Category: Jake

Welcome Bulletin Readers!

(Yes, I know I’m bit slow, after the article’s been mentioned dang near everywhere else already. I promise I’ll go and read all your posts, boys and girls, after I get some sleep.)

That’s not the first time that I’ve had that headline on this site, but this is the first time I’ve ever had my ugly mug on the front page of the paper (Julie makes Duncan and I look classier). I’ve now had my picture, name, and a quote on the front of every major section of the paper at point of my life (yes, even the sports section, when I was in high school). Naturally, I was out of town when the story broke, so I couldn’t post something earlier (I really need to setup my blog so I can post to it from my Blackberry — one of these days).

Any who, welcome to anybody who’s here because of that article (feel free to comment below and say “Hi.”). I think it was a pretty well-done article and covered the wide variety of bloggers in the area fairly well (hotlinks in the online version to the various blogs mentioned would help a bunch). It was better than the last article the Bulletin wrote about local bloggers which not only wasn’t even put online (which was silly) it only talked about three bloggers — Jon, Chris, and I. Nice job, Peter, as while I like Jon and Chris, I think all three of can agree that there is far more to blogging in this area outside of the three of us.

A few references from the article:

  • That whole Baltazar mess that was mentioned was chronicled pretty well by bloggers here (my post got inadvertantly deleted from the BendBlogs.com database during a rebuild of my RSS feed, so here was my take on it).
  • “Sally Heatherton” wrote the blog Marvelous Bend which can be found here (since the URL wasn’t mentioned).
  • If you want to know anything about Trader Joes, if anybody will know about it, Jon will.
  • Shannon’s right — you don’t need to be a “techie” (though I prefer “geek”, thankyouverymuch) like me to start a blog. Go here or here or even here to check out some free and easy-to-use commercial services to start up your own blog. And then pop me a note when you do and I’ll get it listed over at Bend Blogs.
  • And if anybody’s wondering, my shirt says “No I will not fix your computer.” It was a gift from a cool co-worker and I have to think I look dang handsome in it (my co-worker will laugh when she reads this). You can buy one yourself here

It’s been a long day as we drove back from the coast today (the aviation museum was closed today for some wine and cheese festival, so we went to Lincoln City), so I’m buggered. Thanks for visiting and feel free to come back anytime (and feel free to join the NCAA Pick ’em).

March 8, 2008

Out Of Town, Traffic In Portland Sucks, and “The Art Office”

I’m actually posting this from a hotel room in Newberg right now. We decided to get out of town and take a quick overnighter and visit my wife’s sister over here at George Fox. We went out to dinner and wandering aimlessly around Washington Square where I had to visit the Apple Store and fondle some of the over-priced toys. I was actually looking for a case for my Nano, but couldn’t bring myself to pay $25-30 for one that I can get online for half.

I’ve also realized that traffic on some stretches of road around Portland (especially along the 217) between 5-6PM on a Friday really sucks. I-5 was at a dead stop (thankfully we weren’t on it, just going over it), as was 217 for a few miles before getting up to speed as we passed the 99W exit. But while traffic around here sucks, at least we were moving, albiet slowly. In Bend, it’d still take me just as long to go just as far.

The plan for tomorrow is to go see the Spruce Goose down the road before heading out of town.

It was a nice (and much needed) break from reality for a bit, even if I am driving nearly four hours two days in a row and have to go back to work on Sunday.

One thing my wife’s sis pointed out to me was some pretty funny “The Office” parodies some folks in her art department put together a while back, entitled “The Art Office”. The video series is in three parts here, here, and here and they’ re quite entertaining. Enjoy, and I’ll be back tomorrow.

March 7, 2008

Getting Rid Of Games For Coworkers and Having Fun With It

So the boss man wants me to remove the pre-installed Windows XP games (solitaire, Minesweeper, etc…), but I was thinking instead of removing them, I should just overwrite the *.exe files with something obnoxious and leave the menus on the start menu, heck, maybe even put icons on the desktop to see how much time people are really trying to waste.

