Category: Local

Actually, she’s based in LaPine, but since LaPine isn’t an incorporated city yet, she’s going on the Bend blogroll. Welcome to Simone Paddock, a photographer who’s maintained a blog for a couple years, it would appear.

My request from before stands: If anybody knows of anybody that’s a blogger in Bend (or the area) that isn’t listed on my Blogroll, let me know.

We’ve got another foot of snow on the ground this morning (and I’d have pictures if my USB Cable for my company’s digital camera was anywhere to be found). The roads here are awful. ODOT is telling everybody to stay home. They’re considering closing one of the mountain passes (considering it looks like this, I don’t blame them). It’s a mess all over Oregon.

The Portland area is getting beat up, too, and I know this is the first time in a long time I’ve seen this much snow on I-5. Granted, it’s not nearly as much snow as we have here on the other side of the mountains, but we’re a bit more prepared over here for it (or at least we pretend we are).

The work web cam shows how much snow is in Sunriver, and you can see the snow on the local roads so you can see that it’s just a mess out there (and those roads aren’t in too bad of shape because they’re major roads and are plowed more).

Folks: stay home. Please. It’s New Years. Watch some football.

But despite his arrest, he seems to be pretty jolly about the whole thing:

I can only hope that if I ever get arrested, I’m enjoying things as much as he is.

So I could’ve taken pictures of our snow like Jon’s. I took a few winter pictures two years ago (pardon the poor scanning) but would really like to get some more taken. With the back pain laying me up, I haven’t taken nearly as many photos as I’ve liked.

What I really need is a negative scanner so I can get decent scans of my negatives (as I’ve got some great blank and whites in binders in my office). But that’s wishful thinking, that’s for sure, as those little buggers are expensive. And I need a dark room to develop my own film.

And I need to win the lottery 😉

I was just reading a story over at Bend.com about the driving conditions, plowing, etc… in Bend after our snow dump. My street hadn’t been plowed when I was reading the story (though most of Bend had), so I posted this comment to the story:

It’s nice that they’re getting most of town (read: The newer/more-expensive neighborhoods) but is there anybody who, like me, is on the older Northeast area of town who is still waiting for their road to be plowed? I’m calling a taxi to get to my doctor’s appointment today because my wife can’t drive me because she can’t get out of our neighborhood (and I can’t drive because of my back/leg that I’m having checked out today).

EVERYBODY I’ve talked to, all over town, has been plowed, but it’s 9:00 am, on the 3rd day of this mess, and I’m still snowed in.

OK, done ranting 🙂

Not even two minutes after I posted that comment, I heard a truck on the street. Assumed it was the garbage man, but it was a snowplow. Granted, my road’s still in really bad shape, and my wife still wouldn’t drive in this mess. So the cab is still scheduled to be here at 10:00.

I have to admit though, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve been able to see the top of the mountain on Mt. Bachelor’s Web Cam.

That’s what it looked like in Bend at about 7:30 this morning (thanks Barney for the pic). It’s still snowing now, and another 5-10 12-20 inches are expected. Mt. Bachelor got dumped with 34-inches in the last 24-hours, and I’m sure skiing is awesome. The passes are a mess, and even Portland got some snow (though they’re panicking about the 3 inches they received, and the locals here in town, while concerned, aren’t freaking out — yet).

Full story over on Bend.com (with great photo).

The roads in my neighborhood probably won’t be plowed — the snow will melt before the city shows up. Thankfully I’m still working from home for another week, otherwise, I’d be driving through this mess and my 30-minute commute will become a 90-minute slog.

Update @ 1:00 PM: Just went out side. There’s now well over a foot on the ground, and it’s still coming down outside. The flakes are as heavy and big as they were before, but it is still coming down fairly steady. I’m going to have trouble getting to my post-surgery follow-up tomorrow, but why am I still happy about the snow? One, we can always use the extra moisture come spring. Two, because it brings in the tourists, and, like it or not, that pays my paycheck.

Just what every police officer wants: A tree that grows donuts. Or something like that…

Bend police issued an APB — an all-pastry bulletin — Tuesday for the holiday pranksters who secretly adorned the metal tree sculpture in front of their Eastside headquarters with dozens of edible examples of the stereotypical cuisine of choice for cops on the go: donuts.

The police have a good sense of humor about it, but did want to point out that “Whoever did this showed a total, flagrant disregard for one of the four major food groups.” Thanks Barney for the link.

Last July when I first got my wireless card, I left the laptop on while driving home from work, a noticed a bunch of “oregontrail.net” SSIDs that showed up. Why they showed up, I had no idea, and OregonTrail’s mediocre site wasn’t any help.

Happened to be watching TV the other day, and saw an ad for their wireless service. For $20/month, you can roam on their downtown and Awbrey Butte hotspots at a blistering 128Kbs. Will this catch on around here? I really doubt it. If I had a wireless-accessible PDA or something, I might consider it, but if I going to haul my laptop down to Drake Park, I’m going to go a couple more blocks (to my parent’s house) and plug in where I can get something a bit faster than 128Kbs. I personally don’t want to hang out downtown with my laptop for fear of getting laughed at, mugged, or crapped on by those damn geese at the park.

They’re also selling residential service, which seems even more ridiculous to me. Their fastest connections for residential (two-way 512Kbs) run $50/month. Plus $25 setup fee. Plus, you need to have line-of-sight to Awbrey Butte (and possibly pay a local company $185 to get you all the equipment you need). For the rich(er) folks in town, that’s not a problem, but quite a bit of town can’t hit that. Put an antenna on Pilot Butte, and then you’ll have better luck (granted, Pilot Butte’s a state park, but we’ll just ignore that variable).

But really folks, spend you money elsewhere and get better connection speed. If you’re a basic cable TV subscriber, you can get high-speed Internet for $35.95, and the speeds are much faster (and the local cable company is always running “Free Install” promotions). Then, spend right around $75 (at the most) and get yourself a good wireless access point and Wi-Fi card. It’s a one-time cost, and you then not only have good wired access, but good Wi-Fi access.

Here’s what I’d like to see OregonTrial do: Get this to work in rural areas outside of Bend where high-speed options are scarce. My boss, for example, has DirecPC two-way satellite at their house out East of town. It’s always acting up on them. Put up a couple towers out there where you can see for a hundred miles, and line-of-site won’t be a problem, and then you’re in business.

Just my two cents. Granted, I still don’t have an access point at my house here, but I’ll be getting one one of these days. Hell, somebody want to give me one? Hell, somebody anonymously bought Matt at Metafilter a $1000 camera, so anybody want to send me some Wi-Fi loving? 😉

Man, people are obsessive about this video game. They even have big sites dedicated to it. Anyway, after over 37 hours of dancing on the video game “Dance Dance Revolution Extreme” at a local arcade, Drew Gamble called it quits this morning, breaking the unofficial world record by 90 minutes. There would’ve been two kids that broke it, but the 2nd one mis-stepped and was disqualified after playing the faster tunes. The teens used the event to raise money for a local charity.

If nothing else, the video game can keep participants in shape. The story says that his partner has lost about 90 pounds since he began using the dance machine regularly, and both have very low heart rates. They even had a couple endurance athletes (marathoners and triathletes — common folks around here) stop by to lend their support.

iSky, one of those outsourced call-center outfits, has an office here in Bend. They’ve been advertising pretty heavily in print, radio, and on local TV about how they have seasonal jobs opening up for the holiday season. Barney just tipped me off that he saw an ad on TV for them that stated its criteria were “Excellent spelling and grammer” [sic] . Barney was nice enough to call them and point that out to them.