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!
Category: Local
Central Oregon Blogger Meetup
Since it’s been a hell of a long time since anybody’s had a format blogger meetup around here, Shannon decided to organize one. Here are the details:
Central Oregon Blogger Meet-up
Feb 21, 5:30ish at the Blacksmith (happy hour, for those who care!), Downtown Bend (Map)
RSVP to Shannon at shanlee at gmail.com
Spouses and significant others are invited.
Jen’s put something up on COWPU as well as on her own site, and I’m sure some other locals will be posting info on their sites soon.
I’m hoping I can make it (if I can, it won’t be until 6:00 at the earliest).
KTVZ.com Adds Commenting Feature
It looks like it’s only on a few stories (like the domestic partnership story) and after chatting with the folks there, it’s moderated, but lightly — mostly just to keep the crazy crap that belongs on R&R off of there (which is a good thing, as there are some damn crazy people on R&R).
The Source has had commenting on their articles (as have most local blogs) for a while, but it’s nice to see some other larger media outlets do it. I don’t expect to see it on the Bulletin anytime soon, though they are doing a bunch of online experiments like their Podcasts and their Near/Far local band site, so maybe we will see something there sometime. Nothing as of yet over on the KOHD site that was supposed to be a communitiy interactive site — we’ll see how long it takes to get to that point.
KTVZ is Channeling A Little Bit of South Dakota
It’s subtle, but a local reader points out that it appears that KTVZ’s FavIcon on their site:
Is the same as the FavIcon for KOTA TV in South Dakota:
KTVZ has their own FavIcon with the little red circle with the 21 in the middle of it, but it’s not there any more.
While I’m sure it’s related to the fact that both companies are using the software from WorldNow, there was obviously a glitch somewhere that will undoubtedly be fixed soon as I know the good folks at KTVZ read this site on occasion (Hi Barn and Eric, nice seeing you both last Thursday).
BendWebCon 2 Is Tomorrow — Anybody going?
If you didn’t know, BendWebCon2 is tomorrow. I’ve been given the blessing by my boss to go attend, so I will be there tomorrow. Is anybody else planning on attending? Does anybody know if they’ll have WiFi?
Why Do The Cool Folks Always Come To The Office On My Days Off?
One perk about working for a vacation rental company that has a good selection of higher-end homes is that you have a tendency to attract higher-end clientèle. The interest folks never seem to visit while I’m at the office however, like a couple of pro athletes that made an appearance recently.
Like a couple weekends ago, former Olympic skier Picabo Street paid a visit to Mavericks (sorry about the cheap plug, but how else are you going to know what the facility is?). She’s apparently doing some work with Resort Sports Network, and they were doing a feature on Central Oregon and skiing in the area. Or something. Really, I have no idea since, again, I wasn’t frickin’ here. I do know that she looks she’s still all muscle and in great shape. They got here to ride the Flowrider at Mavericks, and somebody managed to get a some pictures of her. Here are a couple:
Yeah, she could still kick your butt.
Speaking of people that could kick your butt, this last weekend MMA stud Randy Couture stayed in one of our homes. He was staying as a guest of the owner of this particular house, so nobody really knew he was coming until he came in to pay for the reservation. Again, I wasn’t frickin’ here. The front desk managed to get a couple pictures with our crappy camera (our good digital camera was in use) so these are out of focus and blurry — I sharpened them in Photoshop the best I could. The one of the left is our carpet cleaning guy (and big MMA/UFC fan) doing the ready to rumble pose with Randy and the one on the left is Randy with our front desk manager:
And, sadly, it was my day off, so I couldn’t at least get some better pictures. I don’t know a thing about MMA or UFC, but apparently the guy’s fairly popular. Carpet guy raved for a while about meeting the guy, so he’s obviously got some fans.