I know I’d have to work around Windows File Protection to overwrite some of the game files, but that’s easy enough.

Anybody have any ideas? I’d love to have some fun with this. Something that would track the clicks, keep a report on people trying to run the game, email management, offer a blackmail buyout option if said employee doesn’t want management to see that he or she have been trying to play, etc… .

March 4, 2008

Finally Feeling Good

As you all probably know, I’ve been under the weather. Last week really sucked, but after pretty much sleeping most of Thursday and Friday, I can finally say I am mostly functional again and don’t feel like I’m going to cough up a lung.

Our band concert yesterday went quite well, and we have one more tonight for those of you who missed the great show yesterday. Tonight, Summit High School, 7:30, free admission. Hope to see you there!

Now I just need to get through my e-mail that I haven’t looked at for four days and get details ironed out for the NCAA Pick ’em that I’m getting together so expect something on that over the next couple days.

March 3, 2008

Still Sick

If you’re wondering what happened to me, I’m still under the weather. I didn’t even bother going to the office today as I could barely get out of bed. I’ve been exposed to so many people the last few days who have been sick at one point over the last week or so that I think I’m just getting a bit of everything everybody had.

Thankfully, everybody else in the house is feeling better — just wish I could say the same for myself.

I’m going to see if I can get some work done from home today, but mostly I’ll just be trying to sleep it off so that I can actually be functional for my concerts this weekend (which you all are invited to).

Update on 2/29: After sleeping most of the day (and night) away yesterday, waking to eat and go run a few small errands, today is the first day in about seven where I can say that I’m feeling quite a bit better. Thank. Frickin’. Goodness. I’m sick of being sick. I’m still a bit weak and tired, but it is nice to not be coughing up a lung and to actually be able to see straight. Everybody else in the house is starting to feel better, and the last couple days have been warm enough to actually be able to air out the house a bit, too, which is always nice.

February 28, 2008

Sick

The kids have been sick off and on all week, as have members of my family, and it looks like it’s finally starting to get me. After not having slept most of the last few days (getting up and giving the kids medicine and listening to my wife cough and hack all night haven’t helped), I’m going home from the office early today to crash.

Regular(ish) blogging when I’m functional again (probably after my cough medicine kicks in).

Update on 2/26: Head still hurts, still plugged up with snot and coughing — as is everybody else in the house. I’ve been going to work, but taking early days. I’m just hoping I’ll be better before my band concerts this weekend as playing in a band when you have a head cold is no fun at all (thankfully I’m a percussionist and not a wind player as it could be a lot worse).

February 24, 2008

Bend Blogger Meetup Followup

Amazingly enough, the local blogger meetup was a huge success. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and when I got there (late, like I said), I was floored by the sheer amount of people there. I was expecting a few, not the 30 or so that were there.

It just shows how much the blogging community in this area has really grown, and how being a blogger isn’t as crazy as it once was. “Blog” was a word that I could never use as people wouldn’t understand what the heck I was saying. Not any more.

Shannon’s posted a quick follow-up as well as a group picture on flickr (along with some other shots including a flattering shot of me and the not chubby mommy). I’ve added notes on the people I recognized that I know wouldn’t mind. That, and on my high-res, low size screen, it’s hard to recognize some of the faces. Anybody else, feel free to tag your name on that image.

Like Jen, I was happy to meet BORis and Sally (I apparently already knew BORis, just didn’t know that that person was responsible for that site). All in all, an entertaining time, the little bit I was there. Heck, I won a prize for having the best name tag (I won by default with my Sharpie and Duct Tape creation), so that was worth the trip right there.

February 21, 2008

Blogger Meetup Tonight

Just a reminder that tonight is the local blogger meetup. I will be there, but it won’t be until about 6 (it starts at 5:30-ish) and won’t be able to stay long because of other obligations tonight. But if you’re a blogger in the area, make sure you stop by!

