
Unicom Getting Bought Out By Eschelon Telecom
I know there are a few folks locally who read this site that use Unicom‘s services (either phone services or Internet service). We have a T1 with them at one of the offices I work at as well. And that service will soon be provided by Eschelon Telecom. Here’s the press release from Eschelon, press release from Unicom, and Custom Service info from Unicom.
Now Unicom bought up OneEighty back in the day. OneEighty bought out HighSpeed Communications (aka the ol’ EmpireNet) and also owned OregonTrail Internet. So Eschelon now owns all these former companies and domains, too.
My worry is thus: I’ve had less-than-stellar dealings with support at Unicom (the T1 was there before I got there), and they didn’t integrate the clients they bought very well (we were former OneEighty and previously EmpireNet clients). When I call them, it always seems to take them a year and a day to bring up my account info, and when they finally do, they have to escalate my call because the person answering the phones can’t help me with my usually complicated problem. They have a dedicated support line for their high-capacity lines (T1 or larger), but this wasn’t brought to my attention until after many calls to them. Generally speaking, I’ve had to work around Unicom versus working with them (their DNS servers were caching a domain name totally wrong for example, and it was easier for me to route the office’s request to different DNS servers than to deal with them). My guess is this is only going to make things worse.
My question for the local community is thus: Who out there is locally-based and is provided business-class ‘net access now? I know BendTel (who I use at the other Sunriver office I work at) and Bend Broadband (who I use at home) are still here and doing fine, but I think that most of the local companies that are around are local branches of larger national corporations (like Unicom) or sold out a long time ago (BendNet bought up by Rio Communications). I remember back when Dial-Up first came up here, everybody seemed to be selling it (mostly through reseller companies — very few of them actually owned their own modem banks). But any more, it seems like everybody’s who’s offering DSL or Dial-Up is doing it through another company. Am I wrong on this?
To throw another thing into the mix, there are a few folks who provide Internet service via Wireless (Yellow Knife, Webformix, Clearwire, among others).
Am I missing somebody really obvious here? Anybody have any experiences/stories to share? Discuss…
Trying To Decide Between XM and Sirius?
Don’t bother comparing — they’re going to merge, so I’d wait until things are combined a bit better first.
Proof That Folks Who Drive Exotic Cars Are Compensating For Something
There’s a man who tried to sell a nice Ferrari on eBay. That seller’s last purchase on eBay? A Titan Enlarger Penis Pump.
Link via b3ta
Way Behind…
I vowed this last weekend (took a three day weekend after taking yesterday off) to avoid my laptop completely and not check my email or get online so I could spend more time with my wife and kids. I already had several concerts to play at (with one more tonight) so I was already busy and just decided to keep the laptop bagged up (though I did play some more Nintendo DS, getting up to world five in Mario Bros.).
I boot up this morning and went to get some caffeine while my email and RSS feeds download. After my spam filters did their dirty work, I had 790 new e-mail messages and well over 1000 unread RSS items. Ugh…
So if you e-mailed me over the last few days and are awaiting a reply, I’ll get to your e-mail — eventually.
NEED: Percussionists in Bend Who Can Read Sheet Music
As many of you know, I’m a percussionist (fancy word for a drummer who can read sheet music) and have played in the Cascade Winds and the Central Oregon Symphony for about 13 years. It’s been a fun experience. In recent years with our new director, we’ve gotten some pieces in the band that have really featured the percussion or have at least had hard percussion parts. While we’re never really at a need for percussionists in the symphony (the pieces in there don’t feature us much), we always seem to be short in the band, and this term is no exception.
I’ve heard much of the term from various folks in the band that this person or that person is going to show up, but it’s never materialized. So I’m making the open call here: If you’re a percussionist in the area with some concert band experience, the we’d love to have you. We only have three rehearsals left until our concerts. Right now, we have three percussionists and could ideally use six as currently the three of us are trying to cover the parts for six or more players on a couple of our pieces. The music is tough, and if you can’t read in anything other than common 4/4 time, you’re in trouble here, but if you have some experience and want to play some great music, this is the place. That, and it’d be really nice if I wasn’t trying to read off three parts and jumping around like a maniac (on one piece, I have the timpani, snare drum, suspended cymbal, triangle, and bass drum all wrapped around me — I’m basically trying to cover three parts, and it’s a royal pain in the butt).
Ideally, we’d love for you to stick around next term as well so if we do get enough people we can play the percussion ensemble I mentioned a long while ago.
If you have any questions at all, contact me via my contact form on the right column of the page or comment below.
Microsoft Recommending An Apple Product For Your PC?
Indeed they are. In an article about making music on your PC (published in Microsoft Home Magazine), the author recommends using GarageBand for advanced music creation.:
Part of iLife ’04, a suite of integrated applications (including iMovie and iDVD), GarageBand is a popular program that turns a Mac computer into a professional-quality recording studio for musicians.
Link via the comments section on this Digg article.
And Europeans Say Bush Is Dumb?
At least when given his full name on a screen in front of us, we can tell what his first name is (and we wouldn’t need a lifeline).
Link via Digg.