BendBlogs.com Feed Fixed (Finally)
OK, after playing with it off and on over the last couple days, I’ve finally gotten the BendBlogs.com syndication feed totally fixed. In the process, I’ve setup the main RSS feed for the site to go through FeedBurner. While the old URL will still work (for the future, at least), I’ve setup a new URL for the RSS feed so I can (if need be) change back-end platforms and not have to have a new RSS feed URL.
The new RSS URL for BendBlogs.com is http://feeds.bendblogs.com/bendblogs. I’m still working on getting the autodiscovery tags setup properly on the site as well as the redirection code so that everybody will be using that URL, but here it is in the meanwhile.
I’ve also setup a few ways you can show local blog content on your web site, if you’d like. There is more information on all that on Bend Blog’s new syndication page. So if you’d like, you can have a simple little headline ticker like so:
(I am working on tweaking those a bit — suggestions welcome.)
I’ll be setting up a daily e-mail, too (powered by FeedBurner) that will send daily headlines via e-mail, if you so desire.
Whose Fault Is This?
Since BendCableBroadband is charging the same for their digital cable service as they are for their analog service, we decided to take the plunge and upgrade. They came by yesterday and set it all up. The problem? None of the channels numbers are the same, which I knew going in. The bigger problem? The various TV listings web sites all seem to be using the old Bend Cable channel lineup for their listings. xThe only one I could find that used the right assignments was Zap2It, which isn’t nearly as intuitive of a site to use as all the other sites (and Couchville’s shutting down, anyway, which is sad). The channels are all listed, but the numbers are all wrong, and I’m too dang lazy to cross reference stuff every time.
So is BendBroadband supposed to supply this channel lineup info to these companies or is this some sort of automatic datafeed that they just are ignoring? I don’t know how any of this works, but I’d much rather use Yahoo!’s TV listings or TVTitan to look for shows as the on-screen guide is slow and shows a ton of channels we just don’t get (and with most listing services we can hide channels that we don’t even care to ever watch).
The Snow’s Making Things A Mess
In case you haven’t heard, it’s a snowy nasty mess all over Central Oregon. Out here in Sunriver, it’s snowed at least 12 inches since yesterday. Thankfully my dad and his big contractor truck are driving me out here until I get a new car, as it’s big, high, and heavy, but even he is having trouble getting around. I went with a co-worker to take some pictures of one of our houses, and we were making the tracks in the road in her Jeep. The usual five minute drive took over 30 minutes. These are a couple pictures I took outside my office a bit ago during a lull in the snow storm. The picture on the right was taken through a tinted window which is why it has a blue hue to it.
Be safe out there everybody — and hopefully I’ll find a new car that I can afford soon.
New Book by Former County Commish Tom DeWolf
So what’s Tom Dewolf — former Deschutes County Commissioner and good friend of mine — been up to since leaving public office? He has written a book entitled Inheriting the Trade: A Northern Family Confronts Its Legacy as the Largest Slave-Trading Dynasty in U.S. History. Quoting the Amazon.com description:
A trailblazing memoir about one family’s quest to face its slave-trading past, and an urgent call for reconciliation
In 2001, at age forty-seven, Thomas DeWolf was horrified to discover that he was related to the most successful slave-trading family in United States history, responsible for transporting at least 10,000 Africans. His most infamous ancestor, U.S. senator James DeWolf of Bristol, Rhode Island, curried favor with Thomas Jefferson to continue in the trade after it was outlawed. When he died in 1837 he was reportedly the second-richest man in America.
When DeWolf’s cousin, Katrina Browne, learned about their family’s history, she was consumed with guilt. However, unlike others who might ignore their sordid legacy, she resolved to confront it head-on. Browne produced and directed a documentary feature film, Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, in which she, Tom, and eight other family members retraced the steps of their ancestors and uncovered the hidden history of New England and the other northern states. Inheriting the Trade is Thomas DeWolf’s powerful and disarmingly honest memoir of their journey.
It sounds like a fascinating book, as does the companion documentary Traces of the Trade which will be debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in January. More information on the book is available here.