Category: Cool

Has your site been banned in China? Plug your URL in here and see. Of the sites I’m in charge of:

• UtterlyBoring.com: BANNED
• BendBlogs.com: BANNED
• BendForums.com: BANNED
• sh.orty.com: Not Banned
• sunrayinc.com: Not Banned
• discoversunriver.com: Not Banned
• orty.com: Not Banned

Just for giggles, I ran a few other local sites through the service:

• chuggnutt: BANNED
• KTVZ: Not Banned
• The Bulletin: Not Banned.
• The Source: BANNED.

I’m sure that pretty much any blog is probably banned or any sort of discussion forum of any sort. Anybody else find their sites banned?

Selection Sunday is coming up next week which means that it’s time for offices all over the country to create office pools for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. And it’s time for the readers of this site to compete for bragging rights in the annual UtterlyBoring.com Tournament Pick ‘Em.

While the field for the tournament hasn’t been set yet, you can still get signed up in my group and be notified when the field has been set and you can start making your picks (expect that to happen next Sunday night). Sign up here or if that link doesn’t work, go here, click on the “Join Group” link and use the following info:

Group ID#: 29821

Password: utterlyboring

The group’s page is here, which I think you can only see if you sign up.

Brad ended up winning Last Year’s Tournament and was the winner of a t-shirt from Bend, Oregon Tees. We currently don’t have any prizes lined up (though I’m sure I can find something from my last Bag O’ Crap that might be fun — anybody need 100 floppies?). But if any local companies or individuals are reading this and want to donate some prizes to the winner, comment here. All participants and prize donators will get links on this site and names listed on the group page on Yahoo.

Also, you can fill out up to three brackets per-person, if you’d like. Why am I allowing this? Because, realistically, there are 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 ways a bracket could be broken down, so having up to three per-person isn’t going to help you a ton, but if you have that kind of time on your hands, knock yourself out.

Update on 3/7/07: Now we have prizes! So far, I have the following to contribute to the prize pool (random stuff I found around the house):

• Virgin Pulse 2.4ghz Cordless Phone (gently used, in box).
• 100 Recycled Floppy Disks (oh come on, there’s gotta be a craft project for this).

Anybody else have something to donate to the prize pool? I’ll look around and see what I can find.

Update on 3/12/07: The field’s been set, so make sure you get your brackets filled out! And in addition to the fabulous prizes above (quit laughing), we’ve got a couple more to add to the list:

• Dinner for Two at Jake’s Diner here in Bend. Thanks to Lyle for throwing that in there.
• A prototype Paizano’s Pizza trucker hat, white with black mesh, thanks to that crazy lady in Baker for that.

Anybody else with something to throw in there (and provider’s of prize can’t actually win said prize, nor can I).

Update on 3/13: Another update to the prize list: A basic will (by basic, I meaning no estate planning to avoid taxes and the like) for the winner, created by last year’s winner, Brad (who is a lawyer, don’t worry). Looks like the prize pool is getting more fun (or depressing, depending on how you look at it), so get your brackets filled out today!