I’d like to think that when you’re being evacuated from your home because a forest fire is coming your way, the last thing on your mind would be if your place is going to get ransacked or not while you’re gone. Sadly, I would be wrong.
Category: Local
With All Of Bend’s Empty Houses…
…I could see this happening here:
With real estate values plummeting and foreclosed homes sitting empty, a family of bobcats apparently decided the time was right to pounce.
So last week, they slipped out of the parched foothills of Lake Elsinore and into a spacious, vacant home in well-groomed Tuscany Hills.
Residents of the development got their first look Aug. 27 when the feline squatters — at least two adults and three kittens — lolled atop a wall outside the Spanish-style house
Sad News For The Day
ORblogs.com is closing down. I’m sure Paul has no time to maintain it since having a kid, but that still sucks. Trying to maintain BendBlogs in my free time is hard enough — and I didn’t custom code everything, nor do I index nearly as many blogs as ORblogs. It will be missed. Best wishes to Paul and his family.
It’s Eerily Quiet
One of weirdest (and yet, relieving) days of the year when you work in a resort like Sunriver is the day after Labor Day. Typically, it marks the day after Summer, the day after the last major tourist season until ski season kicks in (which won’t be for a couple months). The day after everybody has gone home, and it’s just us locals again. I just went to the small grocery store here to get some caffeine, and the constant hum of noisy kids, loud-mouth tourists and elevator music was replaced with eery silence. During the Summer, this small but full service store would be packed to the gills, have all checkouts running with lines, and I walk in there today to find employees outnumbering customers. There was one checkstand open, no lines, coworkers just chatting with each other, glad they survived another Summer. Other employees were dismantling, cleaning, and repairing shelves that had been all but destroyed by the summer onslaught. The parking lots around the area are nearly empty, being filled mostly with locals, vendors and real estate agents.
It’s just quiet. And it’s kind of nice. Eery, but nice.
It’s Official: Comcast Joins BendBroadband and Caps ‘net Usage
During the BendBroadband cap mess, there were stories about Comcast mulling a 250GB cap (while BendBroadand was mulling a 50GB max cap, which they later raised to 100GB after public outcry). Well Comcast made it official last week by putting an official 250GB cap (on a related note, at least we’re higher than Time Warner).
Needless to say, the public is flipping out, asking many of the same kinds of questions we asked locally, and trying to figure out ways to break the limit (as well as track it properly). But the sad reality is that this is going to become more and more common, and even Qwest has the exact same policy, even if they’re not quite as obvious or open about it.
Has anybody gotten a large BendBroadband bill because of the caps they instituted locally?
Welcome Bulletin Readers
Apparently my site was briefly mentioned in this morning’s paper (thanks Dave for pointing that out as I would’ve never have known otherwise). The post (and comment) referenced in the article is here.
I’m Back — What Did I miss?
So I haven’t gotten online once since last Wednesday after a small trip to the coast for the weekend to help build a deck at my grandma’s beach house. Among the highlights in my fully-packed inbox upon my return:
- Apparently BendBroadband is in trouble with one commenter saying they’ve already sold (no confirmation yet — I emailed “fred”). It’s starting to make their Bandwidth Cap look more and more like a money grab if this all turns out to be true. Can anybody confirm/deny? E-mail utterlyboring [at] gmail [dot] com.
- Barney has way too much fun with alliteration (knowing him, he could’ve made it much worse, but refrained).
- Finding weed is apparently pretty hard in Bend (thanks Kina!)
- COWPU and COISUG got some press.
- The US track team sucked it up.
I haven’t gotten through all my email or my local blogs yet. It does appear that a local blog did make it into the paper, showing even more how Bend Blogs are getting read by the local media (the Bulletin’s IP address is easily BendBlogs.com’s biggest reader, which is fine as it’s a great source for local information and commentary).
Anything else I missed over the last few days?
Update on 8/26: Full BendBroadband press release after the jump.
Google Street View Is Almost To Bend
I knew the Google Street View was expanding rather quickly, but I had no idea it was spreading like a virus all over Oregon. Look at this screen shot I just took (the blue roads are the roads where Street View is available — sorry about the large screenshot):
It basically looks like the waters of the Columbia in Portland and the Willamette through the valley flooded and are slowly filling in the rest of Oregon.
The only reason I found this was that I was looking up my grandma’s address on the coast (where we’re headed to this weekend — if you look really close at the URL in the screen shot, you’ll see the city) and noticed the little “Street View” button. Apparently the little Street View car has been combing quite a few rural (and twisty) highways and is gradually making it over to this side of the mountains, even combing some rural roads over here.
The nearest street-view image appears to be on the Madras side of Warm Springs (as well as an equidistant shot up Hwy. 97), and looking at the photo, it looks like the Google guy turned the camera on as he was heading into Warm Springs from Madras (based on the lane he’s in as the passing lanes are coming out of the Warm Springs canyon):
Anybody want to make any bets on how long it’ll take for that camera to make it that next 60 miles into Bend? It still hasn’t hit Eugene, so I don’t know when it will make it here.
Let The County Know You Oppose The Room Tax Increase
I rarely (if at all) get into politics on this blog, as politics and the politicians are just a silly waste of time. That being said, this is something that affects quite a bit of Central Oregon, and really needs to be said.
There is talk of putting a measure on the November ballot to raise the transient room tax in Deschutes County by two percent. Needless to say, lodging industry folks are worried and the Bulletin doesn’t even like the idea (you may need to be a subscriber to get access to those articles).
As many of you know, I do geek and marketing work for a couple vacation rental companies in Sunriver, and obviously anything that potentially is going to turn away tourists directly affects me (even though I’ve been pretty vocal of my loathing of some of our visitors, they do pay my paycheck). But what people around here don’t realize is how much of this area is directly or indirectly affected by tourism dollars coming into this area. Like it or not, we really don’t have another major industry here — tourism is it. So anything that’s going to turn away the tourists affects more than the folks who directly cater to those visitors.
Not only that, but it annoys me that the County has decided to pin their inability to manage their funds onto folks who are visiting the area (who down the road could potentially fall in love with the area, buy a home, and put more money in the County coffers) instead of just fixing the problem.
My boss here — who has been in this industry locally for over 20 years — has written a letter to his homeowners that I’ve edited and he has given me permission to post here. I agree with it 100%. Not because he signs my paycheck, I actually do agree with this. And you really should let your County commissioners and administrators ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]) know that you do, too. Read on for the full letter…
Welcome Bulletin Readers
If you’re here because of a quick quote of mine in a story today in today’s Bulletin (must be a subscriber to see the story online), welcome. The blog post mentioned in the article is here, along with a workaround for folks wanting to see more video online.