February 21, 2008

Getting Organized For March Madness

Yes, I know it’s several weeks away, but the NCAA tournament is coming soon. And, like last year, I plan on hosting a tournament Pick ’em on this site (announcement and banner ad to follow). I’m trying to get organized ahead of time here, and what I need is input from everybody on the following:

  • Prizes: We had a couple prizes last year (and I’ve already email folks who contributed last year to see if they wanted to contribute again), but if anybody reading this owns a business that wants some free advertising or has something that they’d like to throw into the prize pool, e-mail me at utterlyboring [at] gmail [dot] com or comment here. I’m hoping to get enough prizes to offer something other than just a first place prize, and I’d like to be able to award a prize for filling out an entire bracket and scoring dead last (as that’s a feat in its own right).
  • Scoring: I’ve set up my group on Yahoo!’s tournament pick ’em site, and one of the options they had this year was the ability to customize scoring. Traditionally, scoring has broken down so that correctly picked first round games are worth 1 point, second round picks are worth 2, third are worth 4, fourth are worth 8, 16 point for the 5th, and 32 points for the championship. However, you can adjust the scoring where every game is worth the same single point (so all games would be the same value), or set it up so that games are worth whatever round they’re in (3rd round games are worth three points, 4th are worth 4, etc…). You can also setup your own scoring system (I’m thinking the Fibonacci sequence, minus zero). I’m tempted to change up the scoring a bit this year to make it more interesting all around, but wanted to get everybody’s input first.
  • Anything Else? If you have any other ideas, feel free to send them my way.

So expect a banner ad up near the BendBroadband ad, plus an announcement forthcoming, once I get things better organized.

February 20, 2008

Any Of You Power Users Have An Opinion On XP vs. Vista?

So long story short, there’s a chance I might be getting a new laptop to replace my laptop that will be handed off to a co-worker. While I can get the new laptop with Windows XP Pro, I’m debating whether I should go with Vista (would have to be Ultimate or Business edition because of the Windows Domain/Active Directory access I need) since Microsoft is going to be phasing out sales of XP in the next few months. My brief experiences with Vista on this laptop (in a temporary dual boot) weren’t all that great, and this certainly isn’t a slouch hardware-wise, and that pretty much ran in line with every other Vista vs. XP rundown. The problem is that most of those XP vs. Vista comparisons are from when Vista was first released. So after some searching, I found this one that shows improvements in Vista with apps and games (with a Vista service pack release candidate installed).

So, you power users out there (and I’m talking folks who run more than a few programs at once and actually use memory and CPU-intensive programs): What do you think? Have you really pushed Vista to its limit? Do you have any applications that you need that don’t work in Vista? While I’m not much of a gamer (I don’t have that kind of time), application performance is key for me, especially in things like the Adobe Creative Suite (CS2) where I spend a great deal of time, rendering, editing, and dealing with dozens of RAW images at a time. But I want a decent video card so I don’t waste system memory on video processing. I also have a lot of other little tools that I’d try to use, most of which will need to work (some of them I can live without, but many I can’t because of the jack-of-all-trades nature of my work).

I will be getting a dual core CPU, a 7200 hard drive, and at least 2 GBs of RAM (along with a DirectX10 GPU), but I probably will avoid the x64 version of Vista, simple because of driver issues — I have to deal with a lot of old and obscure hardware and peripherals here, and I have a feeling that the 64-bit version might give me issues. I don’t have a 64-bit CPU to test with, otherwise I would beforehand (that, and I’ve heard that CS2 doesn’t like Vista64 at all, but somebody correct me if I’m wrong).

Any thoughts from anybody? As usual, I’ll be shopping at Sager for my laptop.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I do have a fully legal copy of Vista Business edition (given to me by a friend of mine that has OEM contacts all over the place) that, should I ever feel the need to, I could upgrade on top of a Windows XP Pro install.

February 19, 2008