Month: December 2010

Vote For My Sis-in-Law’s PPP Logo

So my sis-in-law is a poor college student who’s studying graphics design at George Fox. She’s tremendously good at graphics design (she has a few of her older designs posted here, but she’s done much more and much better work since I put that site online for her a couple years ago). In an attempt to get a few bucks and some local fame, she submitted a logo for this year’s PPP Logo Contest, Her submission was thus:

BethanyKroeker_polepedalpaddle2011.jpg

Personally, I think it’s far superior to the 2010 logo, but I’m obviously a bit biased.

If you live in Bend, a vote for my sis-in-law would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, you have to go to the downtown Bend US Bank Branch to cast a vote (which I guess is fair, since they are the title sponsor of the PPP). But if you happen to have an office downtown (I know many of you do), then just take a walk during your lunch break, and cast your vote.

On a related note, if any of you local marketing or advertising firms is looking for a talented, fresh-out-of-school designer to add to your staff, contact me. She’s graduating this Spring and would like to move back to Bend. Obviously George Fox is one of the more expensive schools in Oregon, so she’d love to be able to start working and paying that down as soon as possible. Contact me and I’ll put you in touch with her.

December 19, 2010

Phallic Fun In The Snow

I always try to check my office web cam in the morning, mostly to see if my cam has survived another night fully functional (it’s dying a slow death, so sometimes it won’t make it 24 hours without needing to be reconnected to the host PC). This morning, a co-worker who was going there to check out the Mt. Bachelor conditions saw this image on the Sunriver Lodge web cam (owned and operated by KGW in Portland). Warning, NSFW if crude drawings of a man’s ding-a-ling offends you or your co-workers:

sunr_popup.jpg

They’ve since scratched out the phallic symbol, but I can’t help but wonder how long it’s been on there and who was responsible for it.

December 16, 2010

Remember when Bend used to be a quiet town with very little violent crime?

Not so much.

BEND, Ore. — Two people were killed and one wounded in an apparent shooting at a home in northwest Bend Thursday evening, police said.

Around 5:50 p.m., Deschutes County 911 dispatchers got a 911 call and responded to the 60000 block of Fresca Street, said Lt. Ben Gregory.

They arrived to find three people inside with injuries – two dead and a third taken by Bend Fire ambulance to St. Charles Medical Center-Bend, Gregory said.

Video link here.

The family and I were enjoying some donuts when the news broke, and the donut shop owner said there were a pile of police cars speeding up third street to the scene. Scary stuff.

Maybe it’s just that we have better news coverage now than we did back in the day (thanks to the ‘net), but I just don’t remember hearing about all this kind of stuff nearly as often when I was younger.

December 15, 2010

It’s Not A Photoshop

It looks like it is, but it’s not.

December 15, 2010

Mario’s A Jerk

He’s been picking on Yoshi since he was a baby:

December 14, 2010

Whoops…Mt. Bachelor Forgot To Pay Domain Renewal Bill

Saw this when loading up Mt. Bachelor’s web site this morning at the office:

mtbdomain.jpg

If you’re not familiar with that screen, that’s the Network Solutions default domain page when your domain is expired or has no nameservers set.

Looking at the Whois record, it appears that the domain expired last week (Dec. 8, 2010):

mtbwhois.gif

I’ve let my contacts at Mt. Bachelor know so hopefully they can keep their domain, but I can only imagine the grief this is causing them right now right in the middle of ski season.

Update: It appears that it’s working in some places, it just depends on your DNS provider or what you have cached (like, for example, I’m seeing their mobile site). OpenDNS has the IP address 166.70.18.97, but Google’s DNS is still pulling the NetSol IP of 209.62.105.19, so obviously something’s gone wonky. As somebody who’s had to troubleshoot DNS stuff like this, I don’t envy them as you’re at the mercy of DNS servers around the ‘net to get their act together and clear their cache, which can take days sometimes.

Looking at the NetSol whois, they appear to have renewed it today through 2019, but are just waiting for things to clear. They have the IP address as 206.71.85.71, but that doesn’t appear to be loading for me at all. So who knows what it’s actually supposed to be.

December 14, 2010

Reading Material

Time to get some of these links off my desktop…

OK, that’s enough for now. Enjoy!

December 13, 2010

For The Music Majors…

An analysis of the melodies of Super Mario Bros.

December 12, 2010

Videos For The Day

Have a few videos sitting in my inbox that need to be shared. Check them all after the jump…

(more…)

December 9, 2010

To The Man Who Called Me About My Domains For Sale

I got a voicemail a couple days ago from a man who was interested in buying domain or two that I own. Unfortunately, his voicemail broke up in some key spots, so all I basically got out of it was that his name was Benjamin from some Portland-based company. His phone number didn’t show up on my call log on my phone as I was out of coverage range when he called, so I can’t get the number from that. I couldn’t understand the company name he was representing nor could I understand the entire phone number he left (beyond the 503 area code), as the message was breaking up (I listened to it about 12 times. I basically got the first six digits (503564), but that was about it.

If you’re Benjamin, and you’re reading this, e-mail me at utterlyboring {at} gmail {dot} com or call me again (I have limited coverage in this office, so e-mail’s probably better). I could certainly use the extra money right now (we really need to replace our sewer line, and that’s not even remotely something we can afford right now).

December 9, 2010