Category: Local

Never thought I’d see a dedicated channel for gays in this horribly conservative town. The shows on Bravo, where there are a few gay-themed shows or shows with predominately gay stars (even if that’s not a focus of the show), probably make some folks uncomfortable already (and so we clear this out now, I’m not one of those people and quite enjoy many of those shows). But apparently there’s enough of a demand for this that here!, America’s premium gay television network, will be coming to Bend Broadband. According to here!’s site, it’ll be on digital cable channel 550 so they are hiding it a bit (as I’m guessing the bulk majority of folks in town just have regular cable, not digital/expensive cable, but I could be wrong).

Thanks Kina for the link.

The hourly updates over on Bend Blogs should go quite a bit faster now. I just finished putting 40 blogs into the “deprecated” status, meaning they won’t get listed in the feeds list and they won’t be checked for updates. Their archived data still exists on the site (yes, Bend Blogs does archive your data whenever it can — see Utterly Boring’s archive), so permalinks will still work. The blogs I deprecated were in one of the following categories

• They haven’t been updated in more than 12 months.
• The blog no longer exists.
• The blogger has long since left Central Oregon (yes, Dane, you’ve been deprecated — get back to Bend and I’ll consider putting you back on there).
• Or the blog was made private or “friends only” in LiveJournal or MySpace.

I’ll periodically check the blogs that I’ve deprecated to see if they reappear, and if they do, I’ll begin reindexing them again.

The one last thing I did was remove ” – MySpace Blog” from the 55 MySpace blogs’ titles, as it just seemed silly to have that as part of the title of the blog.

But we’re now at 210 blogs that have been updated in the last 12 months, and if anybody knows of any others that should be there, I’d love to hear it!

This is very interesting, never thought I’d see it coming, and comments are welcome. Apparently that was a story that went across the KTVZ 5 o’clock newscast (I was at work), but local station KTVZ‘s parent company is going buy KFXO (only just a few months after they started their own 10 PM newscast). Anybody catch it or have more info? I’m running out the door here, but I’ll update this as I hear more later.

Update at 9:40: Just so you know I’m not just winging this, I heard from somebody who actually works at KTVZ that this was broadcast on the 5:00PM news. I missed the 6:00PM news, and it’s still too early for the 11:00PM news, so I haven’t personally verified this (would love to hear somebody who did watch it). I can’t find any corporate press releases anywhere about it.

That being said, assuming this is true, it’s a good move. They can combine their news staffs, as I prefer Peter Murphy and Kathy Cullis on KFXO’s broadcast (even if the broadcast itself isn’t all that polished compared to KTVZ’s). It’s also a good move from a sales standpoint, as they’ll be able to sell both stations’ ad space.

It’s also probably a pre-emptive move, as the other station that’s coming to town (someday) just hired a news director and will obviously have a news cast, will be seeking local advertising dollars, etc… . They know that the group funding the incoming station has money, so they expect competition. If they can eliminate some of it now, all the better.

Again, if anybody has official word, links, video of the story (wish I had a Tivo), whatever, let me know.

Update on 8/17: Official press-release from KTVZ.

If you got a little bendable toy from the library this Summer or from the children’s fair in downtown Bend, you might want to take it away from the kid, as I just got this from the Deschutes County Library:

The Deschutes Public Library is alerting parents about the potential hazard of a bendable toy that has been given to children as a reading incentive during the summer reading program, “Paws, Claws, Scales and Tales.” The dog and the cat bendables were purchased from Highsmith, the company that supplies materials to the 34 libraries nation-wide that belong to the collaborative summer reading program. The alert began in Indiana, where State health officials issued a consumer health alert on August 4 for bendable animal toys that were given away at libraries around the state.

Heather McNeil, Youth Services Coordinator for Deschutes Public Libraries, became aware of the alert today. The toys were found to have 0.4 and 0.24 percent of lead. The maximum safety limit is currently 0.06 percent. They toys are roughly 3.75 inches in length, and are easily bent into different poses.

“If parents find one of these toys they should return them to the library for safe disposal,” stated McNeil. “If parents have specific questions about lead poisoning they should contact the Oregon State Lead Line at 800-368-5060.” In addition they can visit the Oregon Department of Human Services web site on lead poisoning at http://oregon.gov/DHS/ph/lead.

McNeil stated that several of the branches have given away the toys as door prizes at special programs. In addition, the bendables were given away during the Children’s Fair on July 22 at Drake Park in Bend. Prolonged exposure to lead can cause serious and irreversible health effects, including damage to the brain, nervous system, and kidneys. It may also cause hearing, behavior and learning problems in young